Thoughts ?
So, I hate to be right.
I previously posted that MSU will eek it out against PSU (once I get to a computer I can copy screen shot of my comment as proof or just search my post history). And lo and behold they beat PSU .
Next I pretty much said M will dominate and win against Wisconsin in Sheth's FFFF piece where he made Wisconsin in Alabama. Heck I even went on with stephenjrking - noted poster here - you guys are welcome to double check that.
For my mental BPONE though , I just want some justification re:MSU. Specifically
1. While OSU is explainable - superior talent- how the F does MSU beat top teams ? Are we discounting their talent (based on just recruiting rankings ?)
2. Lewerke is good. He's no Heisman candidate but he is clutch. Agianst how the F does MSU find these guys or develop them stretching back to hoyer days ?
3. Is their Oline really bad or is it perception ? And if bad how did it magically rocked agaisnt PSU? (Any game summary of that game as to why PSU that the bed would help, I ddint see it and refuse to see it as I hate dantonio alot)
4. Why do teams shit the bed against quarters D and if it's that great why isn't M running it?
Tl;Dr version: MSU good or lucky? If good then how do they do it ? I hate thier institution but I want to have similar guts (looks like M is getting there thoguh !)
October 14th, 2018 at 7:03 PM ^
Going into woods & pretending you're homeless is fun!
October 14th, 2018 at 4:32 PM ^
I'll largely agree with Doc Toboggan on his points. But will also say that Mack Dintony is a solid coach - as good a coach as MSU will luck into on occasion (well, at least of the ones they can keep). He gets his team to play together, and play hard. He has some sound base plays, teaches good fundamentals, and mostly uses the talent he has to best effect.
Put all of that together with the fact that James Franklin sucks, and you have upset central...
October 14th, 2018 at 4:33 PM ^
Good bad or otherwise I think they bring more emotion to our game each and every year. We are business like but sometimes thats enough to beat us in the end. We dislike them they outright despise us. Someone from MSU or OSU needs to talk shit about us publically (mike hart us) so we can match the emotion. MSU also somehow doesnt have a lot of mental mistakes vs us. We tend to give more gifts than recieve. Throw in a 10% house advantage on calls and its like betting. You may win some but its all uphill.
October 14th, 2018 at 5:21 PM ^
Michigan was called “little sister” earlier this year by the one with a stellar driving record...LJ Scott.
October 14th, 2018 at 4:34 PM ^
maybe they develop talent and have a good head coach?
doesnt our bball program face the same questions?
October 14th, 2018 at 5:23 PM ^
Michigan basketball gets higher ranked recruits than MSU football.
so yes, MSU gets a lot from the players they get and prepares them. Not so sure about coaching them up since after college the NFL careers kind of fade.
October 14th, 2018 at 5:39 PM ^
LeVeon Bell and Kirk Cousins would like a word.
October 14th, 2018 at 6:03 PM ^
Bell has a lot of time on his hands between making rap music and doing contract negotiations. He has played in what...20 nfl games since being in the League? With the Suspensions and injuries and all.
Kirk Cousins hasn’t done anything yet. He might. He might not.
I know I passed them both up in all my fantasy leagues!!!!
But with all the dominating teams MSU has had the last 11 years, I would hope they could name more than two players doing something.....
October 14th, 2018 at 4:35 PM ^
They're not a bad team. But more importantly they play hard. THey're mentally tough. And they play their ass off against good teams and especially Michigan (they absolutely have a mental edge on Michigan these days). Say what you will about 'disrespekt' but it works. They have an amazing record against highly ranked teams. That means they're better than they are lucky.
October 14th, 2018 at 4:35 PM ^
"Thoughts ?" is not a helpful title, please put something informative such as "Mgoczar's bragging thread" so i'll know not to click on it next time.
October 14th, 2018 at 4:37 PM ^
Their O-line holds a lot, knowing it is rarely called.
Their d-backs hold and interfere a lot ( at least when the secondary was good enough to not get blown off the line) and lived with the penalties.
They shorten the game, play dirty, and hope to get you in to a rock fight. Basically, they are trash like their stadium and campus, but they try to get you dirty enough with them, that they can pull off ugly wins.
October 14th, 2018 at 4:39 PM ^
People love to hate on Dantonio when he loses but the fact is he’s a great coach. He wins with less but because of the limited talent he can also lose the games he’s not supposed to. Respect him and we will beat him often. Mock him and he’ll make you his bitch. We will beat them this week. And he’s a total ass. But he’s a good coach
October 14th, 2018 at 4:51 PM ^
Yeah because it really matters if the fans respect him.
October 14th, 2018 at 7:07 PM ^
Mock Dantoine?
October 14th, 2018 at 4:39 PM ^
I think MSU is not good, and neither is PSU. They both looked like ass yesterday. Someone had to win.
Lewerke was not accurate most of the time. MSU can't run the ball to save their lives. They have to hope their defense can stop us from scoring 20 points, because they sure as shit aren't putting much up against our defense.
October 14th, 2018 at 4:40 PM ^
Penn State was badly overrated going into this season, they beat up on scrub teams and OSU played awful at PSU.. and everyone said PSU was incredible..
Illinois ran for 250 yards against Penn State.. If you give up that many rushing yards to any team, you are not good.. Give that up to Illinois and you are awful on defense.
October 14th, 2018 at 5:06 PM ^
Penn State is who we thought they were, lost a bunch of offensive weapons and moorehead
October 14th, 2018 at 5:10 PM ^
We should throw the ball about 10 times against PSU. Run for 7ypc until they crawl off the field. Their run defense is awful.
October 14th, 2018 at 5:47 PM ^
Except for App St., PSU did not beat up on them. Instead of being one of those 'down' games, maybe it was actually telling?
October 14th, 2018 at 6:11 PM ^
True I forgot about that game.
They should have lost to pitt if they could have finished drives in the first half.
The second half they gave up
October 14th, 2018 at 4:44 PM ^
They scored 21 on a middle of the pack psu defense. Im more worried about our offense against their defense. They arent going to be able to run on us so we need to lock down felton davis and watch lewerke's legs. Don brown and winovich vs obvious passing situations is a good recripe for our success.
October 14th, 2018 at 5:11 PM ^
Exactly. Tell me how much we scored and I'll tell you if we won. They're not getting more than 17.
October 14th, 2018 at 5:26 PM ^
My guess is that Michigan scores over 30 points.
October 14th, 2018 at 5:32 PM ^
The wide receivers dropped a lot of well thrown balls...for some reason against Michigan, they will catch all these and run for another five yards after the catch.
Will be tough for Michigan to run on the MSU defense so I hope Shea and the boys can come out firing some good pass plays!
I hope the Michigan defense plays lights out and pressures Lewerke a lot, this is when he gets flustered and cannot be as accurate and lock down on Davis.
It will be a close game. Always is.
October 14th, 2018 at 4:45 PM ^
How'd this happen? It's simple. James Franklin is the undisputed master of beefing it.
October 14th, 2018 at 4:46 PM ^
MSU is not a lucky team. They have been doing this for 10 years now. The announcers blipped an interesting stat: MSU has won 10 of their last 15 games against top 10 opponents... ! Is that luck?
It isn't. They deserve respect.
October 14th, 2018 at 4:55 PM ^
That’s right, they deserve respect for losing to Arizona State and Northwestern!!!!
October 14th, 2018 at 5:05 PM ^
There's literally stats and articles on how lucky they are. They've been lucky for years - duration doesn't change what it is.
https://twitter.com/SBN_BillC/status/1051529355757846528
October 14th, 2018 at 5:37 PM ^
At some point if you're perennially lucky, you have start wondering if your luck metric is capturing reality.
October 14th, 2018 at 6:20 PM ^
Dantonio is 11-0 vs Michigan against the spread. He's 10-5 against AP top 10 in his last 15 games. Are you really suggesting that's luck?
Luck should wash away with that much data, but it hasn't...
October 14th, 2018 at 6:34 PM ^
Compact with the Devil is the third option. Possible.
October 14th, 2018 at 6:37 PM ^
Seems more plausible than sheer luck.
October 14th, 2018 at 6:46 PM ^
Yes, a sizable portion is luck. You've given no reason, in the face of stats that say otherwise, as to why luck must not have played a significant role in their recent successes.
October 14th, 2018 at 6:52 PM ^
Just simply ask yourself which is more likely: Is it that Bill C's algorithm doesn't perfectly capture luck or that Dantonio has Mega Millions jackpot luck?
October 14th, 2018 at 7:21 PM ^
Yeah, bit of a false choice there. You're apparently way overestimating the odds that the lucky games have come out the way they did. Read my response to the poster above. Dantonio's not hitting 1/100 odds repeatedly. He's turning games that shouldn't be into 50/50 shots in the 4th quarter, and then he's winning like 55% of them.
October 14th, 2018 at 7:43 PM ^
It seems you're laying out a methodology for how Dantonio consistently outperforms talent and betting lines. Sounds a bit like the opposite of luck.
October 14th, 2018 at 7:57 PM ^
Luck is like the most significant part of the methodology LOL. Again, read what I have written in this thread. He gets games to come down to chance/luck/randomness/tomfoolery/whatever you want to call it. This is a good gambit with teenagers. It's still luck. He plays to make every game a coin toss in the 4th quarter - it's still a coin toss once you get there.
October 14th, 2018 at 8:05 PM ^
Ok, I got it. Your argument is his methodology is to play in a way that games are decided by last minute luck, which leads to his 11-0 record against the spread vs. Michigan and being 10-5 vs. the AP top 10. I have nothing more to add.
October 14th, 2018 at 10:39 PM ^
Why do you keep saying 11-0 as if going 8-0 against the spread vs RichRod and Hoke is some amazing feat? You say he is 10-5 against the AP top 10. The other poster says he shouldn’t have lost to ASU and Northwestern but they did because (insert explanation and stats on luck). Does Dantonio just forget how to coach every 3 or 4 years when he has 6 or 7 wins? Did he forget how to coach when he went 3-9? Or are we just forgetting that season happened in year 11 at MSU?
October 14th, 2018 at 11:51 PM ^
You realize the whole purpose of the spread is to get betting close to 50/50? He's not 11-0, he's 11-0 against the spread. He is however 10-5 against the AP top 10, which would be hard for any sane statistician to attribute purely to luck considering MSU was the underdog in the majority of those games. The rest of your comments don't seem to have a clear point.
October 15th, 2018 at 10:22 AM ^
I’m starting to think you didn’t actually read anything that is written, you’ve just decided something and given skewed stats to “prove” it. Yes, he has gone 10-5 against the top 10 in his last 15. Last year, one of those wins was against Michigan, who ended up 8-5. A game that wasn’t counted in those numbers is last year’s OSU game because they were ranked 13th. They lost that game by 45. They went 3-9 the year before that with losses to Illinois and Indiana. Must have just forgotten how to coach that year. In the last 3 years, he has 3(!) losses by at least 33 points. Did you even read the doctor’s explanation on any of that or are you just sticking your head on the ground and refusing to acknowledge you are wrong?
October 14th, 2018 at 7:21 PM ^
Ask the PSU corner who dropped an easy interception thst hit him in the stomach with less than a minute remaining in the game. Game should have been over.
October 14th, 2018 at 7:47 PM ^
A dropped interception is a common occurrence in college football. Michigan fans should be acutely aware of that. Have you considered why a match up between a two loss MSU team and #8 PSU in Happy Valley came down to that play?
October 14th, 2018 at 9:32 PM ^
2007 Michigan covered the 3.5 point spread 28-24
October 14th, 2018 at 6:39 PM ^
They aren't perrenially lucky, though. They went somethting like 1-3 in one score games in 2016, them 6-1 in 2017, then 2-1 this year. Their TO margin is about 0 the past two years, and in 2016 was one of the worst in the country.
They win some ugly games and they lose some as well, and for some reason we forget that they lost close games to ASU and NW because we all forgot James Franklin is a dolt and once he lost Moorhead his offenses went back to the crap they were
October 14th, 2018 at 6:45 PM ^
To me the interesting question is how does Dantonio often lose games like that and then beat #8 PSU in Happy Valley? Even before they pulled off the comeback, it somehow seemed like they would pull it off. He seems to do very well against teams and coaches he's studied extensively, except Fitzgerald.
October 14th, 2018 at 6:55 PM ^
Bronxblue I respect you alot (love your takes ) and I agree but what I'm really getting at is to distill and copy dantonios motivation skills or whatever. Basically while they lose to crap teams they just heat top teams. For whatever reason - probably BPONE related - M hasn't done that and so wanted to see what the 'secret' is, in a world of analytics , see if it can be summarized or analysed and implemented in our dna.
October 14th, 2018 at 8:04 PM ^
The case I've made with regards to MSU/Dantonio refers to both good and bad luck as "luck". By leaving games up to luck, Dantonio gets burned often as well, as I've said here multiple times. The MSU team that went 3-9 was not a 3-9 talent level team - they were quite unlucky. However, when you play to leave things to chance, eventually, those things happen and the odds even out.
Dantonio has 6 double-digit win seasons at MSU and 4 bad seasons that combine for a 23-28 record - all with roughly the same talent level based on recruiting rankings. He's a gambler.
October 14th, 2018 at 5:38 PM ^
Connelly article is interesting.
Take away: MSU best chance, by far, to beat Michigan is to be +3 or 4 in turnover margin.
Avoid turnovers, let M D just playing its game, and have a plan to counter the fact that yards on the ground will be hard to come by, and M wins easily.