'19 TX S Brandon Joseph (Northwestern Transfer -> Notre Dame Verbal)

irishff1014

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ulukinatme said:
Sorry, you'll never convince me our defense was that good last season. We looked great in November on paper, but that was after facing some pretty awful offenses between Navy and the teams missing QBs or their best weapons. Some thought we turned a corner at that point, but we then got exposed by an OSU team that was known for their defense, not offense. That one was partially on Elston. Some things last season were certainly out of our control, like injuries and some recruiting holes prior to Freeman getting here. That said we played poorly against a 5 win FSU to start the season, 6 win VT (The only teams VT scored more points on last season were Middle Tennessee and Syracuse), 29 points to Toledo, etc. The Wisconsin win looked good at first, and then Mertz went on to break 200 yards passing 4 times all season, never even reached 300 once. We really didn't face a lot of world beaters on offense last season, so it's hard to say the defense was really dominant even in the games where we held teams to lower point totals.
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You make some very valid points. However, stats don't value the teams played. Like saying that Western Kentucky was the number 2 offense in college football. They play in a shitty division. So of course they are going to have an outstanding offense.
 
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PutuporShutup said:
The 3 man fronts had DEs at the second level and slow lbs at the 3rd level. Completely moronic, and no disguise.
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A little bit like when we had the Zeller on thr basketball team and it was always talked about how well he could shoot from the perimeter. Well that’s nice but sure as hell could use 7’1” rebounding, banging, and scoring at the rim more. That’s is like Foskey who was this bad ass speed rusher with a knack for stripping the ball and all we hear is how good he is going backwards and playing in coverage. Well umm neato …but god bless it give me the strip sacks
 
ulukinatme

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irishff1014 said:
You make some very valid points. However, stats don't value the teams played. Like saying that Western Kentucky was the number 2 offense in college football. They play in a shitty division. So of course they are going to have an outstanding offense.
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That's exactly my point, stats don't tell the whole story. Holding Navy to 130 yards means nothing when Air Force holds them to 68. Giving up 29 points to VT is quite a bit, the only teams VT scored more on were Middle Tennessee and Syracuse. Stats tell half the story, people need perspective to get the full picture.
 
Whiskeyjack

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ulukinatme said:
That's exactly my point, stats don't tell the whole story. Holding Navy to 130 yards means nothing when Air Force holds them to 68. Giving up 29 points to VT is quite a bit, the only teams VT scored more on were Middle Tennessee and Syracuse. Stats tell half the story, people need perspective to get the full picture.
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Thus, "opponent adjusted". It doesn't make any more sense to rank a unit off their best performance than their worst.

Fremeau's model says we had the 11th most efficient defense nationally last year. That's a lot more credible than the emotionally driven eyeball tests that some of you are advocating for.
 
ulukinatme

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Whiskeyjack said:
Thus, "opponent adjusted". It doesn't make any more sense to rank a unit off their best performance than their worst.

Fremeau's model says we had the 11th most efficient defense nationally last year. That's a lot more credible than the emotionally driven eyeball tests that some of you are advocating for.
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I put Fremeau's model up there with 2016 election predictions. There, I said it.
It measures teams on a drive by drive basis and takes into account a team's schedule and all that, which is great, but it doesn't account for Virginia playing a backup QB that throws 2 picks and takes 7 sacks. There are other considerations that the model doesn't account for.
 
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PutuporShutup

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An nd guys model has nd as 11th ranked …yet most other models have us around 40th. Hmmm

Whiskeyjacksearch history “what defensive model had nds defense the highest in 2021”

I just can’t take someone serious that thinks our D was really good last year
 
Irish4life

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ulukinatme said:
I put Fremeau's model up there with 2016 election predictions. There, I said it.
It measures teams on a drive by drive basis and takes into account a team's schedule and all that, which is great, but it doesn't account for Virginia playing a backup QB that throws 2 picks and takes 7 sacks. There are other considerations that the model doesn't account for.
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"FEI says something I don't agree with therefore it's wrong!" is an odd take, especially since none of the other rankings are outlandish by any means.
 
Whiskeyjack

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ulukinatme said:
I put Fremeau's model up there with 2016 election predictions. There, I said it.
It measures teams on a drive by drive basis and takes into account a team's schedule and all that, which is great, but it doesn't account for Virginia playing a backup QB that throws 2 picks and takes 7 sacks. There are other considerations that the model doesn't account for.
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That's true. Our defense likely got too much credit for that specific game. But that's only one of 13 data points. Fremeau's model is still far more objective than everyone here arguing our defense was hot garbage last year because our roster had some growing pains in 3- down looks.
 
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Irish4life said:
"FEI says something I don't agree with therefore it's wrong!" is an odd take, especially since none of the other rankings are outlandish by any means.
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Putting all your faith in a model that doesn't account for all factors is an odd take, especially since we were above teams like Michigan in that list. Do you honestly feel like our defense was better than a Michigan team that held tOSU's high powered offense to 27 and held Georgia to the same number of points as Alabama in the playoff? Like any model it's a measure of a team's strength, but it can only measure the data points available. It doesn't account for injuries, weather, and other factors. If FEI was so perfect then Iowa State was the 11th best team according to overall FEI last season. Instead they had a record of 7-6. Keep banging that drum though.

fei.png

The model only takes into account raw stats and determines a team's success on a possession given an average opponent after the numbers have been adjusted for schedule. It's not perfect, and it doesn't tell the whole story.
 
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ulukinatme said:
Putting all your faith in a model that doesn't account for all factors is an odd take, especially since we were above teams like Michigan in that list. Do you honestly feel like our defense was better than a Michigan team that held tOSU's high powered offense to 27 and held Georgia to the same number of points as Alabama in the playoff? Like any model it's a measure of a team's strength, but it can only measure the data points available. It doesn't account for injuries, weather, and other factors. If FEI was so perfect then Iowa State was the 11th best team according to overall FEI last season. Instead they had a record of 7-6. Keep banging that drum though.

View attachment 3051084

The model only takes into account raw stats and determines a team's success on a possession given an average opponent after the numbers have been adjusted for schedule. It's not perfect, and it doesn't tell the whole story.
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Whiskeyjack never said the model was perfect, and no model will ever be able to perfectly encapsulate all of the factors that can affect the in-game results to measure the strength of these football teams.

As someone with a PhD in Math who watches cfb pretty religiously, I think this model is a good one, and a lot of the results seem fair. Citing one outlier (Iowa State) is frivolous, because again, our model will always underfit a bit.

Yes, NDs defense was on par with Michigan’s last year. You selectively mentioned two of their best defensive results against quality competition (though “held Georgia to the same number of points as Alabama did in the playoffs” is quite the selective way to say “34”, especially in a game where Georgia hung 27 by half before laying off the dawgs and running clock in the 2H), while omitting the fact that they gave up 37 to Michigan State and 29 to Nebraska.

Every game matters, and I’ll trust the guys with real modeling experience, as opposed to those just looking at aggregates, or worse - those who don’t even make an attempt to look at the numbers *shivers*
 
Irish4life

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ulukinatme said:
Putting all your faith in a model that doesn't account for all factors is an odd take, especially since we were above teams like Michigan in that list. Do you honestly feel like our defense was better than a Michigan team that held tOSU's high powered offense to 27 and held Georgia to the same number of points as Alabama in the playoff? Like any model it's a measure of a team's strength, but it can only measure the data points available. It doesn't account for injuries, weather, and other factors. If FEI was so perfect then Iowa State was the 11th best team according to overall FEI last season. Instead they had a record of 7-6. Keep banging that drum though.

View attachment 3051084

The model only takes into account raw stats and determines a team's success on a possession given an average opponent after the numbers have been adjusted for schedule. It's not perfect, and it doesn't tell the whole story.
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Yeah, because Iowa states problem last year wasn't it's offense or it's defense.....it was special teams...where FEI has them at 101. The takeaway there should be that a terrible special teams unit can turn a team with a very good offense and a very good defense into a 7-6 team. 2021 COLLEGE FOOTBALL SPECIAL TEAMS FEI RATINGS | Football Outsiders
 
ulukinatme

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AlaskanIrish said:
I got several posts in before I realized Ulukinatme wasn't mocking Whiskey for misspelling "Freeman" as "Fremeau." I'll see myself out. Love having a Monday off. Go Irish!
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It's the Fremeau effect! The #FremeauEra is here!
That's pretty funny actually :laugh:

Irish4life said:
Yeah, because Iowa states problem last year wasn't it's offense or it's defense.....it was special teams...where FEI has them at 101. The takeaway there should be that a terrible special teams unit can turn a team with a very good offense and a very good defense into a 7-6 team. 2021 COLLEGE FOOTBALL SPECIAL TEAMS FEI RATINGS | Football Outsiders
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They were ranked 11th overall for FEI, is that not an average of all facets? I'm not completely shitting on the model here, my point is it's only built on numbers. That's it. It doesn't take into other factors, like a normally excellent Virginia team having to start a backup against ND. Said backup throws 2 INTs and takes 7 Sacks. To the model ND looks awesome defensively, but it's an anomaly. If we played Virginia with Armstrong starting we likely don't post those numbers and it's a much closer game. We're the only team last year that had to face Virginia's backup. Armstrong was averaging close to 400 yards passing a game, his backup had half that against us. It's not because our depleted defense was that good, we got lucky.

The model is this: (Points For or Against / 7) / (Competitive Possessions / 2 )
That's it. That's essentially the whole model. That gives you Game Efficiency for an individual game. You then take the Game Efficiency from each game that season and adjust for SoS, that's FEI. It's not that complicated, and again...doesn't tell the whole story. It's a helpful barometer, but it doesn't mean you have the 11th best defense in football. It means you were generally efficient with competitive possessions you were given. However it doesn't factor penalties helping or hurting your output, injuries, weather, number of turnovers, missed tackles, blown coverages, etc. How many times did Hamilton bail us out in the first half of the season before he was injured? I'm not saying the model is garbage, I'm just saying we were not knocking on the door of Top 10 defense all things considered. How could we be, we had a number of injuries that held us back! Football isn't played with numbers, that's just a part of it.
 
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PutuporShutup said:
That's fine, D gave up 24 points to a good offense, not a great one. Good enough to win, but not a really good performance in my mind. Especially with game at home.
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Well, after DeShawn Pace's interception Cincinnati MARCHED 8 grueling yards to a touchdown

Then of course, you knew that Chris Tyree's fumble led to a 17 yard drive, right?
 
House16

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ulukinatme said:
Putting all your faith in a model that doesn't account for all factors is an odd take, especially since we were above teams like Michigan in that list. Do you honestly feel like our defense was better than a Michigan team that held tOSU's high powered offense to 27 and held Georgia to the same number of points as Alabama in the playoff? Like any model it's a measure of a team's strength, but it can only measure the data points available. It doesn't account for injuries, weather, and other factors. If FEI was so perfect then Iowa State was the 11th best team according to overall FEI last season. Instead they had a record of 7-6. Keep banging that drum though.

View attachment 3051084

The model only takes into account raw stats and determines a team's success on a possession given an average opponent after the numbers have been adjusted for schedule. It's not perfect, and it doesn't tell the whole story.
Click to expand...
Hold on, Iowa State was legitimately really good last year. They beat Oklahoma State (which we couldn't do) in spite of getting absolutely abused by the refs and came very close to beating Baylor. They had fairly close losses against Oklahoma, Iowa, and Clemson. I don't bat an eye at #11 at all, even if their overall W/L record doesn't look like it.

It's kind of the same reason we look at computer ratings overall. They're able to factor in nuance that the average fan can't (because no one can watch every game of every team). ISU didn't have the #11 resume by any means but they absolutely might have been the 11th best team.
 
Irish4life

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House16 said:
Hold on, Iowa State was legitimately really good last year. They beat Oklahoma State (which we couldn't do) in spite of getting absolutely abused by the refs and came very close to beating Baylor. They had fairly close losses against Oklahoma, Iowa, and Clemson. I don't bat an eye at #11 at all, even if their overall W/L record doesn't look like it.

It's kind of the same reason we look at computer ratings overall. They're able to factor in nuance that the average fan can't (because no one can watch every game of every team). ISU didn't have the #11 resume by any means but they absolutely might have been the 11th best team.
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They had a good offense and a good defense.....and horrific special teams which cost them 2-3 games.
 
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Poirette said:
Well, after DeShawn Pace's interception Cincinnati MARCHED 8 grueling yards to a touchdown

Then of course, you knew that Chris Tyree's fumble led to a 17 yard drive, right?
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Should we discuss the other 375 yards… D still gave up the 3 tds? Yes offense was main reason we lost no doubt. But cinci averaged 6.3 yards per play, that’s not good.
 
ulukinatme

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Our defense did play fairly well against Cincinnati given the fact it was probably the best offense we faced all regular season. It was more the exception than the rule given the fact we played a lot of crap offenses. Lets be honest here too, we should have played even better against the Bearcats. We're talking a team that had their last four recruiting classes ranking 45th, 41st, 66th, and 49th. Even with our depleted numbers and position struggles on OL and WR we should have matched up better than we did. The good thing that game out of that game was we started getting Styles more reps, which pushed Austin and Lenzy a bit more, and we got the OL shored up a bit in the BYE.
 
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ESPN’s defense efficiency ratings had Notre Dame at #8 in 2021.

The way they do it does take into account things like strength of opponent, garbage time, importance of each play, etc…

“Team efficiencies are based on the point contributions of each unit to the team's scoring margin, on a per-play basis. The values are adjusted for strength of schedule and down-weighted for "garbage time" (based on win probability). The scale goes from 0 to 100; higher numbers are better and the average is roughly 50 for all categories. Efficiencies update daily during the season. FPI data from seasons prior to 2019 may not be complete.”
 
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he's playing D only, this drill is for offense and anyone up for punt returning (He's only up for punt returning). NO WR
 
dublinirish

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Noticed at the end too Jaydon Thomas lining up in the drill as a defender presumably for special teams purposes
 
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