The State Of Our Open Threads: After Minnesota

Normally, I try to get this up and on the board earlier on Sunday, but I was at a birthday celebration (not my own, of course, as mine is in early July). 

I actually struggled a bit for content today because, well, the 52-10 drubbing made it a rather quiet night despite the longer thread. I say "longer" in a relative sense, of course - we've broken 3,000 posts over the years, but last night's 1,566 (the total as the clock hit zero, which is what I use) actually made this thread the longest thus far in 2023 campaign. Between rule changes and the lack of serious things to complain about, it has been a mellow season generally, at least to the present. 

How mellow, you ask? No, you probably didn't, but all the same, I will tell you. 

Last night, using the efficiency ratings that I somewhat scientifically devised, was the most mellow we've been in a relatively calm season (again, to date - we've got six games yet, some of which will likely be a bit dicey at points). As I mentioned last week, anything in the 2.50 to 3.00 range generally means a comfortable, low-complaint victory in the Harbaugh era, but ECU and Minnesota sit far below that. I never really thought much about how to label the sub-3.00 games, but these might be described as the ones where, as John U. Bacon states, you might mow your lawn, but in a good sense.

The Big Two in this study - "fuck" and "shit" - didn't get much action last night. We only gave 44 fucks to 30 shits, and in the season to date, that is below the average for both (63 for "fuck", 33 for "shit"). Indeed, this year's averages through six games are about half the average of last year's averages (I just read that out loud to myself and gagged, but I'll leave it in). We're definitely feeling less hostile than even last year, although as we know, all it takes is one game - usually Penn State or OSU, but sometimes another one puts us back on a more psychotic track. 

So, overall, nothing really has changed - even if you just used fucks given as the sole measure, Bowling Green was our most uneasy moment as fans thus far. 

There's another way to look at that as well: 

Working on the theory that the mentions of QB1 and "offense" should correspond somewhat, we find that they, well somewhat do that, but not perfectly obviously. Mentions of J.J. hit a peak during the game where we could objectively say he was not quite in sync, and then our concerns about the offense generally peaked with Rutgers, where we came out a bit flat in the first half. Things have, for now, subsided, but the correlation coefficient of the statistics on this particular chart last year was 0.78, which fascinated me enough to see what happens this year. 

Here is where we are at with talk of each side of the ball: 

Again, I don't think this is different than what you probably already thought - the Rutgers game had the most chatter about both, in part because we were coming off a flat performance against a MAC opponent, and in part because we didn't wake up completely until the 2nd half of that game. It has been mostly positive uses of these since then, with isolated moments of concern here and there - Nebraska's one or two explosive plays for example (not an understatement, of course - they didn't score on either anyway). 

Here's where we will talk briefly about positive uses of "fire" because we saw quite a bit of that last night. 

The yellow bar on the far right would be the normalized value for the Minnesota game, which represents the 45 mentions of "fire" in that thread. Historically, once we went north of about 40 or so, we were becoming tense, but last night, it was much more about specific accolades to players and to the team. As I've said, it has been a zen sort of year so far. 

Next....."Team Chaos"......or just another bad Indiana team or something. Anyway, I'll see you all there - though purely incidentally as you won't know which one is me.