Intro: What’s the German word for “genuinely and sincerely rooting for someone’s success, but also vindictively satisfied - in a way I’m more than a little ashamed of - when that certain someone learns a hard lesson about their skill set and the decisions they’ve made”? There MUST be a German word which encapsulates that specific emotion.
Intro: I try to differentiate between process and results: for instance, I can deal with losing to a significantly better team. Context matters. Michigan’s opponents lose to a significantly better team all the time. What I can’t deal with is fielding a poorly-prepared team, which is what Iowa is doing right now on offense. They don’t run routes well. They don’t block well. They drop passes at a pretty astounding rate.
Last week, we got a question: Has a power conference program ever seen such a drastic difference in offense and defense as Iowa? I already had this data set ready to go (yes, I’m a nerd), so let’s answer the question from a full-season Points Per Drive perspective, shall we?
Intro: Welcome back to Iowatch! Before we get into this week’s crash landing…just for funsies, let’s squint at Iowa’s 2022: Iowa’s opponents scored 173 points on the season, for an average of 13.3 PPG. The Hawkeyes’ 17.7 PPG was enough for 8 wins. Only Ohio State really blew Iowa out of the water; Michigan beat them resoundingly, but it didn’t appear on the scoreboard.
9/23/2023 – Michigan 31, Rutgers 7 – 4-0, 1-0 Big Ten On Saturday I looked at my watch halfway through the fourth quarter and said "what?" It was 2:50 PM. Michigan would strangle out the last seven minutes with a series of punishing Kalel Mullings runs and go home in an NFL time window. Which is nice, I guess, if the alternative is the networks finding a way to stick in another 10 minutes of commercials in there. It's also nice if you have to do a UFR. But it's not so nice if you're used to a certain amount of football and then there's far less of that. Michigan's approach to the first third of the season has been to land some body blows and then get the heck out of dodge. This tweet is a week out of date now but that means it it overstates how many plays per minute Michigan is getting in after Michigan and Rutgers combined for 105 in 60 minutes, a play rate of 1.75: Who plays fast and who plays slow in college football? Here's an updated loo