Michigan Football, Team 140, 2019 Season

[hack]

I'm still not convinced Mattison was a great position coach. DL play has slipped every year since Hoke left and Mattison took the position-coach job. Can't-miss/fast learner/hardest worker Rashan Gary came and went. But clearly quite a few players have tweeted about this, so, fine. Maybe Harbaugh-era Michigan needs a little something in order to transcend Xs and Os and make these rivalry games close, as they were in the Hoke era.

[WingsFan]

Gary was hurt all year. Chase was hurt going into osu game. If you watch the IU game we were not getting presser on the qb (I guess talent didn't watch that game). Then the bowl game half the defense was out by halftime, so im not mad about that. Really bad luck and some stubbornness from Brown (osu) game.

Another wise the program is on solid footing most all would agree. Glaring issues are winning the big games and until he wins a big game (besides Wisconsin/PSU) Harbaugh hasn't won one yet! If we lose to ND I will be pissed off. Recruiting is going well and everyone would agree that overall he is doing well. However we all know he has taken about 5 or more reach players a recruiting cycle and that those players for the most part aren't making it 4 years here. The other issue is there always seems to be a glaring hole in depth at position groups. I don't mean glaring lack of talent I mean, barely enough numbers that you are hoping to make it through a season without injuries.

[hack]

Those certainly were last year's excuses. Hoke had the same kind of injury/assistant screwups/etc. excuses and still played OSU tough.

I do agree the program is on solid footing, in general, overall. I don't know what the ceiling is, but it's probably lower than I'd thought a few years ago.

[WM Wolverine]

Injuries killed us in the bowl game, I rewatched it and the breakdowns by the subs were glaring with a second watching. Others were playing injured too.

[Hannibal]

Harbaugh's teams are soft and his scheme is garbage. It's why they choke in literally every big game and it's why they are Ohio State's prison bitch.

Get your excuses ready for 0-5 against OSU. As long as Ryan Day is a better coach than Brady Hoke, then the Buckeyes have nothing to worry about.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Read Brian's Practice Bits at mgo if you haven't already. It's a balanced look at the 2019 offense.

Noted: practice drills out of 21 personnel formations. Power isn't going away.

Drills suggest no huddle with play calls coming in after QB claps. Had a Rich Rodriquez feel to them.

The interior OL seems ill-suited for OZ plays. This is key for setting up RPOs and counters to them.

Quick throw QB drills, yes. Tempo, no ..... not yet but might see clues this weekend's open practice which wont be televised and is not a "game."

Pray that Cris Evans gets through his hearing successfully and Charbonnet's rehab gets him back to 100% by fall practice.

BTW, I agree with the persistent poor depth issues during JH's tenure. The "reach" recruits that he brings in contribute to that. JH isn't recruiting at a high enough level to win when the starters go down. osu and Alabama and some others are plug and play machines. IMO, any scheme changes we think are going to get M into the elite league of CFB teams aren't going to overcome the lack of dude depth. Injuries to starters happen I think it's pretty obvious knowing what we know now about the 2, 2018 season ending losses that quality depth, the lack there of, was a factor.

[Jeff Buchanan]

PS ........ from Alicante Spain. South coast sunny and in the 70s. Beautiful.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Just re-watched BTN 2Go video of the Spring Game. I've also read mgoboard's comments on it. Couple of things:

While tempo is clearly faster, it's not that much faster. This isn't your clap and everybody stands up and looks to the sideline thing - or if it is an attempt at it, it didn't look that well done. Still, M is going to get upwards of 65 plays/game at the pace it appears they will be running. Better.

The camera coverage sucked if one was looking to see how the receivers are lining up and trying to judge if these were 2X or 1X personnel formations. All the shots before the snap were tight shots. I could count who was in the frame and assume 3 or 4 receiver sets but where they actually lined up was impossible to determine. I saw more 2X than 1X personnel formations and I'm not even sure there were any true 1X, spread type formations.

In contrast, there were lots of jumbo sets run with the standard 4 OL and then either 2 or 3 TEs a FB and a Tailback. Plays were pure power out of gap blocking schemes. These sets almost always resulted in a no-gain or very little gain stop for the D who had 7 or 8 in the box when M's O lined up in these predictable jumbo sets. That's because defenses know what is coming. If this is what Gattis thinks were things that M did well last season, they didn't and they aren't going to be any more productive this season as far as I could tell from this practice. Wasted plays, IMO.

The D was kindof playing touch you're down football. There wasn't a lot of hitting going on. Fine with me. The O is still running plays and the D has to respond. Depth - at least the kind that is not a major talent drop off by position - is going to be an issue in 2019; there are already a lot of players not playing spring ball so, the guys don't need to be inflicting injuries on their own players most of whom are going to be on the 2 deep at least.

Frankly, I don't think Patterson looked that good compared to McCaffrey (see exception below). McCaffrey ran better PAs, and ROs. Patterson also threw a very bad long ball into single coverage with the defender having established inside coverage (Hawkins). Patterson laid the ball inside instead of outside shoulder; that throw resulted in an INT. Does DPJ or Nico Collins make that catch over Hawkins instead of giving it up to him? Probably. Still it was a bad throw against man coverage that had inside leverage with the ball thrown to the inside shoulder.

There was not a lot of RPO stuff as far as I could tell. Maybe some of the short throws were RPOs. Hard to tell. There was a good deal of option ball that involved your typical toss to a trailing tailback.Those plays seemed just OK most of them being executed when McCaffrey was in. Either that or the D is good enough to sniff these out and play good assignment ball. I'll go with the later as option ball may work against the very aggressive defenses M might face having not seen M's O run this play 50 times like M's D has seen it.

There's no telling from these kinds of practices if Gattis is going to be an imaginative, in game play caller. We won't know that until M actually plays a game this fall and only after several games.

There was a noticeable dearth of slow developing long ball plays. There WERE long balls ..... most of them routinely over thrown by all the QBs. But the ball came out of the QBs hands faster than with Pep's plays and the OL provided a great pocket whihc all the QBs were able to step up into. Patterson looked very good doing this, he just threw the ball poorly. McCaffrey had a better touch and accuracy on deep balls. Milton threw a nice out pattern to Eric All for 35 yards.

There was an increase in the number of crossing routes to slots and backs. That is definitely the Gattis effect on the O. Black was particularly and notably present on these. He lined up a bunch in the slot. Passing plays were noticeably executed faster with the ball coming out quickly. If Patterson had an edge, it was in this department - very accurate and that sort of stuff is in his wheelhouse.

Both Moody and Nordin kicked FGs. Some observers think Moody has the edge. I didn't see anything suggesting that in my film review.

It was hard to tell what is really going on with the offense. It's faster but, IMO, a lot of shit that was bad last year is going to remain. Very early and limited ability to say that actually but, like I've said, I'm cautiously pessimistic about Gattis and the offense hype. So, maybe a bit of a negative bias here. The many jumbo/TE/FB dominant, 2X personnel sets was disturbing as my sense is that this is the default ground game. I didn't see Patterson run but one QB keeper and I don't think this was off a read but rather a planned QB run. Mcaffrey and Milton actually looked like they were making option reads. Milton had one really nice run when he correctly read the DE crashing inside. If M makes a habit of handing off to the tailback all the time, like it usually did last season, defenses are not going to honor the threat of a QB run off a RO play. If Patterson starts, as I think he will, Gattis has to let him make those reads and make the defense pay when they crash the DE.

[THE_WIZARD_]

Did HARBAUGH!!!!! win?

[AlabamAlum]

Shaddup

[THE_WIZARD_]

xoxoxo

[Jeff Buchanan]

Brian did his take on the spring game and it was a lot better than mine. Encouraging actually.

He was able to see a couple of things, I assume from the stands, I couldn't from the stupidly tight camera shots the BTN featured on its broadcast. They were:

Multiple, effective counters to M's power game, IZ. These involved primarily the QB and it was McCaffrey that was running them as RPOs. Brian offered these plays invited, ney required, man coverage and you can see the defense jump from zone to man right before the snap. This is a QB read. He is either going to hit the open receiver on a short drag route or he's going to keep the ball and run an arc-zone keeper. Brian offered that it looked like Dylan was just supposed to keep it and run despite the play looking like he might have the option to pass with the D having to honor that possibility.

Patterson did have the run/pass option on these plays and he was very effective hitting the crossing receivers dead on in the middle of the field setting up a bunch of YAC. Black had one of these plays and so did Ronnie Bell. Both went for TDs although the Bell TD came after Patterson was "sacked" (touched) on an A gap blitz. I'm thinking Patterson wasn't supposed to run at all so, while the play offered that option and the D had to honor the QB or tailback run game option, Patterson was passing no matter what in this practice.

Threatening both field boundaries in the passing and running game - something notably absent in Pep's offense. There were some 4 receiver sets on these plays according to Brian. You can't see them on any video I've viewed. Brian points out that, in this regard, M's offense looks a lot like Scott Frost's UCF offense before it got really good (in his second year as HC, 2016). He called it split zone - Admittedly, I don't know what that means. Apparently this was a feature of UCF's offense where you put 4 receivers out there (3 wides and a slot), threaten the long ball, get the defense into zone with the LBs dropping and then run an OZ with your tailback (or pass the ball to an uncovered reciever if there is one). There's a video of UCF burning M's D for a long TD run, when they came to AA in 2016, using this scheme. M's version is with Sainristil lining up in the backfield and gaining 30+ yards on an OZ run. Nice!

M practiced in drills and also ran a good deal of OZ blocking plays that looked OK. Brian notes M was terrible at this last season and further notes that C, Ruiz, is key to making these plays work. If he can get the reach block required for a successful play, it will become one and it doesn't matter what the rest of the OL does. To that end Ruiz did well (caveat, M's DL). Effective OZ blocks, that spring a (speed in space) back are key counters to IZ power. While power, IZ plays are Alabama's bread and butter, the counter to it - the OZ plays - are key to Bama's ability to bludgeon opponents.

I think it is pretty clear that IZ power is M's default play too. In 2018, there was no counter. Hence, M would settle for a lot of FGAs inside teh RZ. In 2019, it appears there will be. If true, that should improve M's woeful 2018 RZ efficiency stat. Brian pointed out that Ben VanSumeran was the running back on several of these IZ plays that I though were run out of jumbo formations (they were) and produced little gain - they actually did produce that necessary 4-6 yards for a third and shot situation; what looked like 2-3 due to the touch nature of the scrimmage would have actually been twice that during actual contact football. M would then comeback with a tempoed OZ, RPO play.

In the comments section of Brian's piece at mgo, a poster enthusiastically offered that M's offense will be the most talented it has put on the field since 2003. From there ensued a back and forth about how well M has recruited in comparison to the elites, namely osu. Not well and the chart demonstrates this. Dudes.

M has to get through osu to win a championship and if you're just looking at talent between osu and M, that is a tough row to hoe. This may be the year though if the Gattis effect actually produces a top 25, or better, offense and Patterson, has a big year while not getting injured running the ball in a heavy RPO/RO offense. That's because ufm is gone, ryan day is debuting and QB justin fields is, according to spring practice reports, not going to steal the show. Needs work according to observers. Good.

[THE_WIZARD_]

shaddup

[iam416]

I offer this from a poster on a premium OSU board. Take it for what it's worth, obviously. But the most important point in it is very good news for you dimfucks if true (HARBAUGH!!! is being forced to hand over the keys to Gattis):

[Jeff Buchanan]

Thanks for posting that.

Let's go back to November and December, 2018. Casual observers may not have been tuned into this but those that were were very much attuned to some sort of discord. It started with rumors of players being pissed off.The best substantiated rumor involved Karon Higdon having a fuck hollering contest with Harbaugh. The assumption was that Higdon was pissed off about being repeatedly asked to run into stacked boxes without the slightest attempt to threaten in ways that would prevent defenses from ganging up on him.

Look it up. M's RZ efficiency was horrible and I don't think anyone with a clue about football thought the kind of offense Harbaugh was trying to run - and make no mistake, he was running it and Pep was his yes man, was flawed. The run game had holes despite the unicorns trying to rationalize the stupid shit that went on with it. Brian at mgo, gave up. Not coach and even he knew M's offense under Harbaugh was as bad as it was under Al Borges. Lacks variability was how I think he put it one time and not going to over-power opponents with man ball in the modern CFB era.

So, yeah, the young guys on the coaching staff and the players knew the story: the offense sucked. The defense got tired of putting their bodies out there to watch the offense make a couple of nice plays then stall. Once the osu game came around and the turtle pace of mind-blowingly stupid offensive play calling reared it's ugly head in the third quarter, the team quit. The 63 point blow-out was the end result. A team that hasn't quit doesn't let that happen. It happened. Mattison leaving for osu along with Al Washington was a sign of trouble. There is no denying that.

On to UF. I was at the game v. Mississippi after RR knew he was gone. I was at the Peach. The Peach Bowl had the same vibe. Nobody cared and the results on the field proved it. Coaches were on their way out and it's possible nobody knew for sure Harbaugh would return.

The pieces fit. I don't care if Harbaugh initiated the change involving Gattis or Wade Manual did, or it was a colective decision involving JH and others. It's done. It needed to be done. I favor a "discussion" took place and Harbaugh and anyone else in that discussion made a decision. If Harbaugh did get dimed and perceives he's been emasculated by this, and I can see that, it could spell the end of his tenure at M when a departure under favorable terms and a return to the NFL is possible (see ufm's departure from osu). If the team falters this season, fails to beat MSU, ND and osu, bring home a championship and contend for a CFP berth, I think Harbaguh is gone - not a firing. He's not on a hot seat and M higher-ups will be more than willing to keep him in place. It will be made out to be something like moving on to new opportunities.

Mark it down.