Illinois Hokie's Recent Comments

Cline, Malleck and Bucky all start in a 3 TE attack offense.

I think this is more important than most people realize. With Byrn's graduation and Stanford's dismissal we are really young at WR. I have no concerns at all about I. Ford and Phillips, but after that things get uncertain. Newsome's got jets. So does Knowles, but he got beat out by a bunch of freshmen. I expect good things from Holland but that's a gut feeling.

In general, once we get past our top two receivers, there's a bunch of uncertainty. We need Cline, Malleck and Bucky to counterbalance that.

Yeah, exactly. If we didn't pull his offer when he "verbaled" to Florida, I don't think we are about to now because he's taking the officials he said he was taking the whole time. And I can't see us grayshirting a position of need. I think this is a case of hand wringing.

One reason I think his routes aren't picture perfect is because of how well he adjusts to to ball in in air. I was really impressed by how he watches the ball the whole way in while not really breaking stride. Great ball location skills. That pass where he went up over the defender and caught the ball at the highest point but then landed on his feet and ran it in for a TD while the defender fell down, that was a thing of beauty.

We're all gonna have to figure out a meeting place.

I thought the rotation always had the playoffs happening on New Years Day, meaning the order of the New Years Six this year won't be the order they always happen in.

But I thought wrong. This is really, really stupid scheduling as far as ratings go. But what a fun way to ring in new years for fans of the two programs playing.

And I won't mind spending New Years Eve in Miami this year...

I'm thinking right out front of the stadium by the main entrance on Spring Road. Is that the entrance players and coaches use during the Walk?

As presented, this isn't that bad IMO. We aren't claiming co-NC or any such bullshit, we're merely saying we beat the national champions by a score of 35-21.

IMO, I think they know their opinions mean nothing. But ESPN pays them to fill air time with opinions. It's no better than 24 hour cable news. That's why I turn the TV on at kickoff, off at 00:00 4th quarter and then turn on Bill and Mike's postgame on I Heart Radio.

I felt exactly the way you described regarding DJ Coles' medical hardship waiver a few years ago, and it was granted without comment or delay.

Basically as long as all the medical paperwork is in order, the programs are given a huge amount of leeway in determining what is season ending. You don't have to be laid up with the injury. It suffices for the coaching staff to say the injury hampered the player enough for them to play someone else instead.

First and most importantly, I consider this a spirited debate rather than an argument, so if I come off as harsh I apologize. I'm just enjoying the discourse.

Second, the problem I have with only including P5 opponents in normalizing the scoring defense of OSU's opponents is, in the case of Kent State and Cincy, it reduces your sample size to the point that it's too small to be statistically meaningful.

Kent State played Ohio State and LOLUVA. Cincy played Ohio State, Miami and us. With samples that small, the result against OSU has too great an effect on the mean. Kent State's scoring defense against P5 competition is determined in half by the 66 points OSU hung on them. With a sample size of two, you're strongarming the slope of the graph to be lower. Of course the Kent State result is normalized closer to 1.0, because the Ohio State game is responsible for half of the normalized value! It's self-fulfilling prophecy.

However, I also agree with you that it's bunk to assert that Kent State and Cincy have better defenses than Notre Dame, even if the statistics show it, because the results against Kent State and Cincy's opponents and the results against Notre Dame's opponents doesn't share enough data points in common to draw meaningful conclusions. But like I've said, we can't look at Kent State and Cincy's results against P5 opponents because the sample size is too small. So let's just throw all non-P5 competition out the window enentirely

Using all of the above graphs, Ohio State did not show consistent offensive improvement in the regular season from the Maryland game through the Michigan game. Their performance was up and down. So the options we face when looking only at P5 competition are either:

1. Ohio State's offensive improvement took place entirely against Kent State and Cincinnati.
2. Ohio State's offensive remained constant, and a mitigating factor affected the VT result.

I'll call 1 the modified flipped switch and 2 is the same return to baseline argument I've been presenting.

The data still doesn't support the idea that Ohio State got better as the season went on. Once they hit conference play, they were as good as they were going to get on offense, from a statistical standpoint. All we really accomplish by disregarding the non-P5 data is to give the flipped switch argument a little more wiggle room, because we're willfully ignoring the Kent State and Cincinnati games.

If they stop our D line, Bud will just corner blitz all night.

After this season, some players better develop Wolverine's goddam mutant healing factor to balance it all out.