Yea, and we shall block things
The Question:
Ace: Which returning player do you expect to have the biggest breakout season under Jim Harbaugh? Who benefits the most from the coaching change? To keep us from all answering the same thing, first responder gets to take Butt/Bunting.
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The Answers:
Adam Schnepp: Butt/Bunting or whoever lines up at Y/TE are obvious (and very merited) choices, but I think that the returning player most likely to have a breakout season under Harbaugh is the guy who ends up being the starting quarterback. That may seem like a strange pick considering that there isn't actually a specific player whom I can definitely name here, but there's pretty solid circumstantial evidence to back up my prediction.
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| Beeeeeee goooooooooood. [Fuller] |
Harbaugh's long had a reputation as a quarterback guru, and for good reason: he developed Andrew Luck and Colin Kaepernick while helping resuscitate Alex Smith's career. Smith had a career completion percentage of 57.1% and threw for 6.2 yards per attempt in the five seasons before Harbaugh arrived. In two years under his tutelage, Harbaugh simplified the offense and Smith's stats benefited for it; his completion percentage in those two years rose to 64.3% while his yards per attempt rose to 7.4.
After years of suffering through Brady Hoke and his offensive staff trying to slam a round peg into a square hole over (Denard) and over (Devin) and over (Shane) again, it's going to be a breath of fresh air to watch Harbaugh implement an offense that's supposed to work to a quarterback's advantage. In the Smart Football article linked above Chris Brown discusses how Harbaugh erased sight adjustments from his offense so that the quarterback didn't have to hesitate when the defense presented coverages that shifted post snap. Instead there were built-in hot routes in every play that didn't require the quarterback to hope the receiver reacted the same way to the coverage they were presented with.
If the past is any indication of the future then whoever wins the quarterback battle is going to have a firm grasp of progressions as well, because Harbaugh tries to make this as simple for the quarterback to rapidly work through as he can (more on that here and here). I expect Harbaugh to implement similar concepts at Michigan, where the power running game should open up options for the quarterback to create the type of big plays that we didn't see last season.
[After the jump: someone will take Butt/Bunting. Eventually.]
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David Nasternak: Kenny Allen. We can haz spread punt. I predict a school record for number of 'opponent fair catches.' And having 11 players on the field at all times.
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Brian: Well, fine, I'll take Jake Butt and/or Ian Bunting.
There was an undercurrent of anti-spread thought during the coaching search based on the idea that there would be unacceptable transition costs after the last two awkward transitions. I think that's overblown since Harbaugh is likely to flip the running approach from almost all zone to almost all gap stuff, but in one regard the spread skeptics were right: dang if Harbaugh isn't inheriting a set of tools suited to the manballing.
Foremost amongst those tools are Jake Butt and Ian Bunting, the kind of hybrid block/catch threats that Harbaugh has flung into endzones and the NFL willy-nilly. Both guys are praised for their receiving skills, and with Butt we've seen evidence of that. It's about whether that can get mean enough. Funchess never did, but I have a hunch Harbaugh will be more effective at getting the maximum from his players. Butt and Bunting should be able to get to blockin' size and then they'll be flying down the seam against extremely disadvantaged defenders. I was already hype on Bunting, and now he's got the exact right guy to take advantage of his talents. I'm expecting massive things for both guys.
(Also: Shallman.)
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Seth: That leaves offensive line, wide receivers, and…oh yeah the fullbacks!
Lest we forget, Nussmeier was a one-back kind of man, and the fullbacks were relegated to H-back or weird tight end duties:
That is not the sort of thing Joe Kerridge was not-recruited for. Until Hoke was fired, the remaining fullbacks could look forward to an uneasy life motioning across formations, leaking into flats, and dancing around SAMs and WDEs to set the edge.
Harbaugh's offense, however, requires a guy who can primarily do two things: 1. Get a head of steam and thunk a linebacker out of the hole, and 2. Make extra pass rushers go "doink".
doink.
Michigan hasn't had a real plugger for the fanbase to fall in love with since Kevin Dudley. Since the spread's had a half a generation to proliferate through college football, there aren't a lot of coaches left with a track record of developing fullbacks. Michigan's coach is one of those rare guys who will play an H-back and a fullback on the regular. If they can make Shallman into Shea that would be awesome, but either way this hiring means a lot of snaps suddenly came available for brick types who don't mind graduating an inch or two shorter than they arrived. Mr. Kerridge, Mr. Houma, please step forward and submit your helmets for inspection.
Harbaugh developed two NFL fullbacks—first Owen Marecic, and then Ryan Hewitt—at Stanford, and likely would have had a third if Geoff Meinken hadn't had his career derailed by knee injuries. Harbaugh's last fullback recruit, Lee Ward, was Stanford's captain this year and could catch on as an undrafted free agent. In San Francisco Harbaugh used a 7th round pick to draft Bruce Miller, who's become one of the best in the league of this dying breed.
It's frustrating that Houma didn't get a redshirt, so he and Kerridge are both juniors this season. But both of them were kind of the odd men out when Michigan went to one-back zone blocking last year, and it was quite a coup for them, in this day and age, that Michigan is bringing in one of the few remaining I-form all stars. They'll also have some new coaches with new ideas on how to coach pass blocking, a constant bugaboo in the Borges era.
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Ace: And the O-line falls to me, it appears.
The career of Kyle Kalis, in particular, stood as a testament to the previous staff's failures. Here was a five-star snatched away from Ohio State who looked like an NFL guard and had a highlight film of straight-up murder:
Fans were clamoring for him to see the field as a true freshman when Michigan's line struggled in 2012, and that didn't seem entirely unreasonable. Instead of hitting the field in 2013 and being Steve Hutchinson, though, he had trouble holding onto his starting spot; even last season, as the line improved (remember, improvement is relative), he started just seven games. We've only seen flashes of the guy who made bodies hit the floor; more often, we've seen him a little unsure of which body to hit, period.
In comes Tim Drevno, the man in charge of Harbaugh's killer O-lines at Stanford and San Francisco who then managed to get solid production out of a USC line featuring three true freshmen last season. It's safe to expect improvement across the board for Michigan's line, especially since everyone returns. I'm most excited to see Kalis, the prospect who couldn't miss, start to fulfill that potential.
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BiSB: Looks like I get the wide receivers. Which... yipee. Answer faster or perish, I suppose.
Harbaugh didn't have a thousand yard receiver at Stanford, but Doug Baldwin and Ryan Whalen were both pretty good. The big difference will be that now that the running game will (oh please Angry Michigan Next-Year-Has-To-Be-Better Hating God, give us this one) pose a bigger threat, play action might actually be effective. Harbaugh's schemes put serious stress on guys with run-pass responsibilities, in that he creates six or seven or eight potential holes on the offensive line, and makes clear that if you aren't gap-sound and RIGHT THERE, you're in for a world of hurt. So even if they aren't churning out ten yards a carry, the middle of the defense should be less helpful in the passing game.
So for a guy like Amara Darboh, the running game might clear out the linebackers a little bit or bring the safeties into the box. Darboh doesn't seem to have the Funchess/Hemingway quality where you can chuck him the ball in double coverage and expect Not Doom, but if you get him in single coverage or an open release and he can be really effective. We seem pretty confident that if Freddy Canteen gets isolated, he can route dudes to death. We just didn't see much of this stuff last year because EVERYTHING was bracketed or had a linebacker sitting underneath or just generally didn't have a gotdamn prayer.
But yeah it's the quarterbacks and tight ends.