Upon Further Review 2016: Defense vs Colorado

SPONSOR NOTES: Got a couple of requests to re-record the podcast commercial featuring Matt and his kids because it sounds like Matt has dragooned his offspring into this. Well, yeah, that's what offspring are for. Matt is a man who will dragoon for you. That's not something everyone can say, because not everyone knows what that word means. Matt does!

In addition to being a gentleman replete with Michigan tickets, Matt is also a good man to know if you need a mortgage. It's striking that we actually get non-astroturfed comments about positive experiences with Matt not infrequently.

If you're buying a home or refinancing, he's the right guy to call.

IDIOT DIRECTOR NOTES: This goober zoomed in so close to almost everything and provided zero high-angle replays, so I'm doing a lot more guessing about coverages than I usually do. As a result some plays of interest aren't clipped because the interesting bits I remember from the game aren't actually on the screen.

FORMATION NOTES: Okay, I separated front and cover look, and am still not satisfied with the results. "Press" was anything with hard corners on guys on the LOS:

Off was off. This was two high, and also the post TD.

One high version of same:

Still a work in progress.

Michigan and Colorado didn't do anything too weird except for some offset three man lines I'm just piling in as "exotic."

SUBSTITUTION NOTES: Again a tight rotation, which makes yet more burned redshirts puzzling. Wormley and Glasgow led the way on the DL with 53 of 71 snaps; Godin, Winovich, and Garry all got around 40. Hurst got 27 and since he played well I'm guessing they're trying to keep his workload light as he continues to recover from whatever held him out of the opener.

Linebacker was as you'd expect, with Starters getting the whole game minus some personnel package items. Gedeon is the guy who stays in when Michigan has just one true LB on the field.

Secondary was also low rotation, with Thomas, Stribling, and Clark playing every snap. Hill got dinged up and missed 16; Kinnel saw 20 snaps, most meaningful; Watson had 18.

WTF burned redshirt of the week goes to Carlo Kemp and his four snaps.

[After THE JUMP: panic calibration.]

STILL SPINNING IN CIRCLES AHHHH

Are you going to put the little dude up?

Now I feel I can proceed.

AHHHH

As per usual, let's do a drive overview of this bonkers game.

• 50 yard TD drive consisting of flea flicker and Peppers post bust
• 67 yard sustained TD drive
• 80 yard TD drive that is a first down and then the 70 yard bomb.
• Missed FG drive that is one 50 yard play, one 11 yard play, and then a stop.
• three three-and-outs
• three first-down-and-outs

That's Liufau's portion of the game. Without him:

• four three-and-outs, one of them a four-and-out turnover on downs
• one three-and-out preceded by a dubious hands to the face call on Godin

How does that strike you in the cold light of dawn?

Actually… not that badly.

Colorado's forward motion consisted of a couple of outside zones against five-man boxes, the two bombs, and the pile of wide open slants in the middle of the field. The first bomb was one of the busts we braced ourselves for preseason in the hopes that Michigan would be better and more diverse once crunch time came.

The busts are unfortunately frequent and on occasion ludicrously severe. The worst one in this game was in fact an incomplete pass on which CU faked a screen that would have picked up a ton of yards since Michigan vacated every linebacker they had on some simple motion:

I have a feeling one or two of the zone runs may have featured a Michigan player in the wrong gap as well, and a couple of the slants had a similar feel.

The second bomb was Michigan adjusting to the slants just in time to get hit by some damn good offensive coordinatin'.

Wait, what?

Remember this from last week?

I didn't like Michigan's reaction to the various covered TE sets they showed. Something about their approach just seemed off. The clearest example I have is a pop slant that McCray deflected; despite the successful outcome of the play that dude is wide open:

He's wide open because Michigan's spending Clark and Thomas covering nobody in particular. There are no WRs to that side of the field. Once the play starts both backs commit to the other side. It feels like a team prepared for this pop slant is going to send Thomas at it as soon as they read run action.

Virtually this exact same play transpired against Colorado, except McCray wasn't in the passing lane:

That should have been 15 instead of 50 but Clark misses a tackle. Is what it is.

When CU comes back to this in the second half Michigan finally has that backside S (who is actually Clark, a CB) sliding to the potential slant on the snap. It is not a slant, as you may remember. Clark's to the top right and is briefly on the screen as Idiot Director takes over:

Michigan gets torn up on the slants, goes back to the locker room to make adjustments, does so, and right out of the gate Colorado banks on that backside S not dropping deep. I was impressed with CU's new offensive coordinator against CSU and am equally impressed after this game.

I don't know what you do about that other than get better coverage from your safety and maybe blow up the QB; Michigan, of course, did blow up the QB. Glasgow gets pressure such that Liufau's throw looks like a back-foot prayer. I was shocked to see it end up a picture-perfect throw.

BUT SLANTS SLANTS SLANTS SLANTS

Yeah, I'm still pretty frustrated by how easy those were. I haven't seen Michigan defend these well yet so I don't actually know what the idea is. On the first one, CU runs play action—none of these were RPOs and that's another level of frustration—that pulls a guard across rather unconvincingly. Both LBs bite hard, and then Peppers slips:

Brown might expect his corner to cover that; he might expect a LB to come under it. Until we get more data I'm not 100% sure. I do think both guys can do better and negged both Gedeon and Peppers.

The second was frustrating because Peppers ended up in the box and McCray over the slot, an event that should happen 0.0% of the time in your correspondent's opinion. McCray drops into a zone and tries to read and react to the QB but is too slow to do so:

Again possible that the ILBs need to have someone drop back in coverage.

A third that got called back for an obvious hold was a bust from either Peppers or Gedeon:

I'm guessing Gedeon since Peppers pressing the eject button on that route puts him right under a hitch that is a potential INT if thrown. That doesn't look like a bust, it looks like an attempt to bait the QB into a pick. Therefore it's Gedeon getting way too hyped up to stop the run, which was something of a theme.

Things did get better as the game went along. Gedeon held up and covered a slant in the second quarter; McCray undercut a couple in the second half:

This is a combination of iffy slot coverage, LBs getting way upfield on PA, busts, and Michigan's safeties or safety-type players playing passively.

How does this get fixed? Does it?

Big chunks should get fixed. Jourdan Lewis will be a huge upgrade in this area, and yes, I'd expect him to get a ton of snaps as a slot corner. He'll eat up all of Brandon Watson's snaps and I won't be surprised to see Michigan lift either Hill or Thomas frequently when opponents go four-wide. Watson seems like a third corner from a previous era when it was a win if that guy tackled after the catch. CU's one sustained TD drive was greatly assisted by Watson missing a tackle for five yards on a play that gained 18:

He also got beat on another slant that ended up inaccurate for Peppers-related reasons.

Meanwhile Peppers got pressed into duty as a slot cover guy in off coverage, which has never been a strength. He should improve as the season goes along. Lewis will be in the grill of any of these throws he's asked to defend.

Meanwhile the busts and safety passivity should get better as well. You never know this will happen, of course. It's reasonable to expect some growing pains and adaptations to address those.

Nonetheless, I am now terrified about our safeties.

Well, let's check the ol'—

You're supposed to say chart.

I must have busted that assignment.

[NOTE: PFF grading works out differently than mine. In UFR zero is bad for DL; it's average in PFF. Their scale seems to be about a third or a half of mine. PFF has a "penalty" section that I've elected to omit for space's sake, which is why the individual components might not add up to the "overall." number. I'll note when it's a big discrepancy.]

So. The safeties. I'm kind of with you and kind of not. Ditto PFF. They're certainly more interesting than Jarrod Wilson. (OTOH, Wilson may have been more interesting in this system.) Each of the three ended up making an alarming play for a huge chunk of yards:

• Peppers stood flat-footed and did not get to the opening post TD.
• Hill got torched on the 70-yarder.
• Thomas got lost on the second flea-flicker and was bailed out by a routine drop from the CU receiver.

Thomas also got beat on the corner route TD, which doesn't bother me because Jourdan Lewis will get that assignment going forward, an ugly missed tackle, and a couple of other issues. Those latter do other me.

To the positive, all the Peppers things, a Hill TFL, and a Thomas PBU in a scramble situation. The former two got above zero in both systems, with Peppers considerably above the Mendoza line. Thomas not so much; I had him worse than PFF given the way the two systems come out.

I've been disappointed with Thomas so far after he had an excellent run to finish the season. He took a long time to develop under the previous regime and I wonder if things are once again moving too fast for him in a different system. I think that might be a problem that persists.

So… I'm not freakin' out. I am dialing back some expectations.

They did bust a couple runs.

I mean, kind of but not really. Amongst much sadness in the CU run game there were four runs of 10-15 yards. The longest was against a five man box and featured a blitz to what ended up being the backside of the play and is largely RPS. Another was outside the tackles immediately with no blocks relevant except WRs, RPS. Michigan had some blitzes on that left them exposed, RPS.

None of this had anything to do with Glasgow—

and now you're going to defend his honor

--and now I'm going to point out some Glasgow things and wonder how that PFF score came about.

He had an off day by his standards but still did this:

He also combined with Gary and McCray to get a sack on Liufau that was his last participation:

That's the push-pull thing we talked about in the season preview. He also was a major contributor to a Godin TFL. I did catch him getting blown out by a one on one block on one occasion and offered up a –2, but I don't get the PFF grade. There was virtually nothing up the middle for CU all day and Glasgow was a major driver of that. He wasn't even on the field or at all relevant for the vanishingly few successful plays they managed. So, I dunno, man.

Just last week you were wondering if you were harsh to the LBs and now they've all got huge numbers. Did you change anything?

I don't think so? I was a bit more generous offering up +0.5 to a LB who flowed to the right spot without contact, and I may have missed some minuses I should have issued when the LBs were not relevant in coverage after play action. But mostly they were just good.

When not erasing himself as a potential cover guy on play action, I thought Gedeon had an excellent game. Along with the sack he had a number of other plays on which his ability to scrape to the hole was useful. Gedeon will shoot up into the LOS hard and then redirect. With Michigan's DL holding up for the most part he's able to play inside out with effectiveness.

Here Gedeon shoots up into a gap and forces the ball back into Wormley for what probably should have been a TFL. Back spins through the tackle and heads downfield, where he meets… Gedeon:

If Gedeon had just closed that gap and forced the RB away from the play design he gets a sticker from me. To that and then be useful later in the play is pretty good. To contribute after he shoots up into an OL he needs other guys to funnel it back to him, so he's usually the cherry on top of a tackle sundae. That's still a valuable thing to be. You prevent missed tackles and yards after contact.

Gedeon did this a lot. Here he's blitzing up the gut and redirects to get outside and shut down a dangerous-looking QB run:

He scrapes to the hole better than either of Michigan's ILBs from a year ago.

While he doesn't seem to be quite in Morgan's class as a guy taking on an OL, he did have one impressive stick where he got off a block and prevented YAC that seemed all but certain:

By midseason I hope his lack of playing time over the past few years is even more inexplicable.

I didn't have much clipped from McCray, but his ability to catch up to this flare route despite being disadvantaged by his position pre-snap was impressive:

PFF didn't like him for reasons that remain obscure to me. They may have given him a negative for a missed tackle on one of the few successful runs; to me dude jumped over a cut and almost got to a spot that was really hard to get to; I'm going to let that go and shove the minuses in RPS.

And?

And?

THE OTHER LINEBACKER, MAYBE?

Right. Before you throw a shoe: while Peppers was without question Michigan's player of the game it was by no means a clean performance from him. We talked about the post touchdown that opened Colorado's scoring earlier this week, and there were other biffs scattered throughout the day, including a couple of those slants discussed above.

On the other hand, I just… why would you do this?

You don't even have a plan to block him!

On the other hand, you might as well not have a plan.

Everyone has a plan until a rabid raccoon jumps on their face.

In addition to his various edge maestro plays, Peppers was deployed to devastating effect as a blitzer. He of course had the lightning-quick sack. This was not his only withering shot on Liufau:

That's clever design by Brown. Hill is there to draw attention. When he backs out the defense naturally looks elsewhere for blitzers, whereupon Peppers jets from considerable depth into the midsection of the QB. Without Peppers, though, this is a step or two slower and correspondingly less effective.

The sack was also good design and execution. Peppers is in a gray area that doesn't seem that threatening. The C has four DL and five OL; he shifts the protection right because Stribling is in press on a slot guy and could easily come off the corner. Then he puts his head down. Peppers waits two, three beats, and then starts creepin'. At this point the CU LT and LG are picking which guy gets in scot free. They choose… poorly.

Peppers has done a good job of picking his moment on these blitzes, holding his water long enough to be excluded from the protection call but timing it so that he's moving forward on the snap.

I mentioned this above but I'm at a loss to explain why Peppers is ever put to the boundary. This chunk run that ended the first quarter (and thus Colorado's offensive production) sees McCray outrun. Does Peppers get outrun?

Probably not. I know there's a tight end over there and maybe Peppers will cover him better than the ILBs, but all Peppers edge destruction all the time, is what I say. McCray can cover a tight end.

AND THE OTHER GUY?

what other guy

/throws shoe

Probably Rashan Gary then.

The most interesting bit of this game on the DL was Gary getting in opposite Wormley and displaying a WDE skillset. His first major contribution was a near-sack on third and ten during a critical portion of the game:

That dip around the corner is not something many people have, let alone 290 pound guys. There's a certain depth at which your edge rush is effective and a certain depth where it's just opening up big lanes like we saw against UCF. Eight yards is about that cutoff, and Gary was productively getting around the corner at eight yards with frequency:

And when you can combine that with the ability to string out a running back all the way to the sideline, well:

He also got upfield on a quick hitting run play to Michigan's detriment; he contributed more than Winovich did by some distance.

He also gets MGoBonus points for demonstrating why even firebreathing five star recruits usually can't get much playing time at defensive tackle. Tackle is a wrestling match you need to have certain skills to win. End is much more of hair-on-fire, I'm-290-pounds-and-can-throw-a-car spot, and Gary got put on skates on his one DT run D snap:

He's probably a tackle, long term. For now the edge is where he should be except when it's time for pass-rush exotics.

The rest of the defensive line seemed less rampant.

They were, although keep in mind that Michigan lifted one of them for chunks of the game and some of their positives migrated to the LBs. Colorado's OL was a major step up from UCF; while they still got thunked this wasn't laughable on every snap.

We haven't talked about Wormley much because he's less prone to do spectacular things than some of his compatriots, and he's established. I didn't clip anything for him despite his huge positive number against UCF and didn't talk about him as much as Chase Winovich because Winovich is new. Well, here's an effort to repair that:

That is Wormley getting a relevant hit on the QB despite drawing the attention of three different guys. He bowls over the middle one, and that's enough.

Wormley also got some legit edge pass rush, often of the painful-looking variety:

Godin was good, again a rangy and penetrating sort of defensive tackle. He got some organic pass rush and blew through a guard for a TFL:

He sort of held up to some doubles, too.

Hurst didn't do a ton until late, when he singlehandedly ended a Colorado drive in the desultory portion of the game. He did stand up to a couple double teams, something he was not very good at a year ago. He also got edged on some outside zone runs, but it's possible someone else missed an assignment and he was supposed to do that.

The one downer was Winovich, who got out of some lanes and didn't make anywhere near the number of plays that he did last week. Charlton's pending return is going to eat up someone's snaps, and despite the fact that Gary didn't get into the game until the second quarter I don't think they'll be his.

Was there anything, like, good, about the stuff Brown did? You seem to be complaining about all the things.

You mean other than the fact Michigan has four of the top ten TFL guys in the league?

Yeah, other than that.

Michigan's much better prepped to stop those out routes that everyone uses to convert third and short-ish, usually with a rollout. You've seen it a hundred times: three WRs to one side of the field, outside guys run slants to pick off coverage, outside guy pops open. Michigan got stops on these plays twice. The first was partially a bad throw from Liufau, but that throw was the main reason the WR didn't get lit up by Hill:

Accurate throw and that guy is getting hammered a yard short of the line to gain as he turns upfield.

Later they'd get that critical Gedeon sack by pattern matching it. Again, this is a situation where a sensible camera angle or actual replay would have been useful but watch Stribling to the verrrry bottom of the screen first check the outside receiver and then leap up on the out Hill can't cover:

Hill picks up the slack on the hitch route inside; Liufau hesitates because Michigan covered all three of his options and then Gedeon blasts him. That's some good pattern matching and something we did not see last year.

And we still know close to nothing about the corners?

We're getting more data that suggests they're pretty good, albeit slowly. Another game, another excellent Clark PBU on a mostly hopeless deep ball:

He seems to have changed his trail technique this year in a way that makes back shoulder stuff much harder. He's right behind the WR. This would normally increase the window to hit him over the top but he is 6'4", so good luck with that.

And more solid play from Stribling on shorter stuff. He got hit on one slant for about six yards and broke another up…

…he also got a stop on an out (but not one of the rub-off rollout variety) that would have ended the second CU touchdown drive early if not for McCray jumping offsides. Stribling only got straight up beat once, on a circle route that Liufau missed on, and was a constant bother when targeted. Between this and Hawaii we've got a relatively solid set of data that he's legit.

Heroes?

Peppers, obviously. Gedeon was excellent. The DL had an all-around good performance without any one mindblowing performance. Stribling was near impeccable against some guys who can move.

Maybe not so heroic?

Thomas was the only safety who didn't do enough to make up for his large mistakes. Watson was iffy as a slot corner. Winovich didn't produce much.

What does it mean for Penn State and the future?

Michigan needs Jourdan Lewis back. Not so much on the outside or against manball teams—although he will be very welcome—but as a third corner to play in the slot. Nobody else on the team can touch him in that department. His return will shore up the middle big-time.

Busts are happening and will continue to happen. The goal is to have them attenuate as the season rolls along. Big hunks of the yards Michigan gives up weekly are due to those busts, and that's good, in a sense. If the rate doesn't slow down, not so much.

The safeties seem vulnerable in man to man coverage. Peppers less so than the other guys, probably. Hill got turned around and Thomas got shook, although Thomas had a pretty solid resume last year. I am concerned these are not excellent fits for what Brown wants to do at S.

Gedeon is legit. Perhaps overaggressive, but a guy who can get to the POA even when disadvantaged, and a sure tackler.

Stribling and Clark are probably very good. Stribling is PFF's top-graded corner in the league right now; Clark is #2. That seems about right. Aside from the one issue before halftime against Hawaii Stribling's been a very tough customer. Clark's been targeted almost exclusively on fly routes that he's wrecked; he's probably got change of direction deficiencies we'll see as the year goes along but I liked him then and like him now.

What was that movie where things evolve very quickly? David Duchovny vehicle? Hopefully not literally titled "Evolution" because then not remembering the title would be dumb? That's Rashan Gary. Scary phase approaching rapidly.

Good God, Peppers may break the TFL record. Whatever it is.