Mailbag question: Interesting "STATS" of the Michigan State game

Mailbag question: Interesting "STATS" of the Michigan State game

Guys,

Not sure if you seen the stats, but did you notice that the Michigan offense had only 12 series on offense compared to 14 for Michigan State and only had 2 drives that lasted longer than 5 plays and Michigan only had one drive that lasted longer than 3 minutes!

WOW I did not really think it was that bad.

I knew it was bad, but not that bad. Then you throw in the time of possession and wow do a lot of things need to get corrected.

Jimmy K.

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Thanks for the question.

Those are some telling stats for sure, with only two drives lasting longer than five plays and only one drive lasting over three minutes. Of course if you are scoring touchdowns in less than three minutes, fine, but when the offense is going three and out, or only four/five plays, with punting, turnovers, etc., nothing good for the defense is being done.

It seems like we are repeating ourselves sometimes, but again we caught a ton of crap earlier in the year when we said the lack of ability to drive the long field was a concern of ours ascertained by watching practices the last two years. Which is okay, we understand 100% why many did not or do not like to hear any negatives when the team just won big, but some continue to hide like ostriches from the glaring concerns that have been pointed out and unfortunately continue to crystallize.

In our opinion this team has relied too much on big plays. As the competition increases these big plays become harder and harder to come by. When playing in the Big Ten, week after week, teams really pick up on strengths and weaknesses and will try and exploit your weaknesses with their strengths, see MSU game.

Michigan had to settle for field goals twice against Michigan State when the offense could not sustain drives. This will kill the chances of winning against superior teams. The beginning of the game, we thought, incurred a huge momentum switch when Michigan State stopped Michigan after turning the ball over, and Michigan had to settle for a field goal. You could almost see in the Michigan State players’ faces that they knew they were in the game, and that helped get the crowd into the game as well.

The result is the defense is on the field for too long and field position is negatively effected. If Michigan does not develop the ability to move the chains and sustain drives it will, in our opinion, lose more games. An associated problem is that the longer the other team has the ball and the more possessions the other team has the ball, the more likely the opponent will find weaknesses and use them to move the ball and score.

A good sports analogy is baseball, where a batter starts to figure out a pitcher the more he faces the pitcher in a game. And by the third or fourth time to the plate the hitter starts to know what the pitcher throws, what he like to throw in a certain situation, and the speed of his pitches.

For Michigan’s offense to help the defense, the offense must have longer drives and use some time on the clock to let the defense catch its breath and make adjustments on the sidelines. It is hard to accomplish any part of the above mission when an offense has only one drive that lasts longer than three minutes.

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Written by CoachBt and ErocWolverine