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

[WM Wolverine]

Friend that is huge ND fan said he couldn't believe we played man vs Wimbush as he has no ability to read a zone defense...

I thought Wimbush hit on a handful of low percentage passes early and even needed help via penalties to score their early touchdowns.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Don...... know thy enemy.

I thought that was a mistake as well. I'll give him credit after the first bomb Winbush completed, he did go to zone but for unknown reasons I think man coverage predominated. I'm thinking M's back end doesn't play zone very well and it's not repped enough.

I just went back and looked at the UFR Defense. Brown uses a lot of fronts based out of 3-3-5 or 4-2 -5. There's a nickle package on downs where the yards to go demands it. Brian calls the unidentifiable fronts "exotic." On the back end he categorizes these as Press 1 or 2 high. I don't think you can make the assumption that 2 high is zone. I think "Press" means it's man but available video is routinely not able to see if CBs drop into zone or not.

I guess you'd have to be in the stands to see zone and you'd have to know what you're looking for. So drawing the conclusion that M didn't play a lot of zone v. ND and should have is a bit tenuous.

[Hannibal]

I don't know if any of you guys watched the Nebraska/Colorado game,but if you didn't, see if you can find a recording of it on youtube. A lot of people take issue with my criticism of Harbaugh and our offense. If you do, then take a hard look at Nebraska's offense. Scott Frost in his first game has a better offense than what Jim Harbaugh has in his fourth year. Scott Frost in Game 1 has a better QB than Harbaugh has put on the field in four years. And the guy is a true freshman. Mitigating circumstances? Mike Riley's recruiting was trash. The QB is a true freshman. It's a brand new system. Yet Nebraska rolled up 245 rushing yards in the first half against Colorado. They pass the eyeball test with flying colors. Nebraska obviously still has issues and I think that we'll probably beat Nebraska this year. In the future though, Frost is going to pwn the hell out of us.

[hack]

An intricate pro-style offense is a fragile flower; the spread seems to grow like a weed.

[Jeff Buchanan]

So, we should bring in the latest coach successfully running whatever version of a spready offense you want to take, from wherever he might be achieving said success and replace JH and his pro-style offense?

Hmmmm I think M tried that when everyone was complaining about Mike DeBord and Lloyd Carr in 2007. It didn't work out.

The grass is always greener .....

[hack]

Nobody said that. If you want to have the kind of high-quality discussion here you so often say you do, quit it with that strawman nonsense.

[iam416]

[whodean]

Say ... Maybe this team is going to be alright?

The schedule is murderer's row though.

[drok]

Is this team a playoff team? Probably not. Are they as terrible as a lot of the fanbase complained last week. No. It's way too early, but we will definitely know after the Wisky-MSU-PSU stretch, and hopefully not sooner.

[Detroit Dan]

I think it's too early to rate Frost above Harbaugh. I watched part of the Nebraska game and wasn't particularly impressed one way or the other. Nebraska did lose the game, in which they were favored, and their QB got hurt, so it certainly wasn't a success on the surface. On the other hand, BOTH Michigan's QB's looked good rolling out and slinging the ball, while occasionally keeping it for first down runs.

[Jeff Buchanan]

I guess I'll be out here on the island of supporting JH's offense all alone again. So, let's get a few things straight.

Frankly, the evidence does not support that what most CFB fans think is a pro-style offense is the best or even a good alternative to the various forms of spready offenses available to be installed at the college game level.

I'll ask an important question that pertains to the current discussion. What is a pro-style offense?

It's pretty obvious that on the web, among CFB fans, this term, along with spread offenses, gets thrown around a lot. I'd say 80% of folks talking about this stuff don't know what they are talking about despite copious resources to learn about it. I'd also risk saying that a good number of young people who do know what they are talking about when it comes to this particular discussion about pro-style and spread offenses have either coached football, recently played it or played some version of EA Sports, Madden Football. Therefore, they know what modern NFL and CFB teams are running and it ain't your grandmother's pro-style offense - an outmoded term if there ever was one, and previously associated with any NFL level football team. It simply does not apply, in it's broadest application, to the NFL or the CFB game after, say, 1990.

So, let's be clear. NFL teams are running offensive sets that are comprised of three receivers, a running back, and a tight end that can line up next to a tackle or flexed out wide as a fourth receiver. This is 11 Personnel (one RB, one TE). The Patriots can claim some ownership of the 21 Personnel term (one RB and 2 TEs). Either of these formations play into an NFL, West Coast and concept-based passing attack that is the most prevalent and reliable way for attacking modern NFL defenses.....the kind you can't run very well against. So, these days, when you're referring to the pros or the NFL, the correct term for the offense the pros run is 11 or 21 personnel offense.

It's really hard to nail down one kind of offense that you can say CFB teams run like you can in the NFL but I can say this: The blue bloods, like Bama and USC for example, who can recruit what's needed to run 11 or 21 personnel packages run them to some degree based on recruiting and developing the OL that's required for them and what kind of QB they can recruit. That's also true of TEs. There are not a lot of HS programs that use, let alone develop, TEs. So, the pickings there are slim. NB Harbaugh's fixation on recruiting TEs and I'll get to that and why it's important in understanding what kind of O Harbaugh is really running.

As well, there are more DeShaun Watsons types coming out of HS than there are Sam Darnolds so, you get more offenses at the college level that feature dual threat QBs with wheels that can be a true run threat than you get Harbaughffense.

So, is Harbaughffense your grandmother's pro-style offense? Not even close. It is more like an NFL designed 11 or 21 personnel offense. Harbaughffense also features a full back that can take the place of or is in addition to one or two TEs. That approach is entirely consistent with an offense that just runs through opponents, grinds them down and wins football games in late October and through November in Big Ten country.

Admittedly, I'm guilty of throwing around that pro-style term as it relates to M's offense. I call it a hybrid. I should be calling it an 11 or 21 personnel offense and I'll start doing that. The bottom line though for me is this: if you understand where JH is trying to take M's offense - big offensive line men, big TEs, FBs that can plow over opponents with a powerful run-centric offense. He also recruits and develops QBs capable of taking a 5 step drop from under center and making big PA plays off of that. He wants them to learn and run the RPO and, occasionally a read option play out of the gun. If you understand this, you'll stop asking why Michigan doesn't run more spread, get better dual threat QBs or any of the tired questions that revolve around misunderstood CFB and NFL offenses. Patterson is NOT a dual threat QB, BTW. He has escapability but is otherwise, as far as JH is concerned, a QB that he is grooming for an NFL career. I suspect that is why Patterson, as well as Dylan McCaffry and Joe Milton signed up to come to M and get tutored by Harbaugh himself. He's building a stable of the kind of QBs he wants to run Harbaughffense - much maligned as it inappropriately is.

Finally, it's clear to me where JH is taking Michigan's offense with his recruiting, with his QB selections, with his fixation on getting a lot of TEs, use of a FB and with the play calling you're seeing in 2018 with Patterson at QB. You can also see where he's taken hits in trying to get where he wants to go, OL and QB in particular. Some of those he has had control over, some of them he hasn't. Here's a quote from an article that I read a while back but located it in writing this post:

(and they found one in JT Daniels https://247sports.com/Player/JT-Daniels-86433

Read this if you want to have a high-quality discussion with me about Michigan's offense and how Jim Harbaugh is doing with it. That way we'll be using the same terms and probably understand each other better.

https://www.footballstudyhall.com/20...ichigan-spread

[hack]

Read this if you want to have a high-quality discussion with me about Michigan's offense and how Jim Harbaugh is doing with it.

Read THIS.

[iam416]

[hack]

Have you met Jeff? He needs to. NEEDS to.

[drok]

LOL