Western Michigan @ Michigan, Saturday, Sept. 8th, Noon EDT, FS1/FSgo Video

[Jeff Buchanan]

Sure, M is up big and should be but it's the little stuff. Line blocking all around on that possession was not good. Missed FG.

[WM Wolverine]

Spanellis has been playing all three interior OL positions, pushing Onwenu at RG in practice..

I expect we'll see the reserves sometime in the 4th quarter.

[Kstat]

[Cody_Russell]

Western had alot of attrition, not sure Flecks recruiting is much to fall back on.

[iam416]

The TD throw to DPJ was really good. PassPro is still a concern, but if they can get him some time they should have a viable passing attack.

[WM Wolverine]

Good game, saw Dwumfour blown up a couple times. Way over hyped this off season, Hurst was one of the very best defensive players in CFB last season. Hurst is greatly missed...

Offensive line issues were visible despite the competition. Western bringing everyone up to the line resulted in predictably boom or bust for Ms run game...

Patterson looked very good, better than last week. Still isn't stepping up in the pocket when pressured but he's no Devin Gardner when pressured...

Punts by Hart were excellent... Western has really good athletes (Bellamy) for the MAC, that offense might be a year away.

[Hannibal]

Lots of lulz from today's game. The starting offensive line was absolutely putrid, but WMU's terrible DB play erased pretty much all of it. 80% of the rushing yards came after a whiffed tackle by an unblocked WMU defender. On Higdon's long TD Ruiz blew an assignment in a way that would make Darrell Funk laugh. On Nico's TD, Shea made a play action fake to nobody. It reminds me of that Rutgers game a couple of years ago when Peppers took a busted play for 70 yards.

Shea is accurate except when he isn't. He's basically Tate Forcier 2.0. Elite thrower on the run but poor decision making and he is mediocre in the pocket. Even on his TD to DPJ he had a wide open receiver on a pitch and catch slant that he overlooked to make the tougher throw. Second string OL blocked better than the first and I think that McCaffrey will ultimately make a better QB than Patterson. When he is in there the offense suddenly looks like it made sense.

WMU's offensive tackles did a better job of blocking Winovich and Gary than our offensive tackles did blocking their defensive ends. Winovich couldn't even get a pass rush against WMU's backup LT. Early returns on the new S&C coach are not encouraging. The team looks noticably slower and less athletic to me. 49-3 wins are nice but I saw no evidence today that the team can beat anyone with a pulse. The offense still lacks an identity and is entirely incapable of executing a pocket passing game.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Kinda like old times. A beat-down of an inferior team.

The score and the overall ineffectiveness of the WMU defense makes it hard to take much away about some of the things I wanted to see.

Is the OL improved? Well, if 308 yards rushing is a measure of that, sure but against a defense that gave up 347 rush yards to Syracuse? Probably can't tell. However, the play-by-run-play technique seemed to be good as there were some gaping holes, all of which Higdon hit or Evans managed to dance around to find an open spot. While HIdon, it appears, got to the second level, you're not going to see him break away from what amounted to the predictably shitty SMU tackling against better defenses. It was nice to see Tru Wilson get some run. You can see why he got hyped but it's not likely he's going to move up on the depth chart. Fun to watch though. He reminds of Mike Hart except a bit smaller. The OL still can't run a screen for shit and that is troublesome.

DId Patterson get better pass-pro? Well, the coordinators employed a lot of roll-outs for Patterson and that plays to his strengths. A lot of that had to do with the screen play was non-existent and so was Gentry (odd). Patterson made some very good throws rolling out - nice to see. I saw him step up into the pocket twice, something I wanted to see, and that worked out once (sort-of) when he checked down to probably his third read and tossed it for something like a 3y gain. The other time, he threw mid range and over threw his receiver. He doesn't look comfortable doing that. He ran some nice PAs of a 5 step drop (not sure that means a lot against very inexperienced LBs and weak Ss) and they all bit predictably. Cover 1, man was WMU's thing and Patterson managed to beat it. Nice to see the coordinators and the QB on the same page. Patterson was 13/18, 143y, no INTs and 3 TDs. He racked up a 70% competion rate - nicely done both in scheme, play calls and execution on his part. His best ball was to DPJ on a perfectly thrown fade to the corner of the end zone. DPJ had his man beat but against better coverage that is probably still a catch. Notably, that is the first time in, I can't remember how long, that throw was made so expertly. Probably Jake Rudock late in his season of greatness.

This is nit-picking because the D pitched a shut out until garbage time and then only gave up a FG that was actually blocked ...... except it wasn't the second try because Amby was off-side on the first attempt explaining why he probably got to the ball and blocked it. Nice try though. The D did held WMU to 90 total yards in the first half and if they got past 130 in the 3rd, I'd be surprised. It wasn't until late that they ran up some possession time and some yards to go along with it finding the redzone only once in 4 quarters. But the D overall made a lot of mistakes and took unnecessary penalties. That is going to cost you, and it did v. ND, against good defenses. I'd also call the D tackles not where they need to be yet but it appeared there was no middle running game for WMU and that's either because WMU's interior OL is not good (and it actually is reported to be with an NFL level center playing) or M's tackles are not good. I'm going to shade that to M's tackles played better than they played against ND v. an WMU interior OL that was a step below NDs in talent level but above average for a MAC team. Note that neither Soloman or Marshal are available leaving Mone and Dwumfour and after that you get to the back-ups. Just checking, Karlo Kemp started at DT, Dwumfour, Hutchinson, Paye and Mone all played at the D tackle position.

I think one of the downsides of Don Brown's approach is that the edges are vulnerable on well designed outside run plays and we saw some of those. When you've got one of your LBs and the viper being assigned to disrupt the opponent's back field it leaves something to be desired with the corners getting cleared out on deep routes. It's a bit barren in the flat and WMU used that area effectively. As well, Brown has to miss Hurst being the disruptive force up front that his defensive approach needs. He made life miserable for all backs when he was comboed with just one of a viper or a LB. Brown has to send both a LB and the viper to get the same QB pressure he got with Hurst and just one LB or the viper.

OTH, the DB and S coverage was really good and Hill, Long, Watson and Long all acquitted themselves well v. QB Jack Wassink and some decent receivers with good speed. I don't think I saw Eskridge, the 4.3 40 guy, get out in front of Hill or Long and he was deployed on both sides. That was nice to see. If Watson could catch the ball in the air, he'd have 2 more INTs. He's going to get ribbed about that. I did see Bellamy get free on the outside more than I know Brown liked. Lots fo first downs by that route.

I''m glad the game played out as an ass-kicking and was not close as I had thought it would be at the half. The offense looked prepared, well, excluding the first possession. I liked taking the ball after winning the coin toss but boy did that blow up in Harbaugh's face. I think there was play calling confusion on the sidelines, a time out, then a stupid penalty, then nothing and a punt. I'm pretty sure Hanni was snickering. On to SMU. I'll be there and for Nebraska as well. I'm also traveling to Evanston for NfW which looks a little easier than it looked last Monday with Duke beating the Kitty's 21/7. I think M can claim it is as good if not better than Dooook.

[drok]

Lol Hannibal's and Buchanan's posts back to back were perfect

[Detroit Dan]

Defense was very good compared to Syracuse. Offense couldn't have been much better. Carry on...

[hack]

Quite possibly the finest four quarters played by any team in the history of the sport.

[Detroit Dan]

And that's an understatement.

Defense very impressive with 2 D tackles out.

Hard to give the O comparable praise, as WMU was shredded also in their first game against Syracuse. Fun to watch today, at any rate.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Lol Hannibal's and Buchanan's posts back to back were perfect

Glass half full, glass have empty.

Watched some video. Here are my post video takes:

WMU is not a good football team esp. on defense (LBs and DBs not good - DL ok). There were so many missed tackles by the LBs, missed reads, bad angles by the Ss and CBs getting eaten alive, that all you can say about M is that they had a good game plan against this particular opponent and executed it against what I would call a good HS equivalent defense.

I don't know what to make of M's OL. WMU got a lot of pressure but they consistently rushed 5 or more and as noted pre-game, their Ss are up close to the OL and actively involved in delivering said pressure on pass plays. LBs blitsed more than 1/2 of the time. They give up containing runs and coverage doing that but it is the way they are trying to overcome a glaring weaknesses in their defense. Even doing that, WMU couldn't limit M's run game like other opponents doing the same thing have been doing on the regular. The pass play design and play calling also advantaged Patterson, giving him roll-outs to mitigate pressure abd he had a good day throwing the ball to open receivers.

Higdon and Evans also had good days and the OL was mostly responsible for giving both of them room to run. But the way WMU deploys their defense makes it inappropriate to assign good downfield blocking by the OL to the chunk plays and rush yard totals. Rather the absence of any kind of tackling at the second level con tributed to what appeared to be a good rushing performance overall. Credit both Higdon and esp. Evans. for taking advantage of the lesser quality play of LBs and Ss though.

As noted v. ND, Patterson options to air a lot. It looks stupid. OTH he did have one nice read option play where he pulled the ball at the mesh and ran outside and down the sideline for a nice first down. McCaffrey had one of those as well, right off Mayfiled's butt. So, these are in the play book. Speaking of Mayfield and Hudson. They played at LT and RT respectively. There goes the red-shirt for Mayfield. What to take from their play? I think the coaching staff is sufficiently worried about Jon Runyan and JBB's ability to get the job done at OT that they are going to gradually work these two into the 1s.

Also as noted, Patterson's TD on the fade to DPJ was, as JH put it in his post game presser, high level stuff. So, M has a QB. He did sail a seam route to a wide open Grant Perry. That we're not seeing more of those seam routes from Gentry (who, BTW, seems to have disappeared) might indicate this is not one of Shea's better throws.

Missed FG. Ughh.

Tempo of the offense. Ughh. I don't get this. M ran just 53 plays v. WMU. Against lesser opponents where you're running up the score, fine. But this kind of thing probably carries over. We saw a lack of urgency throughout the ND loss. It's like stick to the plan even though you're down 3 scores. IMO, that had a lot to do with the loss to ND. It's a troubling indicator moving forward.

[iam416]

Western, I think, has an offense that can do things against average defenses. They have some players out there that can make plays. But, like most MAC teams, the OL just isn't there and when you play a team that can blow away your tackles there's not much you can do.

The defense is horrible. Anyone who watched the Syracuse game for a quarter knew that. Toledo will obiterate that defense (they'll score against Toledo, though).

SMU is another endeavor against a team with no chance.

The games are real when the LoS is a battle.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Yep, and so far we've seen a battle v. ND that M lost and one against WMU that they won. After seeing the score (I saw none of the game so this is a pure hot take) of the ND/Ball State game, it's hard to believe ND is as good as they appeared to look against M. Can you extrapolate that to mean that both M and ND aren't really that good? Probably.

It's worth pointing out though that M appears to have improved, albeit against below average competition, and ND regressed. I find that encouraging for M and a black mark on Brian Kelly and his staff. My sense that after beating M whose probably not that good, the players thought they were elite (esp. Winbush, the OL, and the DL) when in fact they are just average dudes playing football. Winbush proved he is indeed that with his predictable 3 INTs.