curling

11/21/2020 – Michigan 48, Rutgers 42 (3OT) – 2-3 Big Ten

If there's one thing I've tried to incorporate into my brain over the course of writing about sports it's this: performances are not consistent.

Over a relatively long span of time a player can be expected to do X. Over shorter spans a player can wildly exceed or underperform his true level. And "shorter spans" can be astoundingly long, from the perspective of someone drawing meaning from a single game. The best example I can throw at you now is Strauss Mann, who has ~120 games of .930+ goaltending bookending a brief season-long disaster:

Mann also had 14 USHL playoff games at .932 for people double-checking the ~120

In basketball, Tim Hardaway Jr is a career 35% three-point shooter in the NBA. At Michigan his performance there went 37%, 28%, 37%. Duncan Robinson has a solid case for the best shooter on the planet in the Year of Our Lord 2020; through the first 10 games of his senior season he was shooting 30% from deep and everyone was writing him off.

You want curling examples? I've got curling examples. USA Curling more or less explicitly told John Shuster to die in a fire after finishing 10th and 11th out of 12 in consecutive Olympics. Shuster cobbled together a crew of ne'er do wells, won the national championship repeatedly, and then won an Olympic gold medal.

Football? Let me google some details about this obscure sport. [typing sounds] …interesting… [more typing] …it's like rugby except discrete… well. Let me show you some idiot talking about a Foot-Ball Quarter-Back replacing the starter mid-game during a year of worry and discontent:

Basic stuff... that felt like a revelation. O'Korn's quick, open throws stood in contrast to Speight's struggles to identify open guys the last few games. Twice Michigan picked up catch-and-run conversions on outs that had to be thrown with accuracy and timing to provide YAC. They were. Ditto Gentry's mesh touchdown, which O'Korn knew was open before he even turned around off of play action. This is basic quarterbacking being executed very well. That's huge progress for O'Korn, and apparently the offense.

And then he got dialed in. I gave him 6 DOs in this game, which is a lot on just 26 throws, and I shorted him one on his scramble escapades. The others were no-doubters. This throw is not only between two guys in a tight window but leads Gentry upfield and cannot be better placed for a catch and run:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wd7-D0sd9bE&feature=emb_logo

One 15 yard penalty later, Michigan faces first and 25 with Purdue breathing down O'Korn's neck. O'Korn stands in, takes the hit, and gives Gentry a chance to make a play.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moYO8YubAYw&feature=emb_logo

1) Yes, throw it at the Ent. 2) He even puts this outside of the defender. Given the circumstances this about as good as it gets.

O'Korn leapt off the bench in relief of an injured Wilton Speight, completing 18/26 passes for 10.4 YPA, was the future of the position for one (1) week, and was thereafter a small child lost in a department store. Bet you wish I stuck with the curling examples.

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Now we must consider Cade McNamara. McNamara came off the bench, sparked the offense, and led Michigan to a win. He was calm; he sprinkled in some tough throws in the face of pressure. He looked pretty good. I think we should hold off on expectations that he will continue being pretty good until we see some more. Let's play Pick The Box Score Against Rutgers:

1. 31/43, 319 yards, 7.4 YPA
2. 27/36, 260 yards, 7.2 YPA

Door #2 is McNamara. Door #1? Rocky Lombardi. (Lombardi did have two interceptions. One was his WR running the wrong route; the second was Lombardi forcing the ball in desperation mode.) Rutgers may not be very good at football.

To be explicitly clear, this is also what I was advocating after the Minnesota game:

Now tell me about Milton. Be EFFUSIVE.

First I want to pump the brakes

I TOLD YOU TO BE EFFUSIVE

This was a beautiful way to break in a new quarterback against a team that didn't really know what was coming and the number of different things Michigan asked him to do was relatively limited. We don't know how good he is at throws that aren't screens and wide open slants/posts across the middle.

Post snap reads were minimal. These days it's extremely hard to tell if something is a genuine RPO or a called pass …there weren't even many opportunities to puzzle about it. They kept it simple.

Michigan never put in any reads, presumably because Milton wouldn't execute them consistently. Maybe McNamara can. Maybe he's the answer. But expecting QB3 to suddenly blow up when the rest of the program is in the shape it's in… well, it's optimistic. We literally just did this. Water status: holding.

[After THE JUMP: we soldier on]