I decided to go with a theme of the kid's game Uno for this week's recap, as there were an awful lot of teams this week that suddenly seem to be headed in the opposite direction as last week. Then there are teams like Michigan. I mean, those guys have been dominant for three years. Suddenly in 2024, they look as mediocre or worse than they did prior to 2021 and for the 20, 40?, 70 years before that. I wonder what's different or missing from their preparation this year?

But I digress. The article can be found here:


There is one annoying thing that I did not mention from a betting and data point of view. One challenge that comes up this time of year is how to handle the results of games against FCS opponents. For years, I simply didn't count the results at all. If a team beat an FCS team by 70 or lost to them, it did not impact the power ranking at all.

A few years back, I developed a method to translate SP+ rankings into my power ranking which allowed me to correctly account for games against FCS teams. Over the last few years, I have experimented with using it. Week 2 is always hard because there are so few data points. I decided NOT to include the FCS data is my "official" betting predictions. As the article says, my computer had a rough weekend.

But, when I use the data which incorporates the FCS data, it did much, much better. It went 4-1 for upset picks, 4-3 for recommended picks ATS, and 25-24 total.

That's just annoying.

As always, enjoy!

You are seeing more and more DB forearm breaks. You have RBs, TEs, and WRs running full speed at DBs who do not want to get targeting calls so they are being coached to arm wrap around the legs. The human leg is more powerful than the human arm and we are seeing the results with these forearm breaks.

I am guessing that is what happened to Rucker this weekend.

Not a ready made solution, however you can see a trend.

Working on the film room. Should have it up in short order. A couple things have come to mind on rewatch. Firstly, I really like how Smith has handled the team. Letting Chiles shoot from the hip and grow, while living with the consequences.

The offense isn't complex—at all—and thats ok. MSU really only does a few things, but they do two of them well. Thats awesome, and the path to a bowl and those critical 15 practices is much more clear now. I think Maryland’s pass defense might not be very well coached, but thats ok, you have already seen week over week improvement from MSU.

As a contrast, look at Michigan. Michigan didn't simplify their offense, or defense, at all. Offensively, they’re having a walk on do the same presnap checks and adjustments that they had a top ten pick do last year. They’re running highly technical gap schemes with a walk on at center and a true freshman at right tackle. Defensively, Michigan has yet to develop an answer for the fact that they don't have the depth they did last year, when they routinely played 18-20 starter caliber level players a game.

I imagine this week, UM is going to try to dumb down the offense and find what they do well and build off that—something similar happened to them in 18 and 19. This is the mindset with which i believe MSU approached camp, and you’re seeing the relative benefits.

With MSU, i love the fact that Smith is basically saying, damn the torpedoes, we are a good outside zone team. We’re gonna lose drives because OL will get holding calls when asked to scoop block people slanting away from them. And thats ok! Its this kind of stuff that made me really attracted to Smith as a coach—a program builder who can take the long term perspective when it comes to building a program.

I don't know if he’ll ever have the high level talent to stack up physically with the top 5-8 programs in cfb. However, i think the second tranche of the big ten with a 21st century track record of at least some success (MSU Nebraska and Iowa really come to mind here) will benefit from not being pulled into the helmet games with the pac 12 schools that the conference wants to see.

Just some food for thought on a Monday.

More on Nick Marsh earning Big Ten Freshman of the Week honors after his breakout performance versus Maryland here: