Could have finished 9-4

[Catmandoo78]

Rittenberg’s tweet regarding the Offensive Reset have understandably gotten a lot of engagement, but his assertion that we “easily could have finished 9-4” made me pause.

My gut feel is that 7-4 is probably about right, given what we saw on the field over the course of the season and injuries we incurred. What do you all think?

To add an interesting counterpoint, an NU fan online posted the thread linked below. Essentially, he says the advanced stats show we were lucky to get to 7… which I can also see this point. Where do you all fall on this?

 

[MCC_Cat]

Well if we had Himon for more than one play against UI then I'm pretty confident we win that one. Didn't even remotely get out teeth caved in by anyone other than Oregon. That USC game changed completely on one play.

 

[AdamOnFirst]

The "8 or 9 win" comment was from Braun and is clearly based on the idea that we could have easily won the Nebraska, Michigan, and Illinois games since all three were close games. Illinois and Michigan in particular if our offense had done ANYTHING late we'd have won those games, both were for the taking.

The only thing I agree with the tweeter about is that we aren't really close to actually being a 9 win team, talent wise. You can't expect to win all those close games and the Michigan game in particular Michigan made a hilariously catastrophic series of errors all game long to even put us in a position to maybe possibly win. If you're looking at things predictively, you wouldn't project 5 turnovers a second time and you'd expect Michigan to beat us into a paste.

That said, I don't agree we were nearly a 4 win team either. We were not notably lucky in any of our wins and simply played close, hard fought games against both PSU and MN where we outplayed both opponents late. No luck required, just a competitive, gritty win alongside our competitive, gritty losses to Illinois and Nebraska. Pretty standard. Plus, the stats he cited don't make any sense to use to analyze a season after the fact and aren't even applied well and the two narrow road losses are ignored (also... the stats aren't even correct, we did not have a >1% chance to beat Illinois or a 1.4% chance to beat Tulane). Bad analysis that leads to a bad conclusion.

 

[Catmandoo78]

Well if we had Himon for more than one play against UI then I'm pretty confident we win that one. Didn't even remotely get out teeth caved in by anyone other than Oregon. That USC game changed completely on one play.

Yeah but that’s sort of the point. Just looking at the find score can obfuscate the truth. We lost the turnover battle 4-1 against UI. By just the underlying stats, we were lucky to even have a shot in that game. We lost Himon which hurt, but we were lucky it was a darn blizzard with terrible wind so Altmeyer couldn’t really throw on us which undoubtedly benefited us.

I’m not sure how I feel either way on this. We damn near beat Michigan, but at the same time it’s only because they had 5 TOs and had the most “shoot yourself in the foot” game I’ve ever seen. Do we get credit for almost winning or do they get blamed for almost blowing a game that shouldn’t have been that close?

 

[Catmandoo78]

The "8 or 9 win" comment was from Braun and is clearly based on the idea that we could have easily won the Nebraska, Michigan, and Illinois games since all three were close games. Illinois and Michigan in particular if our offense had done ANYTHING late we'd have won those games, both were for the taking.

The only thing I agree with the tweeter about is that we aren't really close to actually being a 9 win team, talent wise. You can't expect to win all those close games and the Michigan game in particular Michigan made a hilariously catastrophic series of errors all game long to even put us in a position to maybe possibly win. If you're looking at things predictively, you wouldn't project 5 turnovers a second time and you'd expect Michigan to beat us into a paste.

That said, I don't agree we were nearly a 4 win team either. We were not notably lucky in any of our wins and simply played close, hard fought games against both PSU and MN where we outplayed both opponents late. No luck required, just a competitive, gritty win alongside our competitive, gritty losses to Illinois and Nebraska. Pretty standard. Plus, the stats he cited don't make any sense to use to analyze a season after the fact and aren't even applied well and the two narrow road losses are ignored (also... the stats aren't even correct, we did not have a >1% chance to beat Illinois or a 1.4% chance to beat Tulane). Bad analysis that leads to a bad conclusion.

Agree totally with what you’re saying. One minor point of correction… the % he’s quoting is post-game win expectancy from the S&P power rankings. Basically, looking at post game stats how many times should you have won this game if it was simmed many times? So things like TOP, TO differential, yards, where were you in the field position battle, etc.

I’m surprised the stat hated us so much against Illinois but maybe it’s some combination of road game, Turnovers, and red zone TD rate? Those metrics were very lopsided against us, so maybe running those numbers without the context of the awful weather and how it impacted both teams’ ability to play is how that metric looks so bad?

Edit: later in that thread it looks like that guy linked to a good doc that explains the PGWE stat. Better than I can explain it so I’ll just link it here

 

[phatcat_rivals223240]

This is a 7 win team to me. Too many holes on offense vs, say 2023. Inconsistent QB play, thin WR position until Eligon developed late, M*A*S*H unit at RB.

 

[Catmandoo78]

This is a 7 win team to me. Too many holes on offense vs, say 2023. Inconsistent QB play, thin WR position until Eligon developed late, M*A*S*H unit at RB.

Think so too. 7 feels right. Pretty crappy QB play overall, tons of turnovers, garbage play at WR for most the year. But a really great year from the OL and solid play from the DL. If we were worse in the trenches, this might be a 4 win team.

Keep the lines built up and find a QB and you can win 7+ every year. But doing all that takes money and recruiting. I hope we can get it done.

 

[Purple Pile Driver]

Rittenberg’s tweet regarding the Offensive Reset have understandably gotten a lot of engagement, but his assertion that we “easily could have finished 9-4” made me pause.

My gut feel is that 7-4 is probably about right, given what we saw on the field over the course of the season and injuries we incurred. What do you all think?

To add an interesting counterpoint, an NU fan online posted the thread linked below. Essentially, he says the advanced stats show we were lucky to get to 7… which I can also see this point. Where do you all fall on this?

1) 7-4. Did the other 2 games end in ties?
2) NU fan? Says who? Seems more like a troll to me. Folks have said he was a former contributor to Inside NU, the Daily or some other student sponsored entity. That would explain everything as 90% of their content is garbage.

 

[Catmandoo78]

Well if we had Himon for more than one play against UI then I'm pretty confident we win that one. Didn't even remotely get out teeth caved in by anyone other than Oregon. That USC game changed completely on one play.

That USC game did swing on one play… but when it swung it SWUNG. Regardless of context (which the PGWE stat ignores) The post-game stats show we got doubled up in 1st downs, yards, turnovers. And we were on the road. So honestly, the fact that the stat shows that after-the-fact we effectively had no chance to win that game doesn’t feel wrong.

 

[AdamOnFirst]

Agree totally with what you’re saying. One minor point of correction… the % he’s quoting is post-game win expectancy from the S&P power rankings. Basically, looking at post game stats how many times should you have won this game if it was simmed many times? So things like TOP, TO differential, yards, where were you in the field position battle, etc.

I’m surprised the stat hated us so much against Illinois but maybe it’s some combination of road game, Turnovers, and red zone TD rate? Those metrics were very lopsided against us, so maybe running those numbers without the context of the awful weather and how it impacted both teams’ ability to play is how that metric looks so bad?

Edit: later in that thread it looks like that guy linked to a good doc that explains the PGWE stat. Better than I can explain it so I’ll just link it here

Any stat that thinks we had a 1% chance to win the Illinois game isn't worth anything. Or at least if it IS worth anything it isn't designed to be used like the poster is using it.

 

[Catmandoo78]

1) 7-4. Did the other 2 games end in ties?
2) NU fan? Says who? Seems more like a troll to me. Folks have said he was a former contributor to Inside NU, the Daily or some other student sponsored entity. That would explain everything as 90% of their content is garbage.

1) Sorry, meant 7-6. I’ve eaten too much junk food this week, it’s slowed my brain.
2) I mean, he’s a fan. You may not agree with him, but we all start from the basic premise of “we root for NU”.

 

[Catmandoo78]

Any stat that thinks we had a 1% chance to win the Illinois game isn't worth anything. Or at least if it IS worth anything it isn't designed to be used like the poster is using it.

I think it’s referred to as the “did we really get beat that badly?” stat. Like I said, it probably comes down to turnover margin and red zone scoring. We lost the turnover margin 4-1 and failed to score TDs in the red zone. If you play a game with those postgame stats, you’re going to win very, very few of those. I’m surprised it’s 1% but wouldn’t argue if it was 20% or less.

 

[Purple Pile Driver]

I think it’s referred to as the “did we really get beat that badly?” stat. Like I said, it probably comes down to turnover margin and red zone scoring. We lost the turnover margin 4-1 and failed to score TDs in the red zone. If you play a game with those postgame stats, you’re going to win very, very few of those. I’m surprised it’s 1% but wouldn’t argue if it was 20% or less.

I think you might be correct in how they figured the percentages. However, the whole theory doesn’t make much sense to me in the context of what I record could have been or should have been. If we played Illinois and Tulane 100 times, we would win more than 1 time. It just confirms how terrible we played. If you look at our wins, who which percentage looks out of line. PSU maybe, but that’s it. I am with Braun and feel we left a lot of meat in the bone.

 

[Catmandoo78]

I think you might be correct in how they figured the percentages. However, the whole theory doesn’t make much sense to me in the context of what I record could have been or should have been. If we played Illinois and Tulane 100 times, we would win more than 1 time. It just confirms how terrible we played. If you look at our wins, who which percentage looks out of line. PSU maybe, but that’s it. I am with Braun and feel we left a lot of meat in the bone.

Good points. But one clarification: The stat doesn’t mean that if we play Tulane 100 times we don’t win more than 1 game. But it does say that if we played Tulane with those same exact resulting stats (lose the TO battle 5-0, get doubled up in yards gained, play a game on the road) then we would lose 99/100 times. Given those macro stats there is almost no path to victory. Which to me, passes the sniff test. Tulane got our worst performance. If we played a solid game where we don’t turn it over 5 times then the post-game win expectancy is probably much, much healthier even if we lose.

I think that Braun has a point, you could make the case that this team could’ve won more with a better game plan, better in game decisions, and elimination of costly turnovers. But, given the games that happened on the field and what did actually transpire, I think 7 wins is probably about what we “deserved”.

This can work the other way, by the way. I’m too lazy to look it up but I’m guessing the same metric says we were better than our final record was last year.

 

[stpaulcat]

This thread reminds me of Minnesota fans a while back roughly during the Gutekunst through Brewster eras when even though a final score indicated an opponent victory, the Gophers actually won but for some fluke, which of course was not of their doing. However, I liken NU now more to the years in the 1990's when Wisconsin was on the rise and they could not buy a win in close games against tough opponents. IOW, NU is on the rise. Not there, getting there.

 

[CoralSpringsCat]

The "8 or 9 win" comment was from Braun and is clearly based on the idea that we could have easily won the Nebraska, Michigan, and Illinois games since all three were close games. Illinois and Michigan in particular if our offense had done ANYTHING late we'd have won those games, both were for the taking.

The only thing I agree with the tweeter about is that we aren't really close to actually being a 9 win team, talent wise. You can't expect to win all those close games and the Michigan game in particular Michigan made a hilariously catastrophic series of errors all game long to even put us in a position to maybe possibly win. If you're looking at things predictively, you wouldn't project 5 turnovers a second time and you'd expect Michigan to beat us into a paste.

That said, I don't agree we were nearly a 4 win team either. We were not notably lucky in any of our wins and simply played close, hard fought games against both PSU and MN where we outplayed both opponents late. No luck required, just a competitive, gritty win alongside our competitive, gritty losses to Illinois and Nebraska. Pretty standard. Plus, the stats he cited don't make any sense to use to analyze a season after the fact and aren't even applied well and the two narrow road losses are ignored (also... the stats aren't even correct, we did not have a >1% chance to beat Illinois or a 1.4% chance to beat Tulane). Bad analysis that leads to a bad conclusion.

Losing Hubbard/Hagarty for Michigan/Illinois really hurt us.

 

[MCC_Cat]

Losing Hubbard/Hagarty for Michigan/Illinois really hurt us.

Hubbard is an absolute stud. Like Graziano was. He'll play on Sundays no doubt.

 

[MCC_Cat]

I think you might be correct in how they figured the percentages. However, the whole theory doesn’t make much sense to me in the context of what I record could have been or should have been. If we played Illinois and Tulane 100 times, we would win more than 1 time. It just confirms how terrible we played. If you look at our wins, who which percentage looks out of line. PSU maybe, but that’s it. I am with Braun and feel we left a lot of meat in the bone.

Sure we could've won more or less but this team was competitive in just about every game. No shellackings like last year or in our godforsaken last Fitz years. That to me as a longtime NU fan is always a true barometer.

 

[Styre]

Good points. But one clarification: The stat doesn’t mean that if we play Tulane 100 times we don’t win more than 1 game. But it does say that if we played Tulane with those same exact resulting stats (lose the TO battle 5-0, get doubled up in yards gained, play a game on the road) then we would lose 99/100 times. Given those macro stats there is almost no path to victory. Which to me, passes the sniff test. Tulane got our worst performance. If we played a solid game where we don’t turn it over 5 times then the post-game win expectancy is probably much, much healthier even if we lose.

Similarly, it suggests that we would lose the Illinois game 99/100 times with the same stats, so the fact that there was a very rare weather event that night helps explain why it was so close in spite of the stats.

 

[stpaulcat]

Losing Hubbard/Hagarty for Michigan/Illinois really hurt us.

Seriously.

 

[Purple Pete]

Losing Hubbard/Hagarty for Michigan/Illinois really hurt us.

We lost Karlaftis very early in the season as well.

 

[JustGary]

I think people are mixing up the pre-game evaluation with the actual events and situation in the game. We lost the Nebraska game by 7 when we gave up a TD on a kickoff return to begin the second half. We lost the Michigan game on a field goal kicked with no time left. We lost the Illinois game by 7 when we had our fifth string running back on a game played in a snowstorm. To say we could have easily finished 9-4 with a little more offense is not a false statement. You can question whether the 7 games we won could have easily been 5, but it doesn’t change the fact that there were three winnable games that could have easily ended in victory with an offense that could have just held onto the ball.

 

[Hungry Jack]

The OP presents the 2025 NU version of the Dave Wannestedt argument posited almost three decades ago: “if you take away the plays that they scored upon, we win the game”