SMASH THE NUMBERS Week 1 Michigan Football Report Card. Are they ready for Texas?

this is Ferris con with smash the numbers it is now early afternoon Michigan time still morning uh here in California uh I did a full analysis uh was waiting for sports reference data so that I could make sure that I've got everything right um I have a full report card from Michigan I have factored in statistics that I believe are high importance medium importance and low importance I cover all of that in the video today uh I have a score for Michigan uh a positive versus negative score both on offense and defense I also cover uh other factors such as special teams and penalties I predicted that this game would be I believe I said 31 or 32 to8 um and it came pretty close to that a couple more points for Fresno State a few less points than I was expecting for Michigan but all in all pretty close to uh what I was predicting also pretty close to what the line was for the game um of course if there wasn't that pick six at the end of the game uh it is likely that the game would have been a lot closer uh but the final result is the final result so uh in the end I think Michigan had kind of a what I'd call a dress rehearsal kind of situation some some issues um it looked like they were rotating players so they were treating it I think like a dress rehearsal Fresno State is not a cupcake there is a decent chance that they could make a run for the playoffs remember one group of five team does make the playoffs so um it's possible that this is actually a pretty good team uh so I'm not discounting that so uh it's better that Michigan played a team like this won the game was it comfortable no it wasn't comfortable but in the end the score was pretty comfortable I I'll just put it that way all right so I'm going to go over defense then I'm going to go over offense and then I'm going to go over special teams and other factors we're going to do the full report card right now all right so let's start with the defensive side side of the ball uh I had 14 metrics many of them the first seven I have is high importance three is medium importance two is low importance I did put a waiting Factor so metrics that are high importance gets weighted three times as much as metrics that are low importance now when we look at this data I'm going just going to point out the ones that are high and low so let's look at optimistically at the optimistic side right now so turnovers interceptions Michigan had two uh in 2023 they averaged 1.2 realistically I figured they'd get about one interception per game well above that so that that's good um another thing that's good is yards allowed per carry Michigan gave up only 0.4 yards per carry uh that is Stellar that's as good as you can get of course this includes sacks but but still as good as you can get um so uh in my waiting you know basically uh I'm giving them a for each of these lines I'm giving a score between a negative five and a positive five and a zero is kind of neutral kind of what I expected and then I'm giving a weight of a three two or one so in that case uh this is kind of the highest scoring thing the yards allowed per carry and then we also have the rushing yards allowed um realist or in 2023 I they gave up 90 yards per game realistically I figured they could match that with Mason Graham Kenneth Grant and and everyone else um Fresno State for Fresno State they only gave up nine yards so that's that's fantastic um so that also got a high score now on the lower end couple things that are kind of negative and actually there are many things that were kind of slightly negative uh or you know trending towards actually pretty negative so so one thing is the first downs allowed um Mission gave up 13 first downs per game in 2023 and I realistically thought that they could match that uh in this game they gave up 18 so five more first downs to Fresno State uh so that that's a pretty big negative another me negative is the passing yards allowed uh in 20123 they gave up 157 I figured they would give up more yards than that this year so I I put it as 165 uh but Fresno State got 235 yards of passing offense they got almost double the number of passing yards as Michigan did um so I gave that a negative score many other uh variables here you can take a screenshot of this and kind of look at my full analysis but the bottom line here is that I produced a score for each of these rows and my Net score for defense factoring in all the positives and all the negatives was actually a negative 20 so kind kind of below expectations on defense after I waited all these factors okay now let's look at the offensive side so now on the offensive side uh there are two things that really stand out the first is fumbles loss per game they didn't lose any fumbles you know I figured Michigan would be a heavy running team uh and the more they use Alex orgy the more that they're also going to run it looks like so um uh that was one factor but the other factor is that I put in was percentage running plays and I actually thought if they could keep that in moderation or even make that kind of go down a little bit that would probably be better the threat of the pass um uh would be a good thing is is the way is the way that my logic was with respect to that in 20123 Michigan uh passed or sorry ran 61% of the time against Fresno State it was only 56% of the time so um they actually passed more now the result of that passing was it positive yeah we'll get to that in a second but at least they showed that they were passing they were getting closer to kind of a 5050 um run pass ratio rather than being super run heavy all right so on the negative side they did give up an interception and um all of last year JJ McCarthy gave up four interceptions three in one game but four for the entire year uh realistically I didn't think they would come anywhere close to that kind of ratio of 0.3 interceptions per game um I you know I figured optimistically maybe half an intersection per game realistically maybe three qus of an interception per game and pessimistically an interception per game so they did give up one so I got I got to knock them for that um also yards per passing attempt was was not that great I mean we we um you know in in uh 2023 there were nine yards per passing attempt realistically I figured eight would be good you know we wouldn't quite get up to the JJ level but we were only at four and a half yards uh per passing attempt only 121 yards of total uh total passing yards so so that those were not great numbers uh we're definitely going to have to uh work on that offense my aggregate score is a negative - 24 you see that in the uh bottom right corner there so you know factoring in uh the score the weight of the score you know I'm giving a a fairest score here at the end end that is what you see -4 okay now let's go to other factors all right so other factors includes penalties now I actually call this a positive thing um you know I know that there were a couple of penalties right at the end of the game seemed a little Ticky tack but in the end they gave up five total penalties for the game on average Michigan gave up 8.1 one penalty so this is under the average also uh total yards lost on penalties it was kind of right on what what it was what um last year 70 yards versus 68 yards so um you know both those factors I think uh you know the total penalties they did keep it down it would have been great if it wasn't for that you know kind of at the very end of the game um so uh so that's good uh uh but so so net positive for penalties let's put it that way special teams uh I actually gave a weight of a 10 just for this one line item because I'm kind of grouping all of special teams my expectations for special teams uh I'm kind of putting all together and I'm waiting that that a um 10 in my um spreadsheet so uh because they got to because they didn't have any gffs and they had two very long field goals or relatively long field goals I'm going to give them a score of a four a weight of a 10 a plus 40 for that factor time of possession so it's another Factor uh and also kind of time on defense time of possession kind of factoring in together um we uh had the ball for 34 minutes versus 26 minutes adding all that together we I'm giving a factor of um 55 as the total score on other other things outside of offense and defense when you factor that in let's let's again review the other scores we have a -20 if you see on the bottom right here for defense we have a negative - 24 for offense and a positive 55 for other which gives me a total score of an 11 um uh so I everything in it is close to zero but slightly positive uh let me go to that page here slightly positive in a total score of 11 all right so as I said before this is kind of a dress rehearsal for Michigan uh I don't think they decided to show their hand I was thinking that they might they might um be a little bit more aggressive the seemed like they were rotating players even will Johnson um I do think there was some concern by some that will Johnson didn't have a great game although he did have a pick six he didn't have a great game it appeared as if he was taking risks in this game I'm not sure that he will take risks in the um Texas game some other factors here uh the Improvement in offensive line from game one to game two that's certainly something to kind of uh hope for or kind of assume that will happen uh Donovan Edwards didn't have a great game uh but he seems to perform the best when the lightest are light is the brightest so uh I'm optimistic about that um in terms of the quarterback battle I didn't see anything uh dramatic other than experience right so um the passing game was not that great uh the running game was I would say kind of on par uh the total offense was below par uh let's see what happens in this next next game ideally I'd like to see penalty stay low I'd like to see turnover stay low uh I'd like to see the defense do their thing and uh I do think there is an element of this where uh uh M the Michigan coaching staff is playing a little bit of Chess here where they're saying hey you know you may think that uh it's a good idea to throw the ball against will Johnson and I I think they're almost baiting um Texas to try you know like Fresno State did so um I recently watched a video about Greg Maddox and how he used to uh when he knew that he was going to face a team in the playoffs he would actually Groove a pitch or whatever to to a batter uh in the regular season and then have that in the batter's mind that they could they could um you know whatever get a home run or something if if they did that in the postseason and then he would totally change it up in the postseason so um I'm not saying to that extreme but it could be that Michigan is um actually giving Texas the signal to go ahead and try to test um will Johnson and I think will Johnson will not take as many chances he'll maybe try to deflect the ball instead of intercept it but on the other hand if it was a pass that was like the pass that we saw where he got the pick six he'll go ahead and be aggressive and and try to make that play so um we we'll see what happens with respect to that but I do actually hope that Texas tries to throw the ball to them let me know if you have any other comments about my report card please do screenshots and uh kind of take a look at the whole report card I'll I'll U uh post this as well thank you until next time