Upon Further Review 2014: Offense vs Penn State

FORMATION NOTES: Another very gun-heavy outing for Michigan, with nothing particularly unusual about the way they lined up. Penn State spent most of the game in a straight 4-3 of various varieties. Late they went to an eagle front for a couple plays:

Note that Miller has guys to both sides of him. That erases any chance Michigan can double on the interior and exposed Miller to a DT he could not deal with physically. Michigan responded to this with a pin and pull that worked on the next play.

SUBSTITUTION NOTES: No Magnuson still, so line still Cole/Glasgow/Miller/Kalis/Braden. Jake Butt seems to be getting as much time as he would have without the knee injury by now; Williams still hanging on to quite a bit of PT in Hill's absence.

At RB it was all Hayes/Smith with Green sidelined; WRs were as per usual with a little bit of Canteen.

[After THE JUMP: struggling forward.]

I don't know what I expected dot gif.

Is that request?

Sure.

I know this is not a gif.

Just another example of our sloppiness.

But I had a great week of practice?

You did not, you just ate a bunch of Dippin' Dots and watched The View.

Is The View still on?

I don't know

CHART

That's not how any of this works.

Anarchy in Ann Arbor. Anyway, these numbers are very low in amplitude because Michigan only had 19 running back carries and a lot of stuff got offloaded to RPS in this one.

Pass protection was very good; they couldn't block anyone in the run game.

What's with the RPS number? Aren't they trying to do what you want them to?

Michigan did try the inverted veer a couple times to little success; part of that is Michigan's unfamiliarity with the play, part of that was PSU being good at football, part of that is the fact that QB run elements are almost entirely disconnected from the rest of the offense. Michigan's first snap was an inverted veer on which Michigan got a handoff to the edge—almost always works—only for Hull to read and shoot upfield to hold things down:

That happens. Sometimes you get got even when you're running super fancy spread stuff.

Two things continue to rankle about the way Michigan's offense is set up. One: this reaction to the veer is exploitable. With Hull gone upfield the pulling G blocks the end and there's a big vertical lane for Gardner. Michigan does not see this or try to exploit it. The next time they run this play is the third quarter, and the end pulls a Jake Ryan by playing both handoff and keep:

PSU has six guys in the box against seven Michigan players; this is not long-term sustainable if you can attack their reaction to this play. This is also exploitable with a tweak. Abort the mesh, cut the DE, and remove the read, and you get your vertical QB run in lots of space. Michigan could do this if they had an identity that included lots of small variations on difficult to defend base plays, but they don't.

It's not reasonable to expect a team that has tried to ignore the QB run for two years to be good at it now, or have a systemic response to the usual ways to attack it. You may be familiar with a team that does; we are not that team. We are the team that adds some half-ass stuff everyone defends every week and then goes back to the other half-ass stuff after saying "I told you it wouldn't work in the Big Ten." The 2011 Iowa game was the canary in the coal mine.

Two: even after Al Borges's departure there is a serious lack of plays on which it seems like Michigan has set anyone up for easy success. I came to this conclusion after watching something that did seem like Michigan using modern conflict offense: the 25-yard Gardner run near the beginning of the second half was an RPS +2 type thing. You see, Rudy, Michigan put the slot LB in conflict by first running one of their pop passes. This was open; it was dropped:

On the next drive Gardner gets a big gain because the end crashes down and the slot LB who would normally be containing is worried about that pop pass, which allows Braden the time to get out and block him.

Hooray, RPS positive deployed, and then I go in the tank trying to think of the last time I saw something like that happen. It was the fake bubble touchdown against Miami, I think, and that might be it for the season.

I don't see a whole lot of stuff that seems hard to defend on Michigan's part, and after packing my face full of Big 12 football on Saturday that seemed even more glaring. Offenses these days thrive on picking a player and forcing him to be wrong, as the two above clips show Michigan successfully doing. That's a blip; modern offenses make it a way of life.

But the QB running didn't work.

Not much was likely to, and some of it did only to get called back by inexplicable penalties. Two guys throw flags at Kalis on this but it's hard to see why. Dude follows and buries his guy:

And then this draw from an empty set is doomed from the start as Wartman is contemplating AJ Williams in the slot and deciding he doesn't have to care about that:

Maybe Gardner has to give that another beat to induce a pass drop but the overall pattern of disorganized suck goes way beyond any individual player. It takes quite a setup to give the opponent a free hitter on a QB run when they've got two deep safeties. Michigan managed it.

So we suck, but PSU is a legitimately very good front seven. Hull in particular was making all sorts of plays. This pin and pull catches a blitz from PSU; Hull times it just right and gets his flight path to the tailback just right to create a TFL where a lesser light may have seen PSU end up in trouble:

One bad step there and Hull's hoping for a shoestring tackle with Michigan looking for a big play. Hull would later shed Cole when Cole had a great angle to him to shut down Smith for no gain:

That's normally a mismatch for the OL, but when you have a freshman going up against probably the best LB in the Big Ten not so much.

This was a game in which Cole's inexperience and lack of big skrongness really hurt. Here Butt gets an excellent shoulder spear on Zettel, knocking him off balance. This should provide ample opportunity for Cole to step around and wall Zettel off, creating a crease Smith will hit trying to beat a safety for a big gainer. Instead Zettel comprehensively wins:

(Also in Penn State is good: #5 Wartman takes an excellent cut block from Miller, lands on his feet, and keeps going. That's some American Ninja Warrior stuff.) Cole got whipped on the Norfleet catch that put Michigan in position for the winning field goal; Michigan was fortunate that ball went to the WR instead of getting knocked anywhere.

There were also some Braden issues; here he lunges at a DE and comes up with air:

I don't think anyone is particularly surprised that Michigan's young and shaky tackles couldn't deal with the PSU defense. It is a serious issue. And at this point blaming it on Rodriguez is faintly comical. Michigan had plenty of time to find someone other than a true freshman to play LT this year and came up empty.

Gardner is good, and then he's bad, and then he's very bad.

This was actually one of his less variable performances.

Devin Gardner 2013

Devin Gardner

No BRs, though a couple of the throwaways (which also include coverage sacks) felt like they could have been filed there; no throws marked *, but overall not a lot of success when Michigan dropped back.

Sometimes it feels like there's an All-American somewhere in that jumble…

…and then it disappears.

I don't really blame him on the interception. He's looking left until the last second as Michigan tries to set up the screen and has to get the ball out immediately upon finding Hayes lest he blow up the play's timing. Zettel makes a fantastic play to recognize the screen despite stunting outside and getting what looks like a completely standard pass block from Braden:

I don't know if that's a brilliant playcall that wants a screen or Zettel somehow feeling the thing coming; either way it's tough to blame Gardner for not seeing Zettel in the split second he had his eyes on that side of the field.

Michigan does not use cut blocking much anymore and on this and various WR screens that feels like a mistake.

As for Gardner, he is Gardner.

Receivers?

[0 = uncatchable, 1 = circus catch, 2 = moderate difficulty, 3 = routine]

ROUTES: None.

So when you have only 24 throws having three flat out drops is pretty bad. Funchess at least made up for his by stealing a touchdown.

Darboh emerged.

Yes, we finally saw some flashes of the offseason hype as Darboh brought in a number of tough catches in traffic. He's got some ups:

And he can locate a ball that's not where it's supposed to be:

That clip shows you to the good and the bad with Darboh. Whenever he is targeted it feels like the defensive back in in his shorts. We've seen DBs sit on him for interceptions and PBUs all year; here his separation is approximately zero. He appears to have good hands and body control, but the athleticism we were assured he had doesn't come through.

Makes you wonder if Michigan's apparently ponderous WR corps gave the defensive coaches the wrong idea about whether their corners could hack man to man. Will Fuller was a shock to the system.

WHY THEY NO THROW FUNCHESS DEEP?

I don't know. You're so bad. You have a guy who can do this…

…on a 43-yard touchdown I gave Gardner an "inaccurate" on. Why Michigan isn't punting to Funchess on every drive is a mystery. Any time you get one high safety that should be an option.

What does Justice Hayes have to do to get carries in the first half?

I don't know. Nussmeier just said he was the most improved player since fall camp but in the spring scrimmage he was dancing through small holes to find gaps in the zone, and with what we've seen from Green and Smith this year I'm baffled.

Any "trust the coaches" is long out the door after they botched evaluations on seemingly half the team, so I see Hayes making noticeably quicker and more sensible cuts when he's given carries and I grind my teeth a bit. Nobody other than him on this roster can make Hull miss in a tight space:

And this doesn't actually go for any yards but as I'm watching it he just feels way more explosive than Smith:

Hayes seems to know how zone plays develop and makes correct decisions on what to do quickly; he's also got more speed. It is grimly hilarious that Drake Johnson was touted over him through the duration of fall camp. Michigan seems to prioritize size above everything else at their skill positions, and this has not paid off.

(Smith did have one nice cut to the backside late, FWIW.)

Heroes?

Funchess. Glasgow; pass blocking.

Maybe not so heroic?

Michigan run blocking in general. I thought this was a clear win for PSU strategically.

What does it mean for Michigan State and beyond?