In the Outback Bowl Thread, someone asked for a projected two-deep.

Well, I had some free time to dust off the one I did back in...2009. Wow. Has it really been 2+ years already? Looking at the old one was a trip down memory lane, remembering the awesomeness that was Mark Dell and the facepalminess that was Glenn Winston.

Anyway, here's a preliminary two-deep. I added the class and the number of Rivals stars. WO means walk-on; a [j] after the star ranking means Juco transfer. I assumed no early departures, so Worthy is back next year.

This was a fun exercise as I had to make some assumptions about position shuffling, Skyler Burkland, who was going to redshirt, etc.

Enjoy!

Who's all going to Orlando for the Capital One Bowl?

I'll be there, along with Mrs. Hoolie and the Hoolikid, along with some other friends coming up from
Lauderdale. 

It sounds like MSU ticket sales are pretty brisk, which is a good sign for a strong MSU showing.  I'm assuming that at least some of the TOC regulars will be there.

[Last year at the Alamo Bowl we were outnumbered 80%-20% (or worse) by Texas Tech fans, but a few people I know that were there as Tech fans said we were few but loud.  This year let's be numerous and loud.]

If anyone is interested in a TOC meetup, add your thoughts in the comments, please!

[Bama Hawkeye -- Bumped because it's the awesome Power Poll that should have been. ]

Bama Hawkeye said he was a little busy this week, so he asked me to handle the Big Ten Powah Poll for him.  No really, he did.  I got the email right here....oops, my hard drive just crashed.  Well, trust me, he did.

Let's be honest. Two of the easiest columns to write (and get feedback from your readers) are 1) the power rankings column and 2) the pop culture comparison column. Much like that magical day when somebody got their peanut butter on my celery (or did I get my celery in her peanut butter?), it was predestined that one day these two great columns would be brought together...

So last week's ranking was an attempt to pick a noncontroversial comparison system of puppies, in order to head off the controversy of injecting controversial political viewpoints into the overly controversial controversy of basing one's entire self worth on how a group of people you don't even know perform against another group of people you don't even know.  Needless to say, some of you were not happy.

"It's too cute!" "It's not cute enough!" "I'm allergic to dogs!"  "I can't live without my controversy!"

So this week we selected an even more differenter approach to the topic for this week's poll: 

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Michigan State continues to build an impressive resume this season, handing Michigan its third straight loss to the Spartans and first of the season, holding Denard Robinson to "only" 301 total yards. 

Michigan State's offense also demonstrated ruthless efficiency in its balanced attack, scoring on 6 of 11 drives and averaging 3.09 points per drive; but also being able to go into clock-killing, life-choking mode at the end of the game (even though MSU only had a 17-point lead, it was as good as a 30-point lead in terms of being insurmountable).

Illinois is really somewhat of an enigma this year.  Illinois has faced two tough opponents, both at home, and have kept it close but lost both times (23-13 to then-unranked Missouri, and 24-13 to then-#2 Ohio State).  Illinois has the requisite wins over Directional Illinois schools; one an FCS cupcake, one a pretty decent MAC team.  So far Illinois' signature win was in Happy Valley over Penn State, but this appears to be as much a factor of Penn State's novice offense coupled with a terribly depleted defense.

Illinois freshman quarterback Nathan Scheelhaase had impressive numbers against Penn State's depleted secondary (15-19, 151 yards, 1 TD, 0 INT).  However that was a career day for him;  he is currently ranked 96th out of 100 nationally for passer rating (108.83).  Illinois' offense is primarily a run-based, hammering offense.  Running back Mikel Leshoure is #9 nationally in yards per game (121.20 YPG) , but #88 in yards per carry (5.77 YPC).

The difference this year for Illinois has been the improvement on defense. 

Overall, that could be considered a pretty nice defense....nice defense.....nice defense you got there, coach.....

[CUE harp music and wavy scene transition]

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[BamaHawkeye: For whatever reason, Ted's writing always brings out these well-reasoned counter points. Maybe it's because Ted's easy-to-follow logic leads to fruitful discussion.  Maybe it's because Ted is always wrong. Regardless, it gets bumped.]

[After the spectacular critical acclaim of Ted Glover’s post "Why Michigan Will Beat MSU", I decided to bribe someone with a case of Leinenkugel to write a counterpoint.  Ted confided to me that he was indeed "for sale" and agreed to write the counterpoint.  But then real life – as real as a trade involving your favorite team and a wildly talented but aging prima donna wide receiver returning to the team where he saw his best years can be – intruded, so Ted bribed me back with the original bribe.

As I was drinking the three bottles of the Leinenkugel that I designated as an advance on the article, I decided that I shouldn’t write this article as a Spartan fan, but that I should try to write it from the perspective of a third party.  So I decided to channel my inner Minnesooh’t’n Buckeye fan, and write this FanPost from a point of alleged neutrality. It is suggested that one read it out loud with a Minnesooooohta / Ohio accent, just for kicks.]

This Saturday, the Big Ten Game of the Season of the Week will take place in Ann Arbor.  Two insufferable teams – The University of Michigan Arrogance and the Michigan State University Inferiority Complexes, will match neurosis against neurosis in a winner-take-all battle for bragging rights, recruiting, and ownership of "the now abandoned property formerly known as the State of Michigan".  All will be settled, at least until basketball season starts, and the rest of us can all get some peace and quiet.

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Because moorehead1976 graciously did a good stats-based Fanpost that generated some excellent discussion, I am not doing a stats analysis this week.  Instead, I decided to discuss some meta stats issues I have been rolling around in my mind.

Long-time listeners, first-time callers to The Only Colors (and its predecessor, Spartans Weblog), know that KJ has been a long-time proponent of Tempo-Free Stats.

After my analysis of Drive Success Rate and PPD (raht ovah hyah), I believe that it is not only possible, but necessary, to create a version of Tempo-Free stats for football.  This is because two of the statistics most commonly cited as indicator of goodness or badness -- yards per game and time of possession -- are very misleading.

Each drive is an independent grouping of independent tests.  (H/T: Smart Football).  From the offense's perspective, the more independent tests that are successful, the more likely that the grouping ends in success.  The more groupings that end in success, the more likely the overall result is a success.  Conversely, the defense's goal is to avoid and/or prevent the opponent's offensive success.

Basically, the logic is this:  the more drives (possessions) a team has, the more likely it is to gain more yards and score more points, all things being equal.  Just like in basketball [except basketball doesn't have a "shot distance" stat fetish].  So we must look at overall indicators of success on a per-possession basis.

First of all, we look at the rate at which a team's drives end in an offensive score.  I was calling this Drive Success Rate, or DSR.  I have since discovered that Football Outsiders already has a stat called DSR that they apply to the NFL.  FO's DSR is different, though -- rather than measuring the overall success of the drive, it "measures the percentage of down series that result in a first down or touchdown."  In other words, FO's DSR is a measure of sub-groupings rather than groupings, and more importantly, excludes Field Goals as a successful outcome.  So I need a new stat name with acronym for this concept.

Secondly, we look at Points per Drive, or PPD.  Points per drive is indicative of two things: first, the success rate; and secondly, whether the team is scoring touchdowns or resorting to kicking field goals.  I am planning on deliberately leaving extra points / 2 point conversion in the points per drive stat, for these reasons:

1. Extra points kicked are near automatic, so if a team scores six, it's likely that they will get seven.
2. If a team decides to go for the 2-point conversion, the extra two points are attributable to the offense, and therefore the offense should get "credit".  Likewise if the conversion fails, the offense should get the "blame" and the defense should get the "credit".

Third, as an indicator of offensive strategy, I always look at Run-Pass Balance.  I always express it in terms of percentages with the percentage of run plays given first.  We have to adjust "sacks" from being run plays to being pass plays.

Now, here's where I need help and input from y'all.  I really would like to narrow down to the "four factors", and make a "quad chart".  But I am not quite sure what the four factors should be.

Likely possibilities are:

• Yards per play.  Normalized? Net (offense gained minus defense allowed)? Scatterplot offense vs defense?
• Yards per drive.  This may be a good indicator of how effective a team is across many independent groupings.  I guess the question that sticks in my mind is:  yards per drive can be skewed lower based on starting field position.  For example, a team that always starts drives at their own 35 yard line (due to the skill of their special teams) would have, on average, 15 less yards per successful drive than a team that always takes the touchback and starts at their own 20.  This is because they can't go any farther than 65 yards to be successful [unless, of course, they shoot themselves in the foot].  So, I am thinking about yards per drive as a percentage of yards needed to score a touchdown.  In other words, a team that starts at their own 35 and scores a touchdown would have 65 yards gained divided by 65 yards to end zone = 100%.  Likewise, a team that starts at their own 35 and only gets to the opponent's 20 before kicking a field goal would have 45 yards gained divided by 65 yards to go = 69%.
• Turnovers.  I believe we need to account for turnovers.  Turnovers are a relatively rare occurrence -- the turnover leader in 2009, Miami of Ohio, had 36 turnovers out of 886 total offensive plays, or 4% -- but the results are disastrous for drive success when they do occur.  [At risk of sounding glib, turnovers are like plane crashes.  They rarely happen, but when they do, the results are catastrophic].  However, I am not of the belief that teams have the ability to increase the opponent's turnover rate.  I am inclined to scatterplot turnovers lost by the offense vs gained by the defense rather than turnover margin.
• Other things to consider:  Breaking down the offense into yards gained vs expected, both rushing and passing, in order to account for the opponent's defensive quality.  FO dies this with "DVOA", or Defense-Adjusted Value Over Average.  But DVOA requires reviewing each play and assigning "success points", which is a lot of work by itself and is made infinitely more complicated with 120 teams vice 32 teams in the NFL.  [The explanation of Success Points is here].  So we need a simpler way of determining expected yards gained that can be calculated from the stats.  Penalties can have a significant impact on offensive and defensive success rates.  I think we should disregard special teams penalties that only affect field position since the corresponding field position change will be reflected in the yards per drive.  Defensive and Special Teams Scores, like turnovers, are rare but catastrophic events, but I don't know that we should put a lot of effort into tracking them.  [I know that "kickoff return for a touchdown" would not be a key part of my game strategy if I was a coach].

I look forward to everyone's thoughts and suggestions.  If anyone has a desire to contact me privately, please email KJ, LVS, or Pete.

Thanks in advance!

[On second thought, Biggies and Slappies tomorrow.  For now, please enjoy something that's actually well-researched and argued. --LVS.]

After the MSU-FAU game, the talking heads came on and pronounced, "there are still questions about MSU's defense" and "still work to do for MSU".   (I also cringed every time I heard the color guy in the MICH-ND game talk about a "momentum shift" -- it was a bad day for TV analysts in my book.  But I digress.)

Anyway, I wondered if they and I had watched the same game.  I saw a game where MSU held FAU to four "three-and-outs", and allowed a majority of the FAU points after MSU had already run out to a 27-7 lead.  I believed that there was still a "last year's performance" expectation bias that led to the TV guys' comments about "questions" and "work to do".

So, I started to look at the drive charts to see if I could find any evidence of how the 2010 defense's performance  compared to 2009.

I noticed that FAU only scored on 3 of the 10 possessions they had the ball.  Keeping in mind that the goal of the game offensively is to score points, not "gain yards" or "win the field position battle" or especially "have a higher time of possession", I did some analysis comparing the opponent Drive Success Rate and PPD (Points per Drive).

More, after the jump.

Continue reading this post »

[Bumped. The Captain is back! -KJ]

There seems to be some angst among the Spartan fanbase about MSU's perceived lack of a pass rush, based on 2009 and on the first game of 2010.

I took a look at the stats and found that it may not be as bad as we fear, relatively speaking.

CFBStats' excellent database only goes back to 2006, so I had to use Rivals' stats database for the seasons 2003-2005.

Here are the sacks per game averages for that period:

As you can see, the national average number of sacks per game decreased by 0.5 sacks / game from 2003 / 2004 to today.

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[Bumped, and added to the illustrious "For Your Reference" section in the left sidebar.  --LVS.]

I liked KJ's projected basketball roster so much, I thought I'd put together the same thing for football. 

Comments / improvements / debate welcome in the comments.  I hope to keep this updated as MSU gets more commits and as news comes out.  Likely update periods are Signing Day / verbal commit day, and Spring Football news period.

12/8/09:  Added Skyler Schofner, Rivals 4-star commit.  The (R) indicates projected redshirt.

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[Autobump. -KJ]

 Finally!

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Trying to see if people like the embedded image thing better.  Please post your opinions in the comments whether you prefer the text setup (i.e., offensive formation/defensive alignment) or the visual setup (setup at snap, key image from the play).  Thanks for your help.

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[Bumped, of course.  --LVS.]

Welcome (finally) to the MSUFR for offense vs. Michigan.

Couple of things this week:

• I deliberately did not read mgoblog's UFR because I did not want to introduce observer error.  As a result, mgoblog and I may differ on what we call the Michigan defensive formations.  Because Brian has had more experience at evaluating Michigan's defensive sets and plays, I would take his word over mine.
• I am considering removing most of the text cells that set up each play (e.g., formations, defensive formation, etc.) and replacing it with a picture of the LOS pre-snap.  Much of the information can be seen there, and I believe it would facilitate me getting these things done in a timely manner.  Please give your thoughts in the comments.

[EDIT:  Added the legend to the QB and WR charts]. 

Continue reading this post »

[Autobumped.  WOOOO, metrics! -KJ]

OK, a couple of new things added this week. 

First of all, metrics!  I am basing metrics off of mgoblog's qualitative analysis system (major H/T).  I will be looking at three areas: 

• Protection.  This is an individual evaluation of blockers.  I will give out pluses and minuses for each player and sum for a net performance rating.  Take with a grain of salt as most of the time "doing your job" won't get a plus.
• QB failure analysis.  This is to see what happened with incomplete or intercepted passes and try to determine why they were incomplete.
• Wide Receiver grading.  This is to determine how the wide receivers are doing.

I am also thinking about some way to evaluate running back performance.  I am open to suggestions on how to evaluate each RB's performance within their abilities.

Secondly, video!  I am working on some video breakdowns and will get them up tomorrow.  I will be also doing a "Picture Pages"-type breakdown feature of specific plays separately.

OK, let's grit our teeth and get to it:

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[Bump.  --LVS.]

Welcome to the MSUFR for the MSU Offense vs. Notre Dame.  I think DrDetroit and I have worked out a consistent format.  I also think he got the short end of the draw; MSU's offense is actually very good and not at all frustrating to review, unlike the defense.  Technical difficulties right now are preventing me from putting up video; I hope to have this fixed this week.  Comments and suggestions for improvement appreciated.

Continue reading this post »

Way back in the halcyon days of 2007, I discovered the joy of schaedenfreude on the internets.  Most notably, there was one blog in particular that was sooooo shaken by its team's loss to a I-AA opponent that the blog's proprietor took everything down in favor of pictures of kittens.  I poked around in the archives (once the site was back up) and discovered that despite rampant Michigan homerism and occasional manic-depressiveness, this particular blog featured the finest writing, humor, and (especially) analysis to be found.  Nothing could hold a candle to the mgoblog.

Brian, being the genius that he is, was able to take a complicated subject (game theory) and make it simple to understand, while at the same time adding humor for illustrative purposes.  And I still have imprinted (as have most mgoblog fans) his words on former U-M offensive coordinator Mike Debord's playcalling strategy:

When Mike Debord plays rock-paper-scissors, he always picks rock.

Rock totally beats scissors. Why would anyone pick anything else? Sure, occasionally someone will throw his own rock, but this is Michigan. We can out-execute their rock. And there are rumors of this thing called "paper". Apparently it beats rock, which seems darned unsporting, but Mike Debord will believe that when Mike Debord sees it. We can probably out-execute paper, too. Some people will hypothesize that the potential existence of paper warrants the occasional scissors throw, but only three things can happen when you throw scissors and two of them are bad. The idea of throwing "paper" is to be regarded with naught but scorn. Oooh, a Snickers bar! Mike Debord likes Snickers and will let pet monkey Bonzo call a series as he enjoys a candy bar.

Hey, Bonzo scored a touchdown. Now we're ahead. Let's go back to rock. Rock beats scissors.

Rock, rock. Definitely rock. Rock. Judge Wapner's on at ten.

Well, it appears that MSU has its own version of Mike Debord: Pat Narduzzi.  As my unindicted co-conspirator DrDetroit pointed out recently, MSU's defensive game plan is monotonous, unimaginative, and fails to adjust to cover its own shortcomings in talent -- and as a result is shredded by above-average offenses.

It's as though Narduzzi has become convinced that offenses will only throw "rock", so he only throws "paper", except on obvious passing downs like 3rd and long where he throws "scissors".  But when he throws "scissors", he fails to disguise that he is going to throw "scissors".  While he and his opponent are counting to three, Narduzzi has two fingers out of his fist in a V and mutters "scissors comin atcha!" before he throws "scissors".

We have seen this two games in a row and will definitely see it again, most notably with Michigan.  Modern no-huddle offenses are lining up quickly not necessarily to keep the defense off balance, but to have time to read the defensive scheme and adjust.  Quarterback lifts his foot / claps / waves / whatever the trigger signal is.  MSU blitzers walk up to the line or show blitz off the corners.  Offense looks up, reads the pending blitz or rotation (after all, we just showed it to them), looks to sideline for audible (or in a more recent trend, adjusts hot read or receiver route), then runs play.  Blitz is stuffed, or play is changed to take advantage of blitz (screen, draw, quick slant, etc.)  The offense knows when "scissors" is coming and quickly adjusts to throw "rock".  Then MSU goes back to "paper", "paper", "paper".

When I was a kid (this was back in the day of only 3 network channels on TV plus WKBD Channel 50, no internet, no cell phones, and you only knew what was printed in the Detroit Free Press ["Freep" to you young whippersnappers]) we would play rock-paper-scissors when we got bored, which was frequently.  One time my brother threw "dynamite": a fist with thumb sticking out as the fuse.  See, "dynamite" changed the power balance of the game, because it could beat two of the three other items: the fire from the lit fuse would burn "paper", and the explosion would blow up "rock".  The only thing that could beat "dynamite" was "scissors", because "scissors" would cut the lit fuse preventing the "dynamite" from exploding.

Creative offenses these days are throwing not only "dynamite", but many other things as well.  Here's mgoblog again, correctly giddy at what appears to be the full implementation of the RichRod crazy ninja offense at Michigan:

Rodriguez only tolerates predictability insofar as he has to, and operates his offense as a coherent suite of plays that you have to guess right on lest you get gashed. This is not "rock rock rock," it's "rock, scissors, rock, rock, paper, scissors, candle, rock, wait what candle(?) oops you scored a touchdown."

So.  Offenses have adjusted, and adjusted quickly.  The history of sports (real sports, now, not those sports where a draw is a favorable outcome (cough*soccer*cough)) matches that of warfare:  offense always wins.  No matter how one tries to improve defense, the offense will always adapt and overcome, while becoming even more lethal in the process.  The concept of "defense" then becomes a focus on ways to slow the opponent down, to make them pay more than they are willing to in order to achieve their goal.  In football, the skill of a defense is measured in its ability to force the opponent's offense to make more mistakes than your offense does against the opponent's defense.  The way to do that is through deception (disguising coverages) and achieving local numerical superiority (7 or 8 rushers against 5 blockers; or, if that's not working, 7 defenders against 5 receivers).  An Army acquaintance of mine once told me, "if you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck".  Too often this year MSU's defense has found itself trying merely to achieve a "fair fight" instead of making it as unfair (in their favor) as possible.  Narduzzi keeps throwing "paper" even though it's obviously not sufficient.

If Michigan State has any hope in competing at a higher level, then all the infrastructure and foundations need to be laid.  Mental toughness, winning attitude, discipline, recruiting better players, loyalty.  But it is time that Dantonio started realizing that other teams are going to throw "candle", "dynamite", "avalanche", "killer bees", and who knows what else, and that MSU's defense needs learn how to throw "candle snuffer", "bucket of water", "hidden fire extinguisher", and "bulldozer tank with flamethrower mounted in turret".  And the only way to learn those things, I fear, is to find a new defensive coordinator, because Narduzzi hasn't shown himself imaginative enough to even come up with those things, much less throw them in a game.

[Autobump. See concluding thoughts at the bottom.  -KJ]

This post has the MSU offense for the entire second half. DrDetroit agreed to take care of the defense and will post separately.   Thoughts follow.

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[Bump.  Great stuff here.  --LVS.]

2nd quarter follows.  This is where things start to go downhill for MSU offensively, especially when Nichol is in. 

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[taking a break from the CMU game review.  Back with 2nd Q later tonight.]

Take heart, MSU fans.  Despite the frustration we all feel from the CMU game, I can find several reasons not to panic and flush the whole season.  Here are my Top 5:

5.  There will be but one starting quarterback, and he shall be named soon, and his name shall be Kirk Cousins. 

The audition and shared playing time must be over, and clearly Cousins is ahead.  Once a starter is named, the offense can find its rhythm, both in practice and in games.  And speaking of Cousins....

4.  Cousins is a pretty good quarterback, especially for a sophomore.

Cousins is currently ranked sixth in the country in passer rating (186.7). Of course, it's still small sample size and cupcake opponent territory, which explains why Ryan Mallet (YTRM) and Jimmah are first and third, respectively.

3.  The "Running Back By Committee" will end soon as well.

I expect that we will soon see it pared down to 2 backs that will get most of the carries.  My money's on Caulton Ray and Larry Caper.

2.  MSU's defense appears to be stout against the run.

MSU has allowed a total of 128 yards rushing in two games, 2.25 yards per carry.  The D line doesn't seem to get much pressure on the pass rush, but hoo boy do they control some gaps.  This bodes well for games against run-heavy teams like Iowa and Wisconsin, and even against the pro-style of Notre Dame.

1.  The CMU game was a near textbook example of how the passing spread offense is supposed to work.  And it took a perfect onside kick and a last second field goal for CMU to win.

MSU won't face another spread team until Michigan, and M is more of a running spread.  Besides that, MSU really only faces one other good spread team this year (Northwestern; I don't consider Penn State a true spread).

[Bumped.  Review, absorb, discuss. -KJ]

I sat down to review, play-by-play, the CMU game to find out what the hell happened.  I discovered that (a) Central had a really good game plan and (b) it's a hell of a lot of work, so hats off to Brian for his UFRs.  Please note that I won't give out qualitative rankings of players or anything; I think the plays should speak for themselves.

First quarter today; second quarter tomorrow, hopefully.

Play-by-play courtesy of espn.com. 

[EDIT: cleaned up some typos and fixed a few things that were unclear].

Continue reading this post »

So, mgoblog's Michigan season preview is up.  Well thought out and definitely worth a read, even if he does tend to overestimate Michigan's abilities and EEE BARWIS a little too much.

Anyway, in it, Brian (like many other Michigan bloggers and diarists) considers the UM-MSU game a "tossup".

I don't see how they can arrive at this conclusion.  Game is in East Lansing.  Last year MSU beat Michigan, in Ann Arbor, by 14 (and it should have been worse, had MSU not missed 2 field goals and M been gifted a touchdown).  Both teams return the same number of starters; both replaced their quarterback, in Michigan's case, likely with a true freshman.

If I try to look at this game objectively, there's no way I say Michigan has a chance.

Is it just me being a blind homer and not being objective?  What say ye?

So the preseason polls are out, and the Spartans got very little love.  Which is surprising because, as Steve Grinczel noted (H/T: Steve Hendershot), preseason polls are generally based on the "recency" effect -- where teams finish the previous season becomes where teams start the next season.

So, I figured, why not go all in on last year being a predictor for this year?

I went to the 2008 Final Sagarin rankings -- using the Predictor model -- and lined out this year's schedule using last year's rankings.  And was very unsurprised by what I found.

As you can see, MSU would be a favorite in all but two games:  Iowa and Penn State.  Using this predictive model, 10-2 is very much within reach.

Since I started this post, the 2009 Preseason Sagarin rankings have been put up.  Here is a game-by-game based on preseason Predictor rankings.

Not quite as good for MSU, but still an 8-4 finish.

I personally am predicting 9-3:  losses to Penn State, Iowa (although I am growing less sure of this by the day), and at Illinois.  I just don't see Notre Dame as that much improved and I think Wisconsin is in the middle of a downward trend.

Conventional wisdom around the blogowebs and amongst professional gamblers is that the greater the number of returning starters, the better the team should be.  Take two teams found in the state of Michigan:

Team 1:  had an abysmal year in 2008.  Replaces quarterback but returns 15 starters.  Serious media outlets predict turnaround year and bowl appearance.

Team 2:  had a very good year in 2008.  Replaces quarterback but returns 15 starters.  Serious media outlets predict dropoff year and crappy bowl appearance.

You've probably figured out by now:  Team 1 is Michigan, who went 3-9 in 2008, finished 10th in the Big Ten, and missed a bowl game for the first time in 34 years.  Team 2 is Michigan State, who went 9-3, finished 3rd in the Big Ten and went to a New Year's Day bowl game.

I have also been chewing on the Wall Street Journal assertion that Offensive Line Experience Can Predict Success.  Unfortunately that article is pretty weak, offers no statistics or links thereto to prove its case, and seems to be cherry picking based on anecdotal evidence.  What bothers me about it is that if you had a bunch of sub-quality players on the offensive line, and returned all of them, suddenly they'd be magically brilliant and the team would be able to plug in weak or new skill position players and do well.  Likewise, if you had a four-year starter (48 or so games), a two-year starter (26 games), and three true freshmen, would your 74 line starts necessarily mean you had an "experienced" line?

It seems to me that returning starters are important but especially at the skill positions and in particular quarterback since, as I found before, passing (NYPPA+) is much more strongly correated with win percentage than running (NYPRA+).  So I set out to try to analyze the improvement of teams' win percentage based on number of returning starters.

I took all the FBS teams' winning percentage from 2007 and 2008 from stassen.com and calculated the delta in win percentage.  I then took the number of returning starters for 2008 from Phil Steele and ran the regression on the number of returning starters to the delta in win percentage...and found that there is a very weak correlation between returning starters and improvement in win percentage.

via img.imagedash.com

via img.imagedash.com

via img.imagedash.com

As you can see, improvement (as a positive change in win percentage) is least weakly correlated with returning offensive starters.  Therefore, betting on a team improving just because of the number of returning starters is a sucker bet.

[I suspect there's a stronger correlation once you factor in the returning quarterback with the returning offensive starters.  If I can ever clean out the cobwebs and remember how to properly set up a simultaneous regression using binary inputs, I will check it out].