What should we expect in Year 2 from a Greg Mattison led defense?

I'm going to attempt to answer that question by looking at trends from his previous stints elsewhere.

Greg Mattison has been a defensive coordinator for 2 years or longer at 4 different schools: Western Michigan University (1985-86), Michigan (1995-96), Notre Dame (1997-2001), and Florida (2005-07). I’ll examine those changes that Mattison’s defense made from Year 1 to Year 2.

I’m going to take the time to quickly explain what you will see below. The rest of this diary is split up into 5 sections: Western Michigan, Michigan, Notre Dame, Florida, and the Summary. The first 4 sections each have 2 sub-sections: a sub-section examining Mattison’s time at the respective coaching stop and a sub-section applying the trend from the respective coaching stop to Michigan in 2012. Each sub-section will contain 3 charts and 3 tables. Each chart depicts the trend over 3 years. The tables contain the respective raw data. The 1st year shown will be the year before Mattison arrived, the 2^nd year shown will be Mattison’s 1st year at the program, and the 3^rd year shown will be Mattison’s 2^nd year at the program. Years 2 and 3 will be bolded to signify those years as the years in which Mattison was the coach. If it sounds confusing, it all makes sense once you start reading.

Now for a word on the methodology. The math used was really quite simple, I just used proportions to estimate the stats for Michigan in 2012. I’ll illustrate how I calculated the predictions using the numbers from Greg Mattison’s time at Michigan from 1995-1996. The calculation is solving for the expected points allowed per game in 2012.

Solve for X and the number you get is 15.6 points/game. That’s the number we should expect from the defense in 2012 based on Greg Mattison’s performance at Michigan from 1995-1996. I followed the same procedure for each category for each team. It can produce some unrealistic numbers but it’s a relatively simplistic method that provides a general idea of what to expect. I’ll point out some of the unrealistic numbers as they pop up.

I’ll keep the commentary scarce until the summary, as there really isn't much to comment on.

Western Michigan

Applying it to Michigan

Notes of Importance

-A 103.1 Yds/G (!) increase in Passing yards allowed from 190.5 to 293.6 Yds/G is unrealistic; This would be more Passing yards allowed than in 2010, by over 30 yards.

Michigan

**Note: The only statistic available for Mattison’s first stint at Michigan is Pts./G**

Applying it to Michigan

Notre Dame

Notes of Importance

-Notre Dame significantly improved in almost every category except for Pass defense and Scoring defense.

Applying it to Michigan

Notes of Importance

-Recovering 3+ fumbles a game is unrealistic. I doubt that it has ever happened in the modern era.

Florida

Applying it to Michigan

Notes of Importance

-If we see the same improvement that Mattison saw in his 2^nd year at Florida, this defense could be the best in the nation

Summary

I wasn’t sure whether to use the median or the average of the projected data without WMU for the final projections but I decided to use the average obtained without using the WMU data for the final projections for several reasons:

1. WMU was Mattison’s first coaching stop. Looking at the data as a whole, the WMU data was significantly different than other coaching stops and skews the data. The median would normally correct for this but so few data points exist that the median isn’t very helpful in this regard.

2. WMU as a MAC school has a lower level of talent than ND, Florida and Michigan, which are all upper-tier BCS schools. I’m not sure if it’s the primary reason behind the major difference but it might have an effect.

3. I had already created all the charts and tables for the average without WMU and I didn’t think it was necessary to create the charts and tables for the median. If anyone is outraged by this say so in the comments and I’ll think about adding it in if the anger is great enough.

On to the final projected stats for the 2012 Michigan defense:

One final note: hundreds, if not thousands, of confounding variables exist and I didn’t account for any of them. Listing them here would be pointless. Just take all these numbers with a grain of salt and know they’re not going to be entirely accurate. They’re just meant to give an idea of what to expect.

Anyways, hope you guys enjoyed this. Please leave some feedback as I’ll be doing something similar for the offense and I’d like to know what I should add, leave out or leave the same. I expect to have it out in around 2 weeks. This was also my first time publishing with Windows Live Writer so I have no idea if the format will turn out fine. Sorry in advance if it isn’t.