Adv. Stats Schedule Rundown - Week 8 Results

Submitted by Ecky Pting on

Here's the advanced stats composite schedule rundown as of the week 8 results.  Now that FEI is fully meshed and posting Off/Def/ST break-outs, I'm including that as well:

U-M Football Adv Stats Comp Sched Rundown, 2015 wk 8

click to embiggen --^

As it happens, FEI appears to validate M's defensive prowess as much as S&P+; but the offense... has room for improvement (so it's a good week for a bye).  Special Teams is the great equalizer for M, as in the aggregate the Special Teams play compensates for M's offensive deficiencies (no pun intended...) such that the overall ratings for M are in the top ten across the board with the exception being ESPN's FPI rating, which is Monte Carlo based.  I am presuming (maybe someone with insight into FPI might care to comment) that FPI includes some extrapolation of M's turnover margin (or lack thereof).

Turnover luck is certainly something that M has been lacking - it's attributable in no small measure to both of the losses and none of the wins thus far.  A quick metric for gauging turnover luck is to look at the difference between actual and 2nd-order wins, which for M is 1.3 and means M should have 6+ wins thus far.  By comparison, a certain undefeated team who shall not be named on the other hand is -2.0, meaning it would be expected to be 6-2 at this point.  In terms of points per game, M's luck is costing -3.1, where as the UTWSNBN has been benefitting to tune of +3.9, or about a TD between the two.

Iowa remains the expected B1G West champ, and with any luck, MSU will drop is 50/50 game with Illinois Nebraska and M will be in to the B1G CG  if it can win out and get by OSU.

Yours in football - Go Blue!


Please refer to the week 6 diary for additional external sources & references, as well as how to interpret the color scheme if it's not completely intuitive for you.

Comments

BlueKoj

October 27th, 2015 at 4:39 PM ^

I was curious regarding a 50/50 game for Sparty as well. They really don't play anyone close to them. Nebraska is on the road and next closest team, but is that really a 50/50 game?

Ecky Pting

October 27th, 2015 at 5:15 PM ^

MSU @ Nebraska is showing dead-even per Bill Connelly/S&P+.  The win probability for Nebraska is right at 50% ... but it shows a 0.1 point lean to Nebraska!

Notwithstanding an MSU defeat of Nebraska, presuming OSU demolishes MSU and M wins out and beats OSU, then the following 5th tiebreaker would seem to kick in:

5.    The highest ranked team in the first College Football Playoff poll following the completion of Big Ten regular season conference play shall be the representative in the Big Ten Championship Game, unless the two highest ranked tied teams are ranked within one spot of each other in the College Football Playoff poll.  In this case, the head-to-head results of the top two ranked tied teams shall determine the representative in the Big Ten Championship Game.

Presuming M would end up ranked above OSU, with the hope that the demolition of MSU would knock them precipitously down the CFP poll, M may well move on to the B1G CG.