Michigan @ PSU, Saturday, 10/19, 7:30pm, ABC/ESPN 3 Video

[iam416]

Trust the process, Hannibal. Rome wasn't built in a day. The transaction costs are melting away. Better days ahead!

[Hannibal]

That's a good point. It only took five years to get a signature moral victory against Penn State. An actual win is only 10 short years away!

[lineygoblue]

Jeff, I have no problem conceding that Michigan played better than I thought, and what most people thought. I'd like to be at least a tad encouraged by those statistics, but I'm not buying in. While the offense finally had some decent stats against a decent team, the BIG problem reared its ugly head again, the same problem that was exposed by 62-39. Giving up big plays. For me to buy in again, I've got to see both the offense playing every game like they did last night, and the defense playing every game like they did in 2nd half Iowa. Last night they got about half of it right with the offense. The defense put the offense in a hole that they were unprepared to dig out of. They got no help on special teams.

So here we are today, with our little southern myna bird reminding us, that nothing has changed. We have a team that is to be laughed at, and mocked. They instill no respect or concern in any future opponent. And why should they? Because they got within a TD at Penn State?

Please.

I stated earlier that nothing happened in the game to indicate to me that this will be anything better than a 7-5 team.

Notre Dame is up next. Whomever decided it was a good idea to revive that series is about to get a reality check.

[iam416]

Last night was familiar in a 2018 Ohio State defense sense. Not that bad, but familiar. Last year, Ohio State would dominate roughly 80% of the plays. But, when they failed they really failed. So, e.g., they would give up 150 yards on 2 carries to McFarland and then go 3 straight 3 and out series.

Mettellus was, IMO, terrible last night. Or rather, he had a couple bad mistakes and then was asked to do something he just can't do.

[WingsFan]

[iam416]

I also think Penn State is largely what I think Penn State is. They both played Iowa roughly the same even accounting for venue. It's not surprising that when they played they would be fairly even. The one thing Penn State does very well is use their best offensive player.

I still think Wisconsin is significantly better than Penn State.

[WM Wolverine]

Not sure on Wisconsin, M played their worst and they played their best. Penn State didn't overly impress me, they hit on a handful of big plays on Michigan's DB's. Brown doesn't have three, four DB's starting who are going to get drafted this season...

Gattis I think is figuring Shea out more than Shea is figuring things out. Shea looked like he did last season the rare times he was allowed to throw. Tons more three, four receivers helped too.

[Jeff Buchanan]

talent, I was never really out. A few rough moments after the disgraceful thrashing by Wisconsin and expectations just crushed. But then I simply adjusted why I was watching Michigan football. I enjoy the technical aspects of it and there is a ton of good post game analysis out there and "study halls" if you want to take the time to get beyond Michigan, or Patterson or Gattis or Brown, name your name, sucks.

These are kids. The coaches and referees are humans subject to mistakes. We loose site of this in our visceral, very personal passion for the game. I'm trying to divorce myself from that and then try to understand, given what we have available to us, why a particular play was a success or not, why a particular play call was a good one at the time it was called or not, why Harbaugh called for a FG, TO or any number of things he might do as HC during a game. Even the entirely too complex rules of the game, the sensibility of the application of some of them by referees (illegal receiver down field, for example), often eludes me, but I try to understand them.

Doing this has improved my enjoyment of each game because I am less emotionally attached to it and more able to see, even live, why a receiver was wide open, why a Screen or an Arc Zone Read got blown up, why an RPO or QB keeper off the ZR was the right call. It's a lot more satisfying than getting all cranky and throwing bricks at the TV.

So, the season goes on. It's not over. There are about 8 weeks of good CFB left, even the brand that is played by M, and then a months worth of bowl games. On the whole, I care a lot less about whether Michigan loses the rest of its games or wins them. Not all the way there quite yet but I'm getting there. It's like staying clean and sober after years of addiction.

Next game up is v. ND. I'll spend some time reading scouting reports, looking at the data and then write something here about that - something else I enjoy doing - then I'll make a prediction. But when I watch the game, I'm much less emotionally invested in each series and the final outcome. I can see a missed call by the refs but, so what. The last thing I'm going to do is get angry about it and blame the outcome of a failed possession or the loss of a game on it. Move on to the defense, watch it and try to understand the formation, scheme and what Brown intends to do with it. Next possession, next play, rinse and repeat.

[Jeff Buchanan]

The PSU UFR Defense is up at mgo. I plowed through it so you won't have to. The news is depressing:

This isn't as much about the risks/rewards of Don Brown's C-1, man, pressure scheme as it is about the the DL being susceptible to being doubled, creating gaps that the LBs are't filling, pressure not getting there and Ss not being athletic or fast enough to reliably execute it. Reasonable questions can be asked of Brown, "why are you running this scheme when there is the appearance that the players you put on the field in specific down and distance circumstances either can't get pressure, don't see gaps at the LOS developing or aren't athletic or fast enough to be left on an island against the league's top receivers (e.g., Hamler and Olave)."

I'll answer that for Brown: Brown does have a mitigation scheme. How he uses his LBs and DEs to mitigate the pass-rush limitations of the interior DL has been fairly effective. On the back end his mitigation scheme is called "Trap Coverage." You have to read Seth's Neck Sharpies piece to understand it and the switches that need to take place that make it effective .... or not when the calls are missed. These are 19-23 year old kids, not NFL level Ss and LBs. They're still learning. Still, it's frustrating and disheartening.

M's defense got tempoed, a lot. It lead to 3 TDs and the most important one - the one that got PSU to 28 points in the 4th when M was making a charge. You'll remember it when Metellus and Hawkins were looking and pointing at each other while PSU snapped the ball. This is what happened (sorry, can't embed - click on the link):

https://youtu.be/sY2ioJkLl-E

That is more disturbing to me than anything else Brian points out in his UFR because it signals a certain level of systemic disorganization on the sidelines that seems to be a trend of Harbaugh's teams going back, well, since he arrived.

The bottom line is: against bad teams, there is margin for the talent differentials between M players and the opposition's; there is a margin for error getting RPS'ed a few times; there is a margin for these kinds of side-line coaching errors. M can recover. Against good teams, there is no margin for error and a couple of big plays, no matter what the underlying cause might be, especially when the offense may not be able to respond, that one big play can be, and usually is, the difference maker.

https://mgoblog.com/content/upon-further-review-2019-defense-vs-penn-state#read-more

[WM Wolverine]

"aren't athletic or fast enough to be left on an island against the league's top receivers"

Safeties shouldn't regularly be used in man coverage against speedy receiver, unless you're an All B1G talent. This is exactly the risk/reward I was talking about and has been exploited by M's opponents successfully when facing Don Brown. His defenses against M's tougher opponents are able to regularly exploit this mismatch for big plays, PSU did it 3-or-4 times and they changed the outcome of the game.