Just The Stats: Michigan Defense is STILL the Best in FBS

...defense wins championships!!

GO BLUE

Who are we going to believe, these lying statistics, or that righteous dude in the other thread who said our D "needs to get its shit together"?

 

 

...there are some concerns. For instance, what happens if OSU tries to isolate Curtis Samuel against Ben Gedeon in a 1-on-1 match-up coming out of the backfield.

That's an individual match-up OSU will try to replicate as many times as possible. What is Brown's counter to avoid this?

But man, watching Alabama/LSU.  I really hope we get a shot at Alabama.  That would be EPIC!  Of course we have to stop ohio.  Which we will.

GO BLUE!!

Does anyone know how McCray's knee is doing? Hopefully it isn't a serious injury, because we need him to be healthy and playing for this last stretch of the season. His effort on the TD-saving tackle before the half was huge.

There are two ways that our defense can be vulnerable:

1. Get our inside linebackers in man-to-man pass coverage against running backs that can really run, and that's gonna be a problem.

2. If you can get our safeties in man-to-man pass coverage, they have shown a propensity to struggle. They don't carry the post route well when given a lot of room inside of them.

Don Brown is still a Dude. Our 2d string D line is capable of All-America performance. We just need to keep the Dudes healthy.

Maryland had the 16th ranked offense in the FBS, and the 2nd rated QB in the conference.

Wow, that's amazing.  I had forgotten that.  

The previews alluded to that, but I'm so used to crushing pathetic offenses that I assumed MD was pathetic . . . because we crushed them.

Penn State's offense looks a lot better when they are not playing us too.

 

Every team looks better when they're not playing us.

Fix the edge/perimeter or osu will put 40 on us still.

Michigan has #5 and Western has #6 in FBS.

Other offense rankings:

• #20 Total Offense 497.5 yds per game
• T#52 Passing Offense 245.8 yds per game
• #14 Rushing Offense 251.7 yds per game
• #3 Scoring Offense 48 pts per game, behind only Louisville and Washington

In my just-invented stats (although I doubt I'm the first to figure this out:

• #2 in Yardage Domination (Yardage difference per game) 251.1 more offense than defense per game (#1 Louisville has 300.3, others at top are #3 Alabama 220.7, #4 OSU 218.3, and #5 Colorado 177.6)
• #1 in Points Domination (Points difference per game) with 37.3 (rest of top 5: Washington 31.3, OSU 31.0, Louisville 29, Alabama 26.9)

Problem is that we have an exploitable weakness (outside) and deep down the field.

Few weeks in a row we've given up a lot of big plays.

OSU will turn those "oh so close" moments into a serious problem on the outside.

But, we have a few weeks to work on it.

We definitely need to tackle better in space. I don't think anyone would disagree. We still have a great defense but osu will be a different animal.

OSU will make a few big plays on us, but our offense will be hard to keep up with. What really impressed me about this Maryland game was we worked on the passing game all day. We could have just run all game and still scored 40, but they are getting more crisp every game. They attack each part of the field and they have a ton of potential threats. Crawford/Harris/McDoom is looking like a sweet lineup next year with Wheatley/Asiasi at TE!! It's great. To be. A Michigan Wolverine!

And using the "eye test", I would say they play a bit faster up front and their Linebackers are more disruptive.  I think our corners are better at press man coverage, but theirs tackle better in space (this is really about Stribling, J. Lewis is a solid tackler).

Totally unbiased, I think Bama's defense is just a notch better than ours right now, and they also seem to cause more turnovers and score a lot more on those turnovers.

That being said, I think we can hang with their vanilla offense, and we might be able to move the ball on them through the air if Speight continues progressing.  Would be an epic matchup.

OSU is a total tempo/rhythm team.  Need to get on them early, because once that offense gets rolling it's tough to stop. However, when they get bogged down, they look very beatable.

Great to see Wilton's completion percentage increasing. We have one of the top defenses in the country. I think Alabama's defense is better overall but their offense is not explosive. I worry about OSU offense but I think our defense can slow them down just enough to allow our offense to out score them.

might have been #16 going into this week but it won't be in the top 30 after they play us, Ohio State and Nebraska in 3 consecutive weeks.