Orange indeed. (Title ref)
Every week we take this opportunity to do a roundtable obsessing about something, usually quarterback, center, non-Gallon receivers, and non-Gordon safety. This week we obsess about all those things.
The Depth Chart:
- Center of everything: Brian Cook
- Wide retweeter: Blue in South Bend
- Fiddycentback: Seth Fisher
- Left guardian of the database: Mathlete
- Weaksnide lifehacker: Ace Anbender
- Five-technical questions for you: Heiko Yang
And the question:
What position on each side will be most critical to the 2013 team's success?
Seth: We took this to mean the spot you're most focusing on with this team, not which is most important in general (otherwise everyone would say quarterback and associate editor/business manager). Also to avoid obvious things that are obvious, it is stipulated that all are agreed Gardner hurting ouches are the very worst things.
Brian: Even without the possibility of injury this is Gardner by a mile. On one hand, here's a guy who got moved to wide receiver last year and has five games under his belt. He was recruited as a dual threat guy and won't really be one.
On a couple others, dude would have had a top ten passer efficiency mark last year if he'd had enough attempts, and without any cupcakes padding out his stats. Except Iowa. He's spent the offseason hanging out with QB gurus from coast to coast, impressing NFL scouts as a top junior QB, not getting kicked out for boozing, that sort of thing.
Blue in South Bend: Outside of Devin Gardner (who remains the correct answer no matter how you phrase the question), I'm keeping an eye on the tight ends. The depth chart is really thin with the departures of Mike Kwiatkowski and Brandon Moore. They don't really have a game-ready "U" TE, and AJ Williams is the only guy on the roster who has shown the ability to kinda sorta sustain a block (and even that is... yeah). Michigan ran more 2+ TE sets and almost no 0 TE sets with Denard completely out of the lineup last year, and the odds are pretty good that Borges wants to get back to that this year.
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| But can he kinda-sorta catch? (Fuller) P.S. What do you think of my new caption macro? Captions! |
He may either have to get creative (such as putting Dennis Norfleet on Terry Richardson's shoulders under a large trenchcoat jersey) or abandon some aspects of the playbook before even taking them for a test-drive. I think we'll see some position switching to deepen the ranks, and we'll see a guy or two (cough cough Wyatt Shallman cough) moved to a U-TE/H-back role to give them some more flexibility.
On the defensive side, the answer is Devin Gardner. Beyond that, strong safety is worth watching. I really like Jarrod Wilson, and he looks good in the back end, but I don't know whether he can fill Jordan Kovacs' slack in run support. I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks he's more of a free safety. If you re-watch the spring game, you'll notice that Wilson made exactly one tackle, and it was him hopping on Funchess' back until the whistle blew. Neither his recruiting profile nor his 2012 play screams "omnipresent tackling machine." If it becomes a problem, will it force Mattison to run more 'even' coverage schemes (cover-2 or quarters)? Will Thomas Gordon's nose for the football be enough to compensate? Or will we just return to the days where 40 yard running plays are a thing that happen sometimes? SO MANY QUESTIONS AND ITS STILL JULY.
But seriously... Devin Gardner.
Seth: Yes, Gardner Gardner Gardevinygardner has to work out but I don't know what you guys are so worried about that occurring. Most fears have been answered. Why was he moved to receiver? Because they wanted his athleticism on the field, and you know he was taking QB reps all that time. What about the awful spring games? He had a good one. No experience? He started last year against four groups of relatively competent human beings plus Iowa and put up a 160 QB rating. Can he match Denard's production? In five starts against better competition last year his metrics were better than Robinson's. Can his superior passing ability make up for Denard's effect on the running game? In the three games Brian bothered to UFR the running plays with Devin at QB indeed weren't as effective but the passing made up the difference and then some:
[Hit the jump for the table, Mathlete, Heiko and Ace]
| Quarterback | Pass YPA | Run YPA | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gardner (Minn, NW, Iowa) | 9.42 | 4.42 | 7.07 |
| Robinson 2012 | 7.34 | 5.67 | 6.36 |
| 2012 Total | 8.05 | 5.36 | 6.57 |
Why does he run around in the backfield so? The better to escape and do amazing things my dear. Much as the coaches would like to flip the switch and say "NOW we're playing with POWER," when you have the premier athlete of the 2010 class on hand you don't just use him as an artillery piece.
If the last question is "Can Borges use him effectively" I counted 40 different formations Borges threw out in just the first three games with Gardner starting. Forty percent of those plays were from the gun, a third from under center. Later we saw him pull out the Pistol. Don't let ho-hum power runs and PA deeps balls to the receivers in the Spring Game fool you; that always happens in spring games.
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| Maybe we should call this feature "This Week's Obsession with Jarrod Wilson" (Fuller) |
Other than him getting injured, I'm not so worried whether Gardner can perform as I am whether Michigan can find a guy to snap it to him. Once Molk left Michigan's interior line turned into a confused pile of goo a lot of the time. I chalked a chunk of that up to having a center who wasn't reading or leading well. Whatever the limit is for how much a guy on the internet can appropriately criticize a player at a difficult and highly technical and nuanced position, I probably stepped on it a few times last year in re: Mealer.
Well, all of the possible candidates to replace him except Kugler were around last year and never threatened to displace him. They were also freshmen, so okay, but somebody is going to have to read the maniacal defenses we'll see this year, starting with Notre Dame and their unblockable front three. Someone's going to have to keep the guards—very likely to be two redshirt freshmen—on their correct assignments. Even snapping the ball is an underrated part of center, and that's before you figure there should be three different distances (under center, shotgun and pistol) he'll have to master. I don't know if that guy will be Miller or Glasgow by the end of fall, but it seems to be a coin flip right now whether either of them will be an improvement from mediocre.
On defense I'm with Bryan on Jarrod Wilson at strong safety being the guy to watch, for different reasons. Safeties are supposed to take time to develop—the more plays they see the more quickly they react to what's in front of them and avoid the traps defenses set for them. That's even more true in this defense as Mattison never quite stopped asking his safeties to do Ed Reed things once they stopped being actual Ed Reed.
Early on you can bet your Jamar Adams jersey defenses will be planning to pick on Wilson; they saw him make the same kid freshman mistakes you did, and as a tackler he's mostly untested. His Kovacsian qualities won't be as much of a focus: Mattison was already de-emphasizing the strong safety's role as "just give us a place to stand" last year as the linebackers were less likely to let something by them. As this happened the safeties were slowly becoming more equivalent; this season I expect Wilson to be the overhang guy on odd coverages as much or more often than Gordon; Jarrod needs to make the sophomore leap so that doesn't burn us. I'll especially be watching him early, since the best thing he could do for himself is make a few big plays against the non-conference schedule to get offensive coordinators to scheme against somebody else.
Mathlete: The laws of (pound sign) HOT SPROTS TAKES require me to not select Devin Gardner. I should have answered sooner. I was actually going to go with the interior line, anyway. Other than an injury to Gardner which is clearly the path to worst case scenario, the interior line is the position I have the most concern about. Whether it is Toussaint or Green the running game will be fine with Kalis and Kompany can perform at a decent level. Offensive line is such a complicated group and with a lot of new bodies in place this year, their ability to gel is going to be absolutely critical. Michigan has made it clear they are going whether it is working or not and it would nice to get some traditional productivity on the ground this year so we don't have to depend on three Gardner scrambles on third down to keep each drive going.
As to the defense, it's hard to pinpoint a specific position with how Mattison puts together his blitz packages but Michigan has to start generating more pass rush to get to the next level as a defense. Like Bryan and any traumatized Michigan fan I am bit nervous about regression to the mean at safety and the big plays but if the defensive ends or whoever else Mattison sends can generate some quality pressure on the quarterback this season I think the defense can make the jump from solid to great a year ahead of schedule.
Heiko: Hey guys, not that this is relevant to our major conclusion (Gardner), but Wilson will be playing free safety, not strong. I know they had him come up in run support a lot during the spring game probably just to shore up those skills, but he was invariably lined up as free safety. There's nothing in his recruiting profile or evidence since enrolling that says anything other than "deep coverage." Incidentally, Michigan ran a pure cover-1 with the starters exactly once (http://youtu.be/tR5U4ocyf94?t=1h8m10s) during the spring game, and when that happened, Gordon rolled up in the Kovacs spot and Wilson was the centerfielder. Yay.
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| Everybody forgets Dileo. (Upchurch) |
ANYWAY. To answer the question, on defense, Desmond Morgan, James Ross and Thomas Gordon will be most critical to the team's success. While that's not exactly a unit (ILBs + SS), I think you'll see those guys in on making all the critical plays. They've got a great blend of experience and smarts, and Ross is poised to blow up and make people go "OMG mini-Ray Lewis eeeeeee." They'll hold the defense together while the new starters on DL and the secondary figure things out.
On offense, the non-Devin answer to this question is the receiving corps. Borges will happily shred teams all day as long as his quarterback is cool-headed and upright. Michigan's ability to do that will depend on whether the new receivers (Darboh and Chesson) can step up and take the weight off Jeremy Gallon's back. Also whether Funchess can become more well-rounded. Post-spring survey said "maybe" with a bias towards "yes", so I'm optimistic.
Ace: Has anybody mentioned that Gardner is the obvious choice on offense? Oh, is that everybody? Alright, then.
I think the baseline for Gardner's play is still well above average, so I'm not entirely sure quarterback is the position most crucial to the team's success if we're going by performance versus expectations — barring the worst case scenario, of course, in which Shane Morris becomes the real answer to this question. I'm torn between center and non-Gallon wide receiver as the position that must step up the most for Michigan to reach their full potential, and in the end I must agree with Seth; we saw last year how a below-average, assignment-blowing interior line can sabotage an offense, and it's up to Jack Miller first and foremost to turn that around. Gardner's numbers from last year, especially considering the circumstances, are already a reason to run around and go eeeeeeeeeee. If he's provided a viable interior rushing attack — and that's all about the line, presuming at least one of Michigan's stable of backs will be at least competent — then man, the offense could be fun.
Defensively, the spot that I think merits mention is WDE. I'm assuming Cam Gordon or Brennen Beyer will fill in admirably in Jake Ryan's absence, and the rest of the linebacker corps should be quite strong. The secondary has some question marks, but the steady presence of Thomas Gordon and the return of Blake Countess — not to mention the addition of Dymonte Thomas at nickel, where I think he'll make a huge impact — should keep them a solid unit. The real miracle of Michigan's defensive turnaround under Greg Mattison is that it's happened without the defense being able to generate a strong pass rush without blitzing, and while the defense has done quite well the last two years, that limits their ceiling, as well as Mattison's playcalling. Between Frank Clark, Beyer (if he's not needed at SLB), Mario Ojemudia, and Taco Charlton, the Wolverines should find at least one player who can get to the quarterback with consistency; with Ryan out, that will be the key to maintaining their impressive defensive performance.