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Bears

This isn’t the playoff caliber defense we all thought they would be. Talent is there but something is off. Can’t stop the run, giving up to many yards especially in key moments. Pass defense is suspect but it could be because our d-line isn’t getting enough pressure. They are not terrible but definitely not great. Maybe Eberfool isn’t calling the right scheme in the right moments? Eberfool is the defensive coach so maybe that has something to do with it. Who knows but certainly not the defense we thought we had.
We will see tonight if they can rally against Detroit.
That something off is having enough dudes upfront. We have depth guys, we don't have gamechangers. I know everyone looooves Sweat, but he only has 4.5 sacks. That is tied 54th in the league. He has the 9th highest salary.

This greatly, negatively, effects Eberflus scheme. He has not adjusted accordingly.
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Football Enrollment

All very well stated.

When I broke down the numbers the other year, going back to the start of 8 classes, it was pretty evident that:

Among elite programs that private schools held a competetive edge, but nothing necessarily crazy. Observationally this isn't hard to believe with the two most trophied schools by a long shot both being private schools. A standard that the LWEs and Main Souths can't eclipse, but do compete well against.

Then the next tier was your tier of schools that was not quite elite, but consistently strong. In this tier any private-public difference was totally wiped out.

Then in the lowest tier, programs that will almost never reach a semis let alone finals it was likewise nearly equal to perhaps a slight public edge (razor thin).

But why the perception? I think there's a statistical fallacy we don't notice when we just compare private school verse public school record, which is a common stat used in these arguments.

Think of two equally matched schools competing for the state title, one private and one public. We can probably do this at any of the 6 classes that are split this year.

The public school may very likely have made it to the finals beating all public schools along the way. Maybe they beat one private along the way. So we get perhaps no new data all along the way. The private school on the other hand may very well have beat 3 or 4 public schools along the way. So we get a 3-0 tally to add to our overall private v public record. Conversely whenever there is a weak private school that's bounced in round 1 we only get a 0-1 record to combat the other direction. They can't go get beat again to reinforce their lack of success. Or perhaps they get bounced by a private and we get NO data displaying a weak private even if a large number of public programs may have beat them as well. You can play out this same story in your tier two programs. In your typical private v public quarters matchup its like we accumulated a 2-0 private-public record one way and a null record the other. Even if the public wins, that quarter of the bracket yields a 2-1 private-public record edge.

Basically the private schools are just a more extreme representation of the have and have nots that define the entire state of HS football. And the difference in opportunity of matchup helps skew that imbalance into a greater public v private divide when we only scratch surface of total record.
That was a great analysis and these are great observations. Plenty of unconscious bias gets introduced into this conversation, but the reality has been pretty consistent and clear for years now.

There's a clear upper tier of elite programs and a second tier of consistent strong programs that the current playoff system does not adequately & consistently adjust for.

Football Enrollment

CAs system changed this past season and they used MaxPreps rankings. Teams who were in the top 3 of conference did not make the playoffs because they were bounced by large schools with 2 or 3 wins.
This is stupid.

There are three independent areas that need to come together cohesively in a multi-class playoff system.
  • Eligibility - who qualifies?
  • Classification - how do you group the qualifiers?
  • Seeding - how do you sort within the group?
You can use elements of the same concept in each area, but applying a single concept as a blunt-force instrument to solve all three areas likely produces less-than-ideal results.

MMXXIV Edition - CCL-ESCC Predictions Week XIV

PREP BOWL CHAMPIONSHIP
St. Ignatius (Chicago, IL) vs, Young [Whitney] (Chicago, IL)
Iggy to cover

3A CHAMPIONSHIP
Montini Catholic (Lombard, IL) vs. Monticello (IL)
Bronco to cover

4A CHAMPIONSHIP
DePaul College Prep (Chicago, IL) vs. Mt. Zion (IL)
Zion and the points

5A CHAMPIONSHIP
Nazareth Academy (LaGrange Park, IL) vs. Joliet Catholic Academy (Joliet, IL)
Got a feeling the Hill wins

7A CHAMPIONSHIP
Batavia (IL) vs. Mount Carmel (Chicago, IL),
Caravan cover

8A CHAMPIONSHIP
Loyola Academy (Wilmette, IL) vs. York (Elmhurst, IL)
York and the points

Bears

This isn’t the playoff caliber defense we all thought they would be. Talent is there but something is off. Can’t stop the run, giving up to many yards especially in key moments. Pass defense is suspect but it could be because our d-line isn’t getting enough pressure. They are not terrible but definitely not great. Maybe Eberfool isn’t calling the right scheme in the right moments? Eberfool is the defensive coach so maybe that has something to do with it. Who knows but certainly not the defense we thought we had.
We will see tonight if they can rally against Detroit.
I don't want you to miss this game. It is tomorrow at 11:30am!

Football Enrollment

CAs system changed this past season and they used MaxPreps rankings. Teams who were in the top 3 of conference did not make the playoffs because they were bounced by large schools with 2 or 3 wins.

Enrollment absolutely needs to be taken into account and I like the football enrollment and eliminate largest and smallest opponents.

For seeding, go 1-32 and use an RPI formula.
I do agree enrollment should be a factor and in all liklihood the primary one. And I think there's reasons to prefer football enrollment, although you could also blend both FBE and standard. Like a 75/25 weighting perhaps.

Any other factors I would prefer be intrinsic factors and not a success type factor which is a trailing indicator and therefor fairly inefficient and pointless.

On a very conceptual level it's like the top/bottom 25% or so of classes should blend over on enrollment with things like SOS or other elements that can bump schools up or down a bit within a general size based classification system.
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Bears

I would say they have played better. But 21 points would have won the Green Bay game. Yes, giving up 30 points to the Vikings are too many. But every team will have games in which they give up a lot of points. Hell the Chiefs have given up more points in their last two games than the Bears, including 27 to Carolina. The difference is, they did score 30 to beat them. They won one of the games in which the defense wasn't great.
This isn’t the playoff caliber defense we all thought they would be. Talent is there but something is off. Can’t stop the run, giving up to many yards especially in key moments. Pass defense is suspect but it could be because our d-line isn’t getting enough pressure. They are not terrible but definitely not great. Maybe Eberfool isn’t calling the right scheme in the right moments? Eberfool is the defensive coach so maybe that has something to do with it. Who knows but certainly not the defense we thought we had.
We will see tonight if they can rally against Detroit.

What's going on with Batavia?

@Brin22 may I ask how you found that?

I would like to to look at that for other teams
Use this LINK

On section ‘TITLE GAMES Team Info’ select the class you want to view.

At top, pick the team in the class you want to view then scroll down to area where they have starters listed and there is a PDF of team statistics.

Here is MC MC Stats

Bradly Bourbonnais vs LW Central

Mullins… loosen the strings on the sides of your underwear

On the surface level their path seemed a little “light”

Once it was go time, they stepped up and met the challenge

Its really been 2 years since LWC started making a name for themselves

Some would say that they overachieved this season

I would say that they are the new kid on the block making his reputation being known

I am excited to see what they do next year

Football Enrollment

And Ohio Administrators apparently find the value in it. I can't find a ton of details on CA system, but I found some references with pride that they don't use enrollment methods. I know Iowa also recently rolled out changes to capture non enrollment measures.

It can be done, but if member schools don't want to put in the work and vote in a change then we just acknowledge enrollment is very crude and imperfect for any competitive balance goals.
CAs system changed this past season and they used MaxPreps rankings. Teams who were in the top 3 of conference did not make the playoffs because they were bounced by large schools with 2 or 3 wins.

Enrollment absolutely needs to be taken into account and I like the football enrollment and eliminate largest and smallest opponents.

For seeding, go 1-32 and use an RPI formula.

MMXXIV Edition - CCL-ESCC Predictions Week XIV

It's been a damn fine season, gentlemen. Let's go out and win six titles this weekend and spark month-long debates and conspiracy theories and proposals and general hilarity.


Iggy -26 vs Whitney. Wolfpack end the season with a Prep Bowl title. Hope to see them a few divisions down next year in the CCL as they were a playoff-worthy squad this year in any other division. Jesuits 38-7

Montini -18 vs Monticello. Is this the first ever state championship between two school that share the first five letters? Probably not, but it's a thought. Broncos' defense will shut down Thomas Jefferson's residence. Montini 41-14

DePaul -11 vs Mt. Zion. Rams roll. I talked to a friend who has grade school kids at a Catholic school in the city. A school that has almost always sent its kids to Loyola or Iggy. He told me that DePaul is trendy as you can imagine and booming amongst families there. Their athletics program seems to back that up. DePaul 28-14.

JCA +7 vs Naz. This is probably the game I am looking forward to the most this weekend. Both schools have rolled through the playoffs without much challenge. A rematch of a great 16-13 Naz win. I think it's a similarly close game but higher scoring. Naz 35-31.

MC -12 vs Batavia. After getting rolled by Loyola week 9, the Caravan have absolutely dismantled all four playoff opponents. Batavia runs into the Catholic boogeyman, yet again. Caravan 35-14.

Loyola -11 vs York. The Dukes have been playing some really good football. Loyola has been playing better football. I just cant see how York is able to do enough against the Ramblers to keep this one close. I hope I am wrong though and we end the weekend with a classic. Loyola 31-7.

With Loyola dismantling MC and LWE and ESL having dismantled Loyola, assuming ESL beats Geneva, we will end the season with an undisputed #1 with no "wish we could see X play Y" type discussions. That seems rare!
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