Upon Further Review 2017: Offense vs Cincinnati

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FORMATION NOTES: Michigan didn't do anything weird except for a fake-out Emory And Henry on the first snap they never returned to.

Cincinnati mostly played a 4-3 under, sometimes with a standup end.

Line slid away from the strength of the formation, WDE stands up, SAM type substance. They played a lot like a 3-4, with three big DL and the linebacker type guy, even if they didn't have a guy lining up head up on the C:

SUBSTITUTION NOTES: OL and QB remained the same. No Runyan run-out this week. Cesar Ruiz got one snap as a super jumbo TE. Isaac was the primary back with Evans and Higdon getting maybe a quarter of the snaps each.

Crawford and Perry were the top receivers in snaps garnered with Black and DPJ splitting the other outside WR snaps. McDoom had some limited time; Nate Schoenle got maybe ten snaps, none of which he was targeted on. TE remained a blender, with McKeon, Wheatley, and Gentry most prominent.

[After THE JUMP: absolutely no discussion of the QB situation, sorry]

I DEMAND YOU DISCUSS THE QB SITUATION

Did you see the jump? Sorry my man, that's right out.

BUT I'VE BEEN IN YOUR MENTIONS ALL WEEK

do you promise to stop if i talk about the QB situation

YES

are you lying

NO

you're definitely lying

I'M @ING YOU RIGHT NOW

MY FINGER HOVERS ABOVE THE "SEND" BUTTON

Dammit. Fine! Fine. So, this wasn't good but it's mostly because of the two fumbled exchanges. Despite the sometimes-gory overthrows Speight had an acceptable-ish game by my charting:

[Hennechart orientation: mouse over column headers for explanations of the categories. + is handed out for a good throw under duress. * is handed out for a very bad version of a bad thing. Numbers in parens are screens. DSR is an attempt to compress the numbers into one overall number. PFF is PFF's grade.]

WILTON SPEIGHT

The big downgrade in opposition makes that 64% less fun, but this was not a horrendous outing when Speight dropped back to throw. Zero bad reads in two games is a thing. (Though "TAs" are often mildly bad reads.)

The big fat –5 in his run charting is not acceptable-ish; after Zaprudering the second fumble that's about 90% Speight as he again loses control and basically throws the ball into Crawford's chest plate at least a foot away from where he expects it. This game feels entirely different if Speight doesn't fumble twice. Isaac had a near certain TD on dorf #1 and Michigan was at the Cincinnati 30 on dorf #2—those fumbles directly cost Michigan 7-11 points. That's the third time in the last four games that Speight has handed the opposition a touchdown or robbed his team of one.

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln?

I mean, he was okay? He hit his one open deep shot, and a couple of his incompletions were kind of like whatever. He took a deep shot to a double-covered Black on a two man route and missed and this was probably for the best. Okay. The fullback wheel was a bit short but it gave Hill a shot. A more technical receiver makes this work by slowing up and either forcing a PI or successfully high-pointing the ball:

That too is okay. Not great. Not terrible.

Speight also found open guys almost without fail.  On occasion he flashed that ability to move around and find someone even when the pocket is disrupted:

And there was the occasional NFL-level throw that gets out of Speight's hand before the WR makes his break:

Problems other than "don't throw the ball to an eleven-foot-tall imaginary man" were minimal. Some apparent bad reads on third down turned out to be screens run at the wrong time. There were some tough throws he got out against pressure that gave his WRs a chance to make a circus catch that got filed MA. The sheer size of Speight's mistakes drowns out their frequency: too frequent, but not unsalvageably so.

Nonetheless, the stadium started grumbling in earnest after Speight followed up the first yakety sax incident with consecutive Tacopants throws. Perry got open here despite double coverage and nope:

That is a ten yard throw that's about six feet over Perry's head, and that window isn't even that small. The LB trailing Perry is two yards back. DPJ was twice overthrown by preposterous amounts on short or intermediate throws:

These weren't balls outside the frame of the body on a slant that get filed (IN, 1) because the WR has a tough opportunity, they were balls hurled to seemingly nobody.

But after going over the tape I feel better about things. Speight has two obvious issues that need to get corrected. One almost certainly will: we saw one fumbled snap or exchange all of last year. It came at the wrong time and was devastating; it would be weirder if the exchange issues kept happening than if they stopped. A lot weirder.

The second issue is likely to be with us for the duration. Speight is not a consistently accurate quarterback. He has his streaks, and sometimes he falls off a cliff. Maybe Michigan can get him back into that groove he had mid-year, but even then he started off airballing a bunch of throws against Rutgers. This will keep happening. Michigan's charge is to reduce the frequency insofar as they can.

Speight has total command of the offense and is making great decisions. He's scattershot, but the extent to which he is has been greatly exaggerated by the garment-rending faction of the fanbase because of the size of the errors and recency bias. Is he great? No. He's good enough, as long as the fumbles stop happening.

It won't matter. Speight can lead the Big Ten in passer efficiency and from here on out every error will be met with howls on twitter. This is the curse of Navarre.

I DEMAND TO YELL ABOUT SOMETHING ELSE NOW

okay

THIS OFFENSIVE LINE STILL SUCKS FIRE DREVNO

All right, here's that chart. You'll notice something maybe?

No run adjustments. Ben Mason came in for –2 on his one snap, which is listed above.

Michigan hit the Mendoza line and in fact blew through it. Competition level? Eh, ask again later. Michigan dominated these guys when they were not screwing up a slant or stunt, or going full space cadet. There were some hiccups in this game, to say the least. Bredeson had his first big minus of the year when he tackled Evans for loss:

That inexplicable stall is early season, young player stuff. That's a ten yard play otherwise. This is a big gap between Cole and Kugler and Michigan has hats for both guys in it.

Another Evans run met a dismal fate when a DT slanted outside. Onwenu leaves for the second level; DT shoots behind him into that gap, leaving Onwenu no angle to get a linebacker farther inside:

57 C and 50 LG

Onwenu needs to read that and double through that DT, but he's thrown off by Cincinnati lining up late and the DT failing to fire off the ball. That's an accidental feint and I get why it happened; less so the goal line play where both guards pulled.

These big mental errors were collectively –10, or approximately half of Michigan's minuses on the day. Will they continue? At some level certainly. They are likely to drop off as these two second year players move along. Bredeson has already slashed his error rate dramatically. Onwenu should as well.

One thing about Cincinnati: they played some big boys. I called them an under defense because they'd cover up the weakside guard most of the time and didn't play their NT in a zero tech, and then I was like WTF when Mike Onwenu pulled, met the weakside end, and got shoved back. A trip to the roster was in order, and yep:

For a large chunk of the game Cinci's nominal "weakside end" was a 300 pound DT. (One who did not play against Austin Peay, it seems.) This is both encouraging and discouraging for the OL.

The bad bit is that this guy was obviously not going to be much of an edge rusher, so 1) the twists UC kept running should have been obvious, and 2) the 100% clean performance from the tackles on non-twist pass protection is less exciting. I gave out a rare 4/4 protection when Michigan went empty and five guys held off five rushers long enough for Kekoa Crawford to run across damn near the whole field...

...but a lot of that goes back to a Cincinnati pass rush that projects to be nonexistent.

The good bit is that Michigan moved this guy a lot, and his teammates.

So... the right side of the line isn't going to kill us?

Cinci's bonafide DTs are probably the best part of their defense. Michigan kicked off the game by having the right side of the line get their clobber on against the only guy Seth gave a star to in FFFF:

RG 50 and RT 70

Two plays later they buried the same guy on a counter:

RG 50 and RT 70

I had a lot of positives for both Ulizio and Onwenu as they collapsed their DT on a double and either cut off a linebacker or popped off on one. A few times they blew their dudes out so badly that I went back and gave them a plus even though the run did not test those blocks. Isaac bounces this for nine yards but my god the carnage on the backside of this run:

RG 50 and RT 70

This was a straight up whoopin' physically, and that's a great thing to see. Onwenu gave much of his wins back with a couple of big mental errors, most notably a –3 on the "both guards pull" play at the goal line. Even with that caveat it was great to see the right side of the kick someone's ass. Ulizio's issues with leaving a tight end didn't come up for whatever reason—defensive alignment, Michigan playcalls, a week of practice—and now that we got to see a game of him putting his hands on people he looks far more plausible. This is why I was trying to downplay that big negative number from last week. 

Pass protection was another matter. Onwenu was the only Michigan player to straight up lose a one on one pass pro matchup on the day, resulting in a sack. And both guys were culpable on a bunch of obvious twists. Onwenu didn't peel off to get the looper; frequently even if he had Ulizio was out of position and the DE would have gotten a free run up the gut. They did deal with it a couple times, once early and shakily, once late and confidently on a play I forgot to clip.

Onwenu was clearly Michigan's worst OL in this game but that was all mental. When he was on the right page he dominated. I'll take that from a second year player in his second start.

So how did they stop Michigan's ground game?

uh did they

Sort of?

Extract six carries that were Speight sack/scrambles and the last two snaps of the game and Michigan picked up 6.6 YPC. Deflate Michigan's two long carries to ten yards and Michigan still averaged 4.4 YPC. This was a very solid performance.

When Cincinnati did stuff Michigan it was almost always some sort of stunt or slant that Michigan couldn't quite handle. Here Kugler gets hit back by the NT, causing Bredeson to stop and help out; Isaac cuts behind this into an unblocked linebacker charging into the gap that UC's defensive call wants the back to go into:

C 57, LG 74

That will happen. Cincinnati did this a ton. They got some stops. They also put themselves in a bunch of situations where the edge guy was super easy to crack block on Michigan's consistently successful sweeps. Like last week, you can't dismiss the edge runs and chop things down to line yards so you can get your fret on. The way Cincinnati was playing was hugely vulnerable to getting edged.

As a result almost every crack sweep was not only successful but on the verge of breaking big. Michigan got 8, 11, 34, and 53 yards on their sweeps before the last one got TFLed because nobody blocked the only guy in the area. The only thing preventing a 72-yard touchdown on this one is McKeon standing up as Isaac tries to leap over him:

Note the Bearcat linebackers running a twist blitz to the interior, taking them out of the play entirely.

Later the pulling linemen would run by a couple guys, and it worked. I'd probably say this was flat out luck if anyone but Mason Cole ran by the force player, but... maybe this is OL genius? Either way it's results based charting and Cole got a hammer blow downfield to spring a huge run:

This is a great example of Never Turn Upfield. Once Cole passes that guy up he's not even a memory. Maybe he makes a tackle; if he doesn't you just got an edge two for one. He doesn't, and edge two for one is usually a huge play.

This was the closest thing to a Harbaugh Effect in this game, BTW. Michigan went very vanilla on the ground. No double fullbacks, no T formation, no hijinks, just grinding forward. That bodes well.

Is Grant Perry our best receiver?

Probably. Perry was terrific again. His touchdown was more about the Cincinnati defense comically overplaying Bunting than anything he did, but his upfield burst and ability to get to the endzone was a pleasant surprise. And when Cinci tried to cover him with a safety that guy got dusted. We got a very sucky director this week so useful replays were at a minimum. But you can still see that Perry leaves the screen here with a safety preparing to check him, and returns with that S nowhere near him:

He got another three route positives this week. That shot in the endzone was open despite double coverage. ALSO YOU ARE DAMN RIGHT I GAVE HIM THAT CATCH:

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

ROUTES: Perry +++, Gentry +++, McKeon –, Hill –

WOO YOU CAN'T STOP ME, REPLAY BOOTH.

Ahem.

sorry sorry

That tall guy seems like a good person to throw to since he's the closest thing to an imaginary eleven-foot tall person we have.

Yeah, Zach Gentry started going from potential to production in this game. His big catch and run was a great route that suckered a linebacker outside and opened up that YAC:

83, TE to top of line

That is exactly what Michigan was hoping for when the moved him there. That throw's a bit high, except Gentry is 6'7". Also he dusted a guy and ate up 20 yards after the catch. Later Gentry couldn't bring in a tough, low throw that pressure affected, but check the route:

83, TE in motion

That's just the right amount of shove to get open without drawing a flag. (Not that OPI was on the table this game.) Then he's a huge open target for a first down until the DL intervenes. Gentry's potential as a Butt or Leggett is clear.

Gentry was also the key—almost only—block on the DPJ jet sweep. His ability to stay coiled and thunk that LB back was impressive:

83, TE to bottom of line

That guy is blitzing and gets shocked back on contact. Not bad.

I'm guessing that guy sucks and we shouldn't get too hype about Gentry's blocking without some additional evidence. But! He's probably already in the Jake Butt "is generally in the way" tier, far above the Devin Funchess "I'm a wide receiver and I hate this" tier.

Black needs to run it to the sticks!

Black didn't feature much except on the near first down and a comeback route that he got held on without a call. I'm not sure the failure to convert on his catch was as bad as it looked live.  This is a slick route and drifting back to the QB is generally good policy to prevent DBs from getting involved:

Run it at the sticks, yes, but if you're getting jammed like that sometimes you have to turn around for the ball before you're able to cover the requisite distance.

I notice less Poggi complaining this year.

Poggi has had a couple of big errors but has otherwise been pretty good. He is lowering the boom on linebackers:

FB #19

That has been consistent this year. He is hitting people with force, consistently, and that's new.

I do think he was way off on the late crack sweep that got TFLed because nobody blocked the edge guy. This pull feels far too deep, and the late ohshit points towards him as the gent who is supposed to be blocking the guy making a tackle:

Hill has been himself. Poggi is getting the majority of the straight-ahead action, with Hill doing a lot of pulling across the formation or into space on the crack sweeps. "Hill destroys DBs" is unedifying at this point, but still fun!

FB 80

There's been at least one of those in each game.

Uh, running backs?

Chart:

RB chart (WR grades are run only):

Isaac's suddenly the starter and playing like he'll keep that. This is in part because the other two guys are missing opportunities. Evans didn't have anything bad in this game but missed two or three bounce reads in the UF game. Here he made a bounce read out of not much:

Michigan blocks that to the safety; the safety is at five yards as Evans presses the hole, and he manages to get ten on the bounce. So that's good, and most of his unsuccessful runs were OL goofs he had no shot on.

Higdon missed one huge cutback lane that he's got to see once Cinci shows up en masse on one side of Michigan's blocks:

He's even headed that way and cuts left here. That made those blocks look like crap but they looked just fine earlier in the game when Isaac read 'em and cut all the way back:

It's hard to tell with these things but I think both of these were subtle zone counters that are designed to cut back, which make Higdon's error above all the more frustrating. He did hit a cutback lane a couple plays later for a first down.

Should we be panicky about the red zone offense?

No, I don't think so. I don't want to Space Coyote poor Drew Hallett here but I'm not seeing a redzone issue separate from Michigan's other problems on offense. Drives to date:

• TD vs Florida (minus ref incompetence)
• TD vs Florida
• Four yard run, TE runs wrong route on waggle, zero blitz from UF w/ iffy Speight decision on where to go with the ball, FG.
• Speight runs OOB for sack instead of dumping to Hill for modest gain, false start, UF's awesome three tech beats Onwenu, corner route barely misses, FG.
• Yakety snap, consecutive Speight overthrows, FG.
• Third and two from the four sees Onwenu pull instead of block down on power, FG.

Is any of that an inherent redzone issue? I don't think so. It's a number of bad or iffy plays from Speight and two instances where Michigan's new starting guard, a true sophomore, screws up. Also a penalty on a redshirt freshman TE.

None of that is a problem the offense has when the field constricts and it's time to manball up. They're a continuation of Michigan's other problems: youth and a wonky Speight. Michigan was driving DTs off the ball in this game, and that's more indicative of future redzone proficiency than some early-season dorfs. Michigan has been very good in short yardage so far. I think that's a better tell.

Heroes?

Grant Perry made a couple huge plays when needed most. Gentry too. Cole and, yes, Ulizio led the way on the OL.

Maybe not so heroic?

Speight tossed away 7-11 points. Onwenu had a couple big mental errors and had the most difficulty with that twist.

What does it mean for Air Force and beyond?

Breathe deep. Relax. Speight should cut out the turnovers. He's not freshman Ryan Mallett. He's never going to be an A+ QB but he'll be somewhere between a B and an A-.

Panic. Explode. Seriously, though, for everyone's sake let's hope Speight gets through Air Force without one giant meltdown play. We are on the verge of a trend.

The right side of the offensive line can mash. They're still finding their feet; aside from a couple mental errors from Onwenu and persistent trouble with twists in pass protection this was a very encouraging outing. They blew Cortez Broughton up on the ground—he had two tackles and no disruption.

Zach Gentry is a threat. Not only did he make some catches he dusted guys on two different routes. Linebackers cannot check him.

Grant Perry is going to lead the team in catches. He is always where you want him to be and is 3/3 so far on tough catches. Shut up, it was a catch.

The offensive line feels better than last year. Gotta smooth out some rough edges but they've got a couple of probable stars on the left side and some big upside on the right.