Thursday Sips
by Rodger Sherman on Oct 14, 2010 1:36 PM CDT
in Northwestern Wildcats Football
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PrintThat was a pretty good three day posting hiatus, wasn't it? I did it because I hate each and every last one of you.
- Sick post yesterday from Football Outsiders. First off: there are 39 kickers worse than Stefan Demos in the country, according to statistics/expected values. There is math involved. That means its correct.(Be glad you don't go to Virginia). But more interesting is the fact that NU gives up the fifth longest average touchdown drives, an average of 72.9 yards per touchdown. That makes sense when you think about what you've seen from NU - when a team gets driving against us, they start getting a lot of plays, a lot of yardage, and we seemingly can't do much to stop. Two interesting, telling stats. And disturbing ones.
- I realized today I didn't do a recap of the Purdue game. Anybody mind? Guess what, I don't care.
- Big things poppin in the NFL: Sherrick McManis had a pick - first career pick! - against Eli Manning, the quarterback of the second-best team in the New York metropolitan area, and Corey Wootton played and had a tackle - first career tackle! - for the Bears. Still waitin on Kafka.
- A few weeks ago I wrote a Daily column about Bros Like This Site, and I missed the fact that the guy who writes that site tweeted about it. As a religious reader, I am honored that the person who introduced me to the phrase "slampiece" felt the need to tweet about it.
- You can add any Northwestern student, grad student, or faculty member to an IM roster. Anybody with a NetID. So I had a brilliant idea: I looked up Patrick William Fitzgerald II's NetID and got all pumped to add him to my IM football team's roster. And then, tragedy struck: turns out somebody beat me to it. I'm not going to say that it was the first team that was my first guess turned out to be the actual answer, but, the first team that was my first guess turned out to be the actual answer. Lucky guess.
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Football Outsiders Stats
The site does note that the FGV (Field Goal Value) should not be attributed just to the kicker, but the entire unit, and this is definitely the case for NU who have had their share of issues with 2 FGs blocked this year (along with an XP that doesn’t show up in that stat). Also, there have been some iffy snaps/holds, which can contribute to kicking woes.
While Demos has definitely had a down year, don’t heap all the blame on him alone (just the majority).
Also, even though FO uses some solid statistics, don’t always believe them. Although the NU D has given up a significant amount of yards this year (57th nationally in total defense) they haven’t given up many points (26th nationally in scoring defense at 18.3 ppg). I would also argue it isn’t bad to make your opponents drive further for TDs, in fact that provides more opportunities for takeaways, something NU did well through the first 4 weeks of the season.
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JHodges
HailToPurple
thing about stats
they don’t lie. you can interpret them in different ways – the fact that we give up a lot of long drives could tell you that we have a bad defense or that we are doing a very good job of giving teams field position or that we have a good defense.
i know its not all demos. i’ve been saying that more than pretty much anybody.
by Rodger Sherman on Oct 14, 2010 2:15 PM CDT up reply actions
Yeah...
…I was wondering about the yards per TD drive stat, and whether or not it was good or bad to have a high number there. I’d say you’d have to discount it somehow by number of TDs allowed….Iowa has a very small yards per TD drive, but they also have only given up like 2 TDs…in our case, we’re forcing teams to go a long way — so when they score, it’s because they got a TON of yards.
That TD drive stat...
I don’t know how much we can actually take from that. When I first saw that, my first reaction was that that was a good thing but then I quickly realized it was a bad thing. It means we are doing great at making teams work for their TDs from a field position perspective (which makes sense because it seems like every drive we have stalls around the 50.) At the same time, we’re great at letting teams score while working for their TDs. What we do know is that being in the top 10 puts us along with Michigan, Washington State and Minnesota, all of whom have pretty terribad defenses.
by Persalicious on Oct 14, 2010 2:36 PM CDT up reply actions
Interesting Note
The NU D ranks 11th nationally in third down conversion defense, allowing opponents to convert just 29.5% of their 3rd downs.
So, the issue on the long TD drives is not even an inability to get off the field on 3rd downs. It seems to be allowing big plays on 1st & 2nd downs and/or big “explosion” plays like we saw Purdue get 2 of.
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JHodges
HailToPurple
More about stats
Don’t forget that:
94.5678% of statistics are made up,
and, according to Fitz, “Stats are for losers.”
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JHodges
HailToPurple
It's certainly fitting for this week.
I don’t think he meant it as an insult to stat-following-types so much as “When you win the only stat that matters is the win. After a loss, then people pull out the stats to try to rationalize it.”
Of course, being obsessive fans like we are we’ll look over stats even in wins, but the bad news gets easily brushed away with “well a win is a win”.
by Batman42 on Oct 15, 2010 11:44 AM CDT via mobile up reply actions
I'm a grad student at Virginia
and if I were to list the problems with the football team, “kicker” wouldn’t make top 10. Hopefully the new coach can improve them, but so far it’s been rough.
Transitive Rankings: It's not who you beat, it's who they beat. Post Week 6: Big Ten and all FBS
Reality has a little-known Northwestern bias
NU prez knows how to get PUMPED
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