The Blue Board

I absolutely think the 2010 team was better than the 2011 team.

In 2010 MSU beat both Notre Dame and Wisconsin. 2011 your best win is on the road against a 3-3 Ohio State team and you lost big to Notre Dame. The 2010 Wisconsin team is by far the best team played through 5 games of both years and you won that game. So yeah the 2010 team much better. You can throw up stats and all the things on paper you want but it comes down to results. The results don't lie.

The same OSU team that:
Is in complete program disarray
Without their heart and soul coach
-that gave up 338 yards/22points to Toledo
-363 yards (240 rushing)/ 24 points to Miami
-314 yards/17 points to a horrible Colorado team
- and completely collapsed against Nebraska while yielding 423 yards (mostly rushing) and 34 points?

That defense?

Maybe I'm just being argumentative, but I think your assessment lacks substance.

"Much better"

Why?

We were 5-0 through 5 last year, and we're 4-1 though 5 this year. The difference is a home OT W against ND and a road L to a ND team that I'd argue is better than the '10 version. That said, we haven't played a team as good as '10 Wisky yet, so how can you say definitively that this team is worse than 2010? Again, it's the obsession with offensive production combined with your dismissal of our defensive performances that lead you to this result.

Also, MSU already has a Big 10 road W to its credit, as much as you'd like to dismiss a 3-3 tOSU team; we didn't play 2 road games in our first 5 a year ago.

You could say the Jury's still out on UM too. You're 6-0, but who have you really beaten compared to last year? Notre Dame at home vs. the road, in which you won in about the same fashion as a year ago? Your first 2 Big 10 games last year were @ IU and home vs. MSU. This year you had Minnesota at home and went on the road to Northwestern.

I'm saying that tOSU has a better D than Wisky did when we played them. The whole point is that Cousins has faced harder competition through 5 games, especially considering he had 2 road games where the D's were tougher than the corresponding home games a year ago.

Point is: 2010 ND and Wisky at home are a weaker defensive combination than 2011 ND and tOSU on the road. Do you disagree?

And if you are not calling OSU's D suspect then you should give Michigan's D a lot more respect than you do. Michigan has the 9th ranked scoring D and the 39 ranked Total D. OSU is giving up only 40 yards less per game and we are holding teams to less points. So, you scored 10 on OSU so that means what at best you should get 14 on Michigan?

tOSU has also played 2 road games through 6 games to your 1, both against better competition than Northwestern.

39th total D, 58th ranked Rush D, 39th ranked Pass D. How much respect do you want for that? You have a great red zone D percentage wise with 56% allowed, but you've allowed 16 trips inside the 20 through 5 "official" games. So you're good at forcing RZ TOs; I'd rather have MSU's 80% RZ D, which has allowed just 5 trips into the RZ though 5 games.

Between our two teams, UM has allowed 9 RZ scores and MSU 4. I'll take the team that doesn't let its opponent inside the 20 over the one that lets opponents in, then relies on forcing TOs.

Lol. who brought up Michigan? I was comparing Wisconsin last year vs OSU this year.

The see a pattern in the majority of your arguments and objectivity clearly isn't one of them.

Just let Rocky keep talking up his defense when the only good offensive team they played put 31 up on them.

I was referring to Rush Defense. Sorry.

MSU's stats were helped out by OSu being able to score on Nebraska. UM's number took a slight ding by giving up points to NW (because NW offensive stats are undervalued since the computers/stats don't know Persa didn't play for them in their low scoring games).

As for your contention that MSU is better or the same this year, I disagree. Overall raw stats paint only a fuzzy picture of reality. Cousins has looked worse and the team has looked worse. The best victory so far is against a 3-3 team that will finish in the middle of the B10 (at best). Last year they beat a team that finished the year in the top 25 and won a lot of games against teams similar to this year's OSU mediocrity. If this year's team beats an end-of-year top 25 team and wins most of its games against the middle of the B10, then it may be an argument.

But, right now they have obviously lost by 18 against the best opponent they have faced (an unranked ND team). Cousins has looked confused against OSU and ND.

Almost every non-MSU fan thinks this year's team looks worse than last year's team. Sorry.

Yes, because I don't believe Michigan has an awesome D, I'm not being objective.

I said tOSU's D this year is better than Wisconsin's last year. Then you brought up tOSU's stats, which are in the top 35, if not better, as evidence that they weren't great defensively. The point was that, after 6 games now, including several Big 10 games, these stats are getting more and more accurate, and that tOSU still being ranked in the top 20 in scoring D, and in the top 25 in both total and pass yardage is an indication of a pretty good defense.

Which all ties into the fact that Wisky's D last year was pretty good as well, but not as good as tOSU's this year.

You have to be kidding me.

OSU is not a very good team and their defense is not very good. (EDIT - "good" is subjective, so I mean middle-road in B10).

Stop with the meaningless raw data that is based off playing wildly inconsistent (or just bad) teams.

OSU has played 6 games. The only team to score less than MSU against the OSU Defense was Akron's shutout in the opener. Everybody else more doubled (and tripled, etc.) MSU's effort against the OSU defense. If you throw out the Akron stats (because Akron is HORRIBLE, just HORRIBLE based on their lack of a FBS win and their loss to EMU), then OSU is giving up OVER 24 POINTS A GAME to teams other than MSU.

So, did OSU do a great job of shutting MSU down, or does MSU have a bad offense?

What does it look like?

I see your points, but I don't think Cousins looked confused against tOSU. He threw a bad pick to Cunningham, but was pretty effective otherwise.

It's kind of hard for me to take an argument seriously that says "raw stats paint a fuzzy picture of reality" then relies on the eye-test to make a conclusion.

The point about a year end top 25 team obviously can't be decided till year end. For all we know, tOSU could win their next 6 games.

I know where this whole line of argument is going: UM is better than last year, MSU is worse, so UM should win. I already saw the "if Dennard doesn't throw 2 RZ INTs last year, it would have been a totally different game" line; I'm sorry, those were good plays by our DBs to step in front of the WRs, the only bad INT was the 3rd one after the game was out of reach.

Dennard is 2 INTs away from matching last season's total and you've only played 6 games. Your team has been helped by a ridiculous # of fumble recoveries (officially +10, 1st in the nation) and I think we all know that fumbles are among the most random plays in football.

I think it'll be a good game on Saturday, but I still think MSU wins. UM certainly can win, but you'll have to have a much much cleaner performance than what you've shown against Northwestern and Notre Dame.