Among this year's great disappointments has been the understandable, but nonetheless depressing, regression of 2013 Michigan's two best defensive players. Jake Ryan looks lost at MLB. Blake Countess is now the third or fourth best cornerback on this roster. Both appear to be a direct result of the offseason decision to switch from Michigan's 4-3 under/zone defense to a jam-man, nickel/4-3 over base.
I'm sure Brian is going to cover Jake Ryan with a picture pages, so I thought I'd zoom in on a play that's demonstrative of what's happening with Countess, and how that's hurting the defense. This is the first of Rutgers's many 3rd down conversions. Michigan had a backside blitz on with the front seven and was playing man-high pass D. Rutgers ran a pick route from the trips tight formation:
This is a standard thing you do against man coverage. The Y receiver will run his route directly in the path of the cornerback trying to guard the outside (Z) receiver. It works just a like a perimeter screen in basketball: the pick man and the defender following him create a wall between the target and his defender…
Voila: easy pass…
…which is unfortunate because a certain Rutgers lineman blew his MIKE assignment and Jake Ryan was about to turn Gary Nova into paste. Jeremy Clark then compounded matters by setting up too far inside and turned it into a big play.
To a degree you might RPS this, because Rutgers called a pick route against man coverage, and Nova pointed right at the matchups to show his guys they had what they wanted. But the way Michigan's defense is supposed to work is for man-tight to be a base play, and there is absolutely a way to defend this pass with Michigan's defensive call… [jump] [also if you're at work maybe put your headsets on because you know what's coming]
MC5 probably got the idea from Bo's defense
If Countess can jam the Y receiver, Lewis's guy either has to delay his route, or ends up 1-on-1 with Lewis on a slant.
Countess got the latter. One BTN review didn't have it in the screen and the other only captured it on the edge but here's the money shot:
That's a receiver accelerating downfield, and Countess's arms extended into nobody. It is a Sheridan-duck-against-Utah moment where you have to just say "this guy isn't going to do this thing well for the foreseeable future."
Which makes sense because Countess's game has always been as a zone merchant. Based on watching his play, statements from his coaches, and that one time I got to meet him, Blake is an exceptionally bright guy. He understands zones and what receivers try to do them so well that last year we routinely saw Blake improvising to bait quarterbacks into interceptions and covered routes. That's his jam. He can probably learn how to jam-jam well enough to do it on occasion, but he obviously hasn't yet.
Going to a pugilistic, MSU-style bump-and-run coverage scheme and having Jake Ryan move to MLB in a 4-3 over were the major offseason adjustments to the defense. At the season's half-way point, it appears that both haven't worked out. I do think Mattison is a good coach, and I totally see the logic behind the changes given the abilities of the younger guys on the team, so this isn't a "What are you doing?!?" complaint so much as a reassessment.
That reassessment says two of Michigan's best defensive players have become liabilities by being asked to do things in Michigan's base defense that are not their strong suits, and that they're not progressing fast enough at those things that we should expect adequate improvement during the tougher second half of the season.
Going back to last year's defense has its own problems. It sucks for Countess, but the best solution to this seems to be getting Peppers back.