What is this diary? Each week, I take a deep dive into the box scores and team pages from Pro Football Focus, Game on Paper, College Football Data, and more for as many Big Ten teams as I can manage. Often, life makes it impossible to cover every team, but I try to always cover OSU, MSU, PSU, and whoever Michigan is playing in the coming week. (This week, I managed every game but Illinois-Maryland. Sorry, folks.)

I try to generate a couple blurbs based on the statistics I find compelling from each game/team. 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.

OHIO STATE defeated PURDUE (41-7)

ON THE BUCKEYES

McCord can throw the deep ball. As terrible as QB Kyle McCord is under pressure (see: my post last week), he’s been incredibly good throwing the ball 20+ yards downfield, and has PFF’s highest passing grade amongst Big Ten quarterbacks when doing so. He’s completing a solid 48.0% of his passes (two drops brings his adjusted completion percentage up to 56.0%), and he averages 21.6 Y/A and has four touchdowns to zero interceptions. He’s also had only one turnover-worthy play on such throws. It’s probably easier to put up numbers like that when you’re throwing it to Marvin Harrison Jr. (or not? more on that below…) and Emeka Egbuka, but it’s still impressive.

Something’s wrong with Marvin Harrison Jr. I brought this up after Week Four and figured, I’ll say this and he’ll immediately right the ship and then some and make me look like an utter imbecile. But here we are! Don’t get me wrong: he’s still the best WR, and maybe the best non-QB, in college football. He’ll probably end the season with similar total stats to last year’s 77 receptions, 1,263 yards, and 14 TDs, but a deeper look reveals some alarming numbers. After his three-drop(!) performance against Purdue, Harrison has now dropped five balls on the season and has a drop rate of 13.9%. Last year, he dropped three balls all season and had a drop rate of 3.8%. Furthermore, Harrison has caught just two of the 13 contested balls thrown his way this season. Last season, he caught 18 of 30 contested balls. Expectantly, his PFF receiving grade has dropped from 89.9 last year to 76.1 this year.

Ugh. The defense might be elite. It was fair to question the defense and Jim Knowles after Michigan and Georgia’s offenses torched the Buckeye defense in the last two games of last year. We’ll have to wait until The Game to know for sure if this defense is elite, but thus far there’s good reason to think it is. Ohio State is second in opponent-adjusted defensive EPA/play. At 11.1%, Tyleik Williams has the highest stop percentage of any Big Ten DT with 100+ run defense snaps. The other three nominal DL starters (JT Tuimoloau, Jack Sawyer, and Michael Hall Jr.) all have pass rush win rates over 14.0%. LBs Tommy Eichenberg and Steele Chambers have better-than-respectable missed tackle rates of 7.7% and 8.3% and each have more than 35 total tackles on the season. S Josh Proctor and CB Denzel Burke have the third and fifth highest forced incompletion percentages amongst all Big Ten players with 75+ snaps. From the numbers, there are only two points of concern: (1) Eichenberg and Chambers have uninspiring run defense grades of 65.9 and 57.5 on PFF; (2) Davison Igbinosun, the corner opposite Burke, has allowed four touchdowns when targeted, while no other Buckeye has allowed one when targeted.

ON THE BOILERMAKERS

Their inert passing game. QB Hudson Card was a very highly-ranked recruit (59th in the 247 composite in 2020) and very highly-ranked transfer (17th best transfer in 2023 according to 247), but he’s struggled to bring much juice to this passing game. With a PPA per pass of 0.20, a success rate of 43.2%, and an explosiveness* score of 1.39, the analytics indicate that the Boilermakers are basically the Michigan State Spartans through the air. (I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that that’s not good.) If we remove WR Deion Burks’ 84 yard catch-and-run against Fresno State (which was one of the worst displays of tackling I’ve ever seen), Card is completing just 59.9% of his passes for 6.19 yards per attempt with six touchdowns and five interceptions. Also, he leads the Big Ten with 13 turnover-worthy plays. It’s not all his fault, though, as he has zero weapons to help him out. Purdue has only one pass-catcher (now-injured RB Tyrone Tracy) with a receiving grade higher than 66.0 on PFF.

*The mean PPA of all successful plays (PPA at least zero)

They are abysmal in coverage. The Boilermakers remain the lowest graded coverage team in the Power 69* on PFF. Four players in their starting back seven (LBs OC Brothers and Yanni Karlaftis, CB Markevious Brown, and S Sanoussi Kane) are allowing an NFL passer rating of 112.0 or higher when targeted. Brothers is the worst offender (as he allows a 158.3 NFL passer rating, which is literally the highest score possible), but as a CB and the most targeted player on the team, Brown is the biggest issue. His coverage grade of 48.9 on PFF is the lowest amongst any Big Ten CB who’s played double-digit snaps this year. I can only imagine how much sleep Ryan Walters has lost since Purdue hired him, tossing and turning, knowing he has to play this bum of an Ole Miss transfer.

*Power Five + Notre Dame

One sad field goal with extra sad, please. Purdue attempted three field goals in this game. After their first drive of the game stalled out at the Ohio State 31 yard line, Julio Macias missed a 48 yarder on 4th & 8. "Better luck next time." At the end of the half, he attempted a 39 yarder on 4th & goal from the OSU 22 (holding and a sack pushed them that far back) and he missed that one, too. "Sorry, kid." The two aforementioned field goal attempts are defensible from a game theory perspective, but the third field goal is not. The attempt came on 4th & 4 at the OSU 10 with Purdue down 27-0. Thus, a field goal means it’s still a four-score game. Thankfully, the gods were just and Macias missed this 27 yarder, too. "That's karma." As a team, Purdue is now 3/9 on field goals for the season. They’re 126th in special teams SP+.

RUTGERS defeated MICHIGAN STATE (27-24)

Hilarity ensued. With under two minutes to go in the 3rd quarter, the Spartans had a 24-6 lead and a 98.3% chance to win the game. And, then… (smirks) … Punter Michael O’Shaugnessy dropped a perfectly decent snap, and the Scarlet Knights recovered it in the endzone. 24-13. After Rutgers safety Flip Dixon dropped an all-but-guaranteed pick-six (don’t worry!), Gavin Wimsatt helped orchestrate a 12 play, 73 yard drive that ended in a beautiful touchdown pass to Isaiah Washington and then a two-point conversion. 24-21. The Spartans lined up on the ensuing kickoff in an onside recovery formation, but the Scarlet Knights didn’t (five players to each side of the kicker) and pooched the ball to the ~30 yard line (Schiano called it a “sky kick”). Returner Tyrell Henry let it bounce, and Rutgers recovered at the Spartans’ 21 yard line. One play later, Kyle Monangai gave the Scarlet Knights the lead. 24-27. (The PAT was botched on the snap.) The Spartans managed just three yards on their next drive, punted, and then witnessed Monangai run nine straight times for 51 yards to ice the game. Chef’s kiss.

ON THE SPARTANS

Katin Hauser! Savior of Sparta! Not really. But, for a QB who couldn’t beat out Noah Kim this offseason, he looked pretty good. (It’s all relative, folks.) On the positive side, Hauser completed 62.1% of his passes (70.4% adjusted) and threw two TDs to zero INTs. He also added 31 yards on the ground on six designed carries, and scored on a 12 yard QB draw. On the not so positive side, he averaged a measly 4.6 Y/A, really should’ve thrown a pick-six (Flip Dixon, what are you doing!), and had more turnover-worthy plays (2) than big-time throws (1). He fumbled (then recovered) one of his mesh points, too. How he holds up under pressure is also still an open question: Hauser got the ball out quickly (his average time to throw of 2.32 in this game is 0.36 seconds faster than what Kyle McCord averages on the season, which is the quickest in the Big Ten), and so Rutgers only managed to pressure him on six snaps (19.4%). Ripple-effect wise, this even further-beleaguered passing game totally nuked RB Nathan Carter’s production: he posted his lowest Y/C of the season (2.4), and 37 of his 48 yards came after contact, meaning the Scarlet Knights could really focus on stacking the box to stop him. As a team, the Spartans managed just 3.5 YPP in Hauser’s first start. Rutgers’ defense is good, but Michigan almost doubled that number (6.8 YPP) a few weeks back.

You get a ball! And you get a ball! And… Michigan State is now tied for 129th in the FBS in most giveaways per game with 2.6. Noah Kim threw six picks in his last three games before Mark D’Antonio (sorry, I mean that interim guy) yanked him for the backup. Hauser didn’t throw a pick against Rutgers (again, he got lucky), but has one on the season. The real issue is the frequency with which this team fumbles. Nine separate players have fumbled on this team: both QBs; lead RB Nathan Carter; deep backup RBs Jordon Simmons and Davion Primm; receivers Montorie Foster Jr, Tre Mosley, and Atlante Brown (twice); and now punter Michael O’Shaugnessy. In EPA terms, their seven lost fumbles are worth -38.82 expected points added. Clean that up, and they’re at least a stomach-able offense (still -12.84 EPA on the season). Their defense has managed to take away 1.6 balls per game, but that only drops their average turnover margin to -1.0, which is 118th in the country.

The linebackers are rough. I’ve talked previously about how I do not think Cal Haladay is very good at football, but it’s hard to argue that he’s not currently (somehow) the best LB on the Spartans. With Jacoby Windmon now done for the season, MSU has rotated Haladay, Aaron Brule, and Jordan Hall pretty consistently. The biggest knock on all three is that they simply can’t tackle: they’ve combined to make 66 total tackles this season and combined to miss 19. Haladay’s missed tackle rate is at 17.9%, and Brule and Hall are both over 20%. Hall has thus far proven to be serviceable in coverage (63.6 NFL passer rating allowed), but Haladay (118.5) and Brule (98.3) are sieves ("It's all your fault!") through the air, each having allowed two touchdowns already this year.

Birds, but green. Per CFBD, there are only two teams in the country with a garbage-time removed offensive PPA less than 0.05 (really bad) and a garbage-time removed defensive PPA less than 0.1 (pretty good): the Michigan State Spartans and the Iowa Hawkeyes.

ON THE SCARLET KNIGHTS

Gavin Wimsatt’s best game of the season? Well, PFF certainly thinks so. A cursory look at the box score would indicate this certainly isn’t true––Wimsatt doubled his INT total in this game alone. But one of those INTs wasn’t his fault (bounced off the receiver's hands), and thus PFF credited him with just one turnover-worthy play. Though he only completed 13-of-28 passes (46.4%), his receivers dropped four balls, he had to throw away another four because of pressure, and he had another one batted down at the line, bringing his adjusted completion percentage to a very good 73.9%. PFF also credited him with four big-time throws, too. I’d still like to see him run more (just five designed runs before the kneel downs), and the INT that he threw was a real bad one, but I still feel like I see improvement every season.

How awesome is Kyle Monangai? Rutgers’ RB now has the second highest running grade in the Big Ten behind only Blake Corum. Among backs in the conference with 25+ carries, he’s first in yards (635), second in touchdowns (seven), seventh in yards after contact per carry (3.62), first in missed tackles forced (44), third in missed tackles forced per carry (0.37), first in 10+ yard runs (20), first in 10+ yard runs per carry (0.17), and first in 1st downs (38). What’s more, he also has the best pass blocking grade on PFF amongst backs in the conference and has yet to fumble. Blake Corum and Braelon Allen will almost certainly be 1st Team All-Big Ten, but Monangai has thus far absolutely earned a spot on the 2nd Team.

Flip Dixon isn’t alone! I’ve praised the Minnesota transfer previously, but the safety also has another great running mate in the secondary: CB Robert Longerbeam. While the fourth-year player hasn’t exactly made a bunch of plays (just two PBUs, one INT, and a modest forced incompletion percentage of 13%), he leads Big Ten CBs in yards allowed per target (2.97) and has the third best NFL passer rating allowed (36.1). He’s only missed two tackles on the season and has made 18.5, and he’s even added a sack despite just four pass rushing attempts this year. He made a particular impression in the game against the Spartans, forcing two fumbles with some crushing hits on receivers.

PENN STATE defeated UMASS (63-0)

That’s it, Drew Allar? The Minutemen have literally the worst defense in the FBS: they’re dead last in DF+ and dead last in opponent-adjusted EPA. They also have the 6th worst pass defense per opponent-adjusted EPA. Allar’s stat line is fine (82.6 adjusted completion percentage; 7.95 adjusted Y/A*), but when your team is considered a national contender and you’re just “fine” against truly awful competition, it’s revealing. I’ll also cite my favorite self-created stat: YacPy**: Of Allar’s 169 passing yards, 105 came after the catch, giving him a YacPy of 0.62. I’m almost positive that’s the highest score he’s posted this year (higher is probably bad). And against UMass! On the year, Allar has made three big-time throws for a big-time throw rate of just 1.6%. That’s fifth worst in the Power 69 behind Athan Kaliakmanis, Heinrich Haarberg, Riley Leonard (Duke), and Noah Fifita (Arizona). He has the fourth shortest average depth of target, too. As of now, he is a quarterback who won’t win you any games.

*Adjusted Y/A = (passing yards / [attempts - drops])

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

At least the run game looked… oh, wait. Again, the raw numbers look good: sacks removed, the Nittany Lions averaged 7.3 Y/C. But let’s dive deeper: 70 of those yards came on two carries by backup QB Beau Pribula and backup’s backup RB Tank Smith on PSU’s final drive of the game. Remove those runs, and the ground game managed just 184 yards on 33 carries (5.6 Y/C). You might say, “Hey, that’s pretty good!” Yeah, in a vacuum. However, UMass has the second worst run defense per opponent-adjusted EPA. The two-headed backfield of Nicholas Singleton and Kaytron Allen combined for 147 yards on 24 carries (6.1 Y/C), but 88 of those yards came after contact. Despite this offense posting a very good 3.4 average line yards* and excellent 7% stuff rate, it seems that all of this is because Penn State’s backs are making up for an offensive line that can’t block. (I think this contradicts my gripes with the backs last week. *shrug*)

*I now actually know how line yards are calculated and I think it’s flawed and rudimentary. Ask about it in the comments and I can explain.

Can you run on them? Penn State’s defense has been lights out this year (first in opponent-adjusted EPA, second in DF+), especially against the pass (first in opponent-adjusted EPA again), but their run defense isn’t up to the same standard (just 26th in opponent-adjusted EPA). They’ve yet to face a rushing attack that’s Top 45 in adjusted EPA. LB Abdul Carter is an exciting pass rusher (20.8% win rate), but he’s a concern as a run defender (he has the most run defense snaps on the team [90], but has only nine tackles to six missed tackles, and has a run defense grade of 53.0 on PFF). Things get a bit better after him, but not much: of the top 10 snap-getters against runs, just one has a grade higher than 71.4, and that’s safety Kevin Winston Jr. who has an average depth of tackle of 5.1.

IOWA defeated WISCONSIN (15-6)

Brutally beautiful. Call me crazy, but I love a good rock fight. The Hawkeyes won this game and covered the spread despite their offense ranking lower than 10th percentile in: EPA/play (-0.29); success rate (27%); yards/play (3.85); EPA/drop back (-0.68); yards/drop back (2.31); 3rd down success rate (18%); and redzone success rate (0%). They had nine rushes that lost yards, which is nearly 20% of their rushes. Another 13 rushes gained 0-2 yards, meaning more than 50% of their runs went for two yards or fewer. They gained just 31% of their available yards. Of course, the Badgers offense didn’t produce any better. They were a little more successful on a play-by-play basis (38% success rate), but Braedyn Locke’s (who took over for the injured Tanner Mordecai) lost fumble and interception, as well as a turnover on downs when Braelon Allen couldn’t convert, added up to -12.75 EPA, helping them to a -20.15 offensive EPA on the day.

ON THE HAWKEYES

The offense could’ve (should’ve) been so much worse. What really inflates Iowa’s numbers (I use inflates so loosely here) was Leshon Williams’ 82 yard dash to the endzone at the beginning of the second quarter. You can either watch the highlight here (4:35 in the video) or simply take a look at the image below:

When Williams receives the ball, there’s a DE in the hole, a safety three yards away from the hole, and a slot corner two yards behind the safety. There’s also another safety way off screen as insurance. Somehow, the first three guys barely get one hand on him, and he stiff-arms the deep safety (nice) to take it to the house. I was not shocked to find that the DE (Rodas Johnson) has a 62.7 run defense grade on PFF (the 71.6 he received in this game actually improved that score), or that the slot corner (Jason Maitre) has a 57.0 run defense grade and 47.9 tackling grade, or that the safety who got stiff-armed (Austin Brown) has only seen time in blowouts this year… But I was surprised to discover Hunter Wohler (72.1 run defense grade) was the first safety to misidentify the angle. It still is an impressive run from Williams, who also had a 53 yarder against Western Michigan earlier this year, but take away those 82 yards and this offense averaged (checks notes… double takes!!… screams!!!!) 2.54 yards per play.

Some love for Jay Higgins. In truth, we have so many better stats than “total tackles” to evaluate linebackers (missed tackle rate, stops, tackles per snap, etc), but LB Jay Higgins presently leads the Power 69 with 73 total tackles, which ain’t all nothing. He’s one of five Power 69 linebackers with 40+ solo tackles and a single-digit missed tackle rate. He’s had 10+ total tackles in every Big Ten game this season, including a tremendous 15.5 against Penn State. He also has 30 stops on the season (tackles that kept the offensive play from being successful), which is fifth most in the Power 69. To be completely fair and transparent, though, part of the reason Higgins has put up such gaudy stats is because he’s on the field all the damn time. He’s tied (with Cooper DeJean) for second most defensive snaps played in the Power 69 at 533 (that’s 76.1 per game). But there’s something to be said for an ironman, too, no?

Passing yards, rushing yards, and… I’m half-stealing this idea from Jamie’s money-stat about Tory Taylor on the podcast, but I wanted to look at how Iowa’s punting yards stack up against offensive yards, and so I did, and what I found was magical. On the season, Iowa averages the second lowest offensive yards per game at 247.4 (c’mon, Kent State, let’s have a 400 yard game!) and the most punt yards per game at 324.6 (what!). Only one other team in the country averages more than 300 punt yards per game, and that’s Sam Houston State at 300.9 (c’mon, Sam, let’s have a 200 yard game!). Sam Houston State and BYU are the only other teams in the country with more punt yards per game than offensive yards per game. On punts, Tory Taylor has out-"gained" 29 FBS offenses. And this team is on pace to win the Big Ten West! I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seen a more “BIG TEN” stat than this.

ON THE BADGERS

What you want vs. what you have. If his play-calling at Cincinnati was any indication, as well as the comments about moving to the Air Raid, new head coach Luke Fickell wants his offenses to pass more than they run: the Bearcats dropped back on more than half their passes in 2021 and 2022. This year, Fickell has called for passes on 50% of plays despite Wisconsin passing on just 38.0% of their plays in 2021 and 41.4% of their plays in 2022. However, per PPA thus far, the Badger rush offense has been more effective this year than in the two years prior; they’re at greater than 0.2 PPA per rush this year, whereas they were below that line the past two years. (Insert argument here about how passing more opens up the run game.) I’m still (kind of) confident that Luke Fickell can improve this program in the years to come, but there’s no doubt that he’s currently trying to fit a round peg into a square hole and finding that hard.

Up the gut. One other interesting change to note in the Badger offense is not just the frequency with which they run the ball, but where they frequently run it. Last year, on 421 standard handoffs (removing QB keepers, end arounds, reverses, etc), Wisconsin ran it outside the tight ends on 200 carries and between the tight ends 221 times (meaning: 47.5% of the time they ran it outside the ends and 52.5% of the time they ran it between the ends). This year, they’ve become much more focused on moving the ball up the gut of the defense: of their 188 standard handoffs thus far, 138 carries have gone between the tight ends (aka 73.4%). Some of that may be because they’re simply playing their tight ends less often this year (0.96 tight ends per snap) than last year (1.19 tight ends per snap). Add fullbacks to last year’s number and that brings you to 1.53 tight ends and fullbacks per snap. (There are no fullback snaps this year.) I don’t know enough about football to say that when a team starts to spread you out more, they also start to run up the middle more, a la 2023 Wisconsin. Could be true, though.

Why is Jordan Turner starting? The linebacker jumped off the page in this game in a really bad way: he missed four tackles. That brought his missed tackle total to 10 on the season. Contrast that with his 16 solo tackles and 15 assisted tackles, and that gives you a pretty tragic missed tackle rate of 24.4%. Turner isn’t just a bad tackler, though: he’s also a liability in coverage. When targeted, he’s allowed a 133.9 NFL passer rating on the season. So why is it that he’s seeing the field significantly more than Maema Njongmeta, a captain and third team All-Big Ten player last year? Per PFF, Njongmeta grades out better than Turner in every facet of the game but pass rush, in which he’s hardly worse. He’s a better tackler (11.7% career missed tackle rate) and better in coverage (59.5 NFL passer rating when targeted over career). From what I’ve read, though, it’s not even a question to the coaches as to whether or not Turner will be on the field. It seems they’d pull off the other linebacker, Jake Chaney, if Njongmeta were to see more playing time, who also grades out better than Turner. Who’s the idiot here? Fickell’s staff, PFF, or me?

ILLINOIS defeated MARYLAND (27-24)

Sorry. Unfortunately, I did not have time to deep dive this game. If there’s a clamoring in the comments, though, I will, and post something in the comment thread this weekend.