Pass defense stats (YPG): not as horrible as they seem?
Much is being made of the fact that our pass defense ranks dead last (120th) in yardage allowed (1539 yards in 5 games, or 307.8 yds/gm). But the sky isn't actually falling. As has been pointed out elsewhere, the "yardage allowed" metric doesn't take into account our 7 interceptions. The INTs show up in the pass efficiency rankings, where we rank 79th: not awesome, but not horrible.
There are a few other things that stand out from a more detailed look at the pass defense stats.
http://ncaastatpages.com/defense/pass_efficiency_defense?compiled_on=20…
Attempts. We lead the nation in pass attempts against, at 206. Clearly, the game plan for our opponents has been to exploit our young secondary. The Indiana game has some impact on these stats, given how long their pass-first offense was on the field.
Completion percentage. Our completion percentage against is 60.68%, which ranks 77th. Again, not awesome, but not horrible.
Interceptions. We have recorded 7 INTs, which ties us for 16th place with 11 other teams (though 5 of those teams have played 4 games). We are averaging 3.4 interceptions per 100 attempts, which ranks us 57th: above average!
Yards per attempt. We are averaging 7.47 yards per opponent attempt, which ranks 91st. That's not so hot, but hey, at least we're not #120!
Touchdowns. We've allowed 8 passing touchdowns, for which we are tied for 83rd (higher rank = less touchdowns) with 9 other teams. Passing touchdowns per attempt against is 3.88, which ranks 48th (less touchdowns = higher ranking).
I think these statistics basically reflect what we've seen on the field: a willingness to concede the short-yardage passing game in exchange for fewer big plays and more interceptions. Given our personnel, this isn't a crazy approach. And there is opportunity for upside, if players are able to improve with their game experience.
October 4th, 2010 at 10:27 AM ^
I just hate playing a numbers game and waiting for a turnover to happen just by the sheer number of plays the opposing team is running. Would a more aggressive D cause more turnovers? What we are doing now is working because our offense is wrecking people. What happens if we slow down on offense even a little bit?
October 4th, 2010 at 12:16 PM ^
Or several chances at a drive-killing holding penalty/sack/etc. We're going to give up more 3rd and long completions than we like, but if every drive has to feature one, I like our chances of scoring more points.
October 4th, 2010 at 10:14 AM ^
would help our passing D numbers significantly.
We would get a better rush, cause more pressure, causing rushed throws forcing more incomplete passes - and a few more picks for the young guys which will boost their confidence.
Don't be afraid to make a play on the ball either . You can't play with fear in your mind that you're going to screw up and get gashed for a big play. Denard and Co. will be able to make that back up in a hurry. Go let it all hang out.
I have to hand it to a few of the Indiana receivers for holding on to some of those passes when they got lit up by a few of our guys. Some of those hits were big time, and lesser receivers would have dropped a few more of them. Keep bringing the wood.
If we get some heavy pressure and stops early and get up by at least two TDs, we shouldn't have to look back after that.
Time to put Sparty back in his rightful place again.
If you are lucky enough to be at this game - you had better not leave that stadium with your voice in tact. Leave the singin' in church on Sunday up to the choir and help be the 12th man for these kids on D! It better be rockin' in there all day long.
October 4th, 2010 at 10:49 AM ^
Then we would have 1 less player in coverage which for our young inexperienced safety=not good
October 4th, 2010 at 11:08 AM ^
Because dropping 8 guys isn't working...it just gives the QB all day to find an open man.
October 4th, 2010 at 10:14 AM ^
The only thing good about it is that we can't get any worse (as far as rankings go).
October 4th, 2010 at 10:14 AM ^
I think the yardage allowed stat is also inflated by the fact that we have faced 3 teams (ND, BGSU, and IU) that are air attacks and little else. We didn't allow a 100 yeard rusher in any of those games, and our offense put up lots of yards/points in all of them, which means they had to air it out to stay in the game. Obviously it's on us to stop them from airing it out quite so much, but still, it's a mitigating circumstance.
October 4th, 2010 at 10:43 AM ^
Bingo.
October 4th, 2010 at 10:15 AM ^
It’s true that, by some measures, Michigan isn’t 120th. But remember, although there are 120 teams in Division I-A, half of them are mid-majors (i.e., non-BCS auto-qualifiers), and there are many other technically BCS schools that are hardly ever good at football (Duke, Vanderbilt, Iowa State, etc.).
If you compare Michigan against the schools considered to be the Wolverines’ traditional peers, you will find that even at 77th (by some measures), Michigan is pretty bad.
October 4th, 2010 at 10:17 AM ^
The Big Ten is loaded with good QBs this year, and we don't get to play one of the worst -- Adam Weber. We picked a really bad year to have a shitty pass defense.
October 4th, 2010 at 12:28 PM ^
Our remaining QBs are...Cousins, Stanzi, Scheelhaase (or something), Tolzien, Siller, Bolden, and Pryor. No offense to those guys, but I think this might actually be a down year for your standard, accurate-shred-you-from-the-pocket-QB that the Big Ten is known for.
October 4th, 2010 at 10:19 AM ^
Despite our passing statistics, I truly feel that if we can neutralize the run against MSU and hold them to under 100 yards, we will come out victorious.
October 4th, 2010 at 10:35 AM ^
the fact that teams go more for it on 4th down and generally feel they need to score to keep up with our O.
When your D is on the field so long, your O scores a lot of points in a short time period, and you are playing underdog opponents, this is the type of D you get.
I don't think the sky is falling, and MSU will be a great test of this.
October 4th, 2010 at 11:08 AM ^
First, I do agree that our pass defense is horrible, but in many ways the IU game was the perfect storm for them to look worse than they really are. A home game sellout; a game that they have been pointing to for 365 days to define themselves as a real football program. Coming in confident because they believe that they should have beaten us last year in AA, but got jobbed by the refs. A 5th year heady QB who is the most prolific passer that we will face in the B10 this year. An excellent group of receivers, led by Doss, and complemented by Belcher, Turner, Wilson, and the tight end (Bolser?). Little or no running attack. A game plan to dink and dunk down the field, which they executed masterfully. All of these things add up to what we saw Sat, but we still won! None of the remaining teams on our schedule will have the advantages that IU had. In fact, I will predict right now that none of those teams will equal IU's yardage in any of those remaining games. Any takers?
October 4th, 2010 at 11:20 AM ^
Given that Chappell set a Wolverines record for most passing yards yielded to an opponent, let's hope so!
October 4th, 2010 at 7:45 PM ^
Chappell's YPA was 7.5. That's good but not incredible. (Denard's was an unreal 17.3.) He just had lots and lots of attempts.
October 4th, 2010 at 11:21 AM ^
We just need to accept the fact that our CB & safety crew aren't very good, hope we can outscore the opponent, and hope that we bring in a large and highly skilling recruiting class (in the secondary.)
Saying our secondary isn't "really that bad" is like Lloyd Christmas saying, "You mean I have a chance."
October 4th, 2010 at 11:22 AM ^
So my son is in 6th grade and plays pee wee football. His team of 24 players has 8 players who played tackle football previously and all of those moved up from junior pee wee. So while we have 15 players at or close to maximum weight, we in effect have a decimated defense and offensive line, and all "true freshmen" starters.
Anyway, my son watched the IU game with me on Saturday. His comment to me over and over again was "Dad, this is just like our team. If Michigan could manage to tackle on first contact or near contact, they would be much better on defense."
We were bending sure, and didn't really give up big plays, but there were so many missed tackles that went for an extra 5 or 10 yards.
The other thought I had (and the OP gets at it), is our offense has been so quick to score, the opposition gets in a lot more plays. So the more accurate statistical measures may be the ones that measure by the play rather than by the game. (3rd down conversion percentages, yards per carry, etc.)
Either way, the effective measure of our defensive coaching staff is improvement across the season. Even if they continue to play bend don't break, if they can be coached up to make that first tackle opportunity, they'll improve.
October 4th, 2010 at 11:26 AM ^
I would like to see a points per possession metric as a rating of defensive ability. If it's possible, the statistic could also take into account starting field position. That would be a meaningful number to me considering how quickly our offense often scores, and I imagine UM would rank in the worst half of the league but not so far past the median.
Unfortunately, I have no skills and cannot break it down and get freak nasty with numbers a la the Mathlete.
October 4th, 2010 at 11:30 AM ^
Lies, damn lies and statistics!
I tend to agree with the numbers, we are conceding small chunks in favor of increasing the probability of a turnover. Not my favorite way to play defense, but it has worked out so far (in terms of winning football games).
I think that all of that changes some this weekend, however. Watch for a few new blitzes this week. I think that GERG will force Cousins to win this game and take the three headed monster at runningback out of the equation.
October 4th, 2010 at 12:07 PM ^
From my friend's texts, I expected a horrific defensive performance. I was mildly surprised. I thought there were some positives (again keep in mind my base line expectation -- horrible).
With one exception, we kept the ball in front of us and were able to swarm and tackle. In other words, we didn't break (much). We weren't gashed for huge plays.
I think Chappel is a better passer than we thought. I will wait for UFR, but my impression was that lots of times we had decent coverage and Chappel put the ball in a pretty small window. Question is, what other passers in the B10 will be able to make that many passes that consistently. My thoughts are perhaps Cousins and Stanzi. Also, Pryor, but in part because I expect OSU's receivers to be able to get more open than IU's did.
Taking into consideration IU was using a short passing game, we got okay pressure.
Seemed like when we brought 4, there were more gaps in the defense.
While we still missed tackles, it seemed like we were tackling harder and attacking the ball carrier rather than letting the ball carrier run into (over ) us.
I think this defense has a chance to be slightly below average (rather than horrible), which may be good enough for most of the season.
October 4th, 2010 at 12:10 PM ^
Michigan State will need to take a knee every other play for them to not put up record numbers. UofM should just enjoy the fact that Paul Bunyan will be in Ann Arbor for a whopping 4 hours.
October 4th, 2010 at 12:23 PM ^
NCAA Average yards per play so far this year = 5.69, UofM vs. Indiana = 5.80
NCAA Average pass yards per attempt = 7.25, UofM vs Indiana = 7.50
The defense was bad, but not as bad as the yardage numbers look.
The big raw stats Indiana put up are a product of them running almost 100 plays. Of course, their being able to run almost a hundred plays is the result of the UofM offense scoring ridiculously quickly, Indiana executing their game plan well, the the D not consistently getting off the field on 3rd down.
Here is the UofM drive chart. It's ridiculous. How is the defense not going to give up a ton of yards when the offense's longest drive is 3:56?
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Michigan Drive Summaries
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| START | QTR | POSS. | YARD | PLAYS | YARDS | RESULT |
| 9:14 | 1 | 0:46 | MICH 24 | 2 | 76 | Rushing Touchdown |
| 7:25 | 1 | 1:54 | MICH 15 | 5 | 85 | Passing Touchdown |
| 2:48 | 1 | 0:58 | MICH 19 | 3 | 80 | Fumble |
| 11:30 | 2 | 1:00 | MICH 22 | 3 | 2 | Punt |
| 6:39 | 2 | 3:56 | MICH 19 | 9 | 81 | Passing Touchdown |
| 15:00 | 3 | 0:50 | MICH 28 | 2 | 72 | Passing Touchdown |
| 11:28 | 3 | 2:09 | MICH 13 | 3 | 9 | Punt |
| 6:55 | 3 | 0:45 | MICH 31 | 3 | 69 | Rushing Touchdown |
| 4:34 | 3 | 1:28 | MICH 28 | 3 | 9 | Punt |
| 12:26 | 4 | 1:53 | MICH 29 | 4 | 16 | Punt |
| 8:48 | 4 | 1:36 | MICH 39 | 3 | 3 | Punt |
| 1:15 | 4 | 0:58 | MICH 27 | 5 | 73 | Rushing Touchdown |
October 4th, 2010 at 4:31 PM ^
Thanks for going through it.
October 4th, 2010 at 12:51 PM ^
Am I the only one who gets it? RR and Robinson have developed a game plan against Indiana that:
1. Protectected Denard. With the offense on the field for only 18 minutes, the chances for injury are reduced.
2. Denard only threw the ball 16 times therefore his arm was strong and sharp for the last passing play. On the other hand, UM forced Chappell to throw 64 times and by the time he had to throw the Hail Mary, his arm was a wet noodle.
3. Lastly, Michigan scored 2.3 points per minute while on offense as opposed to Indiana's .83 points per minute. If Robinson had unleashed the defense to even up the time of possession to 30 minutes per team then the score would have been 70 to 25. It would have been a boring game, viewers would have changed channels and not been able to see the heroics of DR. Also, RR would have been demonized for running up the score.
So, there you have it from my perspective.
October 4th, 2010 at 12:53 PM ^
The only number I care about at this point is 5. 5-0. Just win, baby.
October 4th, 2010 at 12:57 PM ^
I agree with the OP and most other commenters, that our pass defense stats thus far are the result of partially successful bend-but-don't-break schemes designed to protect our inexperienced secondary. You'd expect that the BBDB strategy would be most vulnerable to accurate, consistent, experienced QBs, and that's exactly what we've seen thus far. We aren't going to see any more Ben Chappells, and thus we're not going to see any more 400 yard passing days against us.
On the other hand, we really haven't seen a serious running attack yet. It's much harder to protect your young DBs with BBDB coverages if you have to start bringing more people into the box to stop the run. I'd expect teams like MSU, Wisconsin, OSU to run plenty of play action, and try to exploit our overall lack of individual cover skills. If the D can manage to get off the field often enough to get 2 wins against MSU, Iowa, PSU, Wiscy, and OSU, I'd have to consider that a pretty good result.