In my preview for MSU's game with Arizona State, I made reference to Coach Dantonio being the Exorcist. Like essentially everyone in the college football universe outside of Tempe, I expected MSU's new offense to show progress and MSU's defense to dominate this weekend. I expected MSU to win comfortably and to see Coach D get to celebrate being MSU's winningest coach of all time in front of 75,000 or so grateful fans.
But, much like the original film that I riffed on, things did not actually go to plan and things did not end well for MSU's high priest of football... at least not on that night. Perhaps scheduling a game against a team with a demonic mascot on the day following a full moon on a Friday the 13th was not a great plan after all.
The 2019 version of MSU still clearly has a lot of demons, and on this particular Saturday night the game played out just like the sequel to a bad slasher movie. For some reason, the kids went back to the lake and Jason (played by Herm Edwards in this reboot) slaughters them all in the end. In the process, the kids seemed to make a series of terrible choices while the audience of 75,000 screamed at them to do something else... anything else. But, of course they didn't listen. In the end, the plot was all too familiar and predictable, and most of the audience went home with a sour feeling in their stomach.
But, here's the deal with Friday the 13th. It is basically a fluke. It only really comes around a about once a year (once every 212 days, to be exact) and it actually has no supernatural power. It just feels creepy because everyone says it's creepy. On some level, when it comes to MSU football, I have to wonder if we have all fallen into the same superstitious trap.
Don't get me wrong, Saturday sucked. Hard. But, so many different things needed to go wrong for MSU to lose that they are almost hard to count. There were coaching errors, execution errors, bad calls, slip-and-falls, missed FGs, clock management issues, bad calls, time out management issues, poor spots, injuries, miscommunications, a fumble, and some bad calls. It was basically a Murphy's Law crap sandwich. But, MSU still almost won.
Some of these problems are very troubling, but a lot of them if not most of them seem correctable and not a long term issue. Just look at the box score. MSU dominated Arizona State in every category except the score. While that final score is ultimately the only thing that actually matters, the overall box score should be a better indicator of MSU’s likely performance in the future. The box score may suggest that MSU wins that game maybe 8 or 9 times out of ten (which is exactly what the spread said). If that is true... is this actually a long term problem to be concerned about?
MSU fans are very good and perhaps the best in the business at expected and predicting that bad things are going to happen. (Some of that attitude seems to stem from the whispers at the water cooler from our maize-and-blue frenemies who talk about what they desperately want to be true like it's reality.) In any event, it seems like a lot of MSU fans want to cancel the rest of the season and shut down the program unless we fire all the coaches and start over. That crowd probably didn't leave their homes on Friday either for fear of walking under a ladder to avoid a black cat holding a broken mirror.
So, superstition aside, what is the reality of the 2019 MSU football team? Are they as good as they showed against Western Michigan and just had a slow start against Tulsa and a bad day against Arizona State? Was Western Michigan the fluke? The truth is likely somewhere in-between. At times like this, I think that it is wise to take a look at the numbers as a reality check. In order to do that, it's time for:
Week 3 Metrics Update
When I input all of the weekend's results into my computer, this is what I get for the updated odds to win the Big Ten:
As for the updated expected win totals, those are shown here:
But, much like the original film that I riffed on, things did not actually go to plan and things did not end well for MSU's high priest of football... at least not on that night. Perhaps scheduling a game against a team with a demonic mascot on the day following a full moon on a Friday the 13th was not a great plan after all.
The 2019 version of MSU still clearly has a lot of demons, and on this particular Saturday night the game played out just like the sequel to a bad slasher movie. For some reason, the kids went back to the lake and Jason (played by Herm Edwards in this reboot) slaughters them all in the end. In the process, the kids seemed to make a series of terrible choices while the audience of 75,000 screamed at them to do something else... anything else. But, of course they didn't listen. In the end, the plot was all too familiar and predictable, and most of the audience went home with a sour feeling in their stomach.
But, here's the deal with Friday the 13th. It is basically a fluke. It only really comes around a about once a year (once every 212 days, to be exact) and it actually has no supernatural power. It just feels creepy because everyone says it's creepy. On some level, when it comes to MSU football, I have to wonder if we have all fallen into the same superstitious trap.
Don't get me wrong, Saturday sucked. Hard. But, so many different things needed to go wrong for MSU to lose that they are almost hard to count. There were coaching errors, execution errors, bad calls, slip-and-falls, missed FGs, clock management issues, bad calls, time out management issues, poor spots, injuries, miscommunications, a fumble, and some bad calls. It was basically a Murphy's Law crap sandwich. But, MSU still almost won.
Some of these problems are very troubling, but a lot of them if not most of them seem correctable and not a long term issue. Just look at the box score. MSU dominated Arizona State in every category except the score. While that final score is ultimately the only thing that actually matters, the overall box score should be a better indicator of MSU’s likely performance in the future. The box score may suggest that MSU wins that game maybe 8 or 9 times out of ten (which is exactly what the spread said). If that is true... is this actually a long term problem to be concerned about?
MSU fans are very good and perhaps the best in the business at expected and predicting that bad things are going to happen. (Some of that attitude seems to stem from the whispers at the water cooler from our maize-and-blue frenemies who talk about what they desperately want to be true like it's reality.) In any event, it seems like a lot of MSU fans want to cancel the rest of the season and shut down the program unless we fire all the coaches and start over. That crowd probably didn't leave their homes on Friday either for fear of walking under a ladder to avoid a black cat holding a broken mirror.
So, superstition aside, what is the reality of the 2019 MSU football team? Are they as good as they showed against Western Michigan and just had a slow start against Tulsa and a bad day against Arizona State? Was Western Michigan the fluke? The truth is likely somewhere in-between. At times like this, I think that it is wise to take a look at the numbers as a reality check. In order to do that, it's time for:
Week 3 Metrics Update
When I input all of the weekend's results into my computer, this is what I get for the updated odds to win the Big Ten:
As for the updated expected win totals, those are shown here:
If you prefer a more visual representation, here are the expected win total trends for the season to date.
In regards to the overall Big Ten race, things are pretty status quo from last week. I now have Ohio State to have almost a 90% shot to win the East and Wisconsin to have a 78% chance to win the West. Overall, Ohio State has over a 50% chance to the Big Ten, which is essentially what our eyeballs are telling us as well.
While MSU did drop in my overall power rankings from 13 to 17, the rest of the Big Ten took a bit of a slide as well. When the conference suffers four upset losses (MSU, Maryland, Illinois, and Purdue) and fails to cover and 3 other games (Penn State, Minnesota, and Northwestern) that tends to happen. The good thing from an MSU perspective is that several of our remaining opponents may actually be a little worse than we think. The fact that MSU’s expected win total dropped by less than a point (8.95 to 8.16), despite the loss this weekend is the mathematical evidence. That might be trouble for Ohio State if they are sitting at #5 in the College Football Playoff Poll in late November, but it looks like maybe that is a good trade for MSU fans.
Based on my calculations, MSU still has the 2nd best odds to win the East at 8%. I also can calculate that MSU has a 39% chance to win at least 9 games and a 75% chance to win 8 games. These odds are based on the following projected spreads for MSU’s remaining games:
- MSU (-11.4) at Northwestern (it actually opened at -7)
- MSU (-22) vs. Indiana
- MSU (+15.1) at Ohio State
- MSU (+13.9) at Wisconsin
- MSU (-9.4) vs. Penn State
- MSU (-23.8) vs. Illinois
- MSU (-5.2) at Michigan
- MSU (-28.5) at Rutgers
- MSU (-11.9) at Maryland
- MSU is simply not that good overall due to poor coaching/play-calling/offense/fill-in-the-blank and will continue to struggle to beat any team with a pulse on defense. MSU is maybe a Top 50ish team in reality.
- MSU is actually good enough to be a Top 20ish team, but they lost to Arizona State because of some “bad luck” (insert your explanation here) and the fact that Arizona State may be better than we think.
National Overview
As usual, here is my chart showing the actual game results in reference to the opening Vegas lines.
Once again, it is clear how much variation there is in the actual results.
As for the biggest over-achievers of the week, the top prize goes to Western Michigan, with Ohio State, Navy, Nebraska, Charlotte, Memphis, LA Tech, Oklahoma, Navy, Wake Forest, Duke, and Central Michigan also in that category.
As for the under-achievers, this week that was basically just the teams that got upset, most notably Boston College, Purdue, Buffalo, NC State, and Texas Tech, with MSU also right on that 1-standard deviation line. As for the winners Minnesota and Penn State flirted close to the under-achievement line as well.
As for my hots takes on each conference:
- As stated above, the Big Ten had 4 upsets and 3 other teams not cover. Ohio State looked dominant, Iowa survived, and other than that only Nebraska looked good. Michigan, Rutgers, and Wisconsin were smart to take the week off.
- Nothing too surprising happened in the SEC this week, although Kansas State did upset Mississippi State. Florida managed to escape Lexington with a win, and Tennessee finally found a team that they could beat... in the FCS subdivision.
- It was not a great week in the ACC as Boston College suffered one of the more embarrassing losses in recent memory to Kansas, which provided cover such that almost no one noticed when Georgia Tech lost to the Citadel. Then, NC State got upset by a struggling West Virginia team. Let's just give Clemson a bye the Playoffs start
- By contrast, the Big 12 had a strong week, scoring four upset wins by Kansas , Kansas State, TCU, and West Virginia to go along with covers by Texas and the state of Oklahoma. Iowa State and Texas Tech may have lost two coin-flip games, but on balance, it was a strong week.
- The Pac-12 took a regional approach this week. The state of Arizona won in upset fashion, the state of Washington covers, the state of Oregon beat up on the FCS, and the state of California and Colorado either got upset or failed to cover.
- In the Group of Five, UCF not only beat Stanford, they blew them out and I now have the Golden Knights in the Top 10 of my power rankings. Can anyone unseat them as the favorite? Memphis might have a shot in the AAC Title game. Cincinnati and MWest teams like Boise and San Diego State are waiting in the wings in case the Knights somehow implode.
Upset and ATS Performance
Overall, my algorithm has a decent weekend, going 25-23 ATS (52.1%) which brings my total up to 71-68 (51%) for the year. The FPI once again did not fair as well, going a miserable 18-30 ATS (37.5%). That brings the FPI’s tally to 55-84 (39.6%) for the year. Ouch!
As for my suggested bets, this was also a horror show this week. Here is the list for this past week’s preview, with the correct picks highlighted.
That is a dreadful 4-7 (36%) record for the week, bringing the total to 18-16 (53%), which overall is not that bad.
As for upset picks, here is the table for Week 3:
I count a total of 13 upsets based on the opening lines, which is a little higher than the 10.9 predicted by my simulation of the week, but well within the normal range. My model went 2-2 on upset predictions this week, bring my total for the year to 5-4 (56%), while the FPI went 0 for 3 and is now only 2-6 (25%) year-to-date.
The MSU upset was the second largest of the week (second only to Kansas’s Freak Friday the 13th upset of BC) based on the Vegas line. But, the upset of a team where the spread opened over 10 points has already happened 6 other times this year already. Upsets of this magnitude or larger happen 30-35 times in a given year.
Finally, here is my updated Top 25, after Week 3:
- Georgia
- Clemson
- Ohio State
- LSU
- Wisconsin
- Alabama
- Auburn
- Oregon
- Oklahoma
- UCF
- Texas
- Florida
- Iowa
- Arizona State
- Notre Dame
- TCU
- Michigan State
- Utah
- Washington State
- Memphis
- Missouri
- Texas A&M
- Iowa State
- Virginia
- USC
Just like our view on MSU, my power rankings are highly volatile and cannot be trusted too much at his point in the season. I hope and believe that both are going to get better soon.
That is all for now. Onward to Week 4 and bring on the Wildcats. As always, enjoy, and Go Green!
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