College Football Nerds Preview UM
They cover a lot here, but focus on Michigan at the 1:22:55 mark. My embed *should* start there if I did this right. Topics with links to the conversation points in the description of the video.
They address the transitive property the of TCU loss followed by the TCU shellacking in the championship that Alabama fans want to bring up. Talk about the Offensive Line. Discuss the changes that have happened to make UM better including an entire segment on Josh Gattis sucks. I didn't see anything where they were off.
I don't know much about these guys, but I remember last year their model thought we would beat PSU pretty handily, yet one said we would fail to cover and the other said we would lose.
I stopped watching after their next video. They said they watched the game and it was dead even except for a few big M plays in the 2nd half.
they either lied about having watched the game or have no idea what they’re talking about.
You did it right. Congrats on a successful mgoblog embed!
Video right in the post? Click play and it starts right on the UM segment? Didn't figure this kind of technology existed yet.
The transitive thing is particularly stupid because we would have a transitive win over Georgia if you use our matchups vs OSU instead of the matchups vs TCU.
how would we have a transitive win over Georgia? OSU lost to Georgia.
Michigan > OSU by 22
Georgia > OSU by 1
Therefor:
Michigan > Georgia by 21
That logic is no stupider than any other application of the transitive property of college football. I'll allow it.
he asked, you answered +1.
okay thanks. Wasn't thinking margin of victory transitive property. Was thinking moneyline transitive property.
I checked the rulebook. You also have to factor in M’s margin of defeat vs Georgia in 2021 (-23), so we lose again by -2.
Transitive property is always the most braindead attempt at analysis in CFB.
Alabama lost to Tennessee by 3. Then Tennessee lost to South Carolina by 25. Therefore South Carolina would beat Alabama by 4 touchdowns....am I doing this right Bama fans
No, you're not. You forgot that the Transitive Property of College Football has an "all transitive property arguments must benefit Alabama's national title chances" clause.
I can be lukewarm on these guys analysis sometimes, mostly because any time you cover a large number of teams you're going to miss a thing or two. But I thought they were pretty spot on here. They got a couple of things that most national analysts miss: A. The new defensive philosophy as being the reason we're up with OSU now B. JJ was actually really good last year, but wasn't in the best QB conversation because of low volume. The outlook for the season is pretty in line with my own as well.
I don't get Josh leaning towards OSU, with a new QB on the road, but he did say it's probably a good idea to always bet against his pick ;).
This is perfectly fine, surface-level analysis of Michigan, and I don't disagree with anything particularly stringently beyond the fact one of them said Mike Sainristil is good at getting to the QB (2 sacks last year). I also think, and this isn't unique to these guys, that a lot of people talk about how UM is now beating OSU because of favorable match-ups and style as if that's a quirk or a fluke. But that's how football works - you beat teams because you win personnel matchups and also leverage your style advantages. It's not unique to this matchup that the team that plays better wins more often. And the talent gap isn't massive; we're talking about college-aged men playing a sport at a high level. This isn't a bunch of college athletes for OSU playing a bunch of HS freshmen at UM.
Also, I'm done with complaints about a schedule being soft. Georgia's 2018 schedule featured Austin Peay, MTSU, and UMass. OSU didn't play a P5 team in 2019. And there are years where some SEC team will play a low-level ACC or Big 12 team and we're supposed to be impressed beating Texas Tech or Syracuse by 15.
I didn't hear it that way. I heard it as "these teams are at a similar talent level AND Michigan style matches up well with OSU".
They seemed pretty complimentary all around.
I'll admit to bringing some of my past misgivings about their takes into this one but it still felt a bit backhanded.
Also they mentioned that Michigan's schedule is back-loaded, finishing with PSU-Maryland-OSU. That's a combination of two B1G contenders and a dark horse. Anything could happen. I am hoping for 3-0 Michigan through that stretch.
I thought their take our O Line transfers imply some lack of player development with recruits was off-base and perhaps lacking knowledge of the details here. It's fair to say "remains to be seen how well a revamped line works out" as they did, but I get the sense they misunderestimate the talent we brought in and the depth of existing talent they'll be competing against.
Yeah, when they mentioned UM might have three transfers on the O line I felt the same way. Henderson is probably a lock at a tackle spot but Crippen and Nugent will battle for the center spot and Hinton is unlikely to kick anyone out of a starting spot right now. It felt like he wanted to make a point about transfers and so worked backwards from that instead of actually looking at the roster. I mean, they both kept saying there were a bunch of new pieces on this offense and yet UM has a returning QB, two returning RBs, a returning TE, 2 of their top 3 returning receivers, both returning guards and at least one tackle who saw significant time last year. That's about as good as you can expect.
Wasn’t Sam Webb saying he thinks Raheem Anderson will be the top challenger to Nugent? Could be a highly competitive spot.
Is "misunderestimate" copyrighted? I like that word.
I think you will need to talk to George W. Bush about that one.
I will not listen to any analysis that is based on the "loss" to TCU. Refs cost us a TD, we fucked around and found out on another goal line opportunity that resulted in 0 points, and JJ threw 2 pick 6s that are 2-3 standard deviation outcomes on his bell curce. So no, I am not going to waste my time on any transitive property discussion that is based off that game's outcome.
Couple Thoughts:
Nailed it on JJ vs Ewers. Nailed it on Gattis.
Totally missed it on last years OSU game (Mike Morris barely played and the edge pressure did not prevent Stroud from being comfortable and making passes for most of that game).
Not sure what to make of the "having a month to prepare is why TCU did so well against UM and so poorly against UGA." I think having a month to prepare obviously gives you an advantage over only having a week to prepare but UM had a month to prepare too and that didn't seem to make much difference. That game was decided by Pick 6s and some bad calls (Ref calls and OC calls) more than TCU out prepared us.
Interesting listen all the same. Dying for as much UM football content as I can get my hands on these days. Thanks for posting.
I like them. Obviously I don’t always agree but they seem unbiased, knowledgeable, and express their ideas well.
These guys said last year that the Michigan Penn State game was going to be decided by a field goal, and that Michigan would not be able to run the ball. One of them picked Penn State. I stopped paying attention to them after that game.
Harbaugh went to the CoFoPo twice in a row with great records and the playoff games didn't go his way.
He could go all out this time around to not three-peat. OTOH, Michigan could play really tight once they reach CFP. Hoping for the former. And preparing for the later.
These guys are fine. Especially for covering all the teams. But they really make me appreciate that we have Seth and Brian. The analysis from these guys is far better than sports talk radio and Game Day desks but the explanations don’t satisfy.
Seth and Brian are so far beyond all of these people with their analysis and explanations.
These guys are pretty lame. They cite a lot of correlative facts as oppose to causative, "Michigan doesn't do well against teams with powder-blue uniforms. Then they add their own lack of knowledge spin.
"With possible 3 transfers, Michigan's offensive line will take a serious step back" WFT? PFF says that we'll have the best oline in the country. Who are you going to bet on?
"Our model says that Penn State is going to beat Michigan by 8 points. I think Penn State will win but more like 33-31."
- basically College Football Nerds
Listening to just a portion of this makes it pretty clear that these guys don't really watch a lot of Michigan film or know the players at all.
Maybe they know the SEC really well, but covering the Big Ten is definitely not their forte.
And I'm pretty sure their model is bullshit.