I did some analysis of Michigan's drive charts so far, mostly to see if anything interesting would come up about our time of possession.

The first thing that really jumps off the page is the end of each half.

• Through eight games, only one opponent has possessed the ball at the end of the game (Colorado State).
  • We were only able to burn 7:10 (of 8:53) on our final scoring drive.
• Through eight games, we have scored or gone for it with under 1:10 to go at the end of every first half.
  • One of those drives ended on downs.
  • One drive started with 24 seconds remaining, and we missed 62 yard field goal.
  • The other six drives scored, with two touchdowns and four field goals.

To me, it looks like this pattern fits strongly with that Boa Constrictor (TM) approach the team takes to winning games. We're going to score or die trying to end the first half, then run out all the clock that's left to end the game, if we can.

Of all the TOP available, we have held the ball 57.4% of the time this season. Looking deeper at the numbers, I ignored our drives to end the game, as they skew things somewhat. Our average drive starts at the 33, runs 6.6 plays for 44 yards, scores 3.7 points, and consumes 3:07 of game time.

I think the easiest way to include the rest of the analysis is to screen cap a few tables.

It definitely seems like our focus on prolonged possessions has increased in conference play. Outside of Penn State, a Field Goal per drive is about our expected scoring output against B1G teams. It's kind of crazy we averaged almost 9 plays per drive against PSU despite consecutive 60+ yard touchdown runs.

Our focus on TOP seems to be strongest in the first and third quarters, when it is more valuable to tire out the opposing defense.

The joy of small data sets, we somehow have not started a single drive between opponent 30-40. Not as much variation as I would have thought in drives that start on our side of the field, as they all average about 50 yards and 3:30-ish. A bit odd that we score more points starting between our own 40-50 than opponent 40-50. It is nice to see that if we get the ball inside the opponent 30, our scoring average is well above 3. We scored touchdowns on 5 of those drives, with field goals against Colorado State and UConn on drives we started at their 13 and 22, respectively. Both of those drives were in the first quarter.

Not a ton to say about the above, though ti may surprise some around these parts that we score touchdowns on 40% of our drives. I also was surprised Moody has missed three field goals this year, though one of them was the aforementioned 62 yarder and another was blocked.

Not a ton to say about breaking our drives down by their TOP. It does seem like there is a "sweet spot" (or really the opposite) where we have a target time consumed of 2:30-ish on drives we expect to punt.