The State Of Our Open Threads (Year One, Game Nine, Era Of Harbaugh): After Rutgers

You would have thought that a 49-16 win over Rutgers would have been a calm, uneventful game insofar as the open thread for the game itself was concerned - it turns out that certain things can make even a convincing win have its moments.

The summary of the year to date:

Let's start with the fucks we gave - all 268 of them. About 70% of them happened at two distinct spikes in the game. One was the special teams goof that allowed Rutgers' only TD, and the other was the call wherein we discovered that Jake Butt apparently must wear a fright wig and brightly colored shoes so that defenses and officials can see that he is A) in the huddle and B) later split out on the formation. I may have missed a section of the rulebook, folks. 

That ties into the shockingly low instances of "fire" - only 19. Most of them were actually directed at Millen, but a few were directed at the officials, who probably deserve at least a reminder that it is in fact football and not a game of Rack-O or something like that, although I am sure that they would find a way to make a shit call in Rack-O if given the opportunity. 

It wasn't all bad stress, of course - Peppers mentions figured prominently again (saying this makes this a thread which mentions Peppers, so you know) to the tune of 206 mentions. Jake Butt got a personal best this season too - we heard him called out 62 times, most of them coming on the 56-yard reception. Further, we hit season highs for "great" and "nice" too, so it is not as if we weren't overall pleased.

Here's efficiency and percent of total:

Mainly due to officiating and confusion that the officials had over which sport was in fact being played, Rutgers actually stands as the third largest contributor to the total amount of tracked instances and the game managed a final overall efficiency rating of 1.98, which historically would have been a loss that would make us pull our hair - maybe the hair of other people - out of scalps. However, adjusted for the Original Six from this analysis, the efficiency dips to 4.77, which would have been consistent with a bumpy win. 

Here's the original six in chart form:

You can see the downslide over two very stressful weeks, but I think that within those numbers are people struggling with their expectations versus how the season has unfolded, mostly in a way better than they could have imagined in 2015. I could be wrong, but the numbers and the visceral reactions to certain things show expectation management and some of the passion coming back, which isn't a bad thing.

The Mood Chart:

Mostly good vibes this year. We shall see how this evolves over the next couple weeks. As I mentioned earlier in the season, the Mood Chart is a work in transition, particularly in the nomenclature department because of the changes this year.