Michigan Football, Team 139, 2018 Season

[WingsFan]

Shea Patterson is out best QB since Chad Henne. Last thing we can afford is him getting hurt, Shea running for his life (see above) b/c of that extremely poor effort to pass block from Evans (that's just one example).

I would be fine with Tru Wilson playing behind Higdon. I also love football players with wrestling backgrounds like Wilson, no hes not going to break a long run and hes not the most talented guy, but hes the guy who sticks that blitzing LB to protect his QB. Not diving at his ankles smh

[Hannibal]

We'll see about Patterson but Henne was overrated. Shitty pocket presence and average accuracy.

[Detroit Dan]

You got me there, Wings fan. That was a bad miss by Evans.

I agree with Hanni on Henne.

One M QB I really liked was Todd Collins:

• Holds the record for the best career completion percentage (64.28%) in Michigan history; this is also the second best mark in Big Ten Conferencehistory.
• Ranks third in Michigan annals in passing efficiency (145.0) behind Elvis Grbac (148.1) and Jim Harbaugh (145.6). His mark is also fifth in conference history.
• Finished his career at Michigan second only to Grbac in pass attempts, completions, and yards. He now ranks fourth in those three categories having since been passed by John Navarre and Chad Henne.
• Passed for at least 200 yards in 14 games, the most of any player in Wolverines history to that point. Collins now ranks fourth in games with 200+ passing yards behind Navarre (28), Henne (26), and Tom Brady (15).

Seth at mgoblog is really impressed by Scott Frost's offense, putting him in agreement with Hannibal. So you can add that to the list of things I've been wrong about. That does add some interest to the game for me. Harbaugh v Frost as offensive minds.

[Jeff Buchanan]

......Seth at mgoblog is really impressed by Scott Frost's offense, putting him in agreement with Hannibal. So you can add that to the list of things I've been wrong about. That does add some interest to the game for me. Harbaugh v Frost as offensive minds.

Here's the thing. Harbaugh and Frost are so different in their approaches to football it is hard to compare them. JH is known for the capacity to design run plays, fashioning an offense around those that makes it difficult for opposing defenses to figure out blocking keys. I've seen glimpses of it at M but a dominant run game that sets up the big play off a PA consistently has yet to emerge in Harbugh's 3+ years here.

The reasons given for that are, obviously QBs, then the offensive linemen and RBs can't execute them because not enough practice time, experience level of offensive linemen, too complex for the college game and so forth. All of them legit, IMO. Mark Dantanio is famous for remarking after beating M that Harbaugh called run plays out of 40 different formations but that didn't fool anyone because out of those formations the run plays were the same. Moreover, it's pretty obvious that the recipe for disrupting M's run game and the offense in general is to slant, stunt and blitz on every play with the A-Gap blitz and speed rushes from the edge being particularly effective and not picked up very well.

Brian, in his UFR offense, noted that he had a hard time making any sense out of some of the blocks offensive linemen were making attributing them to mistakes rather than some blocking scheme to confuse the defense. The point is that while Harbaugh has the rep as a great offensive mind, he has yet to deliver on that rep at Michigan.

OTH Frost is associated with the modern Spread and Shred an upgraded version of what Rich Rodriguez is correctly attributed with designing and implementing at WVU. He's had success with it as an OC at Oregon and as HC at UCF. Big success. I can't say I've studied UCF's offense to the extent that I have Michigan's but superficially, the differences are huge. We've had discussions here comparing the virtues of these two types offenses. Clearly, spready offenses in varying forms predominate in CFB. Power offenses are outliers with USC, Stanford and M being the best examples and I suppose I should include The Nick's offense at Alabama.

One thing is for sure. The tendency to divide CFB offenses into two discreet categories, spread and pro-style, misses the obvious and significant hybridization of both toward some sort of middle ground where CFB offenses incorporate elements of both. I don't think Nebraska under Frost is about that kind of thing at all. He is spread and shred all the way. Whereas Alabama and Clemson in the SEC (maybe others I'm not familiar with there) and osu, PSU, Indiana and M in the Big are. There is a power component to all of these BT offenses and they're all hybrids running offenses very similar to that of the pros. Frost isn't headed in that direction from what I can tell.

As you might expect, I'd love to see M's defense bury Nebraska's offense this weekend, putting the hurt on Frost's attempt at introducing a heavily QB dependent offense if simply to prove a point that a pure spread and shred offense, given the vulnerability of QBs running that, isn't going to do well in the Big Ten. I could just as easily be shown that what RR couldn't make work at M will work at Nebraska with Frost designing it.

[Hannibal]

I liked Todd Collins a lot too. The one weapon that he did not have in his repertoire was the soft touch pass. If he had that he probably would have thrown for about another 10 TDs. But very accurate, good arm and excellent deep ball.

[Jeff Buchanan]

This is interesting ........ its from a Q&A that Michael Spaith and Devin Gardner did at the Tap House (a local Ann Arbor joint) last night:



The question asked about repeatedly running into stacked boxes is prescient. It pretty much confirms what Seth offered when I asked him about this in his latest Neck Sharpie posts on Power Running.

The other thing I found revealing was Devin's comment about M running to the edge, putting this on film and then not making any adjustments to compensate for that. This is a thing most of us have complained about here with the Thomas jet sweeps for example.

[hack]

Interesting about the sweeps with no adjustments.

[Jeff Buchanan]

In the Fancy Stats (S&P+) rankings. M moved from 10th to 6th overall (Defense now #2, behind Auburn and offense now at 24). Neb fell 24 spots to land at #77. Northwestern ranks 66th overall (24 D, 96 O, 113 ST).

As I learned last year in picking winners, this is CFB or this is why you play the game sorts of things come up...... big time. Regardless, the last time I saw the predictive model that gives a win percentage in the remaining schedule and after MSU lost, then Wisconsin lost, M was favored in every game except osu. I think the win v. Neb is going to close the gap on osu a bit.

M is approaching or in the case of offense, exceeding the final 2016 S&P+ rankings:

Team/Record/Win Diff./S&P %/S&P Margin/Overl Rank/S&P O/O Rank/ S&P D/ \D Rank/ST %/ST Rank

Michigan

10-3

10.7 (0.7)

98.9%

26.8

3

33.8

41

7.7

2

0.7

39

Just numbers but objectively encouraging.

Fucking ND.

[iam416]

[Jeff Buchanan]

Buzz Kill

[Hannibal]

There was some validity to the "Utah" one.

[Mackenzie]

Just saw another replay of the play that put the 49ers' Jimmy Garoppolo out for the season. So similar to the play that McCaffrey put his head down on in the Nebraska game. Hate to see any of our QB's or players go out on a play that really does not have a lot of meaning--or even some that perhaps do. It great to see McCaffrey with so much desire and moxie but, going forward, I hope he picks and chooses his spots to "hold 'em rather than fold 'em" a bit better. Hope Harbaugh had a talk with him about that.

[WingsFan]

McCaffrey also got hit on the side of his helmet when he did that, yep just step out of bounds.

[froot loops]

That's always a problem with the Notre Dame game for U of M or MSU. It's always at the beginning, its a tough game and by the end of the year ND has regressed.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Bill Connelly's Five Factors, S&P+ Fancy Stats are starting to have some meaning after 5 regular season games. Copied from Mgoboard

Last week Michigan was #5 overall, 4th in defense, 24th in offense and 42nd in special teams.

This week Michigan is #7 overall, 4th in defense, 27th in offense and 9th in special teams.

Overall S&P had a relatively favorable view of our offensive performance since we remained fairly stagnant despite only scoring 20 points. This probably has to do with the fact that we gained almost 400 yards on over 4 YPC rushing and 8 YPA passing against the S&P+ #31 defense in Northwestern.

A quick look at the numbers for 2017 tells you that the D is 6 spots better and the O is 58 spots better - that's a huge statistical improvement on offense based on the 5 factors - and ST is 49 spots better, also a pretty big jump. If all you want to do is look at numbers, what they can tell us is that the Patterson and Warriner factors are probably real going forward. The run game and probably by extension the whole offensive system is probably better than many of us, including me, think it is. However, that excludes the fact that I hate sitting on pins and needles during most Harbaugh coached games that are close. I preferred Nebraska.

2018:

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

2019:

https://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/ncaa2017

Keep in mind, Connely's stats are forward looking and predictive, not a resume. If you want to see Resume, S&P+ that includes SOS, you can view it here through week 4. (just skim through the explanation of this and scroll down to the rankings)

https://www.sbnation.com/college-foo...kings-2018-sos