I took a deep dive into the box scores from Pro Football Focus and Game on Paper for the Michigan, OSU, MSU, PSU, Illinois, and Rutgers' Week 3 games. (Last week, I said I was going to try to cover every Big Ten team, and I’m STILL going to try to do that as frequently as possible, but this week Life again made that an impossibility. [I'm posting this from a long wedding weekend in South Dakota.]) I tried to generate a couple blurbs based on those box scores from the statistics that I found compelling from each game. It could be compelling for the game itself, or maybe for what it portends for the team or player that season. It also could be a season-long statistic that I find compelling. Really, there’s no formula. This is just a very paper-based, statistical approach to evaluating teams. And, also, sometimes I watch a little bit of film if I don’t believe the statistics and want to know what the heck is happening (see: Drew Allar).

Note: Games are listed in order of how much I think a Michigan fan will care about the (a) teams playing, and (b) outcome of the game.

MICHIGAN defeats BOWLING GREEN (31-6)

Three picks, two scores, one smile. So, J.J. McCarthy is still human after all. His first INT was more situationally frustrating than anything else. His second very well could’ve ended up as an arm punt if it’s thrown either a little better/worse or Cornelius Johnson can make a play by interfering with the guy or grabbing him upon INT. His third… dude, what are you doing? Throw it away and live to see another down. Eh. Whatever. The first TD is a strike after Roman Wilson just dusted a guy. The second could’ve very well ended up as an arm punt, too, if Cornelius Johnson can’t make that play. There could’ve been a third passing touchdown if McCarthy lobbed it into a wide open Morris on the right sideline rather than throwing him a rope, but we know at this point he can hit the deep shots so it’s not a concern. But the one stat I’m taking away from this game is one, big, goofy, supportive grin on the face of one Blake Corum. After the third INT, Corum goes over to cheer up his quarterback, and his optimism and confidence in J.J. just warms your soul through the television screen. If the best thing since sliced bread still has his QB’s back, then I do, too.

Speaking of the best thing since sliced bread. Last week, I compared McCarthy’s 2022 non-con stats to his 2023 first two games stats and found they were pretty similar, despite the fact that the eye test indicates he’s taken a significant leap forward in that time. This week, I’m going to do the same thing with Blake Corum. In 2022 against Colorado State, Hawaii, and UConn, Corum had 34 carries for 235 yards (6.9 Y/C) with 7 TDs. This year against ECU, UNLV, and Bowling Green, Corum had 37 carries for 254 yards (6.9 Y/C) with 6 TDs. The eye test (at least from the first two games) would have us believe that the run game has maybe taken a step back due to a confluence of factors (breaking in new linemen, running back rust, stubborn play-calling), but that eye test was somewhat debunked on Saturday. I’m certain the Bowling Green Falcons don’t have much of a defense to speak of, but this was a disemboweling on the part of our star RB that we expected for all three of these games, not just one. He must’ve spent the week sitting in a vinegar bath, removing the rust, and tuning up before the Big Ten season. Slalom on, sir.

Trench warfare, actualized and optimized. Corum was great, but it’s worth pulling up a couple of line stats, both on the offense and defense, to show how vastly superior Michigan’s beefy boys are. The offensive line generated 2.65 line yards per carry. They only allowed one run out of 30 to get “stuffed” (go for zero yards or fewer), which means BGSU’s stuffed run rate of 3% was in the 0th percentile this season. PFF rewarded them with their best RBLK score (77.5) in the past three years. Meanwhile, the defensive line held BGSU’s run game to just 0.52 line yards per carry, stuffing 41% of their runs and “stopping” (2 yards or fewer) 56% of them. There were 7 TFLs and 4 sacks; combine that with the 2 INTs, and Michigan’s “havoc rate” of 21% was good for 95th percentile. All said, the Falcons running game earned -0.47 EPA/play. I know I called them “beefy boys” to start this paragraph, but this was a men vs. boys scenario.

Lord, I hate the circus. Other than the animal abuse, it really just screws with statistics. At the end of the third quarter, Bowling Green’s offense had accumulated 124 yards on 39 plays (3.2 YPP). Of those 124 yards, 30 of them came on a brilliant, circus catch by WR Odieu Hilaire on the first play of the game, and another 33 came on a How In The Hell Did That Fall In His Lap catch by WR Abdul-Fatai Ibrahim. Remove those two ludicrous plays and we’re down to 61 yards on 37 plays before the 4th quarter, also known as a diminutive 1.6 YPP. Presently, the league leader in defensive yards per play is Air Force at 3.4. I have a really hard time seeing the majority of our opponents moving the ball, especially once Will Johnson and Rod Moore return, unless they also purchase some tickets to the circus.

The number here is zero. There are zero games remaining before Jim Harbaugh returns to the field. I know that ultimately his absence from the games was minor at most, since he was coaching the practices and we were just playing cupcakes, but I still think this means something. It’s important to have a stable leader you can turn to in times of crisis (see: J.J.’s picks, or O-Line questions). When you have four head coaches in three games, it’s hard to know who’s in charge. Jim’s back. Jim’s in charge. Let’s go.

OHIO STATE defeats WESTERN KENTUCKY (63-10)

Eventually, we all fall. The past three Buckeyes starting quarterbacks all were ranked as the number one passers in the Big Ten each season (C.J. Stroud in 2022 and 2021, Justin Fields in 2020 and 2019, and Dwayne Haskins in 2018). That’s a high bar to meet, and I don’t think anyone would’ve blamed Kyle McCord if he fell short of that. Somewhere in the Top 3 seemed like a reasonable expectation. The Top 5 would be okay, considering the weapons around him, but not ideal. However, after playing three not-good-to-cupcake-level defenses (Indiana is currently 71st in DF+, Youngstown State is an FCS school and doesn’t qualify for F+, and Western Kentucky is currently 96th in DF+), McCord ranks 9th amongst qualifying Big Ten QBs (you read that right). That’s one below Cade McNamara and one above Gavin Wimsatt. McCord’s season stat line is pretty gaudy (69% completion, 10.7 Y/A, 6 TDs, 1 INT), but if you watch just his highlights from these games, it’s abundantly clear that he’s simply finding guys who are screamingly wide open due to mental lapses in opposing secondaries. Do I think he’s worse than Cade McNamara, Noah Kim, and Tayven Jackson? No, I do not. But this is still a noteworthy decline in QB production from Ohio State.

The Hilltoppers thought they could win. Okay, that might be a bit of a stretch, but they weren’t playing this game like BGSU played Michigan (trying to make it out mostly alive); they were playing it like a team that said, “Screw it, let’s go for it.” Western Kentucky went for it on 4th down a whopping 6 times. They converted 3 of those attempts. In the 2nd quarter alone, the Hilltoppers failed to convert a 4th and 10 from OSU’s 42, and failed to convert a 4th and 6 from their own 40! This aggressive attitude combined with some poorly timed turnovers helped lead to a lot of short fields for the Buckeyes, who scored on drives of 40, 48, 55, and 58 yards.

The defense creates even more offense. The Buckeyes offense stalled a bit in the second half: excluding their last, clock-killing drive, they had one drive end in TD, one drive end in an INT, and two drives end with punts. (McCord was still in the game for the punts.) But OSU scored two defensive touchdowns, scoring on a fumble that bounced into the end zone (despite being the nominal starter, RB Davion Ervin-Poindexter fumbled twice on five carries) and snagging a pick-six, too (on a very weakly-thrown ball by backup Bronson Barron, a Weber State transfer).

Questions will be answered. Maybe. According to every metric, Notre Dame will be the best team on both sides of the ball that the Buckeyes have faced, and by some margin. Here’s an example: Per PFF, their OFF grade is currently 91.0, and their DEF grade is 89.9. Indiana (66.4, 71.9), Youngstown State (66.7, 67.4), and Western Kentucky (60.8, 68.7) aren’t even within spitting distance. Of course, Notre Dame hasn’t really played anyone either: their stiffest competition this year was against NC State, who is 53rd in F+ (a not good offense but a solid defense), and they beat them 45-24. ESPN says Ohio State has a two-to-one chance to win. To me, that seems a little high considering it’s going to be a night game in South Bend.

WASHINGTON defeats MICHIGAN STATE (41-7)

I don’t care what you say, Greg. A week or two into the season, my cousin Greg (an MSU alum) told me that Noah Kim was better than Payton Thorne. I told him this wasn’t true, and he didn’t listen. Then, I texted him halfway through Saturday’s game versus the Huskies and asked if he’d changed his mind. Somehow, he hadn’t. I doubt I have to convince many readers, though, that Kim is really going to struggle this year against competition that doesn’t falter against a light breeze. His stats looked good coming into this game, but MSU had played CMU and Richmond. (FWIW: The Chippewas coverage grade on PFF is the third worst amongst all FBS teams.) After three games, Washington has the 43rd highest coverage grade in the FBS (26th amongst Power Five teams). Kim could only complete 12/31 throws (he was wildly inaccurate, many of his completions only hauled in thanks to sticky fingered WRs) for 136 yards. You might expect he was pressured a bunch and threw a lot of balls away, leading to those incompletions, but that wouldn’t be accurate: Kim was pressured on 10 of 34 drop backs (29% would be the 80th highest number amongst starting FBS QBs). On a positive note, his YacPy* stayed at a respectable 0.28, so it’s not like all he had to do was find the open guy (assuming he found any guys at all).

*YacPy = (yards after the catch) / (total passing yards)

It wasn’t just the passing game. (Former) Big Ten rushing leader Nathan Carter couldn’t get anything going against the Huskies, carrying the ball 17 times for 48 yards, and never breaking a run for more than 9 yards. This performance drops him to third amongst Big Ten rushers, behind Rutgers’ Kyle Monangai and Minnesota’s Darius Taylor. Carter was definitely a good transfer to bring in, but he’s not the savior that Kenneth Walker III was, as some Spartans may have hoped after the first two games. His yards after contact per carry and elusiveness score (PFF measurement for how you-guessed-it elusive backs are) are both 12th amongst the 23 Big Ten backs with 20+ carries on the season. This is literally as middle of the road as it gets.

One small positive offensive takeaway. According to PFF, amongst Power Five teams, Michigan State allows the third most pressures per snap from their LT position. For most of the year, this position has been manned by Brandon Baldwin (128 snaps), but he was yanked at the beginning of the second quarter after allowing a sack for JuCo transfer Keyshawn Blackstock. The Spartans may have a diamond in the rough here, as Blackstock had scholarship offers from USC, Florida State, Tennessee, and Penn State (just to name a few). How he ended up in East Lansing is a bit beyond me (he’s from Georgia), but he could help plug a hole on this offense.

Charles Brantley missed tackle watch ends. This probably has less to do with the fact that Brantley suddenly learned to wrap up, and more that the coaches recognized he couldn’t really wrap up, and also couldn’t really cover all that well either, and so he was yanked after 16 snaps this week in favor of 5’9” backup Justin White. I think this was mostly about coverage, but it’s worth pointing out that Washington’s receivers made some ridiculous catches in this game: there were a few plays on which they made leaping grabs, plucking them from their absolute highest point. It’s hard to fault any CB too much for not stopping them, even Brantley.

Where do good defenses make tackles? I’ve heard a few times previously (probably on MGoBlog) that good defenses can often be determined if you look at the percentage of tackles being made by each position. The implication is that if too high of a percentage of tackles are being made by cornerbacks, your coverage probably isn’t very good, so receivers are getting open with regularity. So, I took a look at the tackling numbers for Michigan, OSU, PSU, and MSU through their first three games, and the tackling numbers didn’t disappoint. (Before we jump in, Michigan, OSU, and PSU’s defenses rank 2nd, 5th, and 4th respectively in DF+. MSU’s is 48th.) Michigan, OSU, and PSU’s cornerbacks all had made basically the same number of tackles: 29, 29.5, and 28.5 respectively. But MSU’s have made 44.5 already this season, a 50% jump from the other teams. The only defense for this is that MSU’s defense has faced the tied for most passing plays per game of the bunch (32, tied with PSU) and the tied for most plays per game of the bunch (62, tied with OSU), but these numbers still don’t align with the sheer number of tackles the MSU secondaries have to make. What’s more, the MSU CBs have missed 10 tackles this season, too.

PENN STATE defeats ILLINOIS (30-13)

Am I still skeptical of Drew Allar? It’s true that amongst Big Ten QBs he’s second in PFF’s passing grade, second in adjusted completion percentage (both behind McCarthy), lowest in turnover worthy play percentage (1.0%), and is one of two without a pick this season (the other being Gavin Wimsatt, of all QBs). On the flip side, he remains dead-last in aDOT at 6.7, a whole 1.1 yards behind Tanner Mordecai. His YacPy in this game was 0.56. (Last week’s team YacPy was 0.59.) The eye test is a mixed bag. If he’s in the pocket and can set his feet, he can throw a decent ball (he had a really nice fade to Sean Clifford’s brother Liam to set up a field goal at the end of the first half), but if he starts to move his feet he can’t hit the broad side of a barn. I was also impressed by his presence to know when to take off and pick up a few yards; he’s faster than you’d think, and he’s big, but he’s not exactly graceful. Still, I’m just not buying that this guy is on par with McCarthy. Illinois’ defense is 29th this year in DF+ after they finished 3rd last year, and that’s still factoring in a lot of preseason projections, which I bet were pretty high. Let’s see what Allar can do against some real competition this week against (checks notes)... Northwestern. Okay, then, next week versus (checks notes)... UMass. Gotta wait til they play OSU, I suppose.

Was Illinois stacking the box? On Penn State’s first third down, they had nine yards to go at their own 30. The Nittany Lions were in shotgun with 12 personnel (one RB, two inline TEs). Illinois countered this with six men on the line of scrimmage, two linebackers roughly four yards behind them, two corners on the WRs, and one safety playing so deep he’s in a cornfield. Translation? On 3rd and 9, Illinois had eight men in the box. This was standard. Illinois almost always lined up with an extra man in the box in order to stop PSU’s talented running backs; Nicholas Singleton, Kaytron Allen and Trey Potts combined for 93 yards on 25 carries (3.7 Y/C), 79 of which yards came after contact (85%). This feels like another bullet point in my Drew Allar Isn’t All That Good argument. A good QB picks apart a defense so keyed into stopping the run, especially on play action. Instead, Allar went 2/6 on play action passes for 4.7 YPA.

Is Luke Altmyer a skinny Santa Claus? The Ole Miss transfer threw two picks against Kansas last week, but if you go and watch them, you have to feel for the guy––on both plays, his wide receivers had two hands on the ball, but they were somehow snatched away by defenders. However, his four(!) INTs against Penn State brings his total up to seven on the season, and these four were so indefensible (the first directly at an LB in zone; the second a hideously underthrown fade; the third an even more hideously underthrown fade; the fourth a direct thrown into a CB’s chest) that you have to wonder if he’s getting some Nittany Lion NIL money. Altmyer looked serviceable to good in his first two games of the season, but Toledo’s defense is 72nd in DF+ and Kansas’s defense is 103rd. Not all defenses will be as talented as PSU’s, but this is clearly a QB who isn’t the game manager Tommy DeVito was, and Illinois definitely doesn’t have a Chase Brown to hand it off to a million times this year.

Nittany Lions clearly don’t like free things. Thanks to Altmyer channeling his inner Oprah (“You get a pick! And you get a pick!”) and a Josh McCray fumble, PSU had pretty good field position all day. On the five drives that came after a turnover, they scored 20 points. On their remaining 10 drives, they scored just 10 points. Consequently, PSU’s available yards gained was just 51%. They’ve gained 54.2% of their available yards on the season according to BCF Toys (garbage time removed) which ranks 37th in the country. This is exceedingly low for a team that’s (a) considered a playoff contender, and (b) has played two cupcakes and what looks like a back-to-usual Illinois squad.

At least the defense is as advertised. Perhaps the thing to most get excited about re: PSU football this offseason was the pass rush, and they certainly didn’t disappoint against Illinois. Even though they only found paydirt once, Altmyer was pressured on 18 of his 30 drop backs (60%), on which he completed just 5/16 passes for 4.6 Y/A. Edges Chop Robinson, Adisa Isaac, Amin Vanover, Dennis Dani-Sutton, and Zuriah Fisher combined to generate 17 pressures (many on the same snap––PSU generated 34 pressures, but Altmyer was, again, only pressured 18 times). They were equally adept at stopping the run: remove RB Reggie Love III’s 20 yard long and the Illinois backs combined for 52 yards on 20 carries (2.6 Y/C). If there’s a place to ding them, it’s their tackling. Love proved he was a fairly elusive back last year, but forcing seven missed tackles and gaining more than 75% of his yards after contact is a bit much. This was a team-wide failing (13 missed tackles in this game), but starting MLB Abdul Carter is the primary culprit, as he now has more missed tackles on the season (6) than he has solo tackles (5).

RUTGERS defeated VIRGINIA TECH (35-16)

Gavin Wimsatt has taken steps forward. Is he going to make an All-Big Ten team? Absolutely not. But is he the total liability he was last year? Also absolutely not. With the caveat that he’s thus far faced the 64th, 68th, and 90th (which, frankly, is not ludicrously low), he’s completing 7.4% more of his passes for 0.9 more Y/A, he hasn’t thrown a pick yet, and his turnover worthy play percentage is down from 4.6% to 1.3%. What’s more important, though, is that they’re actually utilizing his athleticism. I’ve advocated that Wimsatt needs to run more to maximize this piddly offense, and that’s exactly what Rutgers has done. In 345 snaps last year, he ran 28 times (including scrambles). This year, in 202 snaps, he’s run the ball 29 times (including scrambles), which is an increase from 8.1% to 14.4% Wimsatt Runs. This should continue, seeing as his EPA/rush (0.10) is higher than his EPA/drop back (0.08).

Kyle Monangai has emerged as the guy. Heading into the season, I thought Samuel Brown V would be the bellcow RB of the team, but instead it’s been Kyle Monangai. He currently leads the Big Ten in the following running categories: attempts; yards; yards after contact; missed tackles forced; 10+ yard runs; and breakaway yards. He’s second in TDs (behind Corum), first downs (behind Minnesota’s Darius Taylor), and PFF’s elusiveness score (behind OSU’s Chip Trayanum).

Will that really matter against Michigan? Wimsatt and Monangai did work against the Virginia Tech Hokies: they ran the ball a combined 27 times for 230 yards (8.5 Y/C) and 4 TDs. But, as Seth has been saying all year, these Hokies are not representative of the Hokie defenses of old. According to PFF, they would have the worst defense, the worst run defense, and the second worst tackling defense in the Big Ten. We know Michigan’s defense to be significantly better (2nd in DF+). Despite the appearance of a strong running game, the Scarlet Knights’ offensive line has not performed all that well statistically, generating just 1.91, 1.21, and 2.17 average line yards per carry in their first three games.

What have they done to my boy!? If I were a football coach, I would get as many players as I possibly could who can do multiple things, because if you want a triple-threat in basketball (drive, pass, shoot), why wouldn’t you want that in football (pass, run, catch)? That’s what “TE” Johnny Langan can do. Last season, he ran the ball 31 times, caught 32 balls on 62 targets, lined up at QB 34 times, and had the highest NFL passer rating amongst players in the Big Ten to throw three or more passes (really having some fun with the numbers here). This year, they’ve exclusively made him a TE (no snaps at QB or in the backfield) and they’ve barely even thrown to him (in the last two weeks, he’s seen two targets). This is a tragedy of unfathomable proportions