Maryland @ Michigan, Saturday, October 6th, Noon EDT, ABC National/espn3 video

[iam416]

There's no reason holding would correlate strongly to sack rating, so that's a stupid X-axis. And it doesn't.

Assuming the data is for B10 games, it seems like holding is called less than once a game for every team in the league. If there are 70 plays in a game, that's a total of roughly 2200 plays in that chart. Meaning approximately 15 more holding calls were called on against OL's blocking OSU than M or less than 4 per season.

WWAMC.

Further, when compared to the numbers I cited, I'm really dubious of the work as there was more penalty yardage assesses against M's opponents than against Ohio State's from 2015-17. So, I'll take this M fan's obviously self-interested work with the appropriate grains of sand. Follow the money as they say.

[hack]

LOL. Good try.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Well, the chart demonstrates that Michigan QBs get sacked a lot and that M's offense (I assume OL, TEs, WRs and RBs) get a lot of holding calls. I'd conclude from this chart that if you can't protect your QB because you suck at the techniques - or whatever else - required to do that, you hold and hope you get away with it. M's OL has notoriously sucked for at least a decade with few exceptions (2016). I would expect a chart depicting this data would show exactly what it does show.

What it does not show, if this is your point, is that M gets penalized more than other BT teams for holding because the refereeing unfairly targets M. What it does show, at least to me, is that M, during the period depicted, had the worst OL in the league. My eyeball says that is definitely the case.

What would you do with any facts you derive from this chart? I could be totally wrong in my interpretation of the chart or miss your point in posting it ...... maybe but not likely.

[iam416]

You've got it backwards. It's showing holding calls against the OPPONENT of the a team. Thus, the perpetual bitching that M's DL gets held all the time and gets no calls. That's what it's supposedly getting at.

Of course, M's Opponents are penalized more than OSU opponents and this data was created -- very much created -- by a M fan. Follow the money.

[Jeff Buchanan]

The chart still sucks, obviously easily misinterpreted by smart people (heh).

[WingsFan]

Best part of the chart is kicking Iowa out of the B10

[iam416]

The other thing is that it assumes that holding calls are dependent on pass rush quality. If you assume the opposite -- that is, that the less teams hold against you, the more sacks you'll get, then the chart implies something entirely different. If you assume that -- that the officials aren't biased and call holding as they see it in a fair way -- then the chart suggests that M is actually get way fewer sacks than it should given how little opposing teams hold against them.

Best part of the chart is kicking Iowa out of the B10

But, Wingy wins. Fuck him. I don't it one bit. But he wins.

[hack]

Yeah, that was amusing.

[hack]

There's now the kernel of a reasonable question there. Obviously it's a pretty rough metric. Obviously teams that generate a lot of passrush are going to generate more holding opportunities than teams that don't, on the other hand. Unless you are suggesting that opposing OLs choose not to hold M DLs as much as those of other teams, and elect to take more sacks.

Brian may or may not choose to put it on the blog, if I understood the twitter exchange properly. But it's a rough measure of something that could be useful.

[iam416]

[hack]

Big data on football is really hard, yes. Which makes this graph less than scientific. Not sure it makes it useless, but certainly not perfect.

[Hannibal]

The graph shows that there is a clear, albeit somewhat scattered, correlation between the ability of your D-line to sack the quarterback and holding penalties called on opposing offenses. The worse you are at sacking the quarterback, the further apart are the holding calls against your opponents. It makes perfect sense.

And Michigan, of course, is a huge outlier miles outside of the rest of the system. Imagine my shock...

[WingsFan]

Well, the ref blew it, then.

lmfao here is a different angle, I would love to see anyone, anywhere, anytime - show a call blown this badly. Michigan did get the ball one more time and scored for the win, just think if this call cost us the game?

[WingsFan]

[AlabamAlum]

Well, if they were wanting to be ticky-tack, they could have probably called holding on the RT. Looks like he grabbed an arm.

Anyway, what is the belief, WF? That it was a deliberate bad call intended to swing the game to Northwestern?