The State Of Our Open Threads: After Purdue

You know, it's rather interesting - and the national press, in a kinder world, would well note - that coming off a bye week and down your best sign decoding expert, you can still manage a more or less dominating win over a Big Ten West team whose coach was almost literally unknown to the world until about 7:28 PM last evening. While I am sure someone out there is upset that we didn't cover due to a garbage time touchdown, and others are pointing at this game saying, "SEE, NOT SO DOMINATING NOW, HUH?" (there are, in fact, a few of these people on X this morning), we won and apparently, for CFP purposes, that's all that matters (except when other criteria are relevant - see Rule 14.3.2, under subheading "Fuck Those Guys").

Anyway, there was an open thread to break down, so we will do that now. 

I keep mentioning it in passing, but participation has changed in these threads over the years. Rule changes, home versus away, times, even the schedule itself change how everyone uses them, but they are still used. Indeed, last night, we ended up with the second largest thread we've had all season at 1,855 posts (as of the clock hitting zero, which is went the count ceases in this study). We also hit our season high in fucks given at 158, a tribute to a slightly wobbly JJ and three quarters spent slowly trying to figure out that Purdue was in Cover 1 almost the entire time. In fact, speaking of JJ, we also hit a season high for mentions of his play at 215 times (this covers both positive mentions as well as more neutral or negative observations), so the spotlight, in part, was definitely on him in that thread, and rightly so considering what is coming this month for us. 

The trend this year is actually very interesting - in the past, fucks and shits given would more or less stay elevated through the conference schedule, and while that has happened here to some extent, it has only begun to occur in the last two games. Part of it is that our schedule is backloaded, but I think a bit of the off-field stuff probably has crept into our outlook as well. We are now even more invested because this team is being put under an unfair microscope and now people on the outside will scrutinize every little thing. Even for fans, there is now background stress. I cannot imagine what the level might be in Schembechler Hall. 

There were a couple things to be uneasy about last night, in my own opinion. If you were like me, you were concerned about OL play somewhat, wondering if they've simply not shown everything in run blocking or if we have a genuine problem, etc...any number of things. For our purposes, we can look at this and just say, "Yes, we were more concerned about the structure of this team last night", as that is the purpose of this chart. This trend is interesting too, with its spike at Rutgers and then the dip to our Minnesota / Indiana stretch, and now, both are creeping back to that level again. I am sure that, come what may next week, we will be as concerned (or elated - who knows) at Rutgers levels again. 

I do want to mention efficiency as well, because last night was the first game that approach what I will call the "uneasy win" range, which is basically within earshot of 2.00. For the entire season, we had been remarkably calm, and last night was the first night that there was even a hint of "I don't know...." if you will. There's a lot at play - we looked flat for a much of the game, and yeah, it's off a bye, but there are also now forces trying to take this season from us in various ways, and also, the Big Ten will be new look next year and who knows how we do (hopefully we do this well minimally obviously, but still). There's a lot going on, and I think many of us saw last night that there are some things we definitely need to do before this coming Saturday, things we could get away with last night but definitely not in six days. 

Anyway, the 2.26 represents the 821 instances tracked across 1,855 posts. Even with that spike, it's certainly the calmest year we've experienced under Harbaugh. 

These are just the normalized values for select words for the conference schedule. They also highlight a couple things already mentioned - the overall talk about offense and defense peaked with Rutgers and has been on a slow recovery, but also that "fire" and "suck", perhaps for the first time in a long time around here, haven't really been a factor this season. Little things here and there suck in the moment, and yeah, we've wanted broadcasters and referees fired, and yes, players have played with fire (we talk about that too), but these were meant to capture a level of vitriol which simply hasn't been this year. It's actually....refreshing. 

The Mood Chart will make an appearance at the end of the season, and the long-awaited "History Of Fuck In The Harbaugh Era" is finally started after I've procrastinated for a year, so those will be along...eventually. 

For now, on to Happy Valley, with a chance to make it a Sad Valley.