Michigan 31, University of Washington 10 - Post Game Discussion

[lineygoblue]

M 41; W 10

No.

... and ...

I think M will be decent this year. 9-3 or something close. They’ll dispatch Washington with relative ease. 14 points or so.

No.

M won't dispatch a good team like U Dub by 31 points. I think the Huskies were maybe looking past the Griz and got caught. And from what I understand, the Griz are actually a pretty decent team.

The only Michigan team that will win 9 games this year will be the Men's Basketball team, and maybe the softball team. Its sure not going to be the Football team.

I still think 6-6. We haven't gotten to the fun part of the schedule yet.

[Obi-Jon]

Opening line is M by 5.

[AlabamAlum]

The M line is up to -7 at my book. Ohio State is up to -14.5.

[WM Wolverine]

Not sure what to make of Washington, last season's data point of only 4 games doesn't tell us much. Regarded to have a good offensive line and running game but that didn't show up vs Montana. Not sure why many had them as the #1 team in the Pac 12 North when Oregon is in that division.

[AlabamAlum]

Playing greatly reduced schedules the previous year hurts a team. So many competition PT hours eliminated. And neither Oregon or Washington looked great.

[WM Wolverine]

Oregon might be in a rebuild, they are still very young.

I just see the Pac 12 North is nearly devoid of talent other than Oregon. Wouldn't surprise me if Washington could win that awful division while Oregon rebuilds or Stanford. Similar to how someone has to win the ACC Coastal.

[Jeff Buchanan]

So many competition PT hours eliminated. And neither Oregon or Washington looked great.

Probably a very big part of the rather unimpressive offensive showings across CFB You expect that between normal seasons, This problem is magnified in the COVID years. I also don't think it goes away under the current circumstances as fast as coaching staffs would like it to and that they normally could rightfully expect.

Yes, WMU but there's been a pretty good tear down of what M did on both offense and defense already up. The UFRs not yet. Maybe later today. But from what I've seen so far, a tactic I have not seen mentioned to great extent is Harbaugh's penchant to run offenses in 11 and 12 personnel emphasizing the TEs for beef in the run game then putting some window dressing in as WRs/Slots - using these guys sparingly. Nicely for big plays fortunately.

I just read an article naming Zinter, Honigford and Trent Jones all lining up as TEs!. That's a 13 personnel formation. 330 rush yards. There's some proof of decent execution by the OL. Reproducible v. Washington? Well, Harbaugh used this approach at Stanford and during a good portion of his HC role at SF. We'll be seeing this - a lot.

On defense, there is this: Outside of using Dax Hill a bit differently, MacDonald had some new options on the menu. Michigan made the most of a deep collection of quality defensive linemen and outside LBs rotating all of them a lot, McDonald played two different nickel defenses throughout the game. The main set-up started as a was 2-4-5 with Aidan Hutchinson playing as a field end/linebacker and David Ojabo across from him as the boundary end/linebacker. I didn't pick this up at all from the stands. I just saw a confusing array of fronts out of this 2-2-5 that must have left WMU's QB Eleby confused as to picking out who was going to get after him.

Now I know why it wasn't all good v. WMU who moved the ball easily on their first drive and most of the 1st quarter against the 2-2-5, slowed down markedly after that. In the 2nd quarter McDonald switched to a 3-3-4. I didn't pick this up at all. I read about it and it made sense to the craziness I thought I saw up front. From one of these articles (paraphrased) ...... "Before the adjustment, WMU quarterback Kaleb Eleby was 7-12 passing for 89 yards at 7.4 ypa. Afterwards? 13-25 for 102 yards at 4.1 ypa as Michigan ramped up the pressure, even getting a sack-strip by Aidan Hutchinson."

And this:Michigan has a fair amount of talent on the roster, but what should encourage Michigan fans from the opening blowout win over WMU was how multiple the staff was in getting their talent into favorable matchups.

I think this has been a big problem in the Harbaugh era - failure to optimize a players skill set by match-up and being agile enough in game to exploit an opponent's weaknesses - before a younger and perhaps more enthusiastic set of coaches who got the player's attention and could coach were signed on. If this sort of thing is repeatable and M beats Washington with a similar post game analysis of why that happened, we might have something here.

[Hannibal]

The M line is up to -7 at my book. Ohio State is up to -14.5.

Take the 7 points. Very very easy money.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Got through the UFR - Offense. Seth is doing this, not Brain. Both are football Xs and Os sound, IMO. I think Seth explains things better. Always liked his neck sharpies stuff. He's given that up to do UFRs. Taught me a bunch.

The biggest question floating around out there about M's offense is this: Why are you running a modern offense by eliminating the one play that makes it fancy ..... the QB read? I think there are rational reasons and they are listed below:

I don’t know man, but if Jim Harbaugh ever asks me what’s the #1 thing he needs to fix about his coaching I’m going to tell him to stop being afraid to get his QB hit. If this was 2015 we could say “Oh, it’s just WMU why risk it?” and if they didn’t do this sort of thing all the time it would even be fair. Michigan has their QB read guys who are being blocked. They have his back turned to guys they leave unblocked. They stopped their end-of-half MANBALL drive dead in its tracks. I agree with Brian (on the podcast): If Michigan was a read offense they would be using the tune-up game to practice their read offense.

Best guess—and this is just a guess—is that Greg Roman seems to get away with making his reads pre-snap instead of options, so Harbaugh thinks he can do the same. I don’t know what Gattis thinks or how involved he is in those decisions, but he coached under James Franklin for a long time, and Franklin makes this same miscalculation. You can say these guys all make way more than me, and that Shea Patterson got hurt on the first play of 2019 on a QB run, and McNamara probably isn’t near the athlete that Shea was, and the fact that the players were often able to overcome these disadvantages is also attributable to their coaching, and yeah I’ve grasped at all of those things too. I’m not smarter than these people and won’t pretend to be. I just grade the plays and try to understand why they worked or didn’t, and when I graded their gameplan against WMU the broken read option game was the one major thing keeping the score closer than the play deserved.

Also Michigan’s coaches told Sam Webb we’ll probably see more read option stuff from the backup QBs. Since they did that with Patterson, and did it with Milton, and now they’re doing it with McNamara, the most likely explanation is Michigan’s coaches have convinced themselves that it’s better to have their starters make fake reads than actual reads. I strongly disagree.

Some of the video is worth watching to pick up on why the interior OL graded so high, why M kept running to the interior and that leads right into why the RB grades approached the highest numbers since 2015 and a Toussant field day. Sure, WMU caveats apply - their LBs were not good and even though the WMU DC did good things to try to cover that up ...... 335 rushing yards.

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

[Cody_Russell]

Take the 7 points. Very very easy money.

Geez, thought I saw the line at 5.5 when it first came out on Sunday or Monday.

I would definitely take Washington +7.

[lineygoblue]

We're definitely not going to see the Washington vs Montana version of the Huskies.

The group we see on Saturday will be the real team. My concern is that we'll see the real Michigan team as well.

[Hannibal]

Got through the UFR - Offense. Seth is doing this, not Brain. Both are football Xs and Os sound, IMO. I think Seth explains things better. Always liked his neck sharpies stuff. He's given that up to do UFRs. Taught me a bunch.

The biggest question floating around out there about M's offense is this: Why are you running a modern offense by eliminating the one play that makes it fancy ..... the QB read? I think there are rational reasons and they are listed below:

I don’t know man, but if Jim Harbaugh ever asks me what’s the #1 thing he needs to fix about his coaching I’m going to tell him to stop being afraid to get his QB hit. If this was 2015 we could say “Oh, it’s just WMU why risk it?” and if they didn’t do this sort of thing all the time it would even be fair. Michigan has their QB read guys who are being blocked. They have his back turned to guys they leave unblocked. They stopped their end-of-half MANBALL drive dead in its tracks. I agree with Brian (on the podcast): If Michigan was a read offense they would be using the tune-up game to practice their read offense.

Best guess—and this is just a guess—is that Greg Roman seems to get away with making his reads pre-snap instead of options, so Harbaugh thinks he can do the same. I don’t know what Gattis thinks or how involved he is in those decisions, but he coached under James Franklin for a long time, and Franklin makes this same miscalculation. You can say these guys all make way more than me, and that Shea Patterson got hurt on the first play of 2019 on a QB run, and McNamara probably isn’t near the athlete that Shea was, and the fact that the players were often able to overcome these disadvantages is also attributable to their coaching, and yeah I’ve grasped at all of those things too. I’m not smarter than these people and won’t pretend to be. I just grade the plays and try to understand why they worked or didn’t, and when I graded their gameplan against WMU the broken read option game was the one major thing keeping the score closer than the play deserved.

Also Michigan’s coaches told Sam Webb we’ll probably see more read option stuff from the backup QBs. Since they did that with Patterson, and did it with Milton, and now they’re doing it with McNamara, the most likely explanation is Michigan’s coaches have convinced themselves that it’s better to have their starters make fake reads than actual reads. I strongly disagree.

Some of the video is worth watching to pick up on why the interior OL graded so high, why M kept running to the interior and that leads right into why the RB grades approached the highest numbers since 2015 and a Toussant field day. Sure, WMU caveats apply - their LBs were not good and even though the WMU DC did good things to try to cover that up ...... 335 rushing yards.

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

How many times since Shea Patterson came to Michigan have we been hoping that the reluctance of the Michigan coaching staff to run the QB has been something other than blithering incompetence?

[Jeff Buchanan]

How many times since Shea Patterson came to Michigan have we been hoping that the reluctance of the Michigan coaching staff to run the QB has been something other than blithering incompetence?

I won't entirely disagree with this. It's been frustrating during the Harbaugh regime that M can't rise above mediocre as a football team coached by Jim Harbaugh. A lot of that is due to QB play and question marks, at least on the offense, about game plans and play calling. Set up for an RO offense and not run it at all seems stupid.

I thought the UFR provided some background on what is probably behind Harbaugh's strategy and how that plays out in a Gattisbaugh offense. It is truly hard to rationalize that in that offense the threat of a QB run option isn't there.

Let's say Rodriguez stayed and after year four M was playing successful basketball on grass in the Big House........ Caveats apply because although RichRod is considered the father of the RO offense in CFB, what he would probably have turned out running at M, considering late November games, would be closer to what Ryan Day is running at OSU and something different from a Paul Cryst offense at Wisconsin. Bottom line an RR offense would have featured a lot of RPOs. The Gattisbaugh offense appears, at this point early in the season, to not incorporate any post snap reads.

For now, given what looks like very good OL play, and a QB(s) that can throw the deep ball for a big play or two, I can live with a Gattisbaugh offense designed to set that up. TBC, I'm not getting sucked in yet. Like most, I remain skeptical that we have something or even anything yet. I've always enjoyed Hannibal's tamping down on the optimism. He's been right to do it more often than wrong.

[Jeff Buchanan]

I made my way through mgo's FFFF piece on Washington this morning. Seth isn't doing this having moved to the UFR. Alex Drain is doing the piece. It's long and seems to reflect my wordy writing style😁.

My takes:

• Considering that Washington was expected to easily win the PAC-12 N behind an experienced OL, that it got trucked by a much smaller Montana DL took everyone by surprise. Why? Montana blitzed - rushed 5 or 6 - on almost every play and it seemed like the OL simply couldn't get it's line calls right consistently allowing free rushers to clog up the middle on run plays and pressure the QB. The OL looked confused on assignments. The author was unclear how much of this fell on the coaches and how much of it fell on the C, Luke Wattneberg (76). Regardless, it was the fundamental reason Montana was able to hold Washington to one TD.
• A secondary cause for Washington's loss was QB play. When Dylan Morris (12) did have time he was inaccurate throwing behind his receivers - a good one in TE, Cade Otten (86). Morris was missing 4 starting WRs but the author didn't think this would have made a difference as none of them are of the Olave type threat. His wobbliness got much worse as the game wore on and he forced throws into coverage (3 INTs). Question marks appear in local sports media about the likelihood of phenom, 5* Fr. Huard getting the start.
• Washington's OC, John Donovan has received a lot of criticism of his play calling since he arrived to coach the offense. This after being fired by James Franklin at PSU. Moorehead replaced him. The author thought the offense seemed extremely limited v. Montana, vanilla is the common characterization of this sort of thing. What's interesting here is that his O is almost identical to that of M's featuring 2 and 3 TEs in an NFL, pro-style offense. There was zero deep threat due to injuries to WRs. Giles Jackson got targeted a few times and either Morris was off target or Jackson flubbed a CA ball. TE Otton was the only pass threat. He was able to get open a lot ...... Morris would routinely miss him.
• We all know that QBs that struggle in games before M turn out to be Joe Montanna when they come to town. Dunno this time. Morris is going to get pulled for a Fr. if he has trouble early. That's going to change the dynamic on both sides of the ball. McDonald should put out a D that is going to be tough for Morris to deal with. If it's blitz heavy, Id' expect a similar offensive result that Montana got. As well, if the OL is as bad as it looked to be last Saturday, M may get the same result Montana got with 3 and 4 rushers. That Montana did what they did to Washington's run game with a much less talented and smaller DL bodes well for success in keeping Washington's offense in check. It's hard to determine if the line calls that looked to plague a more talented Washington OL from getting the job done can be corrected in a week. Probably not. Watch for M's starting D formation ..... 2-4-5 or 3-4-4??? and whether McDonald calls a bunch of blitzes that get home early.

https://mgoblog.com/content/fee-fi-f...2021#read-more

[Jeff Buchanan]

Speaking of Fancy Stats, I just re-found this from a link posted at mgoboard. Some complicated shit. FEI ......going to take me a while to refresh my addled brain:

After 1 week M is 10th by F+. F+ Ratings combine Brian Fremeau's FEI ratings with Bill Connelly's SP+ ratings in equal parts. Its a way too early ranking that suffers from a lack of data points.

https://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/ncaa/fplus/2021

I looked into some of the other stuff that is there and the numerical numbers assigned to M's predicted offensive and defensive efficiency seem about right. Offense ratings (OFEI) and defense ratings (DFEI) represent the per-possession scoring advantages for each team unit against an average opponent. M's at a OFEI of 0.63 and a DFEI of 0.36. Udub is .53 and .59 respectively.

https://www.footballoutsiders.com/st...i/overall/2021

The way to look at this is that the average team will have FEIs of 0.0. If M is above average in per drive scoring efficiency at 0.63 and Washington is at 0.53, you could conclude that M will score more points controlling for number of drives. OTH, Washington's DFEI (0.59) is higher than M's (0.36). I don't think there is a mathematical way to predict a score based on these data points but, as Alabamalum points out it provides a reference point.

I'd predict M won't score 47 points v. Washington but the offense appears good enough to score between 21-24 points. M's Defensive impact on Washington's O is harder for me to assess. Based on the crapfest Udub put up against an FBS program M should be fine. WMU's DFEI is -0.56 - hence the 47 points score v. WMU. WMU's OFEI of 0.63. suggests M's D played well and should play equally as well v.Udub ..... shit happens not withstanding.

Putting all those data points together, Washington is good enough to score 14-17 points against M's. D. I'll go with M 24, Huskies 17. ..... shit happens not withstanding.