Upon Further Review 2015: Offense vs Utah

FORMATION NOTES: Where the defense alternated between basically two setups, the offense was a smorgasbord of stuff ranging from five wide…

…to unbalanced goal line packages…

To this, which I called "offset Maryland I":

FWIW, I filed Poggi as a tight end in the table.

PERSONNEL NOTES: Rudock your QB. Line was Cole/Braden/Glasgow/Kalis/Magnuson the whole way except for a few snaps on which Logan Tuley-Tillman came in to play tackle that used Mason Cole as an inline tight end (who can't go downfield).

Butt played almost every snap—maybe every single one. There was a lot of rotation aside from him. Henry Poggi got the most time as an H-back; Kerridge was your traditional fullback. Williams got the most time other than Butt as an inline TE. We saw a little bit of Hill and Bunting.

WR was mostly Darboh and Chesson on the outside, with Harris rotating in. Perry played in the slot, sometimes in twins formations in which their were two TEs.

Smith was the main back with Isaac getting maybe 20% of the snaps behind him. Green and Taylor-Douglas got a few snaps each.

[After THE JUMP: throwing guys in the wrong direction.]

Y U STILL BRADY HOKE OFFENSE

Yeah… I wish I could tell you different.

BUT CHART

Butt Chart?

Or that.

I'm getting to this early so we can just set the table for what I saw on the ground. What I saw was Michigan getting destroyed, for the most part.

Both guards were huge issues, and Cole struggled on the ground. 85% is usually the cutoff for a "protection" metric that I think is good, so let that affect your opinion of Rudock. It wasn't as clean a day as it seemed live.

Sigh. Let's talk about power.

Michigan doesn't know what the hell it's doing on it. Earlier this week, MLive beat guy Nick Baumgardner and SI college football writer Andy Staples, a former walk-on OL at Florida, got into an argument about just what was wrong with this play, Michigan's second from a goofy and quickly abandoned six OL set:

Baumgardner asserted that the pulling G has to find someone to hit instead of blindly running up in a gap with a big flashing NO VACANCY sign; Staples retorted that the fault was really the guys who weren't moving/kicking the defender out of the playside A gap. I kind of agree with both guys: obviously life is much easier for you if the gap you think you're going in exists, as it did here:

But that's not always going to happen, and you need a plan B. Stanford's offenses under Harbaugh were great at finding a plan B. Michigan's not so much.

I agree with Baumgardner a bit more. The previous play saw Kalis burn himself on the first gap type thing he saw; the rest of the line blocked down as Utah played to "spill" this power, and Utah had an unblocked guy chasing from the backside. Smith ended up in an outside gap because that's where the hole was; he got destroyed because he had no lead  block.

I mean, there's a reason you never see anyone run "A gap power" like this consistently. The vast majority of power plays attack off tackle, because you get more time to react to what the defense is doing. "A gap power" had better be a trap that catches people off guard, because trying to run it consistently is begging to get stuffed with any line slant. Also it's just way easier to move ends and tight ends and DBs than DTs.

When you are more patient you get opportunities to make decisions after the snap. Here Braden's presented with a crappy situation as Williams gets blown back. M gets a big block from a double on the interior, but if Braden tries to cut up behind that he's probably going to run into Williams's guy, creating a furball and little gain. So he goes outside.

Watch that a second time if you will and see what Braden's pull—and Smith's decision to follow it—does to the linebackers. The unblocked guy gets held up, unsure of where to go. Smith gets to run at him instead of vice versa.

This ends up looking like a good outside zone run: Smith follows his lead block until he gets to just outside the tackle box, and then he cuts back to find a lane. This is using a block in a way that we have very rarely seen any of Michigan's current backs properly execute. It is not necessarily the block Braden gets that opens it up; it's the threat of it. This is Teddy Roosevelt diplomacy: run softly and carry a big stick.

1) This is a decision Braden makes.
2) The back has to respect that decision and use it, otherwise he eats unblocked guys.
3) If the back cannot respect that decision because it is a furball, the OL has failed.

By halfway through the second quarter Kalis was adapting to changing situations in front of him. Here he gets around a bad block from Butt and finds a guy to hit:

But Smith doesn't wait for that. He is running as hard as he can straight at the line of scrimmage, so when circumstances change he has to make a near 90-degree cut and then try to regain momentum. Smith is not good at that. As a result he ends up taking an arm tackle from behind (Glasgow got rolled up on) and does not hit the linebacker with the crunching force that will get him the YAC he is capable of.

On the previous play he "sets up his blocks," as you hear people say so often. On this one he just runs.

This stuff is, I think, the root of the failed fourth and one conversion. Kalis has pulled and pulled and put himself in a nothing gap over and over again and then gets told to maybe chill out and read the play for a second before flinging himself into a pile. Smith has been bouncing power outside because that's what Utah is playing Michigan to do and has had little success. On fourth and one Kalis runs outside with Kerridge; Smith goes up the gut at unblocked guys.

Even if Kalis is wrong, Smith has to go with him. If you abandon him you are doomed. But Smith just runs and hopes it works out.

So: Michigan is not good at moving big DTs. They are not good at adjusting post-snap. And they are not good at using their blocks when they in fact happen. That about covers it.

So the random running again then.

Yeah. If the Wheatley transition is going to help it evidently isn't going to do so right away. Smith still mostly runs at random. The cutback lanes he missed in the second half were truly vast. This one I kind of get because it's power with a reasonable lane where he should go. This one, woof:

A fatcat carpetbagger could light a cigar with the yards just left on the field. But it's not just about missing the holes; it's about creating them. Good backs will run with an idea of the hole they will make and then make a cut. That's what NFL scouts mean but a "one cut" back: he runs until the appropriate time to cut behind his blocks and then does so.

If Michigan has that guy it is Drake Johnson or maybe Ty Isaac.

I can hear the caterwauls for a replacement even from the nether space I exist in.

Yes, bolded alter-ego, they are part of the cosmic background radiation. I'd like to see more of Isaac, who didn't exactly impress but is at least fresh meat for the grinder. His one real chance to bust one ended with a meek tackle at the hands of a CB…

…and he blew a blitz pickup on a play that otherwise was likely to be a big chunk. This is why Smith was in for most of the third down stuff, and why Smith was dropping the ball on that play Utah elected not to cover him at all.

And then the guards?

There's really no sugarcoating it: they were very bad. Braden nosed ahead of Kalis in that department. On the first snap from scrimmage he got serious help from Glasgow on an iso away from him. Should be an easy seal away and a gap if Smith ends up cutting a gap away from the fullback. Smith does, wisely, and meets Braden's guy:

Step around and anchor. Smith is likely to plow out YAC if he is dealing with one tackler. Two not so much.

That was the start of a day that only got worse from there. This is an otherwise well blocked inside zone that he does his lunge/shed/stumble combo on:

He makes me think of Willie Henry a lot, and not in a pleasant way. Because he's on DL highlight films as the dude who gets hurled:

Pass protection was not as bad but neither was it great. This in particular was wince-worthy, as even a vaguely acceptable block may result in a touchdown:

And then the prelude to disaster:

I think everyone was alarmed when Braden was moved back to guard. He tried it a couple years ago and looked so out of place they put him at tackle during 2013's interior OL armageddon and never even considered playing him. That decision looked very justified on Saturday. Unfortunately, I don't know how much better this can get. Options behind Braden are Blake Bars and David Dawson, neither of whom has ever played or even looked plausible in a spring game. Dawson was getting some buzz late in fall camp, so let's try that I guess? Honestly, I don't expect that to stick. Otherwise it already would have. There are no preconceived notions here and both guys were healthy the whole way through camp: Braden probably just played better.

Meanwhile we've discussed a lot of the pulling issues Kalis had. Also, this…

…I have never seen before.

We're probably done talking about bad blocking by now.

Unfortunately, Michigan is still in a state where asking more than the absolute minimum number of people to block is asking for someone to blow up your play.

Or not.

This pitch sweep should really, really work, it is a clear RPS +2 on which Utah is immediately in deep water, and all Michigan gets is a modest gain:

First a dude runs directly between Poggi and Cole, then Butt and Hill both lose blocks quickly. If either gets effectively blocked Glasgow picks the other off and Isaac is one on one with a saftey; if both do Glasgow is one on one with a safety.

This looks similarly promising until 1) Harris's weak cut block is leapt over, 2) Cole whiffs on a linebacker coming inside out and 3) Butt does not realize he is needed to deal with guys coming from the inside and tries to go get the safety:

Michigan's forays outside in this game all looked super promising until nobody got a block. I almost mean that literally.

Meanwhile, adding Tuley-Tillman did not put pressure on the opponent to deal with big power sets with defensive backs, because Tuley-Tillman did not get blocks. Here even a dodgy block on which he stays connected and pushes the guy somewhere probably opens up a cutback lane for Smith. Instead it is an airball and a tackle for nothing:

[ED: But nevermind that, I guess.]

The main problem is the same problem: Michigan sucks at blocking. This was really disappointing, as Michigan was pretty decent to end last year. Transition costs and the loss of Jack Miller—much bigger than it appeared at the time since the LG spot looks like a huge dropoff—explain part of it. Michigan looked at least okay at the double-and-go-get-LB thing.

We have to hope that Utah's defensive line explains much of the rest. Otherwise we're in for another very long year. Transitions suck so much. Here's another one. Hooray!

Why are they throwing at AJ Williams?

I mean… they have to. If Williams is going to play they have to throw him the ball sometimes. And only one of the things that happened when he was targeted was really his fault. He was interfered with on one play; on his lone catch he dug out a very inaccurate ball from Rudock for a single yard.

But you have to throw it to him sometimes or he can't play. If the answer to that is "well then stop playing him" I hear you, but given Poggi's performance in this game it is going to be tougher to displace him than we might have thought during fall practice.

Can we now dump on Rudock?

Serenity now, man.

Jake Rudock 2014

Jake Rudock 2015

I did give him an IN for the first two long throws that were off; the third got a PR. I did not chart the first INT; the second two were an INX and a BRX (the X is for XTREME!). You'll note that aside from the huge disasters he was pretty accurate. So we've got that going for us.

The interceptions have been discussed to death. A final recap: number one was 100% Perry screwing up his route, number two was 100% Rudock throwing a wildly inaccurate ball, number three was a combination of Perry running a bad route and Rudock throwing it anyway.

Meanwhile, the deep balls follow the same pattern: on number one Rudock threw an accurate ball if Chesson was running flat out. Number two was on him, as he threw a ball that was way too flat and gave his WR no chance. Number three was a combo that's pretty forgivable since he got plastered a nanosecond after he got rid of the ball. 

I was actually more concerned about the stuff nobody is talking about. Rudock looked extremely uncomfortable at times, to the point where he's not coming off his receivers like he used to. This is early:

That's super dangerous and for a five yard out. Meanwhile Isaac is open for some number of yards greater than zero right in front of him. Late he started dropping ridiculously deep and created pressure for himself in excellent pockets. That was very weird.

Some of this wasn't on him. The three yard pass to Butt on third and four that set Iowa twitter aflame looked a lot like an Iowa play because Rudock had his choice of covered guys downfield or a throw short of the sticks. Michigan ran a lot of all curls and the like. All curls sucks when the opponent is happily bringing another guy into the box and your QB doesn't have the kind of gun he needs to confidently throw a five yard hitch from the opposite hash to the sideline. Also it just kind of sucks, as anyone who's watched Iowa's offense over the past five years could tell you.

And there were a number of throws in there that were pretty, usually when he could probe spaces between the levels of a zone.

First game with a new team at night on the road with a big wind; he will improve and be okay.

RPS positive? Can that happen?

They did not hit any big plays but they had excellent opportunities to with the pitches that they just collossally screwed up. And they took free yards when offered them. A lot of them.

Michigan's flash screens and "smoke" routes* picked up five to 25 yards every time with the solitary exception of a one-yard gain late. That was on Darboh expecting Utah to continue doing the dumb stuff above; when they played it right Darboh still tried to break it outside. Otherwise it was an easy second and short conversion.

Receivers?

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

Jake Butt is good.

I gave Darboh a routine drop for the third down conversion. It was close between a 2 and a 3 but nobody hit him. I will give Darboh some rad prop-dap-bumps for this block (he's the uppermost WR):

Way to not break the cardinal rule of blocking—never turn upfield—and find a guy.

*[I used to call them "long handoffs" when they were just WRs with no blockers but that is closer to offical lingo, and it's shorter and cooler.]

Heroes?

Pass phase Jake Butt. Darboh mostly? Graham Glasgow.

Maybe not so heroic?

The rest of the OL, and kind of Rudock, and all the TE blocking.

What does it mean for Oregon State and the future?

They have a bigass hole to dig out of. I'm betting Utah's DL is top notch; even so Michigan had so many problems with them and the second level that I can't be particularly optimistic about the ground game. Both guards got physically dominated in a way I have not seen before.

Running back competition is open. Smith did little to secure his place.

The wide receivers might be a pleasant surprise? Once Perry irons out the kinks and Chesson actually gets the ball on his hands this unit might be a lot better than anticipated.

Rudock wasn't great but he wasn't as bad as all that. This will probably be one of his worst performances of the year.

Hooray taking what they give you. This would have been truly ugly if Michigan didn't take advantage of the opportunity to grab 50 or so yards with dumb little WR screens.