Michigan Football, the 2020 Abbreviated COVID Season

[froot loops]

I'm not sure that Gattis is fully in charge when you see the Zach-Cat in action. Or when you see Ben Mason coming in to run the ball.

I do get a huge kick out of how thrilled Dan Dierdorf gets when Mason comes in.

[maxreturn]

Great interview of Urban Meyer. Fast forward to about the 1:45 mark where he talks about Zone vs. Man to Man. Maybe someone should forward this to Harbaugh and Brown!

[Jeff Buchanan]

Great interview of Urban Meyer. Fast forward to about the 1:45 mark where he talks about Zone vs. Man to Man. Maybe someone should forward this to Harbaugh and Brown!

Try taking a look at Brian's UFR Defense Iowa. It just popped up so, I'll excuse your remark that the ufm discussion of osu's zone defense should be forwarded to Harbaugh. Don Brown is waaaay ahead of you.

Anyway, if you're looking for good news about M football the Defense UFR for Iowa is chock full of it.

Your link has urban pointing out that zone defense is hard but it is the "new thing" versus how good offenses have got at beating aggressive man - Brown's MO since coming to M. So, we knew Brown needed to adapt after getting ass-raped, B2B by osu and UF. He brought that adaptation of his D out v. Iowa. It was probably there v. Wisconsin too but it was poorly executed ...... and there were some execution dorfs v. Iowa too. Hill not correctly reading the 3rd and 22 completion, for example, and there are others - mostly drag and slant routes ..... again ...... but trending much better in this category. After that 3rd and 22 completion, Brown broke out some nifty stuff that abandoned a deep S or two but Stanley could never capitalize because he was constantly under pressure. That worked v. Iowa. Not sure at this point that it will work to the extent it worked v. Iowa v. ND, MSU, PSU or osu.

The scheme v. Iowa was correct for the most part. It was execution errors - and not a lot of them - that bit Brown. Again, ???? that it will work v. M's opponents just mentioned that they have to beat.

I'd add that I think Iowa's offense with Stanley playing really well in it prior to visiting AA was a perfect match-up for M killing it in the way Brown ran his zone concepts...... and it absolutely demolished the Ferentz offense. PSU's offense isn't at all like Iowa - not even close - so, not sure we should expect the sack-a-palooza v. PSU's QB running PSU's offense. It's much more spready than Ferentz/Iowa will ever be.

https://mgoblog.com/content/upon-fur...iowa#read-more

[Jeff Buchanan]

......... one more thing: I'll add that I don't think M can win out with the offense they have. In fact, I think there is a less than zero chance of that.

But, it's probably a fact that the coaches from top to bottom know if M is going to win anything at all, the defense has to play lights out in every contest and hope the offense can do something other than look stupid. I think that reality has affected team chemistry in a good way and has probably influenced the way the Iowa game was planned for and called and will affect all M's game planning and execution going forward. IOW, we will continue to yell at the TV when M has the ball and it won't matter one bit.

[drok]

This still seems too optimistic to me. It's a good start defensively. But if we play like that against the remaining schedule, I see only 1 or 2 wins at most.

[maxreturn]

Try taking a look at Brian's UFR Defense Iowa. It just popped up so, I'll excuse your remark that the ufm discussion of osu's zone defense should be forwarded to Harbaugh. Don Brown is waaaay ahead of you.

Anyway, if you're looking for good news about M football the Defense UFR for Iowa is chock full of it.

Your link has urban pointing out that zone defense is hard but it is the "new thing" versus how good offenses have got at beating aggressive man - Brown's MO since coming to M. So, we knew Brown needed to adapt after getting ass-raped, B2B by osu and UF. He brought that adaptation of his D out v. Iowa. It was probably there v. Wisconsin too but it was poorly executed ...... and there were some execution dorfs v. Iowa too. Hill not correctly reading the 3rd and 22 completion, for example, and there are others - mostly drag and slant routes ..... again ...... but trending much better in this category. After that 3rd and 22 completion, Brown broke out some nifty stuff that abandoned a deep S or two but Stanley could never capitalize because he was constantly under pressure. That worked v. Iowa. Not sure at this point that it will work to the extent it worked v. Iowa v. ND, MSU, PSU or osu.

The scheme v. Iowa was correct for the most part. It was execution errors - and not a lot of them - that bit Brown. Again, ???? that it will work v. M's opponents just mentioned that they have to beat.

I'd add that I think Iowa's offense with Stanley playing really well in it prior to visiting AA was a perfect match-up for M killing it in the way Brown ran his zone concepts...... and it absolutely demolished the Ferentz offense. PSU's offense isn't at all like Iowa - not even close - so, not sure we should expect the sack-a-palooza v. PSU's QB running PSU's offense. It's much more spready than Ferentz/Iowa will ever be.

https://mgoblog.com/content/upon-fur...iowa#read-more

Admittedly I didn't see much of the Iowa game and although I've been an avid fan since the late 60's, I'm far from being an expert analyst. Glad to hear that Brown seemingly has woken up.

[Hannibal]

I'm still not mad at Brown for 62-39. I trust the guy even though that was a disgrace. I put it on Harbaugh for having soft players and not having the team ready at all.

[iam416]

[Jeff Buchanan]

Mattison was Hoke's DC from the start of Hoke's first season when the team went 11-2 in 2011. After that M's D wasn't great under Mattison with M going 5-7 (3-5) in his last year as DC in 2014. Mattison stayed on when JH was hired as Don Brown's DL coach. An interesting move that over-time might have had an impact on his move to osu as day's DC, along with washington going with him. That's turned out well for osu I guess.

I just want it understood that osu got a worn out used car when it hired GM. Tune-up and restoration looks pretty good though.

Your point however that RR had hallaciously bad defenses while M's HC is a matter of well established fact.

[iam416]

M's 2013 defense was dicey, but the 2014 was adequate. I mean, they gave up 3 ppg more than 2018 M. The 2014 offense was awful. Hence, the problem hasn't really been the defensive side of the ball for M. Their offense has been the issue.

[froot loops]

It is always hard to tell who should get the credit or the blame when assessing assistant coaches.

[Jeff Buchanan]

M's 2013 defense was dicey, but the 2014 was adequate. I mean, they gave up 3 ppg more than 2018 M. The 2014 offense was awful. Hence, the problem hasn't really been the defensive side of the ball for M. Their offense has been the issue.

Well, of course. I am beyond trying to explain it. I thought Brian had an unusually lucid take in his article: Slow Motion Whiplash. https://mgoblog.com/content/slow-motion-whiplash

For right now, I'm going with that and resigned to M football's fortunes going forward because of it.

Incidentally, in case you've not seen this, a poster at mgo did an interesting analysis of M's offense with the goal being to determine how much of a spread offense Gattis was actually putting on the field. Bottom line, it's not very spready at all (I think I knew this before the article; it just cemented my view) and is pretty good at spready things when they are called and then work - which too often they don't. That creates a negative feed back loop producing a decreasing amount of spready things.

https://mgoblog.com/diaries/using-ufr-analyze-offensive-play-calling-and-outcomes

[WM Wolverine]

Two tight ends doesn't spread the field horizontally. Opposing defenses usually will have eight in the box and predictably stuff M's run game.

For Gattis' offense to work efficiently, he'll need a QB that can is a threat on the ground, and/or put a third receiver on the field at the expense of a tight end. Both are preferable but I think Gattis likes two tight ends.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Here's the thing. I watch the teams that I think have a good chance of making the CFBP and/or are on M's future schedule. But, I do this only casually. Over time, I've learned more shit about Michigan's play-book on both sides of the ball, their game planing approach and how the game is going to get called way before kick-off. I can make evaluations, as limited as they can be watching either live or on TV, on play-by-play basis and then pour over post game video and analysis That is not true of any other teams I watch.

So, and this is WAG, this leads to a degree of hypercriticality that's probably less than 50% accurate. What we do have as fans are these trend things that can be predictive but we should be careful about those predictions. CFB is notoriously unpredictable.

The performance of the 2019 Michigan football team has been pretty thoroughly discussed here and elsewhere. Trends are obvious to even casual observers. I am not among that group. I'm a bit fanatical and have the time to be that way. I'm resigned to a view that we just saw M's last win in the 2019/20 season v. Illinois. The only thing that gets M football above 5 wins is the other reality we're dealing with here" It's CFB...... that means 19-22 year-olds who play football at a fairly high level don't always perform in a consistent manner with the trends we think we have identified. BT referees are not uniformly good and can make bad, game changing calls - human nature actually and finally, a big factor in determining who wins the contest, randomness.

So, more M football wins are possible I suppose but I'm not counting on them. Next subject.

[Jeff Buchanan]

I'll say it: I don't care how Harbaugh does this season. Don't fire him and if I have M's culture nailed, Warde Manuel won't fire him.

Let's go back and take a look at the underlying cause of M football not becoming the power we'd like it to be. CFB is way different in 2019 than it even wise 3-5 years ago. It's changed dramatically in that time frame and by a sea change since Yost, Crisler and Schembechler walked the sidelines. It's hard to attain recruiting success and hard to topple teams that get there. I think money and recruiting are the two most dominant factors in where the game of CFB is today.

I also think that constantly changing coaches can be a crap shoot. Outcomes of coaching changes program wide seem to be determined by a huge number of variables. Some can be controlled, some can't. If you aren't sure you can control critical variables that apply to your organization, you shouldn't make changes. I think Michigan football is in that place and history tells us that coaching changes have not been well managed here. They may have been elsewhere but those places aren't the University of Michigan.

The deciding factor against another coaching change is the comparison between how osu has done things compared to how M has done things. There has been remarkable program stability from Woody to cooper and then from cooper to tressel to ufm to day. Changes in football philosophy - game strategy if you will - has been carefully implemented and it appears to me, anyway, that osu's athletic department leadership has curtailed the impact of outside forces to the extent that it has not affected the program negatively. That is absolutely not been the case at M.

So, no coaching changes for me. Stay the course and work to attain stability within the program and pay attention to building off the football philosophy that is now in place. My view is that it is fundamentally sound. Keep working the plan. None of the foregoing apples if JH decides to walk and he very well might but, my gut tells me he's a guy who is committed to finishing work that he has started and he's not finished.