Analysis of first down plays with Speight vs. O'Korn

Because why have one Monday morning (still technically morning here on the west coast when I clicked submit) posts when you can have two?

Introduction

When O'Korn came in for the injured Speight, I thought I noticed a shift towards more off-schedule passes, especially ones on first down. While this seemed to work fine against Purdue, the wheels obviously fell off against MSU. Then, there was clearly a return to normalcy on Saturday against Indiana, as it looked like we returned to the run and Lloyd Ball'd our way to a narrow victory.

So, I decided to look back at the rate of runs vs. passes on first down, and their correlation with end down and drive success, first with Speight at the helm and then with O'Korn.

TL;DR

- With Speight, Michigan threw the ball 35% of the time on first down

- With O'Korn, Michigan has thrown the ball 39% of the time, and the numbers were even higher before the coaching staff adjusted (44%!!! against MSU--not including the last desparation series)

- With Speight, the off-schedule first down throws were relatively successful and led to several explosive plays, and seemed like a major component of the overall offensive philosophy

- With O'Korn, Michigan is missing both those effective and explosive first down passing plays

- The running game is improving, with average yards and success rate improving on first down carries

- With both Speight AND O'Korn, down series that ended with FG attempts vs. TDs were more likely to start with a pass on first down...RUN THE BALL ON FIRST DOWN IN SCORING TERRITORY

- Well, maybe run the ball on every play first down

Speight First Down Breakdown

*Notes on methodology:

• I included penalty yards both for and against Michigan in average yardage and success rate
• First downs on a down series that ended in TOs on first or second down were not included
• First downs on a down series at the EOH or garbage time were not included

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Michigan threw the ball on 1st down 35% of the time with Speight at the helm:

Compared to running on 65% of 1st downs:

The first down offense under Speight benefited from these timely off-schedule passes, acheiving a higher average yardage, play success rate, and down success rate on pasing plays than on running plays. These numbers reflect that Michigan was especially explosive on first down, with both the long Black (vs. Florida) and Crawford (vs. Cincinnati) TD receptions coming on first down deep shots.

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Now, looking at down series where Michigan gained a first down, we have the following breakdown:

Compared to down series where Michigan failed to gain a first down:

This highlights not only the importance of gaining positive yards on first down, but also how ineffective our ground game was the season through the first quarter of the Purdue game. It also shows that, despite his weaknesses, Speight did have our passing game working on first down.

Note:  The comparison here between Down SR on successful vs. unsuccessful 1st down plays is limited by the fact that any gain of over 10 yards automatically counts as a down success. A better comparison of  Down SR would be to compare plays gaining between 40%-100% of first down yardage to plays gaining <40%. Maybe next time, champ.

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Finally, I wanted to look at first down plays on drives that stalled in opponent terrirory that ended up in FG attempts:

Wooooooooooooof. (Again, note that I included penalty yardage in the average yardage and play success rate.)

Compared to drives that resulted in TDs:

Since n was only 5 :-( on offensive TDs through 3.25 games, the breakdown of those scores:

• 2 passing TDs on 1st down deep shots
• 1 long YAC passing TD on 2nd down to just outside the red zone
• 1 long run in semi-garbage time from just outside the red zone
• 1 red zone TD on a down series that started with a run

O'Korn First Down Breakdown

Now, let's look at the same metrics after O'Korn took over the offense. I included each individual game because, as you will see, there is a drastic shift:

Michigan came out capital T Throwing the ball on first down once O'Korn took over against Purdue. And it tended to work. Unfortunately, we tried that same strategy against MSU, and it failed miserably. Finally, against Indiana, we adjusted and run the air out of the ball on first down (with still a limited success rate but much more explosiveness).

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Passing vs. Running on first down:

We see that, after the Purdue game, that all of average yards, play, and down success rates took a tumble. At this point, a pass on first down is overwhelmingly likely to be setting a down on fire. The big hit seems to be the lack of explosive plays. We saw this last week as O'Korn failed to connect on a couple of wide open deep shots. This, perhaps, aside from TOs (which were nixed against IU), is the biggest limitation we have under O'Korn.

This is a positive trend, as the average yardage, play, and down success rate have all increased over the last 2.75 games.

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Now, again for the comparison betwen successful and successful down series:

Unsurprisingly, you can see here again that running the ball led to greater odds of successful downs, as the proportion of running plays out of successful down series was higher than passing plays overall and against every individual opponent (including even Purdue, where Michigan did pass very well).

Woof. This realllllly shows the importance of first down plays, as failed downs reallllly failed on first down. And failed downs had a very high proportion of first down throws relative to successful downs.

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For the last kicker, here is the comparison between drives that ended with FG attempts vs. drives that ended with TDs. Let's see if you spot anything...

FG attempts:

TDs:

If you didn't catch that, I'll spell it out for you: RUN THE GOT DAMN BALL ON FIRST DOWN IN THE RED ZONE!!!!