This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/cfb by /u/hythloday1 on 2025-08-28 13:56:01+00:00.
For more than ten years now I’ve been posting write-ups to /r/CFB after watching an upcoming Oregon opponent’s full season, and I’ve been delighted with the responses to my questions that I get from fans of each team. Eight years ago I started writing for SB Nation’s Oregon site, Addicted to Quack, but I’ve continued to post them here along with my questions for fans. Last year I got some great responses to my Big Ten preview project for all 18 teams. Here’s the link to this year’s entire project, and a table with individual links for quick navigation:
addictedtoquack.com/…/duck-dive-big-ten-football-…
Here are my questions for each fanbase:
- Illinois - The past two seasons this team has really thrown my retrodictive model for a loop: in 2024 the Illini were the most predictable team in the conference, winning and losing every game they “should” have from each game’s per-play efficacy differentials, but in 2023 they were totally upside down with nearly every loss coming in a game they “should” have won and vice versa. This is totally unprecedented for me to see in a team with basically identical inputs from one year to the next - very similar roster, coaching staff, schemes, and metrics between 2023 and 2024. So what gives, how did they go from a super chaotic team to a super straightlaced one?
- Indiana - Last year I had a lot of praise for the way Cignetti had constructed the roster, particularly that he didn’t seem to be playing favorites and left himself a lot of options at each position and was letting it play out. This time around I’ve dialed that back a bit, there are a couple positions where I think I’m detecting him picking winners in advance and starting out with smaller rooms. Do you think that’s a fair observation and what do you think’s going on either way?
- Iowa - I thought that the big differential in receiver effectiveness across all metrics between Gill and every other WR/TE was telling - he could catch those balls, other guys couldn’t, so I wasn’t buying “it was all the QB’s fault”. I’m looking forward to what Gronowski can do as well but I think revamping the receiver options might have done a lot more, what do you think?
- Maryland - After I published I had a bunch of people ask me if Locksley is coaching for his job, but what I got the sense of is that dude is a canny political operator - he’s positioned himself so that he’s indispensable now, only he could have gotten big name recruits like Washington and some future Delmarva guys, only his connections put together a coaching staff with Pep Hamilton and Ted Monachino, and the athletic department is in the middle of a complete re-org as they scramble for cash so they’re too strapped to fire him after he’s already fired everybody else. So I think he’s more secure than ever, how about you?
- Michigan - I speculated that allowing first Martindale and now Lindsey to come in and run their sides of the ball was about Moore stepping back, sure to be the CEO but maybe more like letting go of a particular Harbaugh-style and “unclenching the fist” if you take my meaning. I saw something similar with Shaw at Stanford, it took him a bit to back off from just re-creating the old boss … do you think that’s what’s going on?
- Michigan State - The detective work of the podcast and article was finding the ways in which Smith changed gears after the AD got fired and went from a “win in Year 3” model to “I gotta win right now” approach and cycled in a different type of player profile during the Spring window, with the extra factor being he didn’t even know – during the time he had to make those portal decisions – who the new AD would be or how to go about satisfying him or her. Now that it’s a little later, what kind of pressure do you think he’s actually under for 2025?
- Minnesota - Last year I asked about the surprising news that the very effective offensive line was going to get retooled, and then unsurprisingly said retooling was a foolish disaster. So uh … same question? I had really built up a ton of respect for Callahan for the previous three years of charting and then kablooey. And the retrodictive model was real surprised with the Gophers’ actual record, you probably don’t want to know how many games it thinks Minnesota “should” have won in 2024 … other than Fleck blinking at some inopportune times, the line was the major reason.
- Nebraska - How important do you think Tony White in particular was to the defense? I spent a while trying to figure out where the “positionless” / swarming linebacker style came from, how important it was to the uptick in defensive performance, and whether any of the 2025 defensive coaching staff have any experience actually implementing it. I’m also having a hard time figuring out exactly what role Rhule means Snow to have with the defense.
- Northwestern - The falloff in defensive performance is pretty off-model but I think adequately explained by the uptempo offense not actually being any more effective and therefore putting the defense out on the field way more often. That’s an awfully convenient explanation though and I worry it’s missing something, what do you think?
- Ohio State - I described Patricia a “chameleon” in my prediction for how the defensive scheme will go; that is, while he might have a hundred theories about what could work, he’ll likely observe that the best was the approach in the second half of last season once they junked the poorly drawn up simulated pressures and leveraged their athletic advantage in a straightforward 4-2, and simply keep going with what he inherited. So all this media back-and-forth about the boy genius is pointless, in my opinion, and the defense will look very familiar all over again … think I’ve got that right?
- Oregon - Think they’ll ever play the talented recruits?
- Penn State - I made a big deal in my article about the decision to let go of the previous OL coach and bring on Trautwein as the best hire Franklin ever made, while the decision to fire the previous WR coach and bring on Hagans as the second worst (no one can ever beat John Donovan). It’s hard to believe they’re on the same staff at the same time. How do you reconcile them?
- Purdue - I came pretty close to calling Odom a lifer, if they’ll let him be, in my article. I thought there was a lot of evidence that he was doing the mass roster turnover in a competent but somewhat different way that indicated he was in it for the long haul, including moves nobody would bother with if they didn’t plan to be there in four-plus years. Is that your sense too?
- Rutgers - I spent a lot of time teasing out the realistic scenarios for some incremental growth in the offense that could be backed up with rigorous statistical analysis and weren’t jus…
Content cut off. Read original on old.reddit.com/…/big_ten_fans_ive_watched_each_te…