Part I | Part III

This is the second post comparing Mark Dantonio’s Michigan State teams with those of his predecessor, John L. Smith. The first post looked at yardage and found that under both coaches, the Spartans moved the ball well, but Dantonio has been much more effective at creating wins out of big advantages in yards gained.

Why is that? Let’s look at two X factors that frequently affect games: turnovers and penalties. I used the same methodology as before, removing the gimme games and classifying each remaining game according to whether State had a sizable advantage or disadvantage in an area, or whether the category was fairly even. For turnovers, differences of two turnovers or more put games into the “sizable advantage” category. For penalties, I used margins of 25 yards or more.

Penalties. What stands out here is quantity: John L. Smith’s teams were much more likely to out-penalize the opposition. On one hand, it might not be that big of a deal, because a disadvantage in penalty yards doesn’t made a big impact statistically on the outcome of games for either coach. (Dantonio, for example is 4-2 with a deficit and 3-1 with an advantage; John L. Smith only had an advantage twice in his four seasons, and lost both games.)

On the other hand, penalties clearly don’t help a team, and JLS was on the short end of a large penalty yardage margin 19 times, compared to only those two games where he had the upper hand. So take a deep, appreciative breath as you learn that under Mark Dantonio, the Spartans have only yielded six deficits, and they’ve benefited from advantages four times.

Turnovers. I don’t want to get into whether creating and avoiding turnovers is a matter of skill or luck, so let’s just concentrate on what the two coaches did when they had advantages or disadvantages. Not surprisingly, neither are great when saddled with a turnover differential of -2 or worse. John L. Smith went 2-9; Dantonio is 1-2. What stands out more is that JLS didn’t handle success well, either, going just 4-3 in games where he enjoyed an advantage of +2 or greater. Dantonio’s teams know how to capitalize, going 7-0 in those situations.

In sum: Mark Dantonio’s teams aren’t setting the world on fire with regard to capitalizing on turnovers and avoiding penalties. It just feels that way because the Spartans were so bad in those areas under John L. Smith.

Next up is the grand finale of this adventure in statdom: We’ll look at whether and how State’s performance has changed in big games and trap games under Mark Dantonio.

Part I | Part III