Wolverines fall in the rankings after Ohio State loss

After Saturday’s shellacking a drop in the polls was inevitable for the Michigan Wolverines; the question was simply how big of a drop it would be.

First came the S&P+, which, while not a poll, is our favored ratings system here at SB Nation because of how it seeks to filter out as much of the “eye test” as possible by relying on play-by-play data to produce a numerical representation of all 130 FBS teams.

Perhaps surprisingly, the Wolverines dropped only one slot to No. 5 in the S&P+. However, Bill Connelly couched that drop by highlighting:

If you look at the teams’ rankings, it appears almost nothing changed. Oklahoma hopped Michigan into fourth in S&P+, while Ohio State remained at eighth. How can that be???

The ratings tell the story, though.

A week ago, Michigan’s S&P+ rating (presented as an adjusted points per game figure) was plus-25.1, Oklahoma’s was plus-23.2, and Ohio State’s was only plus-17.9 following the Buckeyes’ narrow win over Maryland.

This week, those ratings shifted pretty significantly. Michigan’s fell by 3.9 points, and Ohio State’s rose by 1.7, a net 5.6-point shift that is really hard to pull off this late in the year, with almost all of the season’s data already complete.

Michigan’s dip in the Amway Coaches Poll was more on par with what many were expecting. The Wolverines fell to No. 8 in that poll, with Georgia, Oklahoma, Ohio State, and UCF jumping ahead of Michigan.

In the AP Poll, Michigan similarly fell to No. 8 with the same teams making the jump over the two-loss Wolverines.