Upon Further Review 2016: Defense vs MSU

SPONSOR NOTES: Man, that fourth quarter was irritating. Like wearing pants. Also, Dan Gilbert just gave MSU 15 million dollars so you clearly can't get a loan from him even before we consider his major role in the financial crisis. Instead of feeding him more money with which to write in comic sans, try a local guy.

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.

FORMATION NOTES: Not much. This was "goal line H" for MSU and made several increasingly less effective appearances. Michigan had one wacky 3-man-line snap on the first drive and then threw that away permanently, so the rest of the game was more or less this:

Of note: against these big formations M swapped their corners and safeties to get a couple bigger guys on the line.

SUBSTITUTION NOTES: 74 snaps for the defense, with the starting secondary and Gedeon getting all of them. McCray missed just two snaps; Peppers missed six with various minor issues. Furbush got those six.

DL rotation was severely reduced, with Charlton getting all but ten snaps—Winovich got 14, and I think all of those after the first drive were in pass rush packages. Wormley and Glasgow were close behind at 59 and 57; Godin and Hurst did split their snaps about down the middle. Gary got 21 snaps; Mone got 3 before limping off.

Metellus and Watson got various dime snaps.

[After THE JUMP: not great bookending pretty great.]

ALARM! DISASTER!

I mean, yeah, there were some things. I don't think this game downgraded my opinion of Michigan's defense much, though. Stribling isn't impregnable and the backup DTs aren't going to also go in the top two rounds of the draft. Tackling was real bad, which is good and bad in a predictive sense.

How can you say that with all the yards! The yards!

Okay. We're going to do a drive chart. We're going to do two things: 1) pretend the refs called the Hill personal foul both ways like they should have, and 2) ignore the Peppers PI on third and goal, which was a travesty:

On top of the big fat nothing of the call itself sending Brock Huard into a rant, the ball was nowhere near catchable.

In this world this is what M's drive chart looks like before the fourth quarter:

• 12 play, 75 yard TD drive.
• Three and out. (Extended by the Hill PF.)
• One first down and then a turnover on downs.
• Two first downs, 52 yard FG
• Three and out.
• Immediate INT.
• One first down and out. (Extended by Peppers PI.)
• Turnover on downs.

At this point MSU has had eight drives and has 170 yards; they also have three turnovers. (Those turnovers on downs are far more difficult than regular stops and they should get credit for them.) They have ten points because Dantonio came in with an admittedly excellent rivalry kitchen-sink drive they'd no doubt been preparing all year and because their kicker extended his career long.

At this point they're up 20 with 14 minutes left in the game. MSU brings in their running QB. They run with him. What's the play in that situation? Play it conservatively and stiffen in the redzone. Except for missing a tackle on Scott, about which more in a bit, they do this. 11 plays later MSU has a FGA they miss and four minutes are off the clock.

It is at this point that things go off the rails. MSU drives for a touchdown in a flash and then drives to the 13 before another turnover on downs; they then get a meaningless TD on a drive starting with 37 seconds on the clock.

How much of that do you think is actually bad? And how much of that is actually something that will repeat?

Uh... aren't you supposed to answer that?

I suppose so. I don't think much of that is going to translate unless this level of holding is ignored later in the season. Two things did jump out as rather sobering.

One: Michigan slashed its defensive line rotation to the bone after the opening drive. Amongst the backups only Gary and Hurst saw a meaningful amount of snaps on standard downs. Nominal starter Godin seemed to give back his job to Hurst, meanwhile, and looked a lot closer to last year's kind of meh Godin than this year's extremely solid version. Mone limped off after three snaps on which he looked bad. The DL depth doesn't seem quite as imposing after this game.

Two: Stribling, McCray, and Gedeon each had multiple horrendous missed tackles. Stribling had two. On the first he overran Corley on the play that set up MSU with first and goal after the INT.

On the second he did whatever the hell this is to LJ Scott.

Gedeon and McCray also whiffed on Scott to add about 30 yards to his totals apiece; both guys combined on the post-Taco-tackle QB scramble to turn that into a big play. McCray and Thomas combined to turn a four yard gain into 23.

That's way, way too many misses, and they're concentrated in the linebacker corps. They were exposed to some extent. Possible it's just a fluke, but McCray's struggles in space seemed like anything but.

What was so great about that opening drive? Wouldn't the things that they did on it be a problem going forward?

Seth has a post on this; I agree that MSU's opening drive was a script spectacular. It reminded me of that Stanford-Virginia Tech Orange Bowl in which Harbaugh brilliantly formationed the VT defense to death. MSU probably spent as long on this drive as Harbaugh did on his VT gameplan. That one was a bowl game and one was a sixth straight loss midseason is Dantonio's Michigan mania defined.

If you saw it on TV you missed a ton of what MSU was doing because they would cut to the play late. Just about every play saw several players reposition, some two or even three times. Michigan had not seen this on film and had issues trying to get aligned. They ended up with Jourdan Lewis and Jabrill Peppers functioning as inside linebackers on a couple plays; on both times both guys waited and ate blocks because they didn't know what they were doing. Michigan has a fine call on for this play with Peppers at WLB. They slant hard. Peppers should be running opposite the slant and making sure that the guy who ends up blocking him releases to see nothing but air. Instead:

That was set up by the presnap motion getting Michigan out of their desired defensive alignment. Michigan also got formationed on the TD, which saw M misalign and give MSU an easy path to the edge.

Then there was this thing, which is cool and should definitely go on the "steal this play" list:

Looks all the world like a power O and turns into a WR sweep outside of it. Michigan got burned on this on the post-INT drive as well; it's the Stribling missed tackle above.

If Michigan doesn't look at it and adjust, sure, this is a problem. Michigan did do so, so it's not. MSU's jumbo packages were definitively nerfed by the second quarter, when six runs from jumbo inside the ten collected –3 yards. Michigan flipped their CBs and safeties in the scheme and Hill and Thomas were better able to take on the lead blocks. The inverted veer they scored on was well defended when run a second time.

After the first drive the only MSU successes before garbage time came on a third down conversion where O'Connor got hit on the throw and miraculously still threw it accurately, a couple of the missed tackles above, and a counter that seemed like it broke tendencies because it fooled the whole defense.

Lewis took a ton of flags though. He bad now.

As I mentioned in the offensive post, this game was reffed by idiots. The stuff they let go for MSU was literally identical to the stuff they called on Michigan. Darboh catch:

Lewis interference:

You simply cannot throw a flag on one of those and not the other. The offense is the same: hooking an arm. In Lewis's case he's looking back at the ball and isn't outright grabbing; the arms are intertwined but you can make an argument that Lewis has a right to that position since he could be attempting to go for the ball. If anything the flags should be reversed.

Lewis got hit with a more legit PI a couple plays later; even that wasn't a must-call. Meanwhile, MSU had 34 passing yards through three quarters and Lewis ran Shelton's route for him on the INT:

He's fine, guys. I wonder if the refs would have had the stones to throw those flags in a game Michigan could actually lose.

Also, Lewis knows how to tackle a guy 50 pounds heavier than him. So he's got that going for him.

Stribling though?

Okay, yes, this was a rough game from Stribling. In addition to the two missed tackles for big chunks he was culpable on the TD to make it 30-17 when Madaris just ran by him:

That is uncharacteristic, and Stribling did defend a number of other passes ably. I still think he's real good and playing himself into the NFL draft, but I'll have to dial back last week's chatter about corner #1 and corner #1A. Lewis, then Stribling.

The data we have is still almost all very positive despite this outing. Don't overreact.

The DL got dominated!

No. Scott got nearly half his yards on two of those missed tackles that should have been zero yard gains as the DL bounced the play to unblocked defenders. He had 22 carries for 80 yards otherwise.

The DL was fine, and I mean... MSU just hugs people. It's nuts.

Glasgow tries his trademark rip, which is legal, and can't get off the block because he's getting grabbed around the shoulder. In just about every situation an OL wrapping his hand around so that it's literally on the back of an opponent is a flag. Thomas actually drew a call on it; there's no difference between what the MSU OL did to Thomas on that play and what they were doing on about half their snaps. Their RG did this a ton.

Sometimes you get away with it if it's not relevant to the play or the DL can't make it obvious, but, uh...

Explain that one. Or this one.

And that's before we get into tackle Taco time. Twice Taco got ripped from the side on plays where Lewerke broke the pocket, once to convert a fourth and five with a deep bomb, the second time on a 34-yard scramble. This looked worse from the other side of the field where I was sitting; Scott grabbed him by the shoulder pads and yanked down:

And the capper:

MSU somehow got out of this game with just one holding call on an OL. (A WR got one for tackling Lewis on a jet.)

Despite all that Michigan's DL was largely in control after the first drive. Hurst was a major upgrade in penetration and explosion:

He was the key actor on one of the goal-to-go snaps from the two:

Godin just is not going to do that. He's a good player. He's not Hurst, and it's probably time to re-insert Hurst into the starting lineup and feed him as many snaps as he can handle. That seems like it's in process he got a slight majority of the snaps after the first drive.

When MSU spread it out and tried to go after Michigan, single blocks got crushed and things looked a lot like they've looked all year.

MSU was able to get movement with doubles, and no doubt future opponents will try it. If anyone loads up like MSU does I'd like to see Michigan figure out a package with 5 DL. That'll reset the numbers on the interior and give Michigan the opportunity to win one on one as they do so well. They've got the DL depth even if it's a little shakier than previously believed.

And Charlton... Charlton was the dominator. He got the instant spin to force the INT, and while he got blown out a couple times on a slants, when one on one he was tossing guys around.

You can see this on the

chart i clutch to my chest like a Michigan State offensive lineman trying to execute a simple block

chart.

[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.]

Another thing to note this week especially: I'm not going to hit a guy with a negative for getting tackled without a call. I'm not sure what PFF does. They might be evaluating the refs' calls like I do: Peppers had a +0.1 penalty grade despite the PI.

This is a bunch to unpack.

First: that tackling number is horrible. Obviously. That's bad, because it's almost all Michigan screwing up and nothing to do with MSU cleverness or, like, playing well. Right now it's an anomaly, but it's something to keep an eye on. Maryland has a couple of super shifty RBs who will give Michigan a stiff test this weekend.

Without those missed tackles both ILBs check in highly positive and Stribling also ends up solidly positive; it's something Michigan needs to clean up but only that.

Second: M was –7 in RPS on the first drive and +2 the rest of the way. After MSU got through the script they got downloaded by Brown; Michigan adjusted and it was bupkis until silly time.

Third: the DL was still highly positive in ratio but was less impactful overall than they've been in recent weeks because those positives are spread out over so many more snaps. MSU accomplished this with a lot of big formations and very few passes on which the QB was asked to hold the ball for any length of time. A lot of passes got out so fast a pressure number was not issued; thus the super-low 16-6=+10 metric. When Michigan was able to go one on one as they do they dominated as they do.

Four: Damn, Taco. Charlton helped force the INT with a lightning quick spin and was just about literally unblockable without great fistfuls of jersey being involved.

I thought MSU's plan was to run at Peppers and it worked? What's with that grade?

When not accidentally stuck at ILB, Peppers was actually not that involved with the MSU ground game. He didn't come up much either way in my grading... except when he made one of the plays of the game with a backside gap-shoot on fourth down that nobody else makes, nationwide:

(Okay, Jalen Ramsey maybe. Nobody else.) That explosion is just a useful on defense as it is on offense, as he demonstrated as he cleaned up after Charlton on the fourth-down sack late:

Peppers did contribute to one of the long Scott runs after a missed tackle; other than that and the RPS issue above he was a major positive. He had one of his trademark wrong-side TFLs on second and goal:

The only time Peppers was actually playing his position and gave up a chunk because he got owned on a block was on the first LJ Scott missed tackle run; he spun off a block to the inside and could not recover to tackle Scott short of the sticks.

He's good. Love the MSU fans still declaring him overrated after he owned the redzone against them and had two TFLs and two critical fourth down stops against them. Right.

Heroes?

Charlton was a beast. Peppers was excellent. Lewis was very good.

Maybe not so heroic?

McCray and Gedeon were all right overall but missed probably 100 yards worth of tackles; Channing Stribling ceded another 50 on missed tackles and gave up an easy TD.

What does it mean for Maryland and beyond?

The DL might not be  super super deep. When push came to shove, Mone and Godin didn't perform. Mone is probably still hurting; if so you have to wonder whether he'll get back to 100% this year. Meanwhile Lawrence Marshall is a ghost and even Gary had some problems.

Tackling: let's do it. Hopefully this is a wake-up call and things get fixed instead of a problem that suddenly bursts into existence midseason. Survey says... uh. Ask again later.

Taco is fully operational. He tweeted out something along the lines of "and I'm not even 100% yet" after a very good game a couple weeks ago. If this is 100% Taco consistently, look out.

Michigan's DL is much better when it can take on single blocking. Ultrabig formations did give them some trouble in this game.

Hurst should start. He's on another level from Godin.

For the love of God, Big Ten referees. Look in front of your faces.