The Michigan State Ringers
Posted by kj on Sunday, September 14th, 2008
In the early years of organized baseball, before team mascots became as formalized as they are today, teams would sometimes be referred to by the name (or nickname) of their star player. For example, the Cleveland “Naps” were named after future Hall-of-Famer Napoleon Lajoe.
Based on the numbers below, perhaps the MSU football team should take on the moniker of the “Ringers” for the remainder of the season.
Total offensive/special team touches through three games (excluding quarterbacks):
- Javon Ringer: 114 (38 per game)
- Rest of team: 72 (24 per game)
As I posted in the comments section of the previous football discussion thread, it’s hard to argue with the results of giving Ringer the ball 40+ times on Saturday, given the game conditions. And, at this point, we might as well get on the Ringer-for-Heisman bandwagon (however slim those odds may be for a team with work to do just to get into the top 25) and revel in the running up of the stats. He’s now at 498 rushing yards and 9 touchdowns.
In my (again, nonexpert) opinion, the biggest question about this team remains the pass defense (bigger even than Hoyer’s compentency). Cal’s quarterback shuffling probably helped MSU look at least halfway decent in pass defense, Eastern didn’t seem to have the personnel to challenge MSU through the air, and this weekend’s weather prevented either team from executing anything resembling a passing game. Also of note: the Spartan defense has sacked the opposition’s quarterback only three times to date.
Perusing Notre Dame’s stat sheet, their passing offense (7.0 yards/attempt; zero sacks allowed) seems like the one place they could create a large advanage on Saturday. But if we can get some pressure on Jimmy Clausen and the secondary can avoid giving up big plays, there’s every reason to think MSU should come away with the win at home.
Based on the early Sagarin ratings, here’s how the rest of MIchigan State’s games project out this season (projected lines rounded to nearest half point):
- Notre Dame (H): +2.0
- Indiana (A): +5.0
- Iowa (H): -0.5
- Northwestern (A): +0.5
- Ohio State (H): -5.5
- Michigan (A): -4.5*
- Wisconsin (H): -5.5
- Purdue (H): +7.5
- Penn State (A): -13.0
*This seems too high; the Sagarin ratings are probably still accounting too heavily for how good Michigan was last year. Of course, it’s also reasonable to think Michigan will get better as the season goes on and the players adopt to Rodriguez’s systems. And they probably won’t turn the ball over six times every game as they did on Saturday.
On a binary basis, those projections translate to 6-6, with 7-5 or 8-4 looking reasonable if they can win at home against Iowa and/or on the road against Michigan.
Coffee Talk: What are your expectations at this stage of the season, humble readers? How many wins does the team need for this season to be considered a success?
Filed in football discussion, stats analysis5 responses so far
5 Responses to “The Michigan State Ringers”
Benon 16 Sep 2008 at 12:53 am 1I’ve said it a few times, here and elsewhere — I totally agree with you about the pass defense. Otis Wiley has been fantastic, but the rest of the secondary has been relatively mehhhh. I’m pretty worried about that this week. Jimmy Clausen hasn’t been a joke this year, and he actually has someone to throw the ball too: Golden Tate (awesome name) has made a bunch of big plays in both games for ND this season. I have terrible visions of us being the better team this weekend, but getting absolutely burned on 2 or 3 loooong pass plays and losing another agonizingly close game to ND at home.
Ringer — what can you say? He’s been amazing. There’s been a lot of second-guessing as to how many carries Javon had on Saturday, but I think it was justified. He was the only thing that was working for us offensively, (and with good reason — the weather looked absolutely awful. This was one of the two home games I’m going to miss this season, and between sitting in a torrential downpour for 4 hours, and having to drive to and from Chicago in said weather, I can’t say I’m *too* sorry I didn’t make it.) . . . and we didn’t really put the game away until the 4th quarter. The TV guys seemed to think that Dantonio left him the game to see if he could get 300 yards; I think it was out of necessity. (It also seems totally contrary to MD’s style to do something like that.)
The yards aren’t going to come as easy this week; kj, I know you and I have sort of disagreed in the past about the importance of mixing in the passing game to help spell Javon a bit. I don’t think it was all that important to do that against EMU (and truthfully, I like keeping a few cards in the deck), but we’ll obviously have to do that this week. The passing game had the week off — and thank God that Dell and Cunningham don’t have the season off after their injury scares last wee — but we need them this week. ND’s defensive line isn’t the best we’ll see all year, but they’re certainly good enough to contain Javon if they can sell out on the run all game long. Hoyer needs to be markedly better than he was in either of the first two games.
ND is certainly better than EMU or FAU, but I’m pretty confident that we’re the better football team, and I’m completely certain that we can beat them if we keep on playing with the same tenacity we showed last weekend. It’s not a conference game, but they’re a rival, it’s a chance to look good on national television, and it’s always one of the most fun games of the year. On the whole, I’m really, really excited for Saturday, because I can’t wait to see what we can really do.
Time to rise to the occasion exorcise the 2006-game-that-never-happened and the evil ghost of JLS once and for all. I can’t wait. Go Green.
kjon 16 Sep 2008 at 8:18 am 2Dantonio post-game explanation of continuing to give Ringer carries late in the game was a reasonable one:
“We kept him in there because I felt like with the change in that environment with the water,” Dantonio said, “you had to be used to that a little bit. You couldn’t put a fresh guy in there and say ‘OK, let’s handle the football.’ And that game at 17-0 is not that big of a lead.”
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.....40512/1055
Agree with Ben that it’s not Dantonio’s style to run up stats just for the sake of running up stats.
Newbieon 16 Sep 2008 at 2:41 pm 3Football + statistical analysis = a good thing. If only coaches knew that.
http://www.contingencies.org/septoct08/fourth.pdf
kjon 16 Sep 2008 at 3:55 pm 4Don’t even get me started on football coaches and 4th down. Well, I guess you just did:
Sunday night, Cleveland trailed Pittsburgh 10-3 with 3 and a half minutes left. So they need a touchdown at some point to have any chance of winning the game.
On 4th and 7 at Pittsburgh’s 20, they kick a FG. Al Michaels says this is the correct decision because going for it and failing to make it would “deflate the team.”
Pittsburgh, of course, proceeds to run off a couple first downs. Cleveland finally gets the ball back with 30 seconds left, throws a couple Hail Mary attempts, and watches the game clock expire.
One wonders whether Al Michaels thinks the Browns were “deflated” at that point.
You’d think, in the sport where the difference between winning and losing a single game can have the largest impact on a team’s fate for the season, coaches would be more sophisticated about their decision making. But the opposite would seem to be true.
(I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to rant about this somewhere. Thanks, Newbie.)
kjon 16 Sep 2008 at 4:51 pm 5Our friend, Mr. Cook, points to one coach with the sense to go for it on 4th down in a late-game situation:
http://ncaafootball.fanhouse.c.....he-morons/