Upon Further Review 2015: Offense vs Northwestern

Upon Further Review still has a sponsor. I'm late today so I'm just going to tell you that Matt's a good guy and did my loan and Seth's loan and everything was easy and professional. We are associating our name with his and that is something we are very comfortable with.

Matt's got a ticket offer going for a Michigan football or basketball game. If you're buying a home or refinancing, he's the right guy to call. (No pants required.)

FORMATION NOTES: There was… nothing weird? Apparently not. Michigan did run different formations than they had much of the year, with a lot more ace sets and early-down gun. M was split about evenly between I-form of some type, ace, and shotgun.

Here is an offset I for some reason.

This has been your federally mandated pre-jump picture.

Oh, FWIW: this was NW's defense the whole day. 4-3 under for the most part with two rolled-up cover 4 safeties. The linebacker type guy to the bottom of the screen is actually a corner; NW has shifted the LBs to the field and are running an over on this snap.

PERSONNEL NOTES: OL and QB per usual the whole way. Kerridge returned at FB, getting most of the time in front of Houma. RB was a profusion of different guys. Smith early, then Higdon, Green, and a little bit of Isaac and Johnson. Those guys missed time for different reasons.

WR rotation was about as per usual except with more three-wide formations we saw significant amounts of Grant Perry for the first time since the opener. At this point it's clear the rotation this year is Darboh, Chesson, Ways, Harris, Canteen, and Perry. Canteen missed this game for an undisclosed reasons. (If Michigan is going six deep with three freshmen and no seniors, the writing is on the wall for guys not currently playing.)

[After THE JUMP: I drop bows on 'em? Ohhhhhhh probably short for elbows. Now I understand rapism.]

So this was rath—

BANG

YOU ALWAYS DO IT TO ME NOW I DID IT TO YOU HOW DOES THAT FEEL

Pretty good.

d'awwww /kicks dirt

So as I was saying this was a rather efficient performance.

Yes. Michigan's offense was shorted two opportunities by return touchdowns (not that we are complaining) and spent most of the game with an unimpressive yardage total, but a glance at the drive chart is evidence enough that Michigan significantly outperformed any Northwestern opponent to date:

• TD drives of 59, 75, and 66 yards
• Six drives between 29 and 38 yards, one of them ending in a field goal
• 13-yard four-and-out at the end of the first half

Aside from the two minute drill Michigan at least shifted field position on every drive. A break here or there, a little better play, and Michigan looks dominant in all three phases. Against a team that had been very tough to score against, that is significant progress.

I enjoyed this version of Jake Rudock more than other versions of Jake Rudock.

Yes, sir.

Jake Rudock 2014

Jake Rudock 2015

Rudock was 17/23 and 7.8 YPA without a truly big play against a pass defense that is still 14th in S&P+ passing defense metric even afterwards. He had no excellent balls and no completely inaccurate ones. He had only one throw that was a seriously bad idea. That  is the kind of efficient game manager stuff we were hoping for preseason, and opposite this defense that kind of production is going to win a ton of games.

Sustaining it? We'll see. At the very least it's a leap forward.

Anyway, this is the kind of stuff I want Jake Rudock doing.

ID guy, hit guy in chest, see what happens after. Chesson is establishing himself a guy with elite speed, so putting it in a spot where he can try to use it is going to be profitable.

Good decisions to open guys short was his whole day. I am slightly bitter that the De'Veon Smith circus catch got deflected at the LOS, because we were almost treated to another Choo Choo All Aboard The De'Veon Smith Express moment:

But man yeah that checkdown stuff is where it's at sometimes and Rudock is very good at squeezing out those yards. Or at least he was at Iowa. This year, eh.

Pass protection had a lot to do with Rudock's day. Guys within a city block of him were rare. This Williams completion sees him hitch up twice and fire; even by the time he's done there's nobody even threatening.

[Yes, Chesson was arm-wavingly wide open on a wheel route on this throw. C'est la vie.]

If there was a frustration it was a lack of aggression. All of that lack came after Michigan had sprinted out to an almost certainly insurmountable lead, so it is somewhat understandable. Rudock seems to be trying to avoid turnovers. This is generally good. Sometimes it does manifest itself in excessive paranoia about negative outcomes. There were multiple plays in the second half where 1) I don't know exactly what the coverage looks like but 2) I do know that at worst there is a receiver way downfield with one guy trying to check him. Here it's Darboh.

Throw the dang ball man. You are far more likely to get a catch or a PI out of that than an interception, and even in the worst-case scenario it's not that bad since you just punted. A later second and sixteen was less obviously single coverage but it was also second and sixteen on which Rudock ended up throwing the ball away.

Meanwhile, the run game…

I don't think I can CHART you since you BANGED me

Phrasing!

We're not still doing that.

d'awwww /kicks dirt.

So the run chart overstates things because I think the last two drives saw a lot of backup Northwestern DL get in the game while Michigan was playing their starters, and that was 22 snaps—a large portion of the total. I didn't really know what to do about this since M was still playing the starters, so I just charted it anyway. You should mentally round these down somewhat.

Michigan got up huge and put away all the RPS stuff they hadn't put on film already, so most of those RPS negatives hit the run game and obscured the fact that this was pretty much an asskicking up front. I also stopped tracking RPS at all late. This was Michigan hitting it hard at very stacked fronts and more or less succeeding.

This Northwestern defense is a pretty good proxy for Michigan State. Northwestern never left a 4-3 look and ran a ton of quarters. That's MSU's blueprint. That blueprint means hyperactive linebackers and safeties lined up at eight yards; when you run to one side the safety to that side rips down immediately.

Michigan's results against this  were erratic: Michigan got stuffed some and had otherwise successful runs held down by a safety who started at 8 yards and blazed to the LOS as soon as he saw run action his way. The difference is that when Michigan got stuffed it was for 2 or 3 yards, not –2 or –3.

Sometimes the gap-shooting tendencies blew up Michigan plays in the backfield and I couldn't see a way Michigan could do anything about it:

Here's where I'd say "you have to punish that" and other imprecations generally directed at Borges over the past few years, except Michigan did a pretty good job of doing just that. Oh and also Michigan is up 31-0 in the third quarter with the nation's most lethal defense and you don't have to do anything. Especially if the things you might do are things that will come in handy against a very similar defense this week.

On the other hand, if someone took a bad angle or Michigan duped Northwestern's itchy-trigger-finger linebackers, there wasn't much resistance until the safeties.

Nate Williams, a former Northwestern linebacker, described the Wildcat LB play as "blitz ball" on Inside NU:

There is no "read", only reaction. I've seen all the linebackers do it through the first six games, I do not mean to single Walker out. This is how they played against Stanford and Duke, but they were making plays. When they're not, it will cripple a defense versus efficient offenses.

A frustrated Williams spent much of his time bashing this mentality, but as he states above it's served Northwestern well thus far. It frustrated Michigan pretty regularly.

In what ways did Michigan exploit those linebackers?

Ahem.

Ah. Yes. Stanfordization of the week?

Relatively light on the wacky formations this time out. We saw another pro set. That's about it. Michigan ran a lot more three-wide stuff than they had previously and put most of the fancy cows back in the barn after they got up 21-0. Oddly, they ran a ton of inside zone from both shotgun formations and plain old ace. Just six of their carries were Power O.

I did appreciate the Kerridge fullback dive. Here is the play just before it. Watch the linebackers.

Here is the dive. Linebackers again.

That play exploited the blitz-ball mentality to spring a big gain. It also gave us a brilliant still shot demonstrating how weird this offense is to players born and raised on the spread:

"Wait… he's got the ball? Can they even DO that?"

And as I mentioned in the game column, this week's the most obvious coaching wins were in the passing game. There was of course the fake waggle on which Jake Butt was wide open on a corner route:

Walker, the middle linebacker, is probably the guy who has to drop into that route. His blitz-ball mentality carries him past the line of scrimmage before he bails.

I also think the in routes mentioned in the game column exploited that tendency. Each saw Michigan pull a guard. That sent NW LBs thundering to the LOS; when Michigan ran simple in routes behind those linebackers the Northwestern zone was unprepared for them.

Rudock got each of those out confidently and in rhythm because he was 100% sure that there would be nobody undercutting that route. He was 4/4 for 43 yards on those plays. It is in these ways and also De'Veon Smith yodeling past linebackers who show unblocked that Michigan gashed Northwestern's aggressive linebackers.

Finally, Michigan added the zone read. Northwestern was relatively responsible an Rudock conservative with his decisions; it still got Michigan a short yardage touchdown* and a nice Forcier-style run when Rudock exploited a DE who'd overcommitted.

That is an excellent example of Rudock's ability on the ground. He's a guy you have to account for a bit.

*[I remember being irritated that M was in shotgun so close to the goal line instead of manballin' it. It was super weird.]

It's probably time for you to yell at me about tailbacks now.

It was tough to get a read on any one player when the rotation was so extensive, but overall this game felt like real progress. In this it's like Jake Rudock's performance. It's encouraging, but it'll be a few games before we can declare the paradigm shifted.

That said, Michigan bounced when they should bounce for the most part, and ran where they should run on the interior for the most part. Here a blitz-ball LB gets the better of Kalis's reaction time; Smith shifts outside for a solid gain:

This Smith run will go on his highlight reel for all time, as he meets a CB and 13(!!!) yards later he is still churning his legs through contact from four players. Before that he found himself in a ton of space on the backside of a zone play, one on which a double A blitz had successfully got an OL to block air. Smith made him miss with another one of those hard step cuts:

Those are mostly his yards. (The OL did help by making the crater on the backside so wide even if someone was trying to fill it.)

Higdon didn't get many opportunities to make things happen in his eight carries. A lot of them were edge plays on which the quarters safeties crashed down super hard.

He is not the kind of guy who is going to blow through those tackles. At other times he had no choice but to run into an unblocked zone read DE. I did like the slick cut on his one successful run.

I am a little less excited about Green's performance late than I was live. It was good, don't get me wrong, but a lot of the production there was from the blocking.

That said, I did like his awareness to cut away from his fullback on this play. He appears to be reading Braden and when the DL declares a side he goes to the other:

That looks purposeful to me, neither running at random nor dourly executing the play design no matter what the reality is. And while I think the eventual results of this cut were about the same as just ramming it up the middle, this is still Derrick Green seeing the blocking develop and using that information:

That is not something we saw from him consistently—or, like, at all?—last year. With all the stuff Michigan throws at their tailbacks there is still a plausible route to "Ty Wheatley is a meaningful upgrade on Fred Jackson".

And the tight ends are generally killing people? Why is Poggi picking up so many more negatives than the other guys?

Poggi has improved as the season has gone along; identifying what's happening remains a problem. That's not a surprise since he was playing defense until spring ball, but a couple times a game he'll submarine a promising play by failing to find someone to hit on the second level.

On this one AJ Williams puts a relevant DL into the turf, creating a big hole, and Poggi runs by a linebacker coming over the top. That's bad. Then he sits for the rest of the play waiting for a linebacker who will never come:

Blocking is hard and defenses will game you for this reason. The only guy who is really, really consistent at identifying "opponent is slanting so I should do this" is Glasgow. Surprise—he and AJ Williams are the only seniors on the front. Poggi is behind.

Meanwhile that block is a pretty dang good one from Williams. Other than one pitch sweep he failed to seal the end on there hasn't been anything particularly bad on his end, and quite a lot of good.

That Glasgow number?

Glasgow sharpens Glasgow I guess? I haven't seen him truly miss a block in two weeks, and he's identifying who he should block really well. Next week is obviously the real test.

And the rest of the line?

An excellent bounce-back for Cole after a rough day trying to check Ngakoue. Pass protection was excellent all day, albeit against a team that does not get a ton of rush. And then they just put it on 'em in the second half, albeit very gradually.

It was heartening to end up in short yardage late in the game, expect the fullback dive, get the fullback dive, and have the fullback dive pick up the yards easily.

While Northwestern's run defense is not the elite unit people were talking about going into the game, before Saturday they'd done very well against pro-style offenses. And they are still very solid overall. Michigan controlled the line of scrimmage pretty emphatically, leaving Northwestern to make up the difference with hyper aggressive linebackers and safeties.

The final touchdown was the OL putting their exclamation point on the day. Watch the entire right side of the line cave Northwestern in.

We would take that if it was "just Northwestern" but you can't even say that about this team. And while I think last year's line stats don't take the RB issues into account, every available statistical indicator says this line is much improved.

Braden is okay. I think we can say this now. He is not coming off an okay game, he is pretty decent overall. I do worry about what's going to happen when he comes up against a guy like Malik McDowell, who may be a bit wild but is also powerful. Braden still turns in the occasional frustrating play. This one in particular was well blocked otherwise.

I still think Michigan can win against this MSU DL, which is pretty up and down.

Are we bothered about four Michigan punts in plus territory, including one from the 34?

We are not. Even though all were fourth and six or worse, math based on a hypothetical average team would say that a couple of those punts were expectation-scorning.

Michigan is not an average team. They have a punter who has one touchback from pooch range this year (I'm not dinging him for a 59-yard bomb that goes into the endzone). They have a ravenous defense. Both of those things swing decision-making towards punting. The punt from the 34 was fair-caught at the 6 (and oddly placed on the eight); Michigan punched Northwestern off the field and got the ball back on their 45.

Most previous complaining about punting in this space was because Michigan was playing 1950s football with a 1990s team (during the aughts). This team plays 1950s football and can make decisions like 1950s football teams.

I don't understand the WR table.

Whoops! Let me clarify:

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

If we can go back to that Williams catch over the middle, check out Butt's crossing route underneath opening it up as Walker overreacts to his presence. Northwestern fans were all NOT GREAT BOB about that, and yeah, but it's nice that Michigan has a guy with the potential to distort defenses and an offense that leads Rudock to find the guy who was left open as a result. Last year Williams on a route like that would be a laughable decoy.

That whole Chesson-as-Breaston thing… I think that's dubious.

It is not nearly as close a comparison as Ryan Glasgow as Mike Martin, I agree. I'm not saying that Chesson is anywhere close to Breaston as a weapon… at least not yet. In addition to the kickoff TD, Chesson had that drag route on which he exploded past one of the fastest linebackers in the Big Ten and an end around on which he once again demonstrated his ability to glide cut past guys who cannot match his acceleration:

The second end around wasn't as good. He tried to get around a DE further upfield than this guy and had to bend; one of those aggressive safeties was in his face afterwards. But nobody's perfect and Chesson is turning in two or three plays a game on which his blazing speed gets Michigan big chunks of yards.

Chesson isn't as shifty as Breaston, but I don't think Breaston was as fast as Chesson.

Now if someone can just hit him downfield.

Heroes?

Rudock, Smith, all offensive linemen? I guess so?

Maybe not so heroic?

I don't really have anyone who I thought had a bad day. M moved the ball very consistently against a previously suffocating defense and was held down by circumstances (just nine possessions) and a lack of GAF (up 28+).

What does it mean for Michigan State and beyond?

This Rudock wins things. Hopefully that's a sign of things to come. Michigan State is massively exploitable in their secondary; everyone keeps saying that Rudock cannot take advantage of it. If he plays like this, he will.

Smith is still the man. Despite the dinged foot he was authoritative. He's going to get the call against MSU.

The offensive line is improving weekly. Cole and Glasgow are verging on stardom. Braden's stabilized himself. Kalis and Magnuson are okay.

Michigan got to practice against basically MSU's defense. And they didn't have to spend many of their gotcha plays.

AJ Williams for Mackey. Half-serious.

Green's not dead yet. His showing in this game means he might have further opportunities.

Chesson is fast. Fast.