Michigan Football, the 2020 Abbreviated COVID Season

[THE_WIZARD_]

Callahan had a lot of NFL experience and a Super Bowl appearance as well...good luck with that...

[WingsFan]

throat slash

[THE_WIZARD_]

callahan slash.png

[THE_WIZARD_]

Didn't Callahan beat Michigan?

runs

[lineygoblue]

Shaddup and fear the revenge of Frank Solich ....

[AlabamAlum]

Which personnel system you run is tied to the talent you have. We have 3 WRs that will be 1st round picks. So, an 11 makes sense as our base. You have 2 stud TEs, a 12 makes sense.

[AlabamAlum]

I think this posted on the wrong thread. Fuck it.

[iam416]

Who let in the amateur?

[THE_WIZARD_]

Me

[Hannibal]

The good news is -- my Luke Fickelll to Michigan campaign is still alive!

[lineygoblue]

I don't think Fickell would come to Michigan anyway, Hanni.

I wouldn't mind having Cincy's DC though.

[iam416]

[Jeff Buchanan]

I'm going to make a couple of bold assertions here that are purely speculative so, I'll put that out there right now.

The Gattis hire COULD have been a good thing for M's offense. Linesman mentions that Harbaugh should hire an OC that can run his style of offense and juice it up a bit to compete with the new stuff today's DCs are throwing out there. I think that's what we've probably gotten and we're not happy about it having expectations for something wildly different from Gattis.

If I recall early pressers with Gattis shortly after his hire, he was pretty clear he was not going to throw out what M does well. I read that to mean 22 personnel formations, TEs out the ying-yang and a power run game as M's fundamental thing. Then he says, he's going to integrate his speed-in-space stuff. Thinking back, that's pretty much what we have, a bit light on the speed-in-space stuff and a janky feeling to the execution of the current form of the offense.

So, assertion (1) is Harbaugh is getting what he paid for in Josh Gattis. If his post game presser comments where he said he thinks everything is fine are beleivable then, yes, yes he is getting what he paid for.

But, that's not what we expected. I'm not getting what I'm paying for. That explains a lot of the frustration I'm feeling but that frustration is actually reflected in the numbers that measure Ms offense and they don't lie. It's a shit combo of old and new after the Gattis addition. I'ts not something that looks new and different and has, in fact, regressed in terms of numbers that can objectively measure such things.

On Shea Patterson: I advanced this argument yesterday evening and it is the idea that Harbaugh, QBs coach Ben McDaniels, OC Josh Gatttis or all three of them have failed to advance Patterson's QB skills and in fact have for some unknown reason, caused him to regress in the two seasons he's been playing at Michigan. My take is that none of these guys have the coaching skill set to correctly teach a QB to run the ZR/RPO offense. I also think there is a tug of war going on between Harbaugh and Gattis. It isn't a hate each other thing, it's a chemistry between the two that has produced this janky offense we've seen out there in the first 5 games.

There's good evidence that Patterson isn't a make good things happen, elite kind of QB like Tua, Justin or Trevor. I can speculate, based on raw numbers, though that these three guys have turned Shea into a very mediocre if not bad QB. He is clearly doing things that the other QBs I just mentioned aren't. He plays tentatively, he is either making bad reads (missing open receivers) or he has been purposefully limited in making them (the 1/2 the field thing, read your keys there).

I noted that play design looked funny v. Iowa, e.g., 4 receivers that run 10-15 yard verts and sit on them. Against a zone D that's bad if the CBs who play soft but don't bite on a deep route and the Ss and LBs don't get encouraged to vacate their zones by motion or conflict routes, nobody is going to be open. How is that Patterson's fault? Just a thought.

My second assertion then, # (2), is that the three principal coaches who should be making Shea Patterson good are not doing that and instead, through some combination of bad ju-ju between them that we can't know, have produced Tate Forcier or JOK 2.0. M under Harbaugh seems to have a record of 4 starting QBs regressing with the 5th exception being Jake Rudock. Just saying. Patterson has certainly flamed out but I'm not sure that is all of his doing.

[Hannibal]

This morning on the mgopodcast, they are calling for McCaffrey.

[Jeff Buchanan]

After the fact, Monday morning thoughts ..... and no, talent, I'm not going to rationalize THAT game as some sort of great win.

I've seen some very good posts along with a long list of hot-take shit posts scattered about the pages of Michigan football forums:

The run game sucks ..... actually, as it turns out v. Iowa, sack-adjusted rushing yards were obtained at a 4.8 ypa clip. The problem was Gattis not calling enough run plays. When I first saw this take from an mgoboard poster (MT) who is pretty insightful, I doubted it. I went to ESPN and reviewed the play-by-play and sure enough (1) the 4.8 ypa was correct and a number of promising series were ended with Gattis going to a pass play that Patterson couldn't complete. (2) Standard down pass-plays resulted in putting a series behind schedule more often than it created 2nd/3rd and short. MT's assertion was that Gattis should have called way more runs against an Iowa D that consistently presented M's O with 5 defenders v 6 (11 personnel fronts) or 7 (22 personnel fronts) blockers. MT's assertion appears at face to be correct.

On the lack of explosive plays: mentioned by many TV color and analyst types, including ufm, that the lack of them contributes to M's low scoring offense that won't be able to compete with opponent offenses that, despite M's decent D, are loaded with them (PSU, ND and osu in particular). My take is that as it stands now, Illinois is probably the only team that M can be assured of a > 70% chance of win, Harbaugh's shitty road performances considered. Given the Gattis offense in the terrible state that it is in and not likely to improve, when I assert that M could easily have only one more win and go 5-7, MIGHT get a gift v. MSU, @ Maryland or @ IU to get to 6-6, I get a lot of guffaws. I know there are posters here who will both nod their heads in agreement with the 5-7 take and others that will laugh at it.

Many takes supporting the premise that Shea's problems are not just of his making. Contributing factors appear to be coaching, play design, route running. Shea compounds all of these with what most observers think is a bad case of the yips. Those are coming from self created pressure that he does not deal with well in live games. This could account for comments like, he looks good in practice," but wilts under the pressure of the live game. A poster who alleges he has both QB and personal experience with this notes that Patterson's inaccuracy may be coming from a case of nerves and in his case self created expectations that he keeps failing to meet in live action. His performance becomes a vicious circle of self imposed high expectations, poor play design and/or coaching, play calls that put the QB in a disadvantageous place, all of these combining to produce the QB performance we are seeing.

To be clear, none of this changes another prominent view that SP is not going to be a contributor in improving the offense and, in fact, is the major problem. Therefor, it's time to pull Shea and put DM out there. That is counter-balanced by a host of posts that say, "that's not happening," or we can't be sure that DM (or Milton) are >>> Patterson, pulling Patterson will kill him and the team chemistry of the offense, and so forth. My take is that if you're going to pull SP, Illinois is the time to do it. I also don't think that is going to happen.