Was answered today. But it was only the beginning, now we must build on it.

Should read, “forced to kill myself”

in all seven games. I believe we’re second in the country now in scoring defense. We have arguably the best running back in the Big Ten; he’s certainly a first or second round choice as a junior in the spring.

It’s still football, so that should be enough. So we’ve been beaten, depending on your point of view, by self-inflicted errors or errors induced by opposing DCs who attack us at the tactical margin owing to our predictability. Football games now are decided by 4-5 plays, unless there is a physical mismatch like yesterday. Opposition DCs are winning those 4-5 plays when we lose.

We really have two plays. We’ll run the zone read until the safeties cheat and create the numerical mismatch in the box. Then we go over the top (our “constraint” play) to Brodell or the TE. Stanzi hits this pass, Jake had trouble. (We also run the vaunted 3 yard out to keep backside LBs from stuffing Shonn’s cutbacks. We used to run reverses to achieve the same thing, but that play has been run a couple of times only this year, no matter we have DJK and Brodell, both former backs.) Our offense doesn’t work unless we can complete the deep seam pass half the time, and if our OL cannot establish physical dominance.

This line beat up Michigan State, and they’re probably tougher physically than tOSU. MSU beat us because their DC (imo) forced our QB into critical errors through timely blitzing reads on 4-5 plays.

Against an average to below-average team, we’re capable of just cleat-stomping them. I would put Pitt in this category.

Against a tougher team that will be desperate (Wisconsin) we may need to run more than our two plays.

So, we have a better O-Line than Michigan, MSU, or tOSU. We have a better running back than anyone in the Big Ten, and I include Wells. If you single team Mitch King he will take the handoff himself, and Kroul will body slam anyone who is unlucky enough to proceed and receive the handoff. We’re second in the country in scoring D. We’re starting walk-ons again, and that’s a critical intangible in Ferentz’s success. It’s a great group of players who play hard every play. And we’re slightly over .500.

because the spread requires more dominant skill guys than we’ve had in 20 years. We usually have one or maybe two on the field at the same time. We have shown an ability to build brutal dominance at the line of scrimmage. The technical football guy thinks the spread has already peaked because it won’t work without dominating skill guys on the edge, and they’re like left-handed pitchers: they’re just aren’t enough of them.

I think people need to continually remember that our zone-read O was innovative and unusual when introduced into the Big Ten. It took a few years for people to figure out our two plays.

If you have two sequences, and two only, and games turn on 4-5 plays, then a DC (in the blind, much less after quantifying tendencies) has a much smaller decision set. This is what happened at MSU, I think. Their guy got inside our decision loop (this is a John Boyd term, means, he got into and ahead of our own decision cycles) and blew up the key plays that determined the game.

Fry coached such that opposing teams were afraid to study tape: Fry was capable of ad-libbing in games, much less in game planning.

There are pitchers who always seem to be trying to be too clever and to throw the perfect game, irrespective of what kind of stuff they have that day. Somedays, if you are smoking them with heat, your 3, 4, 5 pitches are irrelevant. I sometimes get the impression that KOK is ignoring what is working for what he decided pre-game would or should work. As a result his games strike me more as scrimmages sometimes, where he’s out there working on stuff rather than seeing what is working and hammering that until it’s taken away.

I’ve never seen a team with a #2 nationally ranked D, which can dominate the line of scrimmage, which offers the best back in the conference — play slightly over .500. This would argue for our ripping off a few big games now and getting significantly over .500. Standing in the way of that is the ease with which people game plan us, and our QB’s immaturity. (Remember, he dropped one snap and threw one to the defense yesterday, and both could have gone against us.) We have better coaches, a healthier O-line, a better RB and QB, and a better defense than Wisconsin. But given our schemes, we probably won’t win unless we once again avoid all turnovers.

We’re 5th in the country in scoring D. We have three losses, obviously. The four teams ahead of us have a total of four.

Shonn is #3 in the country, and we owned, of course, the guy who is #1; he’s not the better back. Throw out his best and worst single runs, and Ringer was getting 1.8 ypc or something. Would he be ahead of Jewel? Well, that’s not a slam dunk. I don’t know.

The Swingin’ and Slingin’ Manzi is now #3 in conference passing efficiency, and 40% higher than Bacher and Painter. It’s a misleading stat, perhaps, because of the Manzi’s fumbles not being counted here, but still, he’s grading out well on the computer.

Here’s a favorite stealth stat of mine: we’re tied for first in the Big Ten for fewest penalties, tied for seventh nationally. I assert that our coaches’ ‘execution’ fetish means that we simply don’t have a good team in the years where we are not among the leaders in fewest penalties. We have seen penalties balloon the past three years. That problem appears fixed, but it may be a hidden dependent variable in our success. I would like to do the regression: are we ever good when we are not a leader in fewest penalties?

Okay, in sum: we haved owned the LOS in each game. We have the #1 RB in the conference. He might be the best in the country. We have the #5 scoring D, #18 rushing D, #22 total D. We’re #1 in penalties in the conference and #7 in the country. Our rookie QB is #3 in the conference, although the stat doesn’t measure half of his negative plays.

This doesn’t describe a .500 team, to me. This describes a .667 team, and maybe much better than that (given the non-conference cupcakes). So, either we are unlucky as hell, and being unlucky is the last refuge of whiners and incompetents, or game-planning and in-game decisionmaking negate our intrinsic performance advantages.

Put another way: if our offensive sequences were new instead of 10 years old, I suggest we’d be 6-1 or 7-0 with this collection of stud hoss athletes and the schedule we have completed to date.