Upon Further Review 2015: Offense vs BYU

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FORMATION NOTES: Michigan was super-heavy in this game. A plurality of plays were I-Form Big of some description, most commonly a 2FB lineup featuring Houma and Poggi.

Michigan frequently targeted the bubbles a 3-4 leaves by running fullbacks up both gaps. That is BYU in its standard 3-4, which they only left on passing downs. They left 8 or 9 in the box all day.

When Michigan moved from a dual fullback set to something with a blocker right behind the OL…

…the setup was appended with an "H". Here you can see every BYU defender within six yards of the LOS. M hit its first easy big play off this kind of defense with a 41-yarder to Jake Butt.

Michigan came out in a wacky formation right here:

I dubbed this "Emory" since it's kind of what's usually dubbed "Emory and Henry". This didn't work so hot since it didn't seem like anyone to the bunch knew what the dang snap count was.

On passing downs BYU would lift all but one DL and throw an amorphous pile of dudes at the LOS. They call this "radar".

Michigan's in the pro set they used on the Khalid Hill stealth mode play.

PERSONNEL NOTES: Houma and Poggi got all of the FB snaps. Smith got the bulk of the RB snaps until his injury; when he was absent it was mostly Johnson and Green, with Ty Isaac only getting two carries. That was odd, but more about it later.

Butt saw just about every snap. With the two fullbacks on the field for most of the day there wasn't a whole lot of room for other TEs; Bunting, Williams, and Hill all played bit roles.

WR was mostly Darboh and Chesson. Moe Ways got a healthy amount of playing time and proved an effective blocker; Perry only made appearances in the rare three-wide sets.

OL was per usual. Braden got knocked out with an injury we are assured is minor; David Dawson came in to replace him.

[After THE JUMP: De'Veon and the eleven dwarves]

I mean this is okay.

It's pretty good, actually. 31 points and 450 yards against a real defense is good. That's more than UCLA got, more than Boise State got, more than Nebraska got. None of those teams project to have an awesome offense but we're just looking for the defense's competent sidekick here.

But if you leave out the 60 yard…

Let me stop you there. De'Veon Smith's ridiculous run did tack on a pile of YAC that could distort how good the blocking actually was… if the running backs hadn't given that much yardage back on poor decisions elsewhere. It is a fact of life that Michigan's backs will give up these yards; it's also a fact of life that sometimes De'Veon Smith will keep his feet and then mount a defensive back's head on his wall. The overall rushing performance is a fair reflection of the blocking. It says 254 yards on 51 carries, 5.0 a pop, in a game where Michigan ran two-thirds of the time.

Not quite Stanford's Harbaugh heyday; an obvious step forward. This leads to a

chart

run chart that's part promise and part coping.

Some notes not addressed elsewhere:

• The protection comedown is worth an eyebrow cock, but it was mostly failed blitz pickups. Michigan couldn't pick up double A twist blitzes… so, like, let's work on that the next couple weeks.
• Moe Ways paved the way for a couple long pickups with safety pickoffs.
• Braden is coping. He is much improved but still just okay. In general, the offensive line is two very good players (Cole, Glasgow) and three guys who are decent.

The blocky catchy stuff is also worth addressing; I thought Houma was excellent and Poggi just okay; Williams didn't actually get much time but killed it when he was in. I think the rampant 2FB stuff was a matchup thing against the 3-4; I expect more of Williams down the road, especially since this coaching staff discovered you can throw it at him.

Khalid Hill's relative lack of playing time was explained a bit. He had some nice catches; he fell off more blocks than his H-back compatriots.

You seem to be exceptionally generous about RPS given the fact that Michigan is running into stacked boxes all the time with middling success.

I haven't seen a whole lot of plays that get downloaded and overrun, so RPS minuses are only popping up when defenses can apply unblocked guys to defenders because they're playing their safeties closer than ten yards. That's been offset by a bunch of cheap yards when DBs play off, Harbaugh scheming his way to free blocks, and—finally—tight ends roaming the open plains of the American Midwest, wondering where all the people went.

I know I said I wanted to cosplay a pre-Columbian bison but this is a little much

JURASSIC WORLD WAS REAL

That latter is the first of many hilariously wide open downfield passes to tight ends the Harbaugh era will contain. We have not seen plays that wide open since Denard Robinson was putting the fear of God into every safety from Champaign to Timbuktu.

So anyway I think part of my manball hate was the fact that I never saw anyone who was actually good at running it. Let's go back to those smoke screens. They are literally the easiest and dumbest thing in football. Throw ball to guy. Guy runs. Anyone can do it. Michigan refused to for years for some damn reason; Harbaugh runs a pile of 'em. So what does BYU do? They roll up to the line of scrimmage and play press man. No more smoke screens.

That is not the end of it, though:

That is two for one on a wide receiver block. That does not happen to a corner playing off.

Even something as neolithic as an iso gets a boost from being under Harbaugh's wing. In this game Michigan faced a 3-4; they ran double isos at it, single-blocking the nose tackle and kicking the ends. This was difficult to defend.

That turns an iso from a play that's easy to constrict into something of a mini-zone run. Whichever way the NT goes is wrong. The LBs have to play it straight unless they've got a game on, and who the hell games for an iso? And do you really want to game an interior run against Michigan when they will trap you from any angle? 

Meanwhile this is so stupidly easy to execute. Michigan can do all this stuff because not much of it is that hard to get your head around. It is a system that works, and the RPS numbers reflect it. So do the results. The main downside is that UFR takes forever now because I have to try to figure everything out every week. I'd rather deal with that and quotes like "that was not what we prepared for" than the alternative.

I thought this offense was going to be boring. It is fascinating.

(I've also eschewed RPS minuses for big chunks of the season so far because Michigan is up four scores and is in scrimmage mode.)

But a lot of the frippery didn't work.

Some bad luck and some bad execution. On the Emory and Henry play the two tackles didn't seem to know the ball had been snapped until the play was over. That is the kind of thing that would irritate me if Michigan was bad at executing because it had no identity but it seems like an outlier.  The slot-tackle play was probably a first down for AJ Williams but the pass was batted down.

The pitch counter was Jared Leto in Fight Club. A beautiful thing destroyed too early.

AAARGH CUT UPFIELD

There is a safety offscreen… who took two false steps and was going to be hard pressed to prevent a touchdown.

Why did Ty Isaac get marginalized this week?

No idea. He only had two carries; he couldn't do much with one but the other was a very nice bounce and stiffarm:

You know me: I love it when backs take enough of a step inside or outside to get the defense moving and then cut decisively the other direction. That bounce is quality, as is the stiffarm that follows.

Instead we got a bunch of Derrick Green. I can only assume it was for team harmony reasons, because there wasn't anything about Green's play that suggested he'd passed the other guys. Particularly bad was the third and one right before Michigan turned it over on downs. Michigan blocks this play well, leaving Green at the LOS with a charging safety:

Woof. I'm usually not a fan of plays that see the 11th guy on a defense make contact at the LOS but on third and one I'll give it a pass because that should be an automatic first down as the back plows through the DB. Instead Green tries to bounce at the very last second before contract and goes down without a whisper of YAC. Impossible to see this happen to De'Veon Smith.

I would not be surprised if that was something of a last hurrah for him; over the past year and a half the other three guys on the roster have all outperformed him except when Michigan overwhelmed Appalachian State and Miami (Not That Miami) last year. At this point the data is fairly compelling.

I don't know why we are even talking about this after Smith went beastmode. He's the guy.

He probably is the guy but I don't think that's necessarily carved in stone. His vision remains an issue. On the snap after Drake Johnson botched the pitch counter, Smith missed a cavern of a cutback lane:

Instead he tried to go around a force player who shot outside of Houma and got bottled up for no gain. I don't mind that much when Smith misses a bounce since he is De'Veon Smith and should look to grind people under his treads whenever possible. Smith choosing a crappy bounce over an opportunity to run right at nobody in particular is an "oof" moment. The worst that happens there is the DE hits you from behind and you Smith your way forward for five yards.

A  bit later he picked up eleven yards on a play that was simultaneously really nice and a bit of a facepalm.

Love that cut. Have been asking for that cut every week since Mike Hart graduated. The one hard step outside that you plant off and change direction is the hallmark of great north-south backs. Like that cut so much I want you to see it over and over again.

Smith ruins three second level defenders with that cut. That is a new development from him and it's great.

On the other hand…

…holy hell that is a truck lane on the backside. By the point I grabbed this screenshot it was not realistic for Smith to hit it, but this was a trap play on which Hill was hitting the DL furthest in the backfield; Smith's path took him directly to that block. In fact, this is a counter designed to hit the truck lane. Hill fires off directly into the NT and Kalis makes no attempt to get across the LB, instead burying him into the line. Glasgow makes a short trap pull around Kalis. There he has to go all the way out to a slot corner to find anyone to block. Hooray eleven yards on a nice cut; WTF follow the play design. I gave him a plus one anyway. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Hell, even on the beastmode touchdown he decided to plunge into the interior of the line when Kyle Kalis had correctly decided to bounce his pull to the edge. He was sitting there waiting to give Smith the corner when Smith decided to use the teleporter instead. Good on yer, I guess. I did just say I'm not too peeved when he does not bounce. I'm even less peeved when he does not bounce and grabs 60 yards. I'm just sayin', though.

This has been your weekly book about De'Veon Smith.

Man, we run the fullback a lot.

It's funny. After years in which Michigan ran that edge pitch play after faking a fullback dive they never ran, Michigan is now running the dive while faking the edge pitch they never run. I assume Michigan will come back to it at some point. They showed a triple option look off the dive at some point—Bo would have loved that. In fact, that was not a dive at all but another of the infinite trap varieties they run.

Michigan is lulling opponents to sleep with these dives, and will hit a monster play off a counter to it some time this season.

For now the dives themselves are working just fine. Houma had 4.2 a pop in this game, and if you can do this when you near the goal line you are going to have a good redzone percentage:

I hope they call that play "blob."

Jake Rudock hives cases took a sharp dive… until the second half.

Jeez, you're a grinch.

Jake Rudock 2014

Jake Rudock 2015

Rudock was much better in this game. We finally saw him use his legs effectively. This has always been a part of his game—he had a few hundred rushing yards a year at Iowa once you remove sacks. He had two touchdowns, one a play on which a BYU defensive end faced a Hobson's choice between leaving the corner or Ty Isaac wide open, the other a decisive scramble to the other side of the field from most of the wide receivers. The latter was a good example of Rudock's pocket awareness. He is scanning downfield away from the big ol' gap but still feels it open with his peripheral vision or spidey sense or something and then he's off. 

He was also much better with the actual throwing of the ball. This time when a guy came hand-wavingly wide open in the endzone he threw it to him.

Even here though you get the impression things are moving too fast for him. He is still a little late, necessitating the throw behind and away from a defender. Several times in this game he avoided throws that were reasonably open, and some that were wide open:

That one was especially grating because without anyone in the flat that had to be his primary read.

In the second half he looked gunshy. We didn't get a downfield replay of this but from what we can see on the screen this is one on one coverage on a deep ball:

You've got the time. Throw your guy open. Rudock piled up the Throwaways in this game and that dragged his DSR down. It was very Iowa Rudock there, and that is understandable given the came context.

Also those TAS were mixed in with confident throws to the sideline from the opposite hash and that sidearm zing to Darboh after Rudock avoided a rush and stepped into the pocket productively.

Todd McShay said he looked like a "different human" and that was not wrong.

Rudock gave some of that back in the second half when he reverted to excessive conservatism. Overall still an encouraging and necessary step back towards the Iowa Rudock. And at this point Michigan just needs Iowa Rudock.

I think you've covered the Stanfordizations of the week already.

Mostly. Michigan did some ostentatiously different things in this game, particularly on the opening touchdown drive—the Hill pass, the Emory and Henry formation, the eligible-LT play.

They also continued their series of tweaks and adjustments to their base run plays. In previous weeks we'd seen Michigan run traps by pulling a guard around for a quick hit. This one sees Henri Poggi tasked as the trapper. Watch the ILB to the top of the screen bury himself well away from the play:

BYU saw the trap on film and probably prepared for it by keying on the OL pulling; Harbaugh switched the scheme and got a freebie. It took both safeties lining up six yards deep to prevent this from being a big gain, and if Smith sets up his blocks like he did in the 11-yarder above he could bust outside for a sizeable again.

They also came back with a variant of the ol' run-play-action-and-hit-the-flat play on third and short:

That was one OLB aborting an attempted run defense that had taken him past the LOS significantly from being a big play.

Receivers!

I be like dang.

This does up my frustration that Rudock has not hung more punts up for Darboh, who looks like he'll have a major advantage against most defensive backs when it comes to mutually leaping for a ball. Stop overthrowing deep balls.

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

Canteen got a drop on a 3.

Routes: Poggi –1, Chesson +1.

Lookit all the blocky/catchy targets.

Heroes?

Cole and Glasgow. Mostly Smith. Darboh. Harbaugh/offensive brain trust.

Maybe not so heroic?

Nobody stuck out as particularly bad. There were some indifferent performances but nothing that consistently hurt the offense.

What does it mean for Maryland and the future?

"The expectation is for the position" extends to the coaches. This was a stellar gameplan until it didn't need to be anymore. Michigan hit BYU with counters to stuff they'd prepped and hit them with things they'd never seen. It should have gone better than it in fact did except for some bad luck and bad cuts.

Meanwhile, Harbaugh keeps tweaking and tweaking. The Stanford stuff will happen again; it was a product of his diverse offensive mind and college football is not catching up to it because barely anyone runs it.

Cole and Glasgow are legit. Those guys can go toe to toe with just about anyone. The other guys are okay.

Houma and Williams are making the case for more playing time. In Houma's case that would be an opportunity to stay on the field more when Kerridge gets back and knock Poggi out of the second FB spot. Jay Harbaugh should go around with a big sign with a picture of AJ Williams that reads MAYBE IT'S NOT NEPOTISM.

The tailbacks could still use some coaching up. Progress; too many missed cuts still. I think we'll see Isaac re-emerge as the #2.

Rudock is still working towards comfort in the offense. Improvement. Safety. If we want the big flashing goals that are suddenly feasible he needs to have big games at the right time.