Has Michigan faced a good offense? ND has big time turnover issues, WMU and EMU are both MAC teams (although WMU seems like a very good MAC team), SDSU didn't manage very much against us and Minnesota is possibly the worst BCS conference team this year.

I took a look at each opponent on our schedule and looked at their opponents total and scoring defenses, then took a look in each box score for total yards gained by our opponent as well as final score. I added total offense and scoring offense into a year to date chart and divided actual yardage/score by their expected performance based on opponents NCAA statistics. Here is an example of part one:

 

WMU	TD Yardage	Yards	SD PPG	Points	Record
Michigan	325.5	462	10.25	10	5W 0L
Nicholls State	NA	NA	NA	NA	NA
CMU	398.2	442	32.6	44	1W 3L
Illinois	295.6	341	17.4	20	4W 0L
Uconn	315.6	490	18.4	27	1W 3L
Total	1334.9	1735	78.65	101	0.647
% of Normal		130		128

FCS teams are excluded, and I'll get to the opponents win percentage later in the diary. You can see that WMU is outperforming their total offense expectation by about 130%, and their offense is scoring 128% above par. I did this for each of our twelve opponents, and have ranked each offense by performance percentage in both scoring and total, then I try to put a finger on exactly how well each has performed to date by including an average of the two with opponents record factored in. As I write this, I have not made those calculations and do not know how accurate the list will come out. Nevertheless, I will include it for discussion's sake.

Total offense vs. Expectation:

1. ND 136%
2. WMU 130%
3. Nebraska 115%
4. MSU 112%
5. SDSU 110%
6. Illinois 108%
7. Iowa 107%
8. Northwestern 99%
9. OSU 93%
10. EMU 88%
11. Minnesota 87%
12. Purdue 79%

Scoring offense vs. Expectation:

1. ND 157%
2. Nebraska 150%
3. Iowa 142%
4. WMU 128%
5. SDSU 115%
6. Northwestern 106%
7. MSU 105%
8. OSU 95%
9. Illinois 92%
10. EMU 79%
11. Minnesota 72%
12. Purdue 62%

Average offense vs. Expectation (list 1* list 2/2):

1. ND 146.5%
2. Nebraska 132.5%
3. WMU 129%
4. Iowa 124.5%
5. SDSU 112.5%
6. MSU 108.5%
7. Northwestern 102.5%
8. Illinois 100%
9. OSU 94%
10. EMU 83.5%
11. Minnesota 79.5%
12. Purdue 70.5%

Taking out our opponent's opponent's FCS games, here is my take on SOS for Michigan's opponents 2011, based on opponent win percentage:

1. SDSU .692 (Army, Washington State, Michigan)
2. ND .684 (USF, Michigan, MSU, Pitt, Purdue)
3. WMU .647 (Michigan, CMU, Illinois, UConn)
4. Nebraska .643 (Fresno State, Washington, Wyoming, Wisconsin)
5. EMU .615 (Michigan, PSU, Akron)
6. Minnesota .579 (USC, NMSU, Miami (NTM), Michigan)
7. Iowa .571 (Iowa State, Pitt)
8. Illinois .533 (Arkansas State, ASU, WMU, Northwestern)
9. Northwestern .462 (BC, Army, Illinois)
10. Purdue .429 (MTSU, Rice, ND)
11. MSU .389 (FAU, ND, CMU, OSU)
12. OSU .3 (Akron, Toledo, Miami, Colorado, MSU)

Putting both of these lists together to try and get a clear picture as to who shows up against better opposition, here we have:

1. ND
2. Nebraska
3. WMU
4. SDSU
5. Iowa
6. Illinois
7. EMU
8. Northwestern
9. Minnesota
10. MSU
11. Purdue
12. OSU

This last list very well might be useless since it's double counting data (a good defense allows less yards, a good defense wins more games as a result), but I do think it best reflects my observations so far, all things considered.

Caveats:

1. I'm neither a statistician nor a mathematician, I fully expect this to have some issues, and I'll do my best to correct them within the framework of this diary.
2. Each team is counted towards the defensive statistics. I realize that with a sample size as small as three that can get problematic, but I didn't feel like I had too much of a choice due to data and time constraints.