Chris Evans/Aubrey Solomon and Wins Above Replacement
Not that I want to look at what could have been, but here I am doing that on a Friday afternoon...
I think it is relatively clear that the two biggest position question marks this year are the running backs and the defensive tackles. Unfortunately these were spots where the team unexpectedly lost individuals who could have been major contributors in 2019 (Chris Evans and Aubrey Solomon). My question: how much would the expectations for this season change if both of these individuals were still part of the team? Essentially, how many additional wins or WAR (if any) would these two have been worth this year?
As the roster currently stands I would say there is a 50% chance of a 10-win season, 35% chance of 11 wins, and a 15% chance for 12 wins. With Evans and Solomon I would have pegged the chances of an 11-win season at 60%, with a 10 & 12 win season equally likely at 20%. To me, these two guys on the team would equal 1 additional win.
I guess a separate question springs to mind too: if a serious injury were to occur to someone (or a position group) this year, who/which position would have the largest negative impact on the team?
Worst place for an injury?
CB and it's not close, IMO. I've become much more worried about our CBs with the trickle of camp info.
Our top guy is great. Ambry should be great... but "maybe Big Ten play" is not encouraging. The guys behind him are just guys Zordich is wrapping in duct tape and throwing against the wall, hoping someone sticks.
I agree with the CB opinion for the same reasons - with Viper the next position up but back quite a bit. I think Glasgow could fill in suitably short-term but I think a long-term injury to Hudson would be problematic against certain clubs.
Thirded. CB is also a position where it seems our guys get dinged up a lot. Whether it's a hard hit in run support, a tweaked hamstring, or a targeting call ejection...there's going to be times our starters are on the bench and we need a solid two deep to not get exposed. This keeps me up at night.
Camp is still in the early process. It may be a couple of weeks before Zordich has a presser where he reassures us by telling us that he believes all the corners are absolutely terrible.
Agreed. Ambry will be back for Wisconsin, I’m pretty confident in that. After those two...welp.
Lucky for the “maybe big ten play” aspect, is we open with MTSU who is breaking in a new QB (though they are a passing spread team) and Army who threw the ball an average of 7.5 times per game last year at a 53% completion rate. Even Wisconsin isn’t a team who is going to throw the ball a ton, especially starting a young QB.
So we should survive. It would be ideal to get Ambry those warm-up games, but the schedule could set up worse.
Humble opinion...no way those two guys are worth a win. Evans will be replaced by someone or several someones who will duplicate what Evans would have provided. As for Solomon, the guy is flaky (witness his recruitment), delivered little in his time here and will not, I predict, deliver much in Knoxville.
I don’t know if I agree with your assessment of Solomon’s play on the field. There was a noticeable drop off in play when Mone was in as opposed to Solomon. He was big strong and quick.
I agree. Evans and Solomon would give a higher floor to their position groups. That may be worth a win only in the event that those groups struggle mightily.
Evans wasn't suddenly going to become a star because the offense is changing. Solomon might have that potential, but it wasn't an expectation for this season. They were both on track to be contributors as rotation players It's reassuring to hear Kemp and Jeter get singled out for praise.
August 9th, 2019 at 11:15 PM ^
I think Solomon is too hard to call. I think Evans is highly highly highly overrated on here. He wasn't super shifty, or super fast, or super hard to take down.
For a team like we all want Michigan to be, Evans might be good enough to be the 3rd RB. Maybe. The team should use his freed up spot for a much more athletic freshman and send him on his way.
August 10th, 2019 at 3:50 PM ^
Totally agree. Evans had zero vision which is perhaps the most important skill an RB needs.
Username checks out
CB and DT strike me as the positions most likely to cause panic and it's not close IMO.
WAR is primarily a baseball statistic. Too many variables and not enough games in football to make an accurate representation. My guess is that if you could find a way to calculate an accurate WAR for them we would all be extremely surprised at just how insignificant they would be on their own.
There are 12 regular season football games. A team of zero WAR baseball players would statistically go 48-114. (Replacement players are not as good as average players.) That's equivalent to winning roughly 3 football games. If we expect to win 10 games, that means we have 7 WAR to distribute among the 22 starters and assorted special teams players. Shea, Tarik, DPJ, Ruiz, etc. are going to all be strong WAR guys. In other words, they would be greater than 7/22 of a win. Evans was Higdon's backup. He's better than a 2-star, but he's not getting you major WAR. i.e., he's not getting many more yards than the line blocks for him. Maybe he's 0.1 WAR? Solomon would be a platoon player on the line. So he splits his WAR with another defensive line player. If he played every snap, maybe he's a +0.2, but again, he's platooning, so I'll give him 0.1 WAR. Who are their replacements? Charbonnet eventually, and he's a high 4*, so he may even have greater WAR than Evans. Solomon's replacements aren't 2* or walk-ons either, so the delta in WAR there is also negligible. I can only conclude that Michigan's overall record is not going to be impacted by losing both of these guys. Now if the attrition continues, that's another story.
48-114 is your 2019 Detroit Tigers.
48 wins is being optimistic.....
I think the Tigers get to 49. Color me an optimist!
In this exercise it seems like real life Aubrey Solomon is a stand in for hypothetical Aubrey Solomon, Destroyer of Worlds.
If he's the player he was last season then missing him doesn't really hurt Michigan's chances at all given he barely played and was well behind Kemp and Dwumfour.
He might be a damn good player for Tennessee or he might be just a guy. At this point both seem about equally likely.
I liked Chris Evans but I don’t think we ever saw his full potential with the offense that was being run. If he got in the open field with the ball, the guy could run like the wind and nobody would or could catch him but rarely did it happen. The ball was handed off mostly to Higdon and at times Evans. Truthfully I don’t think Evans liked being hit. It would have been fun to see what he could have done with the “new” offense that is promised.
Solomon... who knows? The whole thing was weird from the start.
Every team in the Big Ten has a RB like Evans. And Solomon didn't stand out to me. I'll take Chabonnet Turner and Wilson. Wouldn't mind having Solomon for depth at DT. But he isn't a difference maker.
This is pure speculation. Certainly not knocking you but I say just play out the season and see where we are after Thanksgiving.Evans nor Solomon who is still very unproven were not stand out superstars anyways.
Not sure you know how percentages work. With or without these players there is a greater than 0% chance that the team loses 3 games during the season. Not likely and for my sanity I hope not, but greater than 0
That’s fair - and a good point. I’ll go:
less than 10 wins: 10%
10 wins: 45%
11 wins: 35 %
12 wins: 10%
That's still way out of whack. Michigan's projected win total is 9.5 so you should be lowering the odds of 11 and 12 wins way down and inflating the odds of less than 10 wins up to around the same number as 10 wins.
Ok let me give it a try, keeping in mind Michigan's o/u is 9.5. And also keeping in mind the over is heavily favored.
12 wins 5%
11 wins 20%
10 wins 50%
9 or less 25%
That is still not accurate. For 9.5 projection, it would be more like this:
12 wins - 5%
11 wins - 15%
10 wins - 30%
9 wins - 30%
8 wins - 15%
7 wins and below - 5%
And even this is too optimistic as there is a much greater chance that you will have 8 wins than 11 wins.
I don't get what you mean by "the over is heavily favored." If the over was heavily favored then the number would bump up larger. The whole point of an over under is that it's split between the two most likely outcomes, isn't it?
August 13th, 2019 at 2:55 PM ^
Last I looked the over on 9.5 was -170. So you have to bet $170 to win $100. Because 10 is viewed much more likely than 9.
15% chance of undefeated and 0% chance of losing more than two games is like some Bama, Clemson, Oklahoma, Ohio State kinda shit.
Realistically, the odds of going 9-3 this year are way higher than going 12-0.
I hate this, but yeah the chances of less than 10 wins should be at least 30%.
I like Evan's, but don't find him as a big loss
To me the biggest loss from Evans comes from his ability (or presumed ability since we never got to see it) to help move the chains or make some big plays in the passing game in the 2 or 4 minute drill. If Michigan were to be down late in a game and need to move the ball through the air I think Evans offers a skill set that the other RB’s don’t.
Hopefully that isn’t necessary at any point, but if it is I think Evans would be valuable in that situation.
Though unproven, a couple of freshmen seem to have the knack. We will see.
I definitely disagree that it is relatively clear that the two biggest position question marks are running backs and defensive tackles.
DT returns the top 2 guys from last year and guys like Paye and Hutchinson have bulked up to the point of some possible DT snaps. Also 2 high level freshman in Smith and Hinton.
RB is fine. Evans is incredibly overrated by this board. Wilson/Turner/Charbonnet should be plenty at RB.
Meanwhile, CB lost 2 of the top 3 after getting roasted by OSU. Ambry is likely out for a bit, which means that the 2nd CB spot will likely be a pretty sizable downgrade from the 3rd CB spot last year until Ambry comes back. And even once he is back, Long >>> Ambry and Watson >>> ??? (Gray?)
That position didn’t fit my argument so I ignored it...
In all honesty those are good points and I could certainly see CB being a problem. I guess for that position after the last 3-4 years I’ve defaulted to assuming the coaches can find quality players and make them work - even if they are overlooked or lower level recruits (Stribling/J.Clark/Watson).
August 9th, 2019 at 11:22 PM ^
The nice thing about CB is that there's proven high quality coaching for those guys. With that said, I agree with you that we're lacking bodies and the ones that we have (outside of the top guys) could have be more athletic.
Worse CB play and no better DL play would make for a long season. I'm really hoping that Mattison lost a step and that's why the DL looked not great late last year.
I don't think the RB situation is nearly as dire as you're making it out to be. It's just the guy you know is a boring former walkon and you've hardly seen the other options. But RB is good place for Fr and underclassmen breakouts.
Solomon hurts a lot more. Not only is depth scary there, he was flashing some serious potential there as a penetrating run defender and pass rusher. I have no idea how that translates into wins value, but not having a pass rush and weaker CBs is a deadly combo.
I agree with you about RB. Not worried there at all. Other than DE, every position on the defense is more worrisome than RB to me.
I must have missed the potential that Solomon showed...
Zero. Not going to lose regular season.
78% of percentages used in conversation are made up.
It criticizing, just curious, why are you dividing by 22, considering how many players rotate through a football game? Plus, kickers and punters could be worth something too
Evans wasn't even good. He had 2 100 yard rushing games his freshman year and then never sniffed another one
He would've been much better suited in a Theo Riddick type role
Evans wasn't even good. He had 2 100 yard rushing games his freshman year and then never sniffed another one
He would've been much better suited in a Theo Riddick type role
Losing another RB would hurt, particularly if it was one who emerged as RB1. We’re not loaded with talent to begin with and at this stage we’re hoping a true FR clicks right away because the guys we have from last year aren’t jumping off the page.
QB1 is always a huge loss. Shea has about 35 starts under his belt and McCaffery has garbage time reps. Might work out just fine but It’s not ideal.
0% chance of less than 10 wins with an expectation of 10.65? Nice.
I think it is relatively clear that the two biggest position question marks this year are the running backs and the defensive tackles
What, no OT (Hudson), CB (Sims & St. Juste), or LB (Singleton)? ;)
My question: how much would the expectations for this season change if both of these individuals were still part of the team?
I don't think it changes anything. Evans is good, but not amazing, and the guys behind him seem fine to replace his production. Solomon was a great recruiting pickup and if he turned into Hurst 2.0 that might change things, but having him would just add depth. Their losses don't change my expectations unless there are injuries at those positions.
Why so high on Solomon? Everybody said he was passed on the depth chart.
Aubrey Solomon has never looked like the dude Everyone projected, so maybe another body would be nice. Injury prone DT, nope, tho I’d like to have Chris on this team.
Not going to miss Solomon. I can see some help from Evans, although not an every down back.