THE GAME 17-MICHIGAN vs osu:Last Call for Saving the Season or Another Round of Pain?

[THE_WIZARD_]

HARBAUGH!!!!!!!!!!!!

[hack]

http://www.freep.com/story/sports/college/university-michigan/wolverines/2017/11/20/michigan-wolverines-football-news-conference-jim-harbaugh/879811001/

Not helpful at all -- Peters is in concussion protocol, but the story suggests he could be back at practice by Wednesday. I think it's written just as a hypothetical?

Speight wasn't cleared for contact last week, don't know about this week.

If it's O'Korn I'm shutting the TV off and going outside.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Well, I've got tickets (now probably worth less than face) so, I'll be there in fcst shitty wx. I've left one game early and that was RR's last season during which the team traveled to HV. M's D got pounded. This was the disaster O of Al Borges run by DG. I couldn't bear watching. Awful. I'm worried this game is going to feel similar.

[Jeff Buchanan]

In case you haven't been perusing M news today here's a recap:

From JH's noon presser: Lavert Hill has cleared the concussion protocol and will have full contact practice this week and return to his CB position for the osu game. Brandon Peters seems fine and is in the concussion protocol. He'll be reevaluated on Wednesday (I'd say he's 50/50 and based on how Hill was handled, he won't play) . Nothing was said about Higdon, Onwenu or Isaac. (based on what was said last week and what we saw in the Wisconsin game, Onwenu will play, Higdon will make a go but he's clearly not 100%, Isaac won't play). Harbaugh would not comment on Speight.
I think he's 60/40 and may be a better bet to play than Peters but not JOK,
JMO

I'm copying and pasting this from Brian's post game piece he does every Monday:

Michigan's pass protection has often been absurd this year, what with gentlemen going entirely unblocked on any sort of stunt, or not-stunt. This reached its apex on third and six in the first half when Garrett Dooley, an outside linebacker who entered the game with a team-leading 6.5 sacks, lined up clearly intending to rush and ran directly at Brandon Peters for a thunder-sack. Juwann Bushell-Beatty was the nearest OL; he was blocking another dude. Cesar Ruiz, a gap further inside, also had a rusher. Chris Evans went in a route immediately. Patrick Kugler ended up blocking nobody.

There were two other instances of horrendous pass protection that saw Michigan fail to handle a stunt. On one Karan Higdon chopped a guy ably; Kugler left his man to also block that guy. That resulted in a chop-block call. Meanwhile, Kugler's guy ran up the middle and sacked Peters. The Peters injury was another stunt on which Kugler was the most obvious culprit.

Kugler might be a major issue. That's certainly the nicest way to interpret Michigan's pass protection issues since he's gone next year, and anything that's the nicest way to think about a problem should be interrogated thoroughly. But I don't remember things like this happening last year, when Mason Cole was at center. Kugler hasn't been physically overmatched?he generally grades out okay to well in UFR?so the most obvious reason he hasn't been able to get on the field until year five is an inability hack it mentally. I wonder if Michigan would stick with Cole at center and whatever may come at tackle if they had a do-over.

Probably not if the second best tackle on the roster is then Nolan Ulizio.

I think Brian has got the right take and provides what the underlying causes might be. I'm glad he is saying it and not me. I hate pointing fingers.

This is a really good piece from a poster on mgoboards (Ron Utah) who has cred among readers including me:

Lots of folks out there interpreted the "Persistent Underachievement" diaries as a call to fire and replace all or a portion of our offensive staff. That is not the case. You can criticize a person or group and still believe they are good at their jobs.

After watching this weekend's game live, I thought the playcalling was terrible. After a rewatch, I actually believe the playcalling was pretty good. But the scheme was not.

What I mean by that is that, given the set of plays we came prepared to run, I like that the play calling was more pass-oriented and aggressive. The deep shot to DPJ felt like a long-delayed relief, like that bathroom trip after too many hours in the car. McKeon dropped a big-gainer from JOK. Gentry had a long completion dislodged by a big hit. DPJ had a TD erroneously called back (though he could have done better with his feet there).

That said, I noticed some fundamental flaws with our scheme. Before I list them, please know that I understand and sympathize with the predicament we face--very young team with insanely young receiving options, young OL, freshman (or 3rd string) QB, etc. Even knowing these limitations, and perhaps even because of these limitations, I do not believe our scheme is giving us the best chance to win.

• The early wrinkle was having McKeon on the outside. Presumably the coaches saw match-ups they liked with him against the UW CBs. It had some success, but it was clunky and did not help us score.
• The reverse to DPJ was a great idea. Why not more of that? One jet sweep to McDoom was the only other play I noticed that really moved the ball aggressively horizontally.
  
• Their CBs were frequently giving healthy cushions. Where are the WR screens?
• The empty wildcat was silly.
  
• UW's hyper-aggressive LBs (like ours) shoot gaps early in a play. They attack quickly and aggressively, often arriving in the gaps before the pulling players can get there. We did not run away from flow nearly often enough in this game, nor did we use horizontal attacking plays to force their LBs to think twice about blizting gaps.
  
• UW's TD on the end around is a prime example of exactly what we need more of: a play that punishes the defense for using discipline and reading their keys. Both guards move towards the RB's lane while the center and weakside tackle move out into space to wall off the pursuit. It is a beautifully-designed play, and they have scored TDs off of it at least two weeks in a row.

In summary, there is not enough deception in our offense. Whether we are running or passing, we fail to use many of the staples of successful college offenses to confuse our opponents. Even 3-star athletes are fast enough and strong enough to disable an offense that's predictable. We don't use RPOs, QB option (we run these but the QB never keeps--a keeper was open for a big gain this week), and we rarely use jet motion, WR screens, throwback screens, or run away from the line action/pull.

I don't want to fire Harbaugh. To borrow from Craig Ross, I want Michigan to stop playing like Red Coats and start playing like Revolutionaries.

I agree with just about everything above. The poster provides context for all his critiques. Some other decent opinions that have been posted around the web involve the following: Think about Brian's pointed explanation about OL play and with this in the back-ground consider that given available practice time and the capacity of players to absorb what is likely a conceptually difficult offensive scheme we are seeing those limitations play out in what Ron Utah critiques.

This isn't an excuse, it's reality. Harbaugh is going to run a pro-style/power offense. Players in it will have to learn it's intricacies (as the apply to run and pass blocking) to make the O perform efficiently. If you are unwilling to wait for this to play out (irrespective of any offensive staff coaching changes that may or may not happen), I feel bad for you. The reason for that is that the only way this circumstance changes is if the Deciders believe M cannot move forward and compete for championships with the style of offense Harbaugh wants to and will play. Under this circumstance which has about a .0001% chance of happening, we're talking about another redo - the 4th in the last 11 years. IMO, this is no way to build a successful football program. The way you do that is to stick to a system the coaches are comfortable with, tweek it here and there (like Ron Utah suggests) and keep moving forward.

[froot loops]

http://www.freep.com/story/sports/co...ugh/879811001/

Not helpful at all -- Peters is in concussion protocol, but the story suggests he could be back at practice by Wednesday. I think it's written just as a hypothetical?

Speight wasn't cleared for contact last week, don't know about this week.

If it's O'Korn I'm shutting the TV off and going outside.

It seems a little optimistic, he would have to be symptom free today.

[froot loops]

I'd have to see the play again but from my POV Chris Evans is to blame for that thunder sack. He is the last line of protection, he has to make sure nobody is coming in before he goes out on a route. When people ask why some stud running back isn't playing and the team says they don't trust that stud in pass protection, this is what they mean, it can literally put a QB out of the game. Kugler not blocking anyone doesn't mean anything. On any pass play it can be common for a lineman to have nothing to do. Speight got sent to the hospital because the LG felt he had to double the tackle in pass protection instead of standing there alone where he should have been watching for any delayed blitzers.

A lot of their breakdowns that I have seen involve basic OL breakdown things. You shouldn't need for 4 years of line development to have this.

[Jeff Buchanan]

............A lot of their breakdowns that I have seen involve basic OL breakdown things. You shouldn't need for 4 years of line development to have this.

People looking at the Thunder Sack (that was the first hit Peters took) was on Evans. Brian at mgoblog will go over this in detail and probably develop a clearer picture of why as there may be some assignment confusion/line call stuff that affected this.

Also, don't get me wrong. Informed observers are not saying it takes 4y or more to develop decent OL play. The two factors that Brian suggests are potentially at the bottom of this mess are (1) Line calls, (2) Coaching. Obviously there is some relationship here but for my POV I know exactly what the differences are.

[drok]

My prediction: the game is close for exactly just long enough of a time for me to actually contemplate a potential win and only at that point will some devastating sequence of events occur to eliminate any possibility of a win, destroying another bit of my soul again.

Go Blue.

[iam416]

Here's to hoping!

[drok]

Damn you.

[iam416]

John U on The Game (from 2013):

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6C3L8QM8aFU"]Author John U. Bacon on Michigan-OSU Rivalry - YouTube[/ame]

[THE_WIZARD_]

OSU-Michigan is almost as big as Nebraska-Oklahoma used to be...

[*JD*]

What's Peters' injury?

[AlabamAlum]

Concussion protocol.

[Tom W]

My prediction: the game is close for exactly just long enough of a time for me to actually contemplate a potential win and only at that point will some devastating sequence of events occur to eliminate any possibility of a win, destroying another bit of my soul again.

Go Blue.

Nostradamus predicted that exact same thing against Wisconsin.