Statistical Highlights After Week 5
The game against Indiana strengthened our already lofty rankings on the offense side and further weakened our abysmal rankings on the defense side. No surprise there. Anyways - here are the statistical highlights after Week 5 games:
Team Rankings:
- #2 in Total Offense, #3 in Rushing Offense, #9 in Scoring Offense. Oregon is ahead of us in Total Offense by 4 yards per game.
- We are now a very respectable #37 in Rushing Defense - although that is mainly because we are dead last in the country (#120) in Passing Defense. They combine to give us #102 in Total Defense.
- We are #1 in the country in Sacks Allowed - just one sack allowed so far.
Indiviual Rankings:
- Denard remains the #1 Rusher in the country. He is still #2 in Total Offense - the top spot now belongs to Bryant Moniz of Hawaii.
- Roundtree is doing pretty well considering our emphasis on run - he is #46 in receptions per game and #60 in receiving yards per game.
Sagarin Rankings:
- We are #23 for the combined ranking. There is now a significant difference between our ELO_Chess (#14 rank) and Predictor (#29 rank). This basically means than although we are winning, we are winning with a smaller margin than expected. The good thing is that ELO Chess is what counts in the BCS rankings - so as long as we keep winning it doesn't matter how we win.
- For those worrying about MSU's win over Wisconsin, note that MSU is #28 and if we give the usual 3 point home advantage, then Saragin gives us a 5.57 point advatage over MSU.
- The usual disclaimer about not enough connections / bayesian in Sagarin's data as of Week 5 applies. After next week we will have enough connections for Sagarin's predictions to be non-bayesian.
Thoughts?
(Edit - missed to copy the link to the data: http://web1.ncaa.org/football/exec/rankingSummary?org=418&year=2010&wee… )
October 3rd, 2010 at 12:22 PM ^
Denard: sweeeeeet
Defense: oyyyyy
October 3rd, 2010 at 12:23 PM ^
But that's just like my e-pinion man!
October 3rd, 2010 at 12:30 PM ^
For some reason I feel our D will stand up better to the MSU. UW, Iowa type offenses.
I have nothing to base this on except the belief that they are not designed for a shootout style game and will be playing out of character if forced to "keep up" with our O.
So it all comes back to Denard. Again.
October 3rd, 2010 at 1:14 PM ^
Our D often played to the level of competition and to our offensive output many times last year. We clamped down fairly (and surprisingly) well against Iowa and OSU when we needed to, and I think we'll do the same this year.
October 3rd, 2010 at 2:03 PM ^
I so hope you are right..
I think our D should turn out a good effort at home. If not it will be pretty embarassing for the team.
I have a feeling though that if Shaw and Toussaint and company were healthy for the IU game, the score would of looked a little different.. and we wouldn't have been sweating giving up 35 so much. The score prob would of looked like the Oregon game
Instead of fumbling on the goal line that would of been a no doubt hand off to shaw to bust into the endzone for the score. For whatever reason i don't know why RR didn't let Hopkins pound it in there. Also when we got the ball back after forcing IU to punt, we had a lot of 3rd and 1 situations or 3rd and short which could of been converted with Shaw or another back other than smith i believe.
October 3rd, 2010 at 2:26 PM ^
It seems that the short to intermediate passing game is giving us major trouble. Minus the two Cam Gordon breakdowns against Notre Dame, we've been solid in preventing the major gashes that killed us last year.
Super accurate QBs with WRs who know how to run routes are going to put up major yardage against us especially if they throw it 65 times like Chappell did yesterday.
I see us faring better against more traditional type offenses than pistol, spread, run-and-shoot types.
October 3rd, 2010 at 12:31 PM ^
Our defense could look very different next wk, considering MSU will not throw it 65 times..
Here is to hoping we force them into a lot of third downs after stopping their run, but who the hell knows with our D
October 3rd, 2010 at 1:15 PM ^
As unlikely as it may be I would love to see us take on Oregon in a bowl game.
October 3rd, 2010 at 2:59 PM ^
The defense's biggest problem this week was seeing 98 plays - sure, some of that is due to their inability to get off the field, but it also didn't help that the offense averaged only 3.75 plays per drive, and even that is inflated due to a 9-play scoring drive. Throw that out, and the average drive length was 3.27 plays. So when the offense kept scoring quickly, the defense could not recover and was succeptible to the quick-strike offense of IU. I fully expect UM to have more trouble scoring against MSU - the drives will be longer, even if the outcome is still points - which means the defense won't see as many plays and will be able to (hopefully) get off the field quicker.
October 3rd, 2010 at 7:59 PM ^
While it was very disappointing to see UM give up 560+ yards to IU, as you pointed out UM's offense was either scoring VERY quickly or going 3 and out. An average team will ususally run about 65-70 plays per game, thus IU had nearly 1 1/2 games worth of plays and TOP (98 plays and ~42 min TOP). Had UM's offense scored less quickly or been more effective at converting 3rd downs, IU might have a more "normal" number of plays and "only" put up 420-430 yards.