Upon Further Review 2016: Defense vs Illinois

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FORMATION NOTES: Michigan ran a ton of their dime package, almost half their snaps. Included were a bunch of exotics, like this thing where the line slides way one direction and McCray ends up a standup end:

3-3 line slide, I said, because I guess?

Meanwhile this was 3-3 standup DT:

Illinois ran at McCray and picked up 17 yards.

Meanwhile I titled this "ugh what is this" and don't remember if I called it anything in particular. Brown's defense quickly outstrips the reader's tolerance for formation detail.

Bleah! I mean, hooray! But also bleah.

SUBTITUTION NOTES: The frequency of three-man lines and general dearth of snaps (just 42 on defense)  led to some absurdly low snap totals for the DL. Charlton led the way with 30; Glasgow, Wormley, Hurst, and Gary were around 20; Godin, Winovich, and Mone were around 13.

Gedeon and Peppers played every snap; McCray missed a few with an injury and was replaced by Devin Bush. Stribling, Peppers, Hill, and Thomas did not come off the field; Lewis was lifted at the very end. Extra DB snaps were scattered between Lavert Hill, Kinnel, Metellus, and Watson. Kinnel probably would have gotten 20 snaps if he didn't go out injured just before the half.

[After THE JUMP: if this is short it's not my fault.]

Some bad things happened.

I mean, yeah. Did you think Michigan would never give up yardage again?

Kind of?

I'd like to tell you that's unreasonable. I cannot. I mean look at this

same old chart

chart, jaded-ass alter-ego.

[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.]

The DL didn't put up the eyepopping numbers they usually do because they couldn't get in enough snaps. Proportionally they were still the killers they've been, with one exception: Illinois was vaguely competitive in the pressure metric.

Meanwhile both safeties overcame some negative plays to post nice numbers; Hill dominated passing routes and Thomas popped up in the run game over and over again.

But, I mean, total dominance over a team they were expected to dominate.

But bad things happened.

I can try to explain the bad things that happened.

Yes please.

The two passing plays are pretty simple. On the first, a safety busted. There is no defense ever conceived of that has a linebacker running down the slot with a receiver without help over the top. Since the BTN director was in full pore-o-vision mode and provided only a field-level replay I can't tell you exactly what happened. I can tell you that Metellus was in as the dimeback in the aftermath of Kinnel's injury and after that Michigan went with a lot of nickel; when they returned to the dime they inserted Watson at CB instead of using Metellus. He has been convicted on that circumstantial evidence.

On the second, Delano Hill misplayed the ball and Malik Turner, who's a legit All Big Ten WR, made a great play.

One of the two running plays to exceed five yards is also pretty simple: Michigan was RPSed when Illinois ran on third and nine. Mike McCray played DT; Ben Gedeon got cut by a WR he was trying to cover; it happens.

The 45 yard run is the only multi-player breakdown. The primary culprit was Winovich, who got annihilated by the tight end. He ended up back in McCray's lap; McCray went upfield in a panic situation and never got out.

That's a chunk, and then Thomas gets cut and gives up the edge. He's in a difficult spot with a blocker but you have to funnel back.

These three items are all slightly unfortunate trends. Winovich has a tendency to get blown up in a way that no other Michigan DL does, because everyone else is 40 pounds heavier than him. McCray has had three or four plays this year where he either gets blocked by a WR or ends up giving up the edge because he tries to go upfield of him. And Thomas gave up the edge on the UCF sprinter TD. Here they combine for a chunk.

How does this get fixed? The primary way is using Winovich as a pass rush specialist in competitive contests. This is already the case—he got two snaps against Wisconsin. I don't think it'll be an issue unless Michigan is up three scores.

And the other bad thing? The injuries?

I clipped the Thomas interception largely because in the background you can see what happened to Kinnel.

That's a non-contact injury, and those are usually problems. That might be a hamstring, in which case he'll be out a while.

Those DL snaps are so low.

Michigan played a ton of dime.

So we're playing a ton of dime against a run-oriented team deploying a bunch of wildcat?

Uh. Yes?

Does that seem odd to you?

Yes and no.

Yes because Michigan's DL is awesome and deep and most of the time I strongly prefer whoever the fourth DL is to Kinnel. No because this was another warmup game quickly out of hand and Brown always wants to keep adding things. Also no because this kind of three-man-line, attack-from-everywhere defense seems to be a favorite of spread coaches trying to nerf their own stuff. Gary Patterson in particular has been running out crazy light defenses at TCU for years now to good effect.

The dime stuff feels more rickety than a four-man line. Even when the opponent gains little there's a moment where a gap appears to be there. To some extent it is there since there are OL pushing on small guys and big gaps between bonafide linemen. If the opposition gets it right you're likely to get gashed, as Michigan did on the early Illinois first down:

On the other hand, if you get it right the opposition can take a massive TFL:

These were back to back occurrences.

I'm more comfortable with four DL out there,  especially with Michigan's line. The 3-3-5 stuff is often a response by talent deficient teams that can't win one on one battles and rely on subterfuge to get things done; they often feel like an admission that you are going to score points. Michigan probably doesn't need it, because this defense is elite.

But if they do happen to need it, they'll have spent the better part of two months refining it before Columbus. This is good, because you can see blips from time to time. Here Thomas blitzes into space that Michigan already has covered:

Michigan was fortunate that Vaughn blew his read here because a give sends the back into the secondary and is a huge play.

Some of the rickety nature of the 3-3-5 stuff is an unfamiliarity. Michigan ran this kind of defense as a passing-down rush exotic only last year. They've adapted extremely well to the various four man fronts Brown runs because they're close to what they did a year ago; this is new and has some holes a better opponent would exploit. 

When they do get it right Michigan inserts unblocked players into the area they need to be. Here a blitz gets Peppers unblocked in space with the QB, who's actually Vaughn again.

If Peppers doesn't come unblocked Gedeon does; either way the O is relying on a missed tackle by an unblocked player to get much of anything.

Michigan repeatedly used dime blitzes to insert unblocked players directly into the running lane.

OSU has some young OL, one of them a freshman, and they'll have trouble with this kind of stuff. Everyone would. Michigan will seek to keep them off balance so they cannot execute their trademark halftime download-and-destroy.

Any hints of how next year's defensive line is going to look?

Yessir. Rashan Gary only got 20 snaps but made impact plays on two of them. This edge pass rush resulted in an aimless punt that easily could have been intercepted:

(Meanwhile, Winovich is executing the same rush on the other side.)

Gary put the right tackle in timeout to crush a run play later:

Michigan was daring Illinois to run with five in the box. They ran. Gary ate it.

Gary hasn't burst through to start largely because of the monsters in front of him. He's progressing weekly and should be a monster SDE next year.

His projected bookend, Chase Winovich, is up and down but clearly has a bunch of potential. He got around the corner in the clip in the Gary section above; he was the main catalyst on Michigan's lone sack; he had two other nice plays on the final Illinois drive.

On the other hand, sometimes he gets blasted like he did on the long run. A full-time version of Winovich is probably going to feel a lot like early Jake Ryan: an explosive edge player who is mostly responsible for a couple of chunk run plays a game. Hopefully that improves by next year.

Line those two guys up and stick Hurst and Mone in the middle and you've got little to no dropoff amongst the starters. The second-team line won't be anywhere near this year's second team line, but there are worse problems to have.

The safeties made up for their errors?

They did. Thomas was excellent even setting aside the interception. He improvised on the fourth and three to get a PBU:

And he was a key cog in the run game. One of the oddities of this season is that Delano Hill is covering a bunch of slot receivers and Thomas keeps getting inserted into the box. It's working; you'd expect those responsibilities to be reversed.

On the other hand, whatever man, he's rolling.

Anyway, Illinois opens up with some wildcat stuff, and Thomas impressively redirects his blitz to the outside:

Michigan does this a lot, and I'm not sure I've ever seen it before. LB and S types will read run action away or outside and suddenly abort a blitz into flow right behind the line of scrimmage. As long as the play is reasonably contained this works better than you'd think: an OL is usually distracted by the threatened blitz and ends up blocking nobody, or blocking someone weakly. Meanwhile the player who redirects is not accounted for by the lead blockers; above Thomas is not IDed by the lead blocker and scoots through unfettered.

Meanwhile, Hill is really good at mirroring tight ends and slots on those third-and-short routes.

You seemed to think better of the linebackers than PFF did.

I did. I think this is because I throw various minuses in the RPS metric and I didn't put the long completion on Gedeon; Metellus got hit with it.

McCray was put in some tough spots by the dime packages and didn't perform there. I don't blame a LB much when he gets lined up at DT and comboed. It is possible to play that spot reasonably well if you're Shawn Crable; it's not part of any LB's wheelhouse.

When not put in near-impossible spots, McCray performed. He had an early edge rush on which his inside feint put the LT on the ground:

And while we're talking about linebackers, here's Ben Gedeon going upfield of a block so quickly it works for him:

That's some peripheral vision right there. Gedeon's not even looking at the WR trying to crack him and still shoots around his block at speed. I usually disapprove of going upfield because it can work out very poorly, but if you get there you get there. Gedeon does. Increasingly hard to believe he was buried on the depth chart.

(Also yes, Wormley makes this play, not Gedeon. At this point Wormley destroying a tight end is barely notable. I'll have 5,000 words on any play where he actually gets blocked by a TE.)

In the vein of that Wormley aside, anything actually surprising from the established players?

Not much that didn't get discussed in the section directly above. Taco Charlton did have an eye-popping moment when he slanted directly into a double team and beat it:

The other thing that was mildly surprising was a lack of tackles for loss. I attribute that to more aimless punts from desperate QBs and all those wildcat packages that gave Illinois an extra blocker. Those plays didn't gain much, but it was more difficult to get to them in the backfield.

Cornerbacks? I mean, I suppose they exist?

They do, and on one play you could tell.

Stribling continues to add to his highlight reel. He's got to be moving up draft boards in a big way.

Can we talk about punt blocking here? There is no special teams UFR.

As good a place as any. Here's this week's edition:

The three guys to the left of the center all get through scot free; the interior two attempt to split the gaps between the three protectors. Illinois probably makes the right choice to block those two guys, but this leaves Kinnel on a free run directly to the punter.

How do you deal with this? Someone has to block one of those three guys. All they have to do is chip him, but the guy lined up in a position to do so ignores Kinnel. Don't know if that's a bust or something Michigan saw on film.

It very well could be the latter; I mean, Michigan saw a flaw in the Rutgers extra point block and exploited it. All due respect to Baxter and Partridge but it wouldn't surprise me if the real hero of Michigan's suddenly-proficient kick blocking is an analyst looking at special teams film in the dungeon 24/7.

Heroes?

Everybody was about equally good.

Maybe not so heroic?

Metellus was the only player who didn't make up for his error with a bunch of good plays.

What does it mean for Michigan State and beyond?

The dime run-D package is a real thing and will be deployed from here on out. Brown's working it in gradually. He started with the bits of his kraken defense that were relatively close to what Michigan had run last year. As the D gets that down you're seeing more and more exotics inserted. You're seeing some busts like the ones Michigan suffered through whilst running their base defense early in the year; you are also seeing the promise.

Michigan is working towards another defensive system on top of their already historically great approach. They have a plan for what to do when and if they actually get in a fight with someone who can punch back.

Gary progresses. They feed him meat. They teach him names. They tell him the names are of bad men.

The linebacker crew takes another step towards legit good. Another week, another lack of big errors from them. The dime places more emphasis on their ability to get it right and so far so good.

Ditto Stribling. More data that he is 1a to Lewis's #1 corner.