Michigan Football, Team 138, 2017 Season.

[hack]

After MSU, it had dropped to 20% (feelings!!). Posters at mgoblog lauding the Harbaugh hire and remaining faithful to him through 2.5 seasons were calling for his head. I think this puts some emphasis on how feelings have so much variance and are not a particularly good gauge of how good M football is or isn't. JMO.

14-10 isn't a feeling. Is a fact. The past decade of this series isn't a feeling either. Also factual. Come on already. What you're doing here is as reasonable as calling for JH's head.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Hack, I think you and I are talking past each other.

I think I get where you are coming from. Not sure you get where I am.

The negative attributes of feelings ball or hot takes is that they're based on emotion, off the cuff comments so to speak. I'ts like DJT's tweets

Thoughtful analysis that leads to sound conclusions supported by well documented observations (as in Brian's UFRs and video posted with selected plays) and then by the grades he provides in those UFRs allows for that.

Just saying the offense or play calling sucks, fire Drevno, fire Harbaugh, fire Pep (hot takes and feelings ball) is, to me, not particularly useful. Why does it suck; what was wrong with a specific play call - what was the down and distance, time on the clock score, trends? Those kinds of questions can't be adequately answered during the game or shortly there after. It takes time to sort all that out and damned if it might just turn-out that a play call was spot on and it just wasn't executed correctly.

Sure, 14-10 is a fact but that fact doesn't support sucks to lose to MSU, the coaches are idiots and JOK needs to be benched and Peters put in. A more thoughtful analysis of why that score was produced is more likely to support conclusions that are reasonable to draw.

[Jeff Buchanan]

As we know, team efficiency ratings have some run in predicting a win or a loss. Barring the effect of the football gods and shitty big ten refereeing (both of which can be substantial) and to a lesser extent the long and pretty much useless list of intangibles (I've got a feeling!), this stuff is pretty good.

M (69.1) is ranked in front of 3 of it's future opponents (Maryland - 58.4, Minnesota - 51.8 and Rutgers - 41.9) and narrowed the gap with Wisconsin (70.2) but, not by much, and remains at a distance from PSU (90.1) and osu (92.3). The sample size of data is getting quite large and therefor it's predictive power is enhanced.

Using these numbers for M and PSU, PSU is, on paper, a 21 point favorite. Take that for what it's worth.

http://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/espn-team-efficiencies-update-2017-week-7

[CGVT]

Might as well not play the game then.

The analytics say Michigan has no chance.

Mark it zero

[ame]https://youtu.be/P41gT4eicrE[/ame]

[hack]

Just saying the offense or play calling sucks, fire Drevno, fire Harbaugh, fire Pep (hot takes and feelings ball) is, to me, not particularly useful. Why does it suck; what was wrong with a specific play call - what was the down and distance, time on the clock score, trends? Those kinds of questions can't be adequately answered during the game or shortly there after. It takes time to sort all that out and damned if it might just turn-out that a play call was spot on and it just wasn't executed correctly.


Well, I just don't agree. Not at all. How about ``it's raining very hard, and the QB has just thrown interceptions to end the last two drives and had a very small sample size of successful reads." How much navel gazing do you really need to evaluate the third interception?

I think in truth there are fact-free emotion-driven reactions and there are fact-rich emotion-free reactions, and then I think you find 95% of everything else somewhere in between those two. There's not just the two kinds of reactions. One can also find some pretty facts-based bonehead reactions, or some accurately intuited ones. Etc. etc.

[Detroit Dan]

Fan satisfaction is important, in my opinion. Fans spend the $ to support the program. Too often, the Michigan coaches (e.g. Hoke, Harbaugh) act as if they don't give a shit about the fans. For example, we have no information about Schoenle. Would it really give the opponents a big advantage to know the status of this player?

If I were in charge of the Michigan program, I would pay some attention to mgoblog and keep the fans on my side by working with mgoblog to explain what's going on.

But perhaps there's an advantage to having a coach/general in charge who's above the fray and does whatever he wants? If Harbaugh wins, he'll be a genius in my book.

Bottom line -- Harbaugh had better have a method to his madness.

[Hannibal]

Emotions have value. Anger can blind you to facts in the heat of the moment but it can also provide clarity in coming to a conclusion once you know those facts. There's a lot to be pissed off about with the Michigan offense right now. Michigan fans are really tired of a decade-plus of excuses and Reasons Why Not.

[UMStan White]

Schembechler hated fans. Often saying he would prefer to pay the games in empty stadiums.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Emotions have value. Anger can blind you to facts in the heat of the moment but it can also provide clarity in coming to a conclusion once you know those facts. There's a lot to be pissed off about with the Michigan offense right now. Michigan fans are really tired of a decade-plus of excuses and Reasons Why Not.

Thanks for this cogent post, Hanni.

Clearly there's some degree of polarization regarding the appropriate and/or useful ways to react to the outcome of a Michigan football game.

As clearly, there's middle ground. I posted the link to the Fan Satisfaction Index because that's a reasonable attempt to render emotions useful. I make posts using analytics because that sort of stuff can be useful as long as their limitations are understood - primarily, shit happens, the football goods and in CFB shitty refereeing.

Ekity Pting's piece on Advanced Stats for the M/IU match-up correctly demonstrated that M would do well by passing on standard downs. In the first half, they did that and the offense clicked (then was drilled by stupid and deserved penalties and a couple of bad undeserved penalty calls by the refs).

Conversely, in the second half, when M didn't do this, while it ran well, it wasn't very efficient.

...... and Hack, any analysis of fumbles and interceptions (turnovers in general) in football will tell you they are random occurrences. Causation though is another matter and does, as you point out, often associate with taking undue risk.

[hack]

So when O'Korn threw that third interception -- a ball thrown near 3 MSU defenders and 1 UM receiver, after throwing interceptions to end the two previous drives -- you're saying that's a random occurence? You really believe that ?

[froot loops]

In rainstorms turnovers aren't random, they are going to happen. The more you expose yourself to risk, the more you will have them. In those conditions often the ball boy's importance is gigantic.

[iam416]

M has 110 first downs on the season (108th in FBS). Ohio State just had 41 in a single game. I realize you bearded millennial advance stat freaks find first downs useless, but back in my day they meant something!

[Hannibal]

The turnovers are a little bit of a red herring for the MSU game, IMHO. I think it was froot who accurately described the interceptions as "short punts". They didn't kill scoring drives, nor did they set up MSU. Our first fumble was close to midfield and it's a little debateable as to whether that cost us points. Obviously, turnovers are bad, but a few other things would have had to happen for us to have beaten MSU in an even turnover game. And I'm generally OK with coaches erring on the side of aggression since conventional wisdom has always been overly convservative. It's just hard for me to get mad when the coach throws the ball too much. Especially when we are losing.

M has 110 first downs on the season (108th in FBS). Ohio State just had 41 in a single game. I realize you bearded millennial advance stat freaks find first downs useless, but back in my day they meant something!

But how are you guys doing in the Einstein-Cook-tempo-adjusted First Down Ranking index?

Fancystats have their value too, but they have to be looked at with some scrutiny, and the stats that have little to no predictive value have to be thrown out. Too often people just accept them because smart people come up with them and, therefore, they must be right.

The Thursday morning mgoblog round table has a guy who has a bunch of fancystat power rankings and every week talks about how this team is underrated and that team is overrated. Whatever algorithms that he uses are worthless and Brian openly mocks him on the air now (it has gotten painful to listen to, in fact). The guy (I think) has a PhD and I have little doubt that he has a lot of mental horsepower but no matter how smart you are, your models have to be calibrated to reality. And some stats like "win probability" have no way to calibrate to reality since there is only a sample size of one for each prediction. This is a harsh lesson that I learned in the workplace for about ten years before it finally sunk in. As an engineer with strong egghead leanings, I am about as predisposed to fancystats as anyone in the world but they have their limits.

[hack]

Is now the time to post the article in which Leon Weiseltier snarls and sneers at Nate Silver? I loved it. IMO you put the quant guy in a room with the qual guy and let them fight it out. Relying on either one, or thinking that either one is superior to the other, is completely stupid.

[hack]

Ekity Pting's piece on Advanced Stats for the M/IU match-up correctly demonstrated that M would do well by passing on standard downs. In the first half, they did that and the offense clicked (then was drilled by stupid and deserved penalties and a couple of bad undeserved penalty calls by the refs).

Maybe it might have correctly demonstrated that a well-coached offense with a decent QB could have done so. This isn't an offense that has a decent QB, or displays the hallmarks of good coaching (avoids flags, minimizes missed assignments, consistently puts players in a position to succeed, finds matchups to exploit, etc.). Whether that's the fault of the coaches, the players or both, nobody should have been surprised that they drew flags, that the QB missed his reads, and that it was in truth the running game that moved the chains and got them into the end zone.

Michigan got 58 yards passing, on 10 completions and 20 attempts. It's beyond me how you can say Michigan passed and the offense clicked at any point -- they got 2.9 yards per attempt! The verdict is in. If the stats are right that passing on standards downs was an opportunity, this only reinforces how bad Michigan is at passing.