I thought about making a similar thread comparing this year's OOC vs. last year, but there are enough new threads I'll just piggy back here.
As we all know, last year's 4-0 start never materialized into a great Big Ten run (though at least enough to make a bowl game). By comparison, I thought it would be worthwhile to see where we're at compared to last year.
Schedule Difficulty
Probably not a huge difference here, but I'd give a slight nod to 2012. Syracuse turned out to be a pretty decent FBS team, though SJSU might not be too far behind where they were, at least at the QB position. UNLV should be improved this year over last, but Western Michigan in 2012 was unquestionably better than NMSU, as it would be hard not to be. New Hampshire is also probably a better FCS program, not that it really matters.
Pass Offense
This is, unfortunately, unquestionably worse. It has also been considerable less important, but still.
2012: 57/98 (58%) 889 yards, 9.1 YPA, 9 TD, 2 INT
2013: 33/62 (53%) 421 yards, 6.8 YPA, 1 TD, 2 INT
Advantage: 2012 team
Again, not much question that we've seen a decline in our passing offense, but that was manifest by the end of 2012, particularly after AJ Barker left. Two of Barker's three 100-yard games were against the non-conf. The other reason for the disparity is Max Shortell, who is a much better pure passer than our current crop and tore apart the weak New Hampshire and Western Michigan D's. The downside was that Max didn't fit the offense and really couldn't run, leading us to.....
Run Offense
Not much question here either, but in the other direction.
2012: 181 attempts, 735 yards, 4.1 YPA, 6 TD
2013: 197 attempts, 1129 yards, 5.7 YPA, 16 TD
Advantage: 2013 team
2012 isn't awful, but good god we've dominated on the run through the first four games. Down the road our inability to pass may catch up with us, but for now when you're running the ball this well it makes pretty much everything else irrelevant.
Pass Defense
2012: 80/146 (55%), 716 yards, 4.9 YPA, 3 TD, 7 INT, 11 sacks
2013: 98/149 (66%), 1080 yards, 7.2 YPA, 7 TD, 4 INT, 6 sacks
Advantage: 2012 team
I always winced during the off-season when people said our secondary wouldn't miss a beat with the guys coming back, because I think people really were sleeping on just how awesome Michael Carter was his senior season. While Eric Murray has been a nice surprise, and Derrick Wells has been limited by injury, I don't think we have a shutdown guy like Carter was for us last year. At least not yet. The difference between these numbers is essentially our ability to shut down Nassib last year vs. our inability to really stop Fales this year (not that it mattered). With the said, I wouldn't overreact too much to these numbers, but schematically we've been playing our corners off the ball more this year, indicating that the staff would agree that Wells/Murray isn't at the level of Carter/Stoudermire just yet.
The other dropoff here is in the sack department. Unfortunately I don't have the stats on QB hurries, which can tell a lot as well. That said, a 5 sack differential is nothing to sneeze at. I thought the d-line was doing an adequate job of getting pressure, but were totally non-existent on that front in the first half this week. That said, the ability to get after the QB dropped off in the B1G season last year, so hopefully we can sustain more success going forward.
All this said, the strength of last year was our ability to stop the pass, something that doesn't seem to be the case this year. It's something of a moot point, however, because we couldn't stop the run for *&^!#*&^!#*&^!#*&^!# last year....
Run Defense
2012: 140 attempts, 514 yards, 3.7 YPA, 5 TD
2013: 122 attempts, 411 yards, 3.4 YPA, 4 TD
Advantage: 2013
The run defense was actually quite good in 2012 in the non-conf, but obviously it had yet to be truly tested. That said, 2013 was still better, and we can at the least hold out hope that it will maintain itself more in conference play.
Special Teams
2012: 20 yards per kick return, 7.1 yards per punt return, 4/9 field goals, 36 yards per punt, 0 special teams touchdowns, 0 blocked kicks
2013: 23.1 yards per kick return, 14.8 yards per punt return, 5/7 field goals, 42.6 yards per punt, 3 special teams touchdowns, 4 blocked kicks
Advantage: 2013 team
Holy crap our special teams was bad last year. It's night and day. Going through the numbers I was surprised that the 2013 team wasn't more dominant than the 2012 team. Then I got to special teams. You can also see it in the mental mistakes.
Peripheral
2012: Penalties (31-238 yards), Turnover Margin (+5)
2013: Penalties (10-92 yards), Turnover Margin (+3)
Advantage: 2013 team
21 penalties extra penalties through 4 games? Yikes.
So...there's your difference. Talent-wise, we may actually not be lining up and beating teams all that much more than we did last year. Or, perhaps more accurately, while we appear to be much stronger in some areas like running the ball, we're appreciably weaker in others. Where there is a more obvious difference, however, is the mental makeup in this team. They are simply doing the little things much better and not hurting themselves in less obvious ways like the 2012 team did. The coaching staff should be given a lot of credit for this.
Two other things to keep in mind:
1) Past isn't prologue. The first four games weren't dominant for the 2012 team, but they were still very good. The problem was the following 8 games, particularly against the more talented teams. Just because we hit a rough patch in 2012 league play obviously doesn't mean we will now.
2) This is much more a team to Kill's liking. I have no doubt that he would sacrifice some in the pass game on both offense and defense to be able to dominate in the trenches. This team is also much smarter and better on special teams, two key areas to Kill. In this way the numbers reflect in a really obvious way the effect that Kill has had in shaping this team to his liking.
