This diary is a fuller exposition of a quick chart that I threw together and posted in Ace's recap of the Iowa game. I've expanded the analysis somewhat and corrected at least one mistake.

In essence, I wanted to chart the offensive regression that we've all witnessed over the course of the season, especially post-Minnesota.

First, let's just chart yards per play (maize dots indicate losses):

The overall regression is clear, with a big spike against Indiana. That was a great offensive performance, but Indiana. Overall there's a clear regression, especially in Big Ten play.

The problem is that not all defenses are created equal. To try to correct for that, I've divided Michigan's yards per play by the average yards per play allowed by each team:

Here you can see that the Indiana performance is still quite good -- we did better against them than the average team. But you can also see the below-average performances (anything below 100%): UConn, Penn State, Michigan State, Nebraska, Northwestern, and Iowa.

Notice how poor our performance against Nebraska was: our yards per play (2.778) was only 53% of the average offensive performance allowed by Nebraska (5.27).

I also charted yards per carry by the running backs:

This is a little bit harder to correct for, since defensive rushing stats include sacks, etc. Nevertheless there's a clear negative trend, and in no case have we averaged more than 5 YPC by running backs in any game.

Finally, yards per pass:

The slope here is a bit flatter, but it is still negative. Perhaps the fall-off over the past several weeks can be attributed to injury? DG's also not getting yards rushing the way he did earlier in the season. DG rushed for 82 yards in the Notre Dame game, for example, and for 121 yards against Penn State.

In conclusion: this is grim. Very grim indeed.