Upon Further Review 2016: Offense vs Florida

It lives! When Homesure Lending sponsored these posts, Matt admonished me that his sponsorship was contingent on me actually doing all of them. So, yeah, next time you see him buy him a beer and get a mortgage. Matt just pinged me in case a refi made sense, demonstrating that 1) he's always on the lookout if he can save you money and 2) rates must be even more absurdly low than they were a couple years ago.

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: I'm not sure if we've seen this before at M:

There are three tight ends to the right side of the formation. "Ace trip TE."

This mess was "tight FB big" and went about how you'd expect:

And this is an example of how Florida spent a big chunk of the first half. Check out the defensive line. That is a huge split between the nose tackle and the defensive end to the bottom of your screen. Michigan had a hard time dealing with it for a couple snaps and then blasted it until UF abandoned it.

Substitution notes: As expected. Rudock, the starting OL, and the FB/RB corps all went the distance. Smith, Houma, and Johnson were your only RBs—no Higdon, no Isaac. I don't think Newsome got any 6th OL time. WR/TE was all Darboh/Chesson/Perry/Butt/Williams until the game was salted away. Michigan put in Ways and Harris in place of the outside WRs, continued playing Perry, and gave Ian Bunting some run.

[After The JUMP: rather big JUMPS forward for a half-dozen guys.]

Well, this is timely.

It exists!

Harrumph.

Do you want to keep doing this or… talk about the game.

One more. Harrumph.

Ok, go.

This was a pasting. Michigan had eight real drives before a clock killer to end the game. Those drives:

• 9 plays, 73 yards, TD
• three and out
• 8 plays, 80 yards, TD
• 12 plays, 77 yards, FG
• 12 plays, 69 yards, TD
• 5 plays, 58 yards, TD
• 12 plays, 84 yards, TD
• 9 plays, 34 yards, FG

Even the clock killer went 49 yards before Michigan kneeled it out. To crack 500 yards in a game this short means you were basically unstoppable. Michigan was basically unstoppable.

Florida totally didn't want to be there, though.

There's probably some truth to that, especially after Michigan extended the lead to 17 in the second half. With Treon Harris at the controls on the other side the prospect of a comeback was dim indeed. Meanwhile this Florida team was coming off back-to-back demoralizing losses against FSU (27-2) and Alabama (29-15, but felt worse than that thanks to under 200 yards of total offense). Several players had already declared for the draft.

I can only judge the things I see happen in front of me and not the mental state of the players. It is worth keeping in mind.

The silver lining is that Michigan and its first year coach was coming off a demoralizing loss of their own, and they took this game and the preparations for it very seriously. That paid off. Several players had their best games in a Michigan uniform. As a whole this offense looked far more polished and intelligent than it had all year. And there's no one who stood out more in this regard than a guy who was half whipping boy this year.

Ryan Mundy.

This year.

Underclass Stevie Brown.

These aren't even offensive players.

Obi Ezeh.

Now you're not even trying.

De'Veon Smith?

Yes! De'Veon Smith.

So. Smith came to play in this game. I don't know if a month off got Smith's ankle healthy or allowed Wheatley to finally drill running back decision matrices into his head or what, but Smith was a different dude. The opening carry saw him check hole after hole until he found an actual gap, which he hit as efficiently as possible:

That blocking is mediocre all around and Smith feels his way past four gaps of nothin' until daylight. He breaks into the second level with barely any separation between himself and his OL and makes the most out of a meh situation. Remarkably, this was a consistent feature.

This was run #2, a borked mess of a play on which Florida aligns itself in the unusual fashion you can see at the beginning of this post, Michigan gets the line call wrong, and Smith is presented with a defensive lineman in the backfield. Then he's Mike Hart all of a sudden:

That's an eight yard swing based on something I flat out did not think Smith could do. You always take reports of nagging injuries healed with a grain of salt since everyone's always hurt and will get hurt again, but that's an eyebrow cocker. A version of Smith with that agility and the ability to use it is another level of back.

Previous UFRs had frequently complained that Smith was not a "one-cut" back who made a decisive change to his flight path and went; instead Smith would change direction more than once as he took unwise angles. This was carry #3:

Smith probably could have ground out some yards by following the play design there—Williams has enough of his guy that Smith can bend it to the outside and get his burrow on. The instant decision to hit the big gap to the backside is a big gain, and reminds me of that video from the sidelines of the Stanford-VT Orange Bowl. Harbaugh kept yelling "back door, back door" at his tailback and sure enough he made a cut very similar to this to blow through the line. I wonder if someone is seeing this presnap, as Florida's formation is vulnerable to this cutback if the backside DE gets blown out, as he does. Michigan shifted from getting blown up by that alignment to blowing it up very quickly. (They got inside the ten on a zone stretch that hit that gap as well, about which more in a second.)

On the very next snap Smith demonstrated that he hadn't lost his touch at the parts of his game that were already top notch:

While that play ends up a zero because Rudock got spooked, Smith's blitz pickup there makes me wish "mansome" was in the thesaurus. That's the least surprising of these plays because he's always been a plus blocker; few of his plus blocks have been as difficult and executed with such aplomb. I want to emphasize that these were four of the first five plays on which Smith had heavy involvement. (The fifth was a three yard run near the goal line that presented no opportunities to put an exclamation mark over my head.)

And this continued! Presented with a DL penetrating almost to the handoff point Smith cut off his OL's back and blew through an arm tackle. On the three, Smith turned negative two yards into two by juking two dudes and running through a couple tackles. Even on certain runs where it looked like he'd screwed up, the tape revealed he was trying to make the best of a bad situation only to find that there was no relief elsewhere. It took me a couple takes to realize that this was Smith avoiding a wholly unblocked LB in the hole:

As I said in the table above, he's probably better off running right at the guy for a few yards but I prefer Smith seeing trouble and adjusting even if it doesn't work out. Early in the second half Smith cut to the backside of the line and got hewed down early because a safety blitz prevented Darboh from getting to the guy. That's an RPS minus; without the playcall Smith is ripping off another backside cut. Even with it if Cole had cut off penetration a little better Smith can attack the S head-on, and that usually ends badly for the DB.

This is a sea change. There was a big argument in the aftermath of the Minnesota UFR when I didn't like Smith just running into a DL instead of making a cut, ill-fated or not, on this run:

If he cuts off the butt of his OL that play probably ends up a lot like the one just above, with not much gained. But sometimes you end up gliding to the backside of the line and finding the secondary, as Smith did on his first run. Or you pause and cut off the butt of your OL and manage to turn second and fourteen into second and six. Even on the plays that gained little or nothing I thought Smith was seeing the field in front of him and running with purpose.

Drake Johnson also got in on the act. Towards the end of the opening drive that Smith was ripping it up on he came in, getting the same formation with the big gap in the line that Smith hit for his cutback. Michigan ran a zone stretch and as soon as the NT committed outside of Braden, Johnson hit the gap. He'd finish the drive with a sharp cutback off his OL's back:

In the aftermath of Michigan's opening drive I sat blinking very quietly for a moment. This blog has hypothesized that Fred Jackson went into coast mode late in his career and that an ambitious Ty Wheatley might be a meaningful step up. Through 12 games there was precious little evidence in support, but it really felt like the bowl practices made things go "click" for Smith and—to a somewhat lesser extent—Johnson. Johnson even got his Smith impression on when he made a couple nice cuts and then powered out 3 YAC near the goal line. 

There was very little to criticize from any of the backs. Sione Houma did have one outrageously bad cut, but he also juked an NFL first round DL in the backfield and generally looked like the package of power and agility that got me to compare him to Matt Asiata coming out of high school. (You may remember Asiata taking shotgun snaps directly up the middle over and over again in yet another of those Utah losses.) Smith put himself on the wrong side of a Glasgow block on a sweep that otherwise had potential. That was the only complaint I had against a half-dozen moments where he made the most of his opportunities.

This is probably a good time for the

CHAAAARGHARRARGHGART

chart.

This chart has a lot of big numbers. Michigan had 77 offensive plays, which is a lot for them, and I charted them all since they left the starters in most of the way. Amplitudes are thereby increased.

Michigan put up 225 rushing yards in this game at 4.9 a pop and spent a lot of carries near the goal line, which have limited upside. It was a rushing performance Michigan has not seen since Denard, and if we're talking about a pro-style offense probably not since Chris Perry was going bonkers in 2003. And their pass blocking was great.

The offensive line was... good? Against that level of competition?

Motivation caveats apply.

Yeah but I mean even so.

Our target for run +/- for a successful day is 66% and Michigan cleared that, but they had a lot of help from the blocky/catchy types to do so. The OL's run blocking was… okay.That feels like a win given the level of competition. Caleb Brantley wrecked three guys on one play…

…and I wasn't even mad. That late shift is perfectly timed and he is a freakish athlete. The two DTs in this game were formidable opposition. The DEs were not. I don't remember if Florida had some guys out but their edge rush was horrendous—one minus between both tackles on 35 or so passing attempts—and while I like Butt and Bunting for those guys to collectively rack up +10 and no minuses says something about the opposition.

Glasgow is/was very good and demonstrated that in this game and in the NFL draft; good luck to him at the next level. As far as guys around next year go, Cole really is terrific in space:

I think he's going to be a great center. Centers end up releasing direct to the second level more frequently than anyone else, and Cole was A+ at that. He's got the power to cope and the intelligence to walk into a starting lineup as a true freshman. Glasgow had a couple of blitz pickups in this game that resulted in big gains that I'm hopeful Cole will be able to replicate. The whole rushing offense felt more polished and coherent after these bowl practices, and maintaining that level of comfort at the spot that makes the line calls is the main way to keep building on this performance.

Kalis remained disappointingly inconsistent. This stood out since various other players seemed to make major leaps forward between the regular season and the bowl. Kalis not so much. The run above where Smith hits the eject button despite having a nice looking hole failed because Kalis overcommitted to a DL and let a linebacker in free. He's still blowing past guys he needs to block with disturbing frequency:

There are alignments in which blowing by that dude is correct because the guy behind you can help out. That's obviously not one of them. At the very least you need to chip him and I'm about 90% sure that Kalis and Magnuson need to combo through a guy that's lined up on Kalis's outside shoulder. Unfortunately this was not an isolated occurrence.  The Houma WHOOP on Brantley was needed because Glasgow was forced to pick up a blitzing LB. Presnap he seems to point this out to Kalis, who ends up blocking a guy moving to a different gap:

Florida's in a 3-4 and both DEs are lined up super tight. When the LB walks down it seems like Glasgow realizes the purpose of the unusual formation is to get the NT or LB in free; he interprets the data and wants to make a change. Kalis just sees the guy over him and decides to block him. On the stretch he saw a guy outside of him and decides to leave him. The subtleties escape him. Four years into a five-year career I'm not super hopeful the light goes on. 

Don't get it twisted, though: Kalis did have a number of plays on which he diagnosed who he should block and did so. He scraped above zero against those DTs. He's all right. I project that he'll be a little better next year, which makes him good-ish.

I don't have much to say about Braden or Magnuson. Braden generally latched on and got a bit of movement. He's cut down on the lunging and spent the second half of last year as a consistently decent guard. He does most of the good stuff Kalis does with fewer outright mental errors. Magnuson ended up slightly negative, and that's a bit of a concern. He's had a hard time getting his head above water this year.

This was the game that Jehu Chesson arrrived! I mean, yeah? Right?

It was certainly the best game of his career. The two big playsagainst Vernon Hargreaves, just months away from being the #11 pick in the NFL draft, catch the eye. Chesson has a veritable media hype train behind him now based on those two plays. And while they're nice plays, teams and players often get overrated because of a bowl game or a few flashy plays in said bowl game. If Chesson just had those two items I'd be more worried this was an anomaly; he didn't.

Chesson's speed was also apparent on a 24-yard catch and run on which one defensive back was loathe to close on him—possibly because of matchup-zone-based confusion—and another simply could not keep up. Check #7 as he enters the frame here:

Chesson's distancing himself from a 5'10" safety the whole way. A replay of that infamous Jason Witten catch in a bowl game that was the inverse of this game.

If Chesson's speed is not news, how about a couple of crazy catches? This play drew an interference call that Michigan got to decline because dang:

And this was about six inches from entering the pantheon of all-time Michigan catches with Walker, Avant, and Woodson:

Combined with the two wins against Hargreaves that's nearly a half-dozen eyepopping plays in a single game. The hype he's getting is warranted, and the sample size supporting it is relatively large.

This progress thing is nice.

Yes.Chesson took a leap and he wasn't the only WR to do so. After an early penalty that caused Michigan twitter to moan "here we go again" about Grant Perry's star-crossed year, he suddenly ceased seeming like a deer staring down a road full of headlights. He popped open on a wheel route thanks to play design more than anything he did, but he caught it, looked comfortable doing it, and didn't look back. Try to ignore the heartstopping near-interception on Perry's touchdown and just focus on his route:

That DB set up inside, turned his hips, and got beat inside. That's some good slot work. He'd repeat that on a late angle route.

Michigan yanked the starting receivers while allowing Rudock to work on his NFL tape, so it was Perry that got the cherry on the sundae. He reeled in a wheel route with a relatively tough catch outside of his body:

This was the guy who caught a zillion passes in high school: not overly physical, where he's supposed to be all the time, good hands. It's not exactly a surprise that he got there by the end of year one, but it is another example of the offense-wide improvement. Michigan took their bowl prep extremely seriously.

Also I clipped this mansome Darboh catch on a slant despite the DB arriving early is straight out of the Avant playbook:

This was exclusively for season preview purposes.

Any late revelations to get hyped about this year?

Michigan left the starting OL, Rudock, and Smith/Johnson in the whole way so this question boils down to the receiving positions. I do have a name: Ian Bunting. All caveats about a bowl blowout apply; all the same I checked on the guys he was beating up and they were generally four star recruits in their second or third year, like Bunting. And he did beat some guys up. Unfortunately by the time he got significant snaps the already-shaky director was regularly cutting to plays post-snap. So I cannot put a box around him to make things clear here, but on this play he gives M the edge by turning in a DE and sticking with it for the duration:

This is a textbook chip-and-then-get-the-linebacker:

He'd finish his blocking performance by driving a WDE type a couple of yards off the ball to offer a cutback lane to Smith. Given the situation all these developments should be taken somewhat lightly, but for a guy whose blocking is the biggest question about his game this was a very encouraging series.

Meanwhile on his one catch he flashed the hands and made me double check that "89" wasn't "88."

He should start working into the lineup as Michigan attempts to find out how close he is to a Butt clone.

Tweaks and such?

There wasn't a ton of flashy stuff. Michigan won the tactical battle when Florida lined up like this:

Florida managed to use this overload to confuse Michigan a couple times but Smith escaped a big loss and then Michigan went to work on it, as described in the running back section above.

Michigan did use a diversity of formations that seemed a step up from the regular season. The yo-yo thing where a Harbaugh team would go from a big formation to four or five wide was more prominent. There were a few callbacks to things from the regular season, like that draw where the QB sprints to the RB and the double fake screen we saw Khalid Hill catch against BYU. (This time it was Butt.)

My favorite thing was a subtle route alteration that got Khalid Hill wide open. Here Perry tucks his route inside off the snap. The linebacker clearly checks him a couple times… and then Perry breaks back to the outside. A distracted linebacker with no depth is then easy pickings for the second-level throw to Hill:

I haven't seen a similar thing from Michigan's offense. I'm sure it's commonplace in the NFL. The combination of Harbaugh and Fisch feels like it should be good at figuring out these little things that screw with matchup zones (and regular ones) by messing with keys.

(Also of note on this play is how natural Hill is as a receiver, something we've seen from time to time. He may not be able to run like Houma; he should still be a two-way weapon.)

We're a million words into this and you still haven't mentioned Jake Rudock.

Right. That guy.

Jake Rudock 2014

Jake Rudock 2015

Wilton Speight 2015

The light remained on for Rudock. He had an easy time in this game since his OL kept him very clean—those three PRs are almost the only time anyone got anywhere near him. Two inaccurate passes and almost ten YPA will do just fine. Here's to Rudock as the new Todd Collins.

And the wide receiver chart?

Yes, yes:

Receivers?

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

ROUTES: Chesson ++, Perry +, Bunting +, Ways –, Darboh –.

Unless he had a flat drop against OSU I don't remember Butt will get through the season perfect on routine balls and really good at tougher catches.

Heroes?

Smith was a new man. Rudock continued being Rudock. The left side of the line was very good, and the blocky/catchy types blew out their opposite numbers. Chesson blew up.

Maybe not so heroic?

The right side of the line wasn't awful but they were a relative weak point. Kalis had a number of mental errors and gave up a couple of quick pressures up the middle.

What does it mean for 2016?

I go to work. The #1 thing that leapt out about this game was the progress a half-dozen players made. Chesson, Perry, Smith, Johnson, Bunting, Poggi, and Braden all may have played their best games. Michigan players keep talking about how this is a different world for them, one in which they are pushed and improve as a result of that. This face-punching after an extended period of practice behind closed doors is the clearest evidence in favor of that not named AJ Williams.

That's why they put Smith on ice this spring. The guy who played this game is not the guy who played most of the rest of the year. If Citrus Bowl Smith shows up for 12+ games this year, Chris Perry and Toby Gerhart will be referenced repeatedly. One game samples and all that.

Chesson is worth the hype. I didn't even embed the Hargreaves plays because you know 'em and I had other things to focus on. He's a legit 6'3" and faster than the Florida secondary, and he's just about polished. Dude is gonna be a dude.

The offensive line is still a potential issue. Cole and Braden will be fine, with Braden shading towards legit good at the end of the year. Kalis and Magnuson are replacement level; while both should improve I don't think either is going to be All Big Ten level or particularly close to it. If concerns about Newsome turn into real problems, they could take a step back despite bringing four starters back. I don't think that's likely, but I would have liked to have seen more progress from the right side of the line.

Grant Perry can get his Roundtree on this fall. Not the Roundtree that streaks wide open through the secondary because of Denard, but the other one who is a slot option with some more downfield upside because he's a bit bigger than your usual slot. His polish was obscured by early freshman jitters; he became a reliable option in this game and over the course of the spring.

Ian Bunting is probably ready. All caveats aside he looked just as capable as Butt as a blocker and in his league as a receiver.