Michigan 38, Wisconsin 13.

[froot loops]

Meyer and Saban have more players, it makes their job calling a game much easier.

[AlabamAlum]

All our players are in a MASH unit...

suicide is painless...

[froot loops]

Please

[AlabamAlum]

Look, believe me now and hear me later.

Saban is holding open tryouts on the Quad for several positions. Got an asthmatic Jew who weighs a buck-35 named Leonard Goldstein who looks like he is gonna get a shot at Mike LB if he isn't beaten out by Brittany McNally, a wily Kappa Delta majoring in Interior Design.

These are dire times.

[hack]

Meyer and Saban have more players, it makes their job calling a game much easier.

Agreed. It's easy to look like a coaching genius when you have the players. It is hard to imagine we get back to that point where we consider Harbaugh on par with those two, and the risk-management stuff I am talking about is really kind of a four-huge-decisions-per-year sorta thing. It's a noticeable gap between those two and the rest, but not always a big gap.

[froot loops]

I'm not saying Harbaugh is great at it, but I don't feel that Meyer or Saban are great at it either. Bad coaching management decisions are much more obvious at the NFL level where the margin of error is much smaller and bad coaching management decisions happen all the time. Dantonio is pretty good at it but he has more howlers than most any coach.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Howlers .... more than any coach? Maybe those are off-set by the excellent timing he seems to have in calling certain plays that have been designed just for the current opponent at the right time. Maybe it's luck. Don't think so. He has excellent ball sense for as long as I've been watching him.

But the relevant point may be that coaches make bad risk management decisions all the time so, I still have a problem singling out Harbaugh for this and as it applies to any losses he racked up because of them and as something that needs to improve. Every coach could stand to eliminate those but randomness prohibits it.

[Hannibal]

I can't blame Harbaugh for not turtling in some games. I think that we have seen coaches lose more games by turtling than by being overly aggressive.

Meyer is insanely good in close games. His record in one score affairs is freakish. A little bit of that might be luck but I think that having an elite running game that can kill clock and pick up crucial scores is the main factor there. Harbaugh lost against teams like Iowa, MSU, and OSU because he couldn't hang onto leads when he needed crucial first downs.

[froot loops]

He just had one at PSU, that fake field goal could have cost them, thankfully it didn't. The stuff that fails doesn't get remembered like the ones that succeed. Because he's had so many succeed the fans don't really grumble about some of the questionable stuff. It goes with the territory, conversely if your coach doesn't have a Little Giants or Mousetrap on their resume any decision that looks suspect gets amplified.

[iam416]

UFM is 5-0 in OT games at OSU and 5-0 in 1-pt games at OSU (all separate games). And a lot of that does inures to a great "crunch time" running game that can get the critical yards.

They do not have that this year. They really, really don't.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Just finished reading the UFR Defense. Cliff notes:

M's DTs got handled a bit by Wisky's OL (no surprise) until Brown switched to an over front. This however put Hudson in a role he's not good at - read and react. He's better as a gap filling missile.

Having Gary out has an impact but one that is mitigated by having Solomon and Paye playing at an increasingly better level each game they play in.

Initially, I thought it was M's pressure, as I posted elsewhere, that was getting to Hornibrook. While it was some of that, Brown deployed the back end in a way that he wasn't prepared for. "Mr. Tight Windows became Mr. Tight Bum." Slants weren't there for him. Hornibrook had a few where he thread the needle but that wasn't until late. What's interesting to me is that neutralizing Hornibrook may have been the key to dominating the game like M did. Taylor was secondary and Chryst contributed by not having him in there more in the 2nd half (6 carries!!). Injury?

State? MSU's OL is not Wisconsin's OL ..... at all. That is going to see Sparty's run game neutralized ..... probably. If MSU had some speed, something I haven't seen, jets could work. M has speed but well executed jets where the blocking works out is something M had a problem with v. Wisconsin. Can M neutralize Lewerke with some Don Brown diabolical back end scheme? I think Lewerke will create enough problems for himself.

[froot loops]

Nailor's health is a key for any jet sweeps on the State front, that dude can flat out fly.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Brain was unkind to Shea Patterson in his UFR Offense. He has his critics but it's hard to argue with his cut-ups that demonstrate how poorly the passing game went. Sure, M probably didn't need it but there will come a time when it will and Brian is worried about that. If it is as bad as it looked, from both a scheme and play calling standpoint, exacerbated by Patterson failing to see open dudes and holding the ball too long in the process, M is not going to continue to be the Juggernaut it looked like v. Wisconsin.

A lot of the huge running success M enjoyed in this game, was a result of Wisconsin injuries to it's DEs and a set of quality LBs that were coached to be super-aggressive given the weakness at DE as well as the back end (esp. the CBs). The aggressive LB play did get exploited by M's running game and the play calling there was really good in Brian's opinion.

One comment I found interesting involved run game scheme variance and the well coordinated calling of run plays. He wonders if, after ND, Warriner didn't take a new level of control from Pep of the run game - both in the pre-game planning of it and in-game play calling. Things seemed to go exceedingly well and this is beyond the poor play of Wisonsin's run D. In times past under Harbaugh, and apparently with Pep, or Drevno or Frey or whomever, making these calls, M's run game suffered. That it is a key part of Harbaughffense and it's efficiency is dependent on it working, it's nice to see it actually working. Anyway, I thought this to be a great observation and hope that whatever has happened at the coaching level continues.

One other observation from Brain worth noting: I've said this and so have a bunch of others posting here that M needs to punish what opponents do to defend M's run game, i.e., they load the box and bring Ss up. Don't care what kind of coverage an opponent is deploying but when you bring defenders up to stop the run, you leave areas of the field uncovered. Most of the time its the short middle zone or the short flats out to 10y. While Brian was able to see some of the routes Rs were running that were designed to create these open zones (see the wide-open Eubanks catch), Patterson rarely targeted Rs in them. That has too change. It may be by design. It would be consistent for Harbaugh to demonstrate 80% of Patterson's throws for example, are not to these open zones but rather to the longer routes and then to suddenly reverse that percentage. That is exactly what he did with the zone reads. So, maybe there is hope for the passing game.

[iam416]

That UFR is consistent with my sense from watching them play ND then nFw and the Wisconsin. Shea doesn't throw in time enough. A lot of his big plays are broken scrambles. Which is nice, but I don't think you can hang your hat on it. Fortunately, Sparty is really bad at pass defense so they should be able to run underneath stuff all day.

[Hannibal]

Shea has poor pocket presence. I think that it is something that you generally can't coach.