Mailbag!
A very special email from BHGP contributor Hawkeye State:
Brian,
Because you are the de facto defender of recruiting services, I had to ask you this question:
David Barrent is a gargantuan offensive line prospect from West Des Moines. Relatively early in the game, and after a handful of offers from the middle-of-the-pack Big 10 and Big XII teams (Zooker, Nebraska, Minnesota, MSU, etc.), he committed to Iowa. Scout heralded his commitment in a breathlessly-worded post entitled "Four-Star In-Stater Commits to Iowa". Not only that, but they start the article with this paragraph:
While the state of Iowa produces a handful of high major prospects each year on the gridiron, the number of 'four star' prospects to come out of the state is a small one, perhaps one every other year. This year, there are three such players and one of them, David Barrent of West Des Moines (Valley) has committed to the Hawkeyes...
Clearly, Scout thought he was 4-star material. That is, right up until I received an updated Scout prospect list today and found Barrent had been demoted to 3 stars, despite the fact not one snap has been taken since that article in May. In fact, the only news I can seem to find on Barrent during that time is that he was the MVP of some camp in Chicago.
My question, then, is this: As a rational human being, how the hell am I supposed to take these guys seriously?
Subquestion: Isn't it in Scout's (and Rivals') best interest to have 4-star players remain uncommited until late in the game? If your team has a chance at picking up 3 4-star commits on the eve of signing day, aren't you more likely to buy a subscription to their sites to monitor their progress than if those players are 3-stars? Conversely, if you already have a 4-star in the bag, are you less concerned with whether you get another than if you have a 3-star and are in pursuit of a 4? Isn't this just blind self-interest? And doesn't that mean that the recruiting rankings from Scout and Rivals are no better than Lemming's Notre Dame worship? I'll hang up and listen.
HS
This is a common question, usually one offered up immediately after Recruit X has seen his ranking dinged after doing nothing in particular. Various points:
The guys running the sites are not doing the rankings. The breathlessly worded article referenced above was written by the Iowa guys at Hawkeye Nation [ grrrrr ... -ed], the Iowa Scout site. They have every reason to swoon so subscribers will be excited and happy. The men actually compiling the rankings are a different set of people.
The seemingly arbitrary drops aren't usually based on anything the kid does. Sometimes they are -- Michigan QB commit Kevin Newsome's been erratic at a number of passing camps this summer and has seen his ranking fall as a result -- but more often it's just a matter of early rankings being based on incomplete knowledge. This gets worse and worse every year as Scout and Rivals try to one-up each other with ever-earlier top 100 lists. A number of kids look good in early film and get rated high, then when film comes in on other kids or guys look particularly impressive at camp, they get slotted in above the previous high-ranked kids. This is no doubt what happened to Barrent.
High rated kids are far more likely to fall than rise. Howard Stassen maintains a list of the most overrated teams in college football based on a composite of pre- and post-season rankings. The top seven: Michigan(yay!), Texas, Notre Dame, Nebraska, Florida State, Southern Cal, Oklahoma, and Miami. Since the span covered is 1989 to present, this would also be a good approximation of the best teams in college football. Indeed, FSU, Miami and Nebraska are 1-2-3 in winning percentage; Michigan is #7, Texas #9, Oklahoma #13, and Notre Dame #17. How can the top three teams of the era also be the most overrated? Well, if you start off #1 you can only go down. If you start off outside the top 25 you can only go up.* (Washington State is the most underrated team.)
Four and five star recruits are FSU, Miami, and Nebraska here. It's a mathematical certainty that a player ranked at the very tippy top of a bell curve distribution of talent is likely to fall when additional information is incorporated into the rankings. High-rated commits are indeed likely to slip in the ratings, but so are high-rated uncommitted players. The difference is uncommitted players have no one to bitch for them.
End discursive points.
I think it's perfectly legit to drop this tackle without him actually doing anything except eating cheeseburgers. That's not to say recruiting services don't have their problems. There's a reason MGoBlog's season wrapup of recruiting doesn't just say "Scout ranks X, Rivals ranks Y" but has an extensive section on each recruit detailing his recruitment from offers to early rankings to camps to late rankings: there is information in there not encapsulated in rankings. I do think there is a slight bias towards uncommitted recruits, but that's because uncommitted recruits continue to pick up public offers and are more likely to attend the various camps both services run -- they're more likely to be in the limelight. But given the strong results put up by the ranking services in terms of both All-Americans and NFL draft picks, it's hard to dispute the usefulness of star rankings.
Recruiting services can be annoyingly overblown, maddeningly political, and barely English at times... but they've got that cheddar in the form of onfield performance.
*(this insight originally brought to my attention by Vijay of IBFC.)
Dear Brian,
Love the new digs. Hope you get all the bugs worked out the way you want them to. _____ questions:
1. Recruiting: If Jay Hopson isn't able to recruit MS players to UM, will he keep his job? Is it even possible to pull in recruits from that state without totally random MLB-playing uncles in Detroit?
We'll see what Hopson's haul ends up as at the end of the year. He's not just handling Mississippi, FWIW: he's also responsible for Oklahoma, where Michigan is in it for four or five high-profile players, and other sections around the country. Premium-board insider buzz is generally positive about his effort level and general personability.
I remain skeptical about recruiting Mississippi, which has some weird juju around it that causes kids to pick sure pain over, like, almost anything else. And their education system is somewhere between "nonexistent" and "Somalia" so the chances of picking up a guy who just can't stay eligible seem higher than usual.
2. Notre Dame: With Charlie's benefactor gone at ND and he has a mediocre to poor season, will the contract for life still prevent his firing (I really dislike him and the way he used the Saints to pry all that money out of ND)?
Kevin White wasn't actually Weis' main backer. The firing of Tyrone Willingham was done against White's wishes, as was Weis' contract extension. (Internet Notre Dame fans are still mostly in loooooove with Weis and universally loathed White, if that gives some insight onto the relative sides here.) Weis is likely secure until his heralded recruiting classes are upperclassmen. It would be hard to boot him until Clausen's a senior, IMO.
3. Zone-Read Option: Are there any examples out there of successful (meaning Alamo Bowl or better) teams running the Z-R-O based offense with non-Pat Whites at the helm? Going back to "Stalactites of Fear" I think that would go a long way towards calming some fears. I have heard of Sean King and his success at Tulane w/ Rod, but Threet and Sheridan are not NFL prospects. After that Woody Dantzler was the PWesque player for Rod at Clemson, and well are there any other examples out there at the BCS level? Rothlisberger at BGU with Meyer rings a bell, and Alex Smith as well from Utah, but what are the metrics we can use to compare all those players to what we have. I guess my question is: how much worse off are we with our talent at QB (passing and running)?
A couple of objections: Roethlisberger played for Miami. They ran a spread, but it was a M-versus-Florida passing spread, not the spread 'n' shred. And Steven Threet is not necessarily chopped liver. He was Rivals' #8 QB prospect two years ago, a four-star with a number of attractive offers. In an alternate universe where Carr is still the coach and Mallett is still around, I bet he's still your odds-on favorite to start this fall.
As to the questions posed... as I was writing my chart-heavy piece in this year's Hail To The Victors I assembled a chart. It was a glorious, glorious chart. I loved that chart, and love it still. Here it is:
Table 1: Yards Per Carry For WVU, NU, And Michigan In The Zone Read Era
Year |
West Virginia |
Northwestern |
Michigan |
|||
YPC |
Nat'l Rank |
YPC |
Nat'l Rank |
YPC |
Nat'l Rank |
|
2001 |
4.19 |
36th |
4.1 |
45th |
3.59 |
78th |
2002 |
5.16 |
8th |
4.31 |
39th |
3.82 |
66th |
2003 |
4.6 |
19th |
4.65 |
18th |
4.25 |
44th |
2004 |
5.14 |
9th |
4.64 |
26th |
3.83 |
68th |
2005 |
5.23 |
11th |
5.03 |
14th |
3.89 |
57th |
2006 |
6.68 |
1st |
4.04 |
52nd |
4.27 |
42nd |
2007 |
6.15 |
1st |
3.61 |
85th |
3.97 |
61st |
Northwestern's offense under Randy Walker was basically the spread 'n' shred, except he ran it with guys like Zak Kustok and Brett Basanez and very, very little other talent (five offensive draft picks over the time surveyed here -- Michigan had five this year) and every year until the last two, when Walker died and everyone graduated all at once and the program was thrown into chaos, the talent-free Wildcats killed Michigan in YPC.
Steven Threet isn't Vince Young... but he might be Brett Basanez.
4. The Football Strategy Window: I agree with Chris at Smart Football and yourself that the Spread Z-R-O offense reached its zenith a couple years ago, and now that "everybody's doing it" the strategic advantage of running it has been diminished (I watched Kellen Lewis get shut down by PSU with a simple read-stunt by the DE and WLB). How likely is it that Rod and company would do a Bear Bryant style trip to Darrell Royal to learn a new offense (the Wishbone FYI) to stay on the bleeding edge of offensive football? I just want to know just how likely is it that Rod really does "not stay predictable" in the words of the offensive coaches.
I addressed this idea in a super-nerdy post in which I copped to a brief period of Magic: The Gathering participation. The main idea was thus:
Magic, like many games, has a distinct rock-paper-scissors aspect to it. If you have a Goblins deck it could tear through anything that's particularly slow but be weak against a "Control" deck designed to keep everything dead or immobile. And Magic, like many games, often inspires copycats when one strategy tends to win a number of tournaments in a row. Once Goblins start rampaging everywhere, everyone thinks that's the way to win and runs them, and it's at this point your lame-o Control deck can show up, lock everything down, and coast to victory. If this happens a bunch, the metagame starts getting split between Goblins and Control and a third thing that might do okay against both gets added in and so on and so forth. At any one time, there are usually two or three dominant archetypes and then scattered weirdos trying to invent a new one and almost always failing. When a weirdo breaks through, though...
Rodriguez is obviously one of the breakthrough weirdos, but now his offense is well on its way to becoming a dominant archetype. Michigan will never have one of those games like West Virginia's Sugar Bowl against Georgia where you blink five times and it's 35-0.
But the thing about dominant archetypes is this: they get dominant and stay dominant because they are better ways to do business. It's likely that Michigan will experience great success with the Rodriguez offense as-is because it's really hard to stop even if you know it's coming. I expect that Rodriguez will slant less heavily to the run as he acquires access to better downfield receivers and quarterbacks who are true run-pass threats and not NFL wide receivers; I don't think he'll have to reinvent his personal wheel to scratch out 30 points a game.
Thanks for everything,
Tyler Sellhorn
Teacher, Assistant Football Coach
Fort Wayne South Side HS
P.S. You had to crack on my banner entry, didn't you?
Dude...
...yes, yes I did.
Will the stadium already be louder next year with the renovations? The upper deck is there already and can keep the sound in. It's a matter of not having fans there yet. What do you think?
Robert Hovenkamp
I'm not a sound expert or anything, but I think the metal superstructure won't have much of an effect on noise levels this fall. Without a full glass wall to reflect sound right back where it came, most of it will pass right through the superstructure and much of what does get reflected will bounce harmlessly away from the stadium. You'll have to wait for 2009.
I don't think your points are being dismissed as harshly as you make it appear. I think a way to rephrase the question to better fit you mindset would be "Once other teams have sold out, personnel-wise, to stop the ZRO, will Rodriguez continue with it or will he find people with abilities to exploit the new defense being presented?"
At least, I think that would be a different way of looking at it. I could be wrong.
Just to further pile on the dude who can’t keep his MAC schools str8. Call Bowling Green State University BGU is like calling OSU OU or UOS. It’s BGSU. I know because when I was 13 my older brother’s girl friend, who went to BGSU, gave me a pin that I cherished because I had a crush on her. Interestingly, I heard stories about her worthless whore of a sister who caught an STD from her loser philandering boyfriend. After I matriculated to Miami, completely unknown to me, I started dating the philandering boyfriend’s little sister and heard the other side of the story (well, there really can be no other side) including how the loser boyfriend had sex with the whore sister in his dorm room when he thought his little sister was asleep. Pretty incestuous without, you know, actual incest—Ohio style!
In closing I would like to agree with Gsimms and mention no one in the Big Ten is built to stop the ZRO—especially not OSU.
That's basically what I'm saying, but I do think Rodriguez is far more likely to actually use the jimmies and joes at his disposal in a way that maximizes their production. Carr didn't do that. I'll probably reference this in an upcoming post, but this breakdown of Michigan's scoring averages versus the national average reveals that Michigan was seven points better than the national average on defense over the whole of the Carr era and only two points better on offense.
I think that's an indication of a certain mentality that's gone.
Brian,
but at the same time, he has faith in his offense, with minor adjustments to personal to lead his team to victory. Its an attitude all of us cocky coaches have, we feel our scheme is the best, and it is, becasue its what we know the best. and thats the key, if we know it better then anyone else, we can be successfull with it. Do not expect to ever see RR do something completely different then some kind of spread out situation. To change wiould be to give up on his philosphy.
Brian, you wrote this about Threet:
In an alternate universe where Carr is still the coach and Mallett is still around, I bet he's still your odds-on favorite to start this fall.
In my opinion (which counts for next to nothing), Carr would have certainly chosen the proven commodity (Mallett) over the unproven commodity (Threet). The only time he deviated from that was with Henson, who was a 58985670 star, hometown prospect. And even then, he did so begrudginly. Plus, can you imagine what the fan base would say? They'd be up in arms if Mr.5 Star Blue Chipper had to sit in favor of a Ga tech transfer. The only logical scenario I can see Mallet sitting while Threet plays is a situation where Mallet is in Lloyd's dog house. But that would nothign that a heart-2-heart couldn't solve.
Also, I have general Comment on Big Ben Worthlessburger. In watching him play during college, it became apparent he would have succeded at that level no matter what offense he was placed into. Ben has a very good, accurate arm, is bigger and faster than most MAC LBs, and has great instincts when it comes to moving around/out of the pocket. Ben wasn't a product of any system, rather he outclassed the opposition in nearly every possible way. I'm not sure why the big programs recruited him as a Tight End, but maybe that was a sign of the times. With the current OMG Gary Pinkel's offense is the best of both worlds craze, one would have to think that Ben - if a high school senior NOW - would be a big time QB recruit.
bgh, I do not find Carr's history of QB's to be as cut and dried as you do. Dreisbach started and famously won Carr's first game in 1995 against Virginia. However, over that season and the next Driesbach and Greise swapped back and forth giving way to Greise in 1997. After that it was Brady or Brady/Henson. When Henson left there was only Navarre who held the job. Giving way to Henne, who was occassionally spelled by Clayton Richard due to ineffectiveness in 2004. After that Henne put the death grip on the job for the next 2 decades. What I'm saying is there is no evidence that Carr is married to his starting QB unless he is an incumbent starter and even then not always.
Regarding Big Ben, my understanding is he did not play much QB in high school but rather was buried on the depth chart behind 'the coach's son.' So, schools didn't really get to see him until late in the process. Tressel eventually did offer him as a QB, so the story goes, but Ben already knew OSU sucked and had the Redhawk FEVER. I loved the way he just dismissed pass rushers in college.
but I have no data to support that assertion, and I never played or coached the game, so my opinion's kind of worthless. I just have always felt that Minor was very much like Tyrone Wheatley- big and strong, but with breakaway speed as well. Carlos Brown has a little better speed and a lot better agility, but for some reason he hasn't impressed me, so I'm not high on him.
Having said that, however, Minor has done little more than disappoint me the past season and a half. If you're really struggling, maybe you could fall back on where they were ranked by the recruiting services out of HS- it's not a perfect predictor of performance, but it's better than flipping a coin, IMO.
I was trying to convey that Minor has the same type of physical assets that Tyrone Wheatley had. That's why I think he's got upside, as opposed to Brown, who looks like any other RB to me. Hey, it's just my non-expert opinion, so it's not worth much anyway.
But yes, of course Minor is not in the same league as Wheatley. That should go without saying...which is why I didn't say it.
1) I don't think Mallett would be here even if Carr was still here, honestly.
2) We'll never know whether or not Threet would have made a leap into the starting job, but you'd have to think the job would at least be open after the Wisconsin debacle... and the Illinois debacle... and the rest of the generalized debacling going.
http://heismanpundit.com/archives/1608 "I think that, without a doubt, we are reaching the zenith of the spread era. The last three teams to win the national title utilized some form of the spread. The last two Heisman winners ran it and the runner up the year before was probably as worthy a winner as anyone and he also ran the spread. But, it’s only natural to expect some adjustment. Each day a team practices to stop it, the spread becomes less exotic. More and more high school players enter college familiar with the concepts of the spread. So, the shock and confusion many defenses have encountered in recent years will naturally diminish. I think where the spread will continue to be effective is for teams with elite talent. The teams with talent are usually the last to adopt contrarian methods. But when they do, it tends to be very successful. Why? Because an offense that tries to confuse you is by itself a challenge to defend. When you take a superior athlete and use all methods of deception to get him into space, it becomes even more difficult."
Well this topic is a popular discussion lately
Brian said:
I don't think [RichRod] will have to reinvent his personal wheel to scratch out 30 points a game.
Well, if I understood the question correctly, it wasn't 'will RichRod have to reinvent his offense?', but rather 'will RichRod choose to reinvent his offense?', so this answer's kind of a copout. But I can't blame Brian for that- nobody (except RichRod) can really know how a scrabbler is going to behave once the coal spoon has been replaced with one of a silver variety.
Yes, the initial necessity of creating a weird offense is what justified RichRod's inventiveness, but personally, I believe it's more of RichRod's personality to find unique solutions that accomplish relatively more than everyone else. It's in his blood, and I doubt that will go away just because he's at Michigan. At least, that's what I hope...
Carr did not choose Henson grudgingly. Actually, it was just the opposite. Carr and DeBord wanted to start Henson, and only Stan Parrish, the QB coach, had Brady's back. The two-QB platoon in '99 was the compromise that resulted. And the reason why the platoon kept on going (for seven games) was because Carr/DeBord figured that Henson would eventually distance himself from Brady, so they kept giving him chances to win the job. But after the MSU and Illinois losses, when Brady clearly outperformed Henson, they finally gave in to Parrish and went with Brady. I heard this from a guy who's pretty reliable on this stuff.
Carr was very conservative from a playcalling standpoint, but when it came to personnel, he was not averse to going with youth over experience. In '95 he started freshman Driesbach over his own son (Jason Carr), who had been the backup the year before. And in '98, he tabbed Brady, and made Henson the backup, even though Driesbach was still around.
Well, Hat, obviously you have some super secret information wrought from a mysterious and un-named source. But, if Carr wanted to start Henson, why fuck around? He's the head coach, after all. I'm not sure head coaches are supposed to compromise. Maybe your version is right, idk or care, really. You'd think, though, some of this would have come out in the Freep story from Febuary on Brady.
And, I'm not sure its fair to bring up Carr. Yeah, he was a backup in 1994, but his experience consisted of throwing 8 passes for 10 yards. Going into the season, Griese was Dreisbach's backup. I'm not even sure if Carr was above Loeffler at that point, although he was a 5 year senior. And, it's worth noting that while neither Dreisbach nor Griese had any real experience going into the game. So, we've got three guys with little or no experience and you've gotta pick one. I don't see that situation correlating to the potentiality of starting RS Threet over Mallett.
I stand by my statement that there is nothing to indicate that Threet would have started over Mallett - notwithstanding, of course, discplinary/attiude issues with Mallett. But that's so far into the realm of the hypothetical that I'm not sure it has any bearing on this conversation.
Uh, just checking the picture download.
The email for the blog is wolverineliberation at gmail dot com, which you would have known if you had seen my original post soliciting you to join us, asshole.
I'm not sure what a .docx is?
I'm surprised at the sudden optimism about Threet's abilities. Last I heard, he was in danger of losing the starting position to a walk-on.
MUAAAAAAWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Dex, I don't think you ever saw my followup to that- I was waiting to see if anyone took the bait. Evil Bastage Mafia in the house.
Ima, Didn't realize you were a fellow Miami guy. Heaven help us.
Re: Rodriguez and the spread, I still think, as I've been saying for months, that we're going to be a fucking MACHINE. Back in the day when Nebraska was awesome, everyone knew exactly what they were going to do. The same with us for the past decade. To some extent both programs were unstoppable. The only thing that's kept us back has been naivety in the form of predictability, and complacency because we refused to change certain things. We're gonna rock. And if not, what's the worst that happens- I'm disappointed? I've been dealing with that since my senior year in high school when Florida State came in and ate our lunch. And until prohibition reins supreme again, there's always a cure for that.
Don't actually expect any intelligent posts on youtube, freep, mlive, or bleacher report. They're all 12 year olds. Blogs are possibly your best bet for intelligent discussion because they attract certain groups of people who are interested in obtaining information on the particular subject.
That said, I recommend visiting "Transcendentalism, Industrialization, and Nationalism: Professor Thompson's Blog on Turn-of-the-Century European Literature and Modernity." A fantastic read.
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