Michigan Season Preview
I found this article entertaining. From SBNation, just posted today.
http://www.sbnation.com/ncaa-football/2011/6/9/2215018/2011-michigan-wolverines-football
Wow. Way too much math for football.. it's summer. My brain hurts from reading that, but I must say it's kinda cool
Con: complicated numbers and graphs confuse me and make me sad
Pro: he mentions "schadenfreude" in the first sentence
tiebreaker: though I don't understand the graphs, they are very smart looking . . .
Also, he said "GERG."
Looks like something Brian will breakdown for the simple minded mathmaticians like myself
I figured out why I hate the adjusted PPG metrics. They're kind like a golf handicap. Because Michigan did better than their handicap expected, they "beat" a bunch of teams they got shit-canned by and lost to UMass. In theory, I could "beat" the best golfer in the world by playing better than I was expected to play, despite him beating me by 10 strokes.
We didn't beat OSU last year. Trust me, that 30 point difference on the final scoreboard was real.
Not to highjack the thread, but will Brian be editing the Maple Street Press preview again this year? Because that would be awesome.
Too many graphs and numbers! Plus it wasn't much of a preview...
be so kind, hit me in the head, my eyes won't come uncrossed.
Good lord thats alooooot o info. Great stuff! + he said SCHADENFREUDE
The 3 adjusted losses for 2010 were umass, penn st, and miss st.
Well it looks like I have one guy on my side.
Not sure if it's good or not, but I guess I'd rather have a nerd back me up with ya know some facts and stats than Pete Fituiak saying we will suck because R. Vinopal and V. Emilioen won't be able to guard anyone.
I love this team. Denard and Martin will be beasts.
Michigan 2011 Big Ten Champs
There are so many "what-ifs" with this team that's it's really impossible to guess how good they'll be next year. If the offense can stop giving the ball away and make some field goals, it GERG was that bad of a coordinator, if the injured players can come back as competent starters, if Mattison can get the D spun up in addition to the standard concerns about injuries, unexpected legal trouble, grades, etc, and if they get by Notre Dame, Michigan could be 10-0 going into Nebraska. If things don't work out, they easily have six or so wins going into Nebraska. If Nebraska is a paper tiger (I think they are) and OSU is actually down, who knows what could happen.
I can't trust the Football Outsiders stuff for specific teams, just for the aggregate. In general, bad turnover margin teams will regress to the mean and great defenses will regress to the mean, but taken in context for specific teams, those things aren't necessarily true. Their stuff is interesting and a nice additional metric, but that's about it.
They can't convince me (and they probably wouldn't try to) that Michigan actually "beat" OSU last year. Maybe on a better day, Michigan only loses by 17, but they didn't outplay them.
Highlight:
there is a decent chance that Michigan will be projected at or near the top of the Legends Division.
Lowlight:
The defensive analysis: Addressing the youth in the secondary without mentioning Troy Woolfolk was a pretty glaring omission, and the biggest criticism of the defense was its propensity to blitz too much on passing downs.
I like being projected near the top.
But I remember a lot of 3 man rushes, on pretty much every down.
The Wolverines were a mediocre 70th in Standard Downs S&P+, but they were among the nation's worst on passing downs, giving up big play after big play after big play. Blitzes on passing downs are a tenet of Greg Robinson's defense ... he couldn't stop calling them, and the personnel couldn't make it work. Combine that with a young secondary, and ... yikes.We blitzed more later in the season but only when everything else wasn't working...and Avery started to settle. I remember more 3 man rush being an issue over blitzing too much. Not that last year's D is going to look anything like this years.
Blitz on every play? If that's true then the DL was not as good as he thought b/c every QB we faced had time enough to make a sandwich and get a haircut before he passed to a wide open receiver. Wait, maybe this guy was watching clips from a different season.
I believe there was a thread about the potential turnaround of the defense. This article had a link with a pretty interesting stat:
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Largest Single-Season Def. F/+ Improvements
1. 2009 Nebraska | Improvement: +26.3% | Where Michigan Would Rank: sixth
2. 2010 N.C. State | Improvement: +21.4% | Where Michigan Would Rank: 22nd
3. 2008 Florida | Improvement: +20.6% | Where Michigan Would Rank: 23rd
4. 2007 Louisiana Tech | Improvement: +17.8% | Where Michigan Would Rank: 36th
5. 2010 Illinois | Improvement: +17.4% | Where Michigan Would Rank: 37th
6. 2007 Temple | Improvement: +16.8% | Where Michigan Would Rank: 38th
7. 2009 Middle Tennessee | Improvement: +16.4% | Where Michigan Would Rank: 38th
8. 2010 Notre Dame | Improvement: +16.3% | Where Michigan Would Rank: 39th
9. 2010 Florida Atlantic | Improvement: +15.9% | Where Michigan Would Rank: 43rd
10. 2008 TCU | Improvement: +15.7% | Where Michigan Would Rank: 43rd
Ugh I hate reading an article that rather than telling me what everything means it refers me to read another set of articles to understand how to read the first article but anyways....
Success rate: "...measure efficiency by determining whether every play of a given game was successful or not. The terms of success in college football: 50 percent of necessary yardage on first down
.....unless I'm mistaken doesn't that mean success rate could punish teams that are good on second and third down?
Assuming you're going for a 10 yard first down if you gain 3 yards on first down, again get 3 yards on second down , and then get 4 yards on the third down play gaining the ten yards.
Does this mean that two out of three of your plays were failures because you didn't get 50% on first down or 70% on second down?
Also, unless I'm just not understanding it correctly if you get 8 yards on first down, get stuffed on second down for 0 yards, and then pick up 2 more yards for the first down all three plays are a success by this measure?
Also also, someone please explain the PPP I'm not sure what that means even after reading the description.
But I guess I'll also say I was a bit skeptical when I read that the Michigan running backs were solid. I disagree but maybe that's because I got used to seeing Mike Hart for four years.
Hopefully they will be better this year it's sounding like the coaches are making a lot of the offense seem to ride on their shoulders.
They picked us to go 7-5 with losses to SDSU, NU, MSU, Iowa, and Big Red, but defeating OSU. I don't know if I agree with those losses, but I think 7-5 is a reasonable baseline season for Hoke considering changes we're making to the defense and the offense.
(I didn't think a new thread was necessary with this thread started yesterday and only on the second page)