The Wrap-Up: Week 1 2022

Hi All!

Welcome back to Goosepoop, newsletter #34!

Today, we’re putting a bow on what was a fantastic start to the high school football season with the first of our fourteen weekly wrap-up reports.

For those new to what that means, the wrap-up is a weekly digestion of all the news that happened in the preceding week. Within each post, we’ll update you on a smattering of subject areas that we’re tracking - while that will always include a report out on last week’s big games, that might also feature a section on the teams that have improved the most (today), or perhaps a section on which teams are routinely beating our models (future weeks).

For this week, we’ve got the following sections on tap:

• Big Game Review

• Tracking the Champs

• Model Check-In

• Survivor Island

• Biggest Upsets

• On the Turnaround

• Superlatives

Scroll on to check them out!

Before we jump into post, I want to take a second and thank you guys, the members of our community. The support we receive from you all is the reason we continue to post these updates, and we are proud to say that we now have over 552 subscribers! Let’s keep pushing to 1000!

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Big Game Review

Kicking off our Wrap-Up is a short recap of each of our 3 feature games from our post last week. For those of you that did not read that, these were:

• West Catholic vs. Edwardsburg

• Grand Blanc vs. Grandville

• Cedar Springs vs. River Rouge

West Catholic 28, Edwardsburg 20

In what was the first game of new coach Landon Grove’s tenure at West, the Falcons showed that they were not in fact underdogs (as our model & the Playoff Wizard users suggested), winning 28 - 20.

While we are not yet releasing divisional rankings (that will start in Week 3’s wrap-up), you have to speculate that this win, plus Lansing Catholic’s opening week loss (see below) puts West at the top spot in Division 6.

As for the Eddies, this doesn’t necessarily damage their reputation - although its clear that they won’t be rolling into the playoffs with an unblemished reputation like last year, they could very well still be a top team in Division 4, playing a home playoff game with a record of 8-1. After all, all three of last year’s top D4 teams lost in Week 1. 

Time will tell here - as with all of Week 1 action, we need the dust to settle before we truly understand the impact of these games.

If you’re looking for highlights, I highly suggest this tweet from the guys at Fox 17. You’ll get to see what West Catholic is packing this year - namely Senior running back Timmy Kloska (Air Force commit).

Grandville 49, Grand Blanc 25

We told you that despite their comparative records and playoff finishes from last year (Grandville had 4 losses and reached the District Finals; Grand Blanc had 1 loss and reached the Semis), you needed to watch out for Grandville in this game. In fact, we even told you that our model had the Bulldogs as favorites here.

Well, while we are never keen to gloat, we will thump our chest a bit and celebrate what was a correctly made pick: in what started out as a tightly-played, high-scoring affair, Grandville eventually separated in the 2nd half, beating the Bobcats by 3+ scores. 

Let’s pause and take in what this might mean in Division 1 this year: if we solely compare to 2021 (which is all we have at this point), it’s striking how many results this would flip on their head. After all, two of Grandville’s four losses came at the hands of Rockford, and Rockford was beat out of last year’s playoff race by none other than Grand Blanc.

Do you get where we’re going with this?

Perhaps theirs a new top dog (pun intended) on the west side of the State in Division 1. Again, time will tell here - we will learn a lot when we see how Rockford matches up this week in their showdown with Mona Shores, and, more importantly, when Grandville squares up with them and Caledonia in Weeks 6 & 5, respectively.

For highlights from the game, here’s WJRT’s recap:

River Rouge 22, Cedar Springs 0

The last of our featured games also proved to be a successful coaching debut: taking over for Corey Parker, River Rouge’s Eric Pettway got off on the right foot, winning a slugfest with Cedar Springs, 22-0.

Bear in mind that while the final score was 22-0, the game played out much closer - both teams were tied 0-0 until 4 minutes remained in the third quarter. Rouge ultimately separated, and their win is largely consistent with where both our model and the Playoff Wizard users had the game rated: Rouge was favorited by both.

Moving forward, we will quickly test the relevance of this game, as both Rouge and Cedar play tough Week 2 opponents: Rouge plays a 1-0 Battle Creek Lakeview, while Cedar plays a 1-0 Zeeland West. Cedar in particular may have the toughest 4 game opening stretch of any team in the State: after Zeeland West, they play Grand Rapids Catholic Central and then South Christian.

For highlights from the game, here’s Fox 17 once again:

Other Big Games

Beyond our feature games, there were many other noteworthy results from Week 1. Here’s a few of our social media posts that capture the big scores from Thursday & Friday:

Tracking the Champs

Let’s start our gamut of other updates with perhaps the most stunning aspect of Week 1: four out eight returning State Champs lost their opening game. This includes two teams who were undefeated last year (Chelsea and Pewamo-Westphalia), and two teams who had only one loss (Detroit Martin Luther King and Lansing Catholic).

Even more surprising is the degree to which this wasn’t predicted by the users of the Playoff Wizard - if you recall last week’s Week 1 Preview Guide, all of these games were predicted in favor of the returning champ.

Here’s to parity!

Model Check - In

With all this noise made about our computer model and Playoff Wizard picks, how did they actually do in Week 1?

Well, let’s find out!

Goosepoop Computer Model:

• Predicted 174 out of 252 games correctly (69.0% accuracy)

Playoff Wizard User Predictions:

• Predicted 160 out of 218 games correctly (73.4% accuracy)

Nice job, Playoff Wizard users! You beat the model this week! However, two important caveats here:

1. As we have said many times before, the Computer model is based exclusively off of 2021 data (and it will continue to be, until we unveil our inaugural 2022 ratings, post Week 3)

2. There are less Playoff Wizard predicted games as some teams simply didn’t have any predictions made on the site (you can see which ones in our 2022 predictions guide)

Survivor Island

In what was one of our favorite sections from last year, we will continue to track the State’s undefeated teams with Survivor Island: Season 2

Alas, Week 1 leaves FAR too many teams to call out individually here. Instead, for this week and the next few thereafter, we will simply keep track of the count of undefeated teams. 

So, as of Week 1, there are 251 undefeated teams in the State. Next week, that number will drop to at most 186, as there are currently 65 games schedules between 1-0 teams.

Good luck to all teams in search of that perfect regular season!

Biggest Upsets

Each week, we are going use our computer model to rank order the 20 largest upsets from across the State. To do this, we are going to find the underdogs who overcame the largest predicted point spread to win their respective game (click the link here if you want to see how our computer model works - please note, it’s still based on 2021 results ONLY).

Here’s Week 1’s top 20 upsets. As hinted at above in the ‘Tracking the Champs’ section, Week 1 had no shortage of wild results:

On the Turnaround

Another new section that we want to feature this year are the teams with the largest improvement over their 2021 records.

This week, we’re looking at the the FIVE 1-0 teams that were WINLESS in 2021. Technically speaking, these teams have already improved infinitely over their 2021 results, but here’s to all of them going 9-0 this year!

Superlatives

• Best Offense: Rochester Hills Stoney Creek (70-0 over Detroit Mumford)

• Best Defense: There were 52 shutouts in Week 1. Does this surprise you? It seemed very, very high to us. 

• Most Points Scored: 110. Southfield A&T 56, Cass Tech 54

• Least Points Scored: 6. Romulus Summit Academy 6, Saginaw United 0

• Overtime Games: 1. Byron Center 34, Battle Creek Central 27

• Safety Alert: 3. Lapeer 34, Ann Arbor Huron 2; Frankenmuth 27, Goodrich 2; Flint Kearsley 21, Flint Carman-Ainsworth 2

Next Week’s Big Games

Feature Games

In Week 2, we will be covering three games once again:

• Muskegon vs. Warren De La Salle

• Rockford vs. Mona Shores

• DeWitt vs. Portland

Collectively, all of our 6 featured teams are 1-0. More importantly, our computer model has all teams ranked in the top 32 statewide (again, this is based solely on last year’s results). Check back here on Wednesday, where we will drop our model projections, Playoff Wizard picks, and previews for each.

Other Big Games

As always, there are many other big games going on outside of our feature games.

Here’s the biggest games happening on Thursday:

• Rockford vs. Mona Shores

• DeWitt vs. Portland

• River Rouge vs. Battle Creek Lakeview

• Romeo vs. Roseville

• Hastings vs. Whitehall

And here’s the biggest ones on Friday:

• Muskegon vs. Warren De La Salle

• Lapeer vs. Traverse City Central

• Harper Woods vs. West Bloomfield

• Muskegon Oakridge vs. Muskegon Catholic Central

• Midland vs. Mount Pleasant

And that’s all for Week 1, guys! Thanks again for taking the time to read this week’s wrap-up.

Don’t forget to subscribe below so you don’t miss out on our Week 2 preview, which is dropping on Wednesday.

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