Upon Further Review 2016: Defense vs Iowa

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FORMATION NOTES: Michigan may have had two "deep" safeties, but they were not very deep. This was MSU-level #disrespekt for Iowa's ability to punish Michigan over the top, and this was a relatively conservative safety deployment for M in this game.

One guy would generally bail while the other shot into the line of scrimmage. Michigan also used its safeties as SAM linebackers with some regularity. Here Peppers is over the slot and Thomas is tight to the LOS to the bottom of the shot:

Also sometimes I hate directors. This is a presnap shot on third and six.

There is more than the usual sprinkling of ??? in this chart because of things like this.

SUBSTITUTION NOTES: Massively reduced rotation. Save an injured Delano Hill the back seven got literally every snap, of which there were 68. Taco Charlton did not leave the field; Wormley only rested on four snaps; Glasgow got 50. Hurst and Godin split snaps about down the middle again; Hurst had a slight edge with 30 to Godin's 24.

Kinnel got 23 snaps as Hill's replacement. Spare parts included Mone(15 snaps), Gary (9), Winovich (3), Lavert Hill(6), and Brandon Watson(3).

[After THE JUMP: [very Kirk voice] WAAAAAAAADLEY]

How on earth did they win this game?

Mostly because of Michigan's offense.

Yeah, but they did acquire 12 points.

You are disappointed by this defensive output?

I mean... kind of?

That's absurd, but it is true that Michigan's defense could have done a hair better and won this game.

So not absurd.

If we're assigning blame for this loss about 2% goes on the defense, so yes, absurd. But there are more minuses on this chart than there have been in recent weeks, as Iowa did something no Michigan opponent has been able to do all year: put together some drives.

[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.]

That's a win for the defense against almost everything.

You will not lose many games when the opposition has 66 passing yards. 66 yards is impressive enough. 21 of those came on three screens. The remaining completions are a 9-yard slant against Stribling, one instance of America's Rollout Out on which Lewis hammered the WR on the catch, and the angle route and dumpoff TD to Wadley.

Iowa missed two opportunities to hit open receivers, one for about 20 yards on their opening drive, one for about 15 on a play action slant. That and the slant were literally the only open receivers—as opposed to running backs—Iowa had all day. This was a comprehensive domination by the pass rush and the secondary. More or less every pass was a variant of this one:

Beathard throws because he's about to be destroyed and Michigan gets a PBU.

Check the coverage on this Winovich sack. Stribling disrupts his guy's route so badly that it no longer exists; Gedeon drops into the TE crossing route Greg Davis loves so and erases that; Thomas in good position on a deeper crossing route that is reaching an area of heavy LB zones:

This was almost every play. If this game goes a bit differently and Iowa is forced to start throwing the ball because they're down two or three scores, the floodgates open. Alas.

In an effort to get any sort of pass off, Iowa had a bunch of plays on which they went max protection and left one of their WRs at the LOS. This was an effort to isolate Stribling and win one on one. That worked once. It did not work again.

It really, really did not work most of the time.

In addition to not having anyone open, any dropback was a gamble that Beathard would make a good decision with someone bearing down on his ribs. Per PFF, Beathard was pressured on 50% of his dropbacks, and when he tried to go more than a few yards downfield that number was probably closer to 100% than 50. Chris Fowler saying that Michigan "has not hit Beathard as much tonight as they'd hoped to" an instant before Charlton warped around the right tackle and induced a prayer was not a Great Moment In Play By Play Announcing:

Iowa approached this game like passing was poison and they were right to do so.

Those Wadley plays were kind of important, though.

McCray versus Wadley went about like you would expect, unfortunately. Credit to Don Brown for anticipating this and directing his linemen to bash Wadley over rushing the passer. On the 28-yard gain on a nothing pass that set up the Iowa TD, Wormley suddenly aborts his rush to hit Wadley. He does so, and yet:

Woof. We are have reached "it is what it is" with Michigan's linebackers in man coverage.

Bashing Wadley out of the backfield was something Michigan tried to do most of the night:

So that touchdown is only partially on McCray. I think he needs to bail out before the OL can latch onto him, but 1) the OL holds him without a call and 2) Hurst needs to hit Wadley instead of run by him:

If Hurst disrupts Wadley, Michigan likely gets a sack and a win.

SO YOU ARE DISAPPOINTED.

no

well maybe a tiny bit

but mostly no

can i tell you the thing that disappoints me

YES

So Iowa starts their final drive with a screen to Wadley. Wadley is their offense. Wadley literally has 75% of their yards in this game. Nobody covers Wadley out of the backfield.  I can only assume this is a terribly depressing Peppers bust:

The worst bit is Iowa is super-late getting out so a Peppers that is covering Wadley blows this up on the catch, and Iowa is now in second and 12 with zero passing game.

So... yeah, that sucks.

They could run on us some.

Yeah. About half of this was Wadley getting his proper share of work because Kirk Ferentz is his best Kirk Ferentz when he coaches against Michigan. This guy is receiving fewer than half of Iowa's carries:

Good job, Kirk.

The rest of it was a hodge-podge of things. Two stood out as consistent issues. One: more edge stuff. McCray was flanked repeatedly. On this early pitchout McCray is exchanging with Charlton and hesitates to the inside:

He did this against Maryland on an even bigger gain so I guess this is some progress; the consistency with which opponents get solid gains on the outside rankles more every week. A crack sweep came with extra rankle because Michigan runs it all the damn time and yet McCray again gets cracked down on because he doesn't look at his blocker; he seems to have no idea the ball's going outside despite Iowa lining up in a formation that causes him to widen out in case there's a sweep:

Charlton is also culpable there but his edge issues have been occasional, not consistent.

The second consistent issue: Michigan's backup DTs are not nearly as good as Glasgow and Hurst. Iowa ran a number of trap plays in this game; Glasgow obliterated any fullback or tight end who dared wham him. Mone not so much:

The play after that both backup DTs got handled one on one on a six-yard split zone and Michigan yanked them from the game.

The starters were gashed! Alarms! Klaxons! And the like!

We are incredibly spoiled so things like "only two DL having monster games" feels like a problem. It is true that this was a step back for the line as a whole; it was a step back from the 1970s Pittsburgh Steelers to merely excellent.

Wormley has not featured much in this column this year because he's an established player who is good but not often spectacular. I'll post a clip or two to remind folks that he's quite good and move on. This game demands something a bit more extensive, because he was rampant. Of all the Chris-Wormley-versus-tight-end events I've seen over the past few years, this is the most emphatic:

His sack saw him go from defending the run to attacking the quarterback like a much smaller person.

He's been somewhat quiet the last few games mostly because the opposition is trying to avoid testing the line in the run game and he's not the kind of guy who's going to get a ton of flashy pass rush, the above clip notwithstanding. Even on that play where it looked like he was the culprit because he went to his knees that wasn't his fault but rather Gedeon's. He crushed everything in front of him.

Glasgow had a number of bad moments—he overpenetrated on Iowa's first play and got blown out big time on a Daniels carry up the gut. Worse was a big Wadley run where it looks like Glasgow has beat his guy and will either tackle or force it back into many persons; Glasgow holds up, and that's the crease:

He absolutely has that stoned until he stops of his own volition. I dunno man. This was not a game up to his usual standards. Barely edging above zero is not great for a DL.

Charlton was in a similar boat. He was a menace whenever Iowa dropped back to pass. His ability to go from run D to all-out QB assault got Michigan a nearly-sealing interception.

On the downside, he had three separate instances where I gave him –2 because he messed up an assignment or got flanked. Still more good than bad.

Hurst did not have any problems except a lack of snaps. Hurst is the starting 3-tech, if you're going by playing time in the fourth quarter. He is the backup if we're talking about the first snap.  I am at a loss to explain why Michigan continue to split snaps down the middle with Godin, who's fine. Hurst is not fine. Hurst is killing it.

Godin had the occasional play in this vein. He was the main force on a third and short stop in the third quarter; he was also contained much more frequently and effectively than Hurst. This kind of flow down the line was common from Hurst and rare from Godin:

Michigan went with Hurst in crunch time almost exclusively and he still barely edged out Godin in snaps.

Where's Gary? Nine snaps?

Yeah, I dunno. He did something ridiculous on one of them:

I'm not going to criticize the coaching staff too much for not playing a true freshman when they've got Charlton and Wormley on the ends, especially in a slow game. Possible that I missed something that PFF and the coaches both noticed.

You seem to have a major disagreement with PFF about the linebackers.

I do. I'm not sure what they saw in Gedeon's performance that I didn't. This was the second straight week I thought Gedeon did very well after a poor game against MSU; PFF has whipsawed from "real bad" to "real good" to "bad".

Gedeon has made out much better in this new era of teams going to the edge all the damn time. His ability to read and flow through traffic almost always gets him to the spot he needs to be. There's a reason it's always McCray chasing stuff outside: opponents are trying to set it up so that he's the main edge defender. Gedeon's also capable of mansome moments on the interior. He hasn't had to take on many blocks from guys releasing free this year, but he did when the backup DTs were in and mitigated damage impressively:

He had some issues, like any linebacker does. I still think he's clearly Michigan's top ILB and tracking towards the NFL draft.

McCray's weakness on the edge has been much discussed. Despite that issue he is also turning in enough positive plays to hover at or above even, depending on the game and grading system. (Not so much in this one for me, but this is an outlier.) He brings a load; he reacts well; he is an excellent blitzer.

Here he has the beef to get through a block from the side without leaving the hole:

He can't tackle but the ability to get a hit in is the prime motivator for an unsuccessful run. He's a good player with an obvious vulnerability.  I expect Michigan will slide him to MLB next year and have Bush do all the edge stuff. For now, it's just about getting better as we go along here.

I got mad at Stribling a couple times. Yes/no?

Yeah... Stribling was still dodgy as a run defender. He's five yards from the LOS on this play and he bails out despite an OL releasing well downfield with Iowa on their fifth straight run, on first and ten, on a night where Iowa was avoiding passing at all costs. The defense is set up with Stribling as a free hitter, and then:

Whatever his key is, it is obviously blocking well before he steps back. He does contain, I guess, but this should have been a Michigan DB slashing Wadley down in the hole. It is not.

More pleasantly, Tyree Kinnel had a second straight game with an impressive play against the run. He's tasked with being the extra guy in the box on this play and beats a crackback block to help the linebackers tackle:

That's the second straight week he's had a Kovacs play.

What about that three man line stuff?

It didn't appear much because Michigan was playing a pro-style team; when it did it didn't quite work out. This was an interesting play to me because Michigan lined up Peppers as a super-deep MLB and it looks like his job is to be the force player on either side of the line. He doesn't get to execute that assignment because Charlton doesn't fight inside:

If Charlton rips inside his blocker that RB is bouncing into Peppers on the edge and that's a very good thing for Michigan. I have a visceral negative reaction to Michigan's three-man lines when I watch them live; on review it usually seems like Michigan had a good idea and they didn't execute it right.

Heroes?

Wormley and Hurst were dominant. Lewis and Stribling were impeccable in coverage, and Lewis added various positive plays in the run game.

Maybe not so heroic?

That Peppers bust on the Wadley screen is super depressing. McCray's inability to keep up on the edge or in the pass game was a a major factor in Iowa scoring any points. Glasgow did not have a game up to his standards.

What does it mean for Indiana and the future?

Hurst for all the snaps. I mean, not all the snaps. All the snaps he can reasonably acquire, and early ones. Better play early means fewer plays to defend and fresher legs late.

Shine is off the DL depth. The backup DEs barely played and the backup DTs both ended up in the red. Michigan does not have two starting DLs. On the other hand, I would not read much of anything into off games from Glasgow and to a lesser extent Charlton.

Tyree Kinnel is going to be just fine next year. I mean, probably. He has the look of an excellent run support safety. Coverage hasn't been tested yet but he was supposed to be a CB/S combo out of high school; if anything the Kovacs stuff was supposed to be a hole in his game. If that isn't the case Michigan shouldn't miss a beat at one of the safety spots.

McCray, edge, coverage, etc. It's a thing. No denying it now.