Essentials

Overview

Colorado's not good. They haven't been to a bowl game since 2007 and last year's 4-9 campaign was actually an improvement over 2-10 the year before. Like Michigan, they played Hawaii in their 2015 season opener. Unlike Michigan, they lost. The Buffaloes have been lost in the wilderness, head-butting each other, for going on 20 years now.

In this context a rousing blowout of in-state rival Colorado State does mean something. They squeezed by a 7-6 CSU team last year and spent big chunks of the last decade actually losing to them, so roaring out to a 30-point first-half lead and coasting the rest of the way is a notable improvement no matter how off this year's Rams are. How much improvement is an open question, but they could be a 6-6, 7-5 type outfit headed to Shreveport or wherever.

Vegas expects them to be Michigan's stiffest test to date, with a line more than two touchdowns closer than the UCF game. This shouldn't be close, but it should be a football game.

Run Offense vs Colorado

Tupou is large, man

Questions abound for Michigan after a performance against UCF which was disappointing even considering the Citronauts' box-stacking. A poor performance from the rotating left guard and indifferent ones from a couple others left Michigan fans fretting after a 37-point win, as they are wont to do.

In Colorado they meet last year's #96 rushing D per S&P+, but one that should improve after losing just one contributor in their front seven and getting back monster nose tackle Josh Tupou. Tupou, who pushes 330 and is the space-eater a 3-4 defense needs, returns after missing 2015 because of an off-field incident. He was honorable mention All Pac-12 in 2014 and should provide a stiffer test than anyone Michigan's interior line has yet faced.

Colorado is also entering their second year under DC Jim Leavitt, who you may remember seeming like a reasonably good idea* during Michigan's DC search. Leavitt put together quality defenses as USF's head coach a decade ago and CU should be past the inevitable hiccups that come with a coordinator change what with just about everyone returning.

Upside may be limited; most of the returners are juniors moving into their senior year and there isn't a touted gentleman amongst them, either by recruiting rankings or NFL prospects. This is a situation where improvement comes from the next generation pushing through.

Early returns are not good. CSU had 186 yards on 33 carries, 5.6 a pop, and many plays featured cavernous holes. Ace:

Colorado's safeties had to get involved quite a bit, and they were good enough to prevent chunk gains from turning into home runs, but they were involved more than they should've been. That's because Colorado's front seven had a tough time getting off blocks unless a CSU blocker comically fell over.

They dominated Idaho State for what little that's worth.

If there's a danger in the CU front seven it's at linebacker. Junior Derek McCartney (yes that McCartney) had 11.5 TFLs a year ago and five sacks as a sophomore; Ace and PFF liked WOLB Jimmie Gilbert's ability to get to the QB. He doesn't seem to do much else—he had six sacks last year and one other TFL plus just 25 tackles overall—but should be a test for Michigan's tackles.

The DEs and ILBs are weak points Michigan will go after. We'll see if Colorado plays as aggressively as UCF or decides they've got something to lose if they let Wilton Speight get going. Leavitt does have a reputation as a guy who wants to get after you.

*[On the field. Maybe not so much off it.]

KEY MATCHUP:  MICHIGAN'S LEFT GUARD versus WHATEVER THAT WAS LAST WEEK. Huge sinkhole was a major factor in the lack of production. Must get that fixed for Saturday and beyond.

[Hit THE JUMP for a LEGITIMATE ALL-AMERICAN… and SOME OTHER GUYS]

[Upchurch/MGoBlog]

Welcome to the first 2016 edition of Moving the Stati-Sticks, our weekly deep-dive into the advanced stats that have become increasingly popular in college football and the weekly in-season post that you most likely forgot existed. I’m hoping to change that this season. Instead of a bunch of tables or numbers in text, I’ll be creating graphs (and they’re mostly intelligible!) for items of note. This won’t be an exhaustive look at every single line item in the advanced stat profiles that are out there, but rather items of interest spun out of last week’s game, followed by a quick look ahead to Saturday’s opponent.

We’ll start with a thousand-foot view of Michigan, and the view’s pretty nice, actually. ESPN’s FPI predicts Michigan’s record will be 10.8-1.7 with an 11.9% chance they win out and a 39.9% chance they win the conference. Bill Connelly’s advanced stats profile at Football Study Hall, from which most of the rest of this post is derived, gives Michigan a 9% chance to win out and 35.2% chance to finish 11-1 or better. Brian Fremeau’s FEI doesn’t have opponent-adjusted stats available yet, but Michigan’s first in the country in unadjusted game efficiency. They’ve also played teams that FEI ranks as either below average (ranked 71-90) or awful (ranked lower than 116), but, uh, wooo we’re number one. More detailed stats are obscured by a lot of garbage time, but on a macro level available projections are very favorable to Michigan.

[After THE JUMP: the run game, quantified]

Things discussed:

• The most depressing 37-point win ever
• Offensive line play: left guard is a problem, new center causing issues in blitz assignments? That’s probably on TEs and OTs.
• Speight is hitting chests, Chessons.
• Winovich and Gary: overpursuit puppies.
• The 87-yarder was mostly Dymonte Thomas misjudging literally a track athlete.
• Colorado: much better than we though pre-season. Like maybe a 6-7 team.
• Jim Harbaugh did not eat boogers. But he may have bit his thumb at Scott Frost.

You can catch the entire episode on Michigan Insider's podcast stream on Audioboom.

Segment 2 is here. Segment 3 is here.

THE USUAL LINKS

• Helpful iTunes subscribe link
• General podcast feed link
• Direct download link
• What's with the theme music?

SPONSOR NOTES: So we fixed the link, as someone informed us that the page had been password protected for seemingly no reason. That is no longer the case. You can go over to Matt's site and be lovingly led through the process of financing a home purchase now. Alacrity, that's the ticket.

In addition to being a gentleman replete with Michigan tickets, Matt is also a good man to know if you need a mortgage. It's striking that we actually get non-astroturfed comments about positive experiences with Matt not infrequently.

If you're buying a home or refinancing, he's the right guy to call.

FORMATION NOTES: Okay. I added a column. "D Pack" is short for defensive package and lists the personnel. 4-2-5 is Michigan's standard with two ILBs and Peppers on the field. Peppers counts as part of the 5 because he can play CB and S, which he did in this game. 3-2-6 lifts a DL for (currently) a safety. There was one 4-0-7 with Peppers at LB and six other DBs on the field.

I'm still sifting through what I want to do with the other columns. I'm probably going to split Front into Front and Coverage, but given how complicated coverages are these days and my lack of ability to see downfield sometimes that'll be noisy data.

Anyway. Most of the stuff wasn't crazy. I called this 4-3 SAM slide, as it's a 4-3 even with Peppers on the end of the line:

This was a more standard 4-3.

PERSONNEL NOTES: Almost zero rotation in this game. Starting defense when the whole way, with all 68 snaps given to the starting  DBs. Kinnel and Watson got 10 and 7 snaps in various dime packages; Lavert Hill got in for that 4-0-7 play.

Peppers, Gedeon, and McCray all missed one snap. The DL rotated six guys close to evenly. By snap counts: Winovich(55), Glasgow(47), Godin(40), Wormley(36), Gary(33), Hurst(33). Marshall got 13 and was the only other DL to play.

[After THE JUMP: calm with bursts of WTF]

Previously: Colorado Offense

dangerman ahoy

Colorado's defense has allowed only 14 points through two games, though opponent caveats apply: Colorado State was 60th in offense S&P+ last year and Idaho State is a I-AA team. Still, the Buffs look to have a truly impressive secondary, and Jim Leavitt's aggressive 3-4 scheme wreaked havoc in their dominant win over CSU. I'm using film from that game and grades from Pro Football Focus to take a deep dive on the Colorado defense.

Personnel: Seth's diagram [click to embiggen]:

We somehow managed to piece this together despite Colorado's best efforts to obscure their real depth chart. A couple of personnel notes: Laguda plays all the snaps despite being listed as a backup on the (last week's) depth chart; when CU goes nickel or dime, he shifts into the slot and Ryan Moeller enters as the free safety.

Corner Chidobe Awuzie, who's going to be discussed extensively in a moment, lines up all over the place. He'll play corner against two receivers, often shifts inside to the slot against three- and four-wide sets, and will drop back into a rover/safety role on occasion.

Base Set? This is another true 3-4 team, and when they go to nickel they usually lift the nose tackle. In dime, they'll pull one of the OLBs—usually McCartney, who's less of a pass-rush threat than Gilbert.

[Hit THE JUMP for the rest of the breakdown.]

[Ed-Seth: We have the great pleasure of employing the services and serving utensils of the original barbecuing bloggerati Joe Pichey of GoBlueBBQ to write recipes for our most delicious sponsor, Stubb's BBQ sauce. It is all over America so you have no excuse for not trying it yet. Consider this your patriotic duty.]

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Since Stubbs wouldn’t approve my purchase of a small buffalo for this week’s recipe, I went with the next best thing. I went to my favorite local meat market and picked up this little 3.5 lb Prime Tomahawk Ribeye.

From the minute I walked in the door, Smokey Bones (The official GOBLUEBBQ pup) was by my side. This thing is massive and packs some huge flavor. I love a good ribeye and really liked how it turned out after dry brining. This was the first time dry brining for me and it will be the way to go moving forward. This will work on steaks, chicken, turkey and pork. The thicker the meat, the longer you brine it for. You can’t get much easier than that.

Ingredients

• Steak (1 - 2 inches thick works best)
• Kosher Salt (1/2 teaspoon per lb)
• Stubbs Steak Rub

[Things get salty after THE JUMP]