greg robinson

right: Will Moeller/Daily

Nine months ago Michigan fans were suspicious of both of their West Virginia coaching heists. Today one is sitting next to Billy Packer and Jason Whitlock in a suit; the other is a season away from establishing himself for the long haul. Both undertook program-changing measures after a disappointing start, but only one successfully delegated his way to success.

You know who is who. Rich Rodriguez:

• fired Scott Shafer after one year as defensive coordinator,
• hired retread Greg Robinson, and
• forced him to run a 3-3-5-ish defense that incorporated the 3-4 and 4-3 with freshmen everywhere.

He got the sad firing box.

John Beilein:

• literally fired or replaced every one of his assistants,
• hired two up-and-comers from smaller schools, and
• all but abandoned the 1-3-1 defense that was his trademark at West Virginia.

If he can wring the expected improvement out of his 46% freshman usage he'll have Michigan's basketball team in the Big Ten title picture for the first time since Fisher was run out of town.

Both coaches tweaked their specialty offense for different players. Rodriguez coaxed an NCAA-average performance out of true freshman Tate Forcier by relying on his scrambling ability in the pocket and using him as a decoy in the run game. (Or at least trying to—Tate had a bad habit of keeping the ball when his read said hand off.) He improved the offense further with sophomore-who-would-have-been-redshirt-freshman-if-Michigan-had-any-options Denard Robinson. Even the Robinson offense wasn't going back to the old Pat White well. Without a Slaton to put oomph in the read and with defenses far more prepared to deal with it these days, he implemented a rushing game that revolved around the quarterback instead of using him as a "gotcha" thunderbolt. He used the QB rushing staples to implement a terrifying play-action game that often saw receivers open by ten yards.

Terrible defense put Michigan in long-field situations (Michigan led the country in TD drives of more than 85 yards), there was no field goal kicking, and the inexperienced Robinson was a turnover machine. The thing was a bit rickety. It was erratic. It put too much load on Robinson's shoulders. It was also incredibly young and promised infinity when Robinson was old enough to cut out the turnovers. It finished #2 in FEI, which you know because I say it every ten seconds.

Beilein lost his only two upperclassmen from the immensely disappointing 2009 team and returned a collection of role players and youth. He had to know his best player was a point guard who couldn't shoot to save his life. He still had a perimeter four and a spread-the-court offense, but he implemented a ton of ball screens that gave defenses a choice between open threes from guys who shoot at a 38% clip or getting pick-and-rolled to death by Morris and Jordan Morgan. Morgan shot 63% as a result and Michigan vastly exceeded expectations.

This lived up to their rep. Both were regarded as innovators. "Genius" is definitely not a word you want to throw around when you're talking about coaches but their peers seemed to regard Beilein and Rodriguez as people you want to talk to. Beilein doesn't talk but gets the most votes when his peers are asked to judge solely on coaching acumen; Rodriguez does, so he pops up at Oklahoma and his coaches get snapped up two seconds after they're let go. Carr's coaching tree is Brady Hoke and Scot Loeffler, end of story. It's tough to throw a rock in college football without hitting someone inspired by or directly associated with Rodriguez.

But he's not here because he couldn't let go. Of all the numbers associated with his tenure at Michigan this is by far the most damning:

It's the 37 next to Syracuse in the FEI defense ratings. That is a schedule-adjusted, I-AA-ignoring measure of defensive competency featuring Scott Shafer and absolutely no talent a few spots off the defenses of Michigan State and Wisconsin. Last year (Shafer's first) they were 72nd, the year before that 80th when Greg Robinson was the head coach and functional DC.

Maybe that wasn't possible here what with Never Forget…

…and all that. But we do know Shafer, a very good MAC coordinator who Harbaugh picked up and then made Syracuse better than anyone thought possible very quickly, is a good coach. And we know he was undermined and pushed out. Evidence suggests Greg Robinson is a terrible coach but he was undermined, too, and instead of a vaguely worse defense than two BCS teams coupled with Denard Robinson—good for 8-4 at least—we got something that was literally the worst ever in various categories.

Beilein had already scrapped the 1-3-1 before the total program reboot and was rewarded with an uptick in his Kenpom numbers from 67th to 53rd. It's a lot harder to tell who's responsible for what, but Beilein seemingly felt everything was insufficient and blew it all to hell. He still teaches the 1-3-1 but only uses it on occasion; he's left the defense mostly to his assistants. His reward: 35th nationally this year. That's better than his previous three years at Michigan. It's better than he ever did at West Virginia, because he knew what he didn't know.

Rodriguez's problem was never his selection of defensive coordinators, it was his refusal to trust them to do their jobs. The thing about Hoke is this: he does. At SDSU he hired Rocky Long to run a 3-3-5; Rocky Long ran a 3-3-5, and it was pretty good, and now he's the head coach. He hired Al Borges to run a passing-oriented West Coast offense; Borges ran a passing-oriented West Coast offense that wasn't quite as good as Michigan's in FEI's eyes but was still top 20. If he "gets" anything it's that he's a former defensive lineman with a narrowly defined set of assets that does not include being a genius of any variety—he's never been a coordinator. So he's hired two guys with very long, very successful resumes to do that stuff for him. That's an upgrade over Rodriguez, who had one—himself. It's an upgrade over Carr, who had zero*.

When I am trying to be cheerful in the face of Hoke's indifferent record I think about the vagaries of MAC budgets and what Hoke did the instant he escaped them. Mattison is the third excellent hire Hoke's made. That's a trend, one that suggests he, too, knows what he doesn't know. Since I'm a Michigan fan I'm bracing for a fatal flaw, but at least it won't be the same one that sunk Rich Rodriguez.

-------------------

*[Ron English masterminded The Horror and does not count. Before his elevation at Michigan he had never been a coordinator. After he left he led the weak unit on the last Kragthorpe Louisville team and has started the slow process of dying at EMU. The only thing he's proven is that he can yell at several future NFL stars effectively.]

Title disclaimer: hate on Donald Rumsfeld all you want—just not here—but the bit about known knowns and known unknowns and unknown unknowns is a useful bit of language. Not intended to endorse or unendorse anything about Rumsfeld. Disclaimers uber alles.

Everywhere you go. A reader sends along this BBC news piece on goings-on in Libya featuring this guy at prayer:

CCHA champs and rid of Qaddafi in the same week*—everything's coming up Milhouse!

BONUS: random Mississippi State sweatshirt in different protest. The 2011 Gator Bowl is coming for you, Qadddafi.

*[Michigan hockey guy lives in the liberated east; Qaddafi's still hanging on in the west.]

Vada latest. Vada Murray is home after radiation treatments:

We have never, ever, in our lives felt so scared.  We also have never felt so loved.  Thank you for the cards, emails, text messages, phone calls & messages on this website; thank you for your continued expressions of love & support.  Thank you to the Ann Arbor Police Department for their unwavering love.  They give true meaning to the phrase, "Whatever you need, whenever you need it." Thank you for understanding if we don't personally return your message.  We both want you to know, we love you back.

Moves. Touch The Banner relates that Rivals relates a couple of position switches: Steve Watson has moved back to tight end and Will Campbell to the defensive line. You're probably thinking "meh" and "duh," but there's an interesting wrinkle:

But unlike Rodriguez and his clunky defensive staff, Campbell will actually be playing the 3-tech defensive tackle position.  I can't imagine the conversations in the former defensive staff's meeting rooms.  "Well, we've got this 6'5" behemoth with loads of talent, but his one problem is that he can't stay low and get leverage.  We just can't figure out what to do with him."

There wasn't a three-tech DT in the 3-3-5 and Campbell wasn't going to play DE, so since he's not so good at NT it's off to offense. I'm not entirely sure this is as much of a slam dunk as TTB does—Campbell has fallen prey to single blocks plenty—but it's at least worth a shot. I'd rather he became an awesome NT but I think it's far more likely he becomes an acceptable three-tech, and either one of those allows Ryan Van Bergen to be the SDE I think Michigan needs him to be if their defensive line is going to be good against the run.

FWIW, Campbell was pretty effective in the goal line set when he could just plow into the backfield. He'll have to do a bit more than get under a guy and drive him back as he falls down if he's going to be an effective player in the other 98 yards of field, though.

Well, yes. It's natural for people to explode when your floppy-haired gritmonster makes two enormous plays that turn a probable loss into a certain win. As the morning's post indicated in the "elsewhere" section, if you don't have a post extolling Zack Novak today you probably don't have a Michigan blog. The Wolverine Blog says "what about the awesome guys?"

Tim Hardaway, Jr. locked up his third straight Big Ten Freshman of the Week honor — no small feat in a conference featuring Jared Sullinger — with a first-half outburst of “en fuego” proportions: four three-pointers in the first five minutes gave Michigan an early cushion that would allow them to weather a big Minnesota run and still enter halftime with a 35-33 lead. Hardaway finished the game leading all scorers with 22 points on 7-11 shooting (5-8 from three) …

It was Michigan’s other difference-maker, Darius Morris, who came through with 11 second-half points — continually finding his way into the paint among Minnesota’s massive front line and finding a way to create baskets — en route to a 17-point, 8-15 shooting, 7-assist performance while committing just one lone turnover.

That's ridiculously efficient and very efficient with ridiculous assist-to-turnover; Morris is also ~60% responsible for Jordan Morgan leading all D-I players in FG% in the last five games. I hesitate when TWB calls Novak a "role player"—Vogrich is a role player—but he's not one of the two lights-out stars that keep Michigan around so Novak can declare winnin' time.

Hardaway's stats are now gross. In his last five games he's made 60% of his threes. Okay, that's a hot streak. It's more than that: since January 9th he's pulled his eFG% up from 42% to 52%. In that stretch of 14 games he's made 48% of his threes. Even if you chuck out the last five games in the other nine he's hit 42%. Over essentially half of Michigan's season—the tough half—Hardaway is hitting half his threes.

!!!

30 for 30 on black socks. Jalen Rose tweets this:

That is an ESPN documentary on the Fab Five smack dab in he middle of March. Prepare to be massively conflicted.

God, the Penn State game. That's when it all came crashing down. After a somewhat encouraging performance against Iowa—at least it was encouraging on the ground—Michigan hits the bye week, dumps the mostly 4-3/3-4 sets they'd been using, and comes out in a 3-3-5 that Penn State gashes all day. Before that game PSU couldn't run if you spotted them two guys and three yards, and in the aftermath I blew up. UFR tags included "fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu," "fire coach x," "greg robinson," "i want a staple gun," "i've got a feeling i'm going to punch the black eyed peas," and "idiocracy."

This bit was particularly painful:

That's right: Michigan ran a stack on first and goal from the one. I bring it up because a reader hit up a coaching clinic featuring PSU's Mike McQueary and reports back:

He used Michigan as an example of the importance of finding a few things as a coach that you can connect with your players on re: scheme, rather than trying to run every kind of scheme with minimal understanding (Less is better).

The hardest thing to watch was a near-goal line stand where PSU ran a Fullback draw into a 3-man front and barely needed any blocking to get the TD. He referred to that as "some knuckleheaded goal-line defense".

I still can't believe RR screwed up his defense enough to get fired. I mean, of all the epic fails in the history of epic fails. All they had to be was mediocre in year three. This is painful:

"This clip makes me feel a little sad for Coach Rodriguez. His offense is nearly impossible to gameplan for, but the defense couldn't get it done"

Fffffuuuuuuu.

Etc.: The Wolverine Blog rebuts the Rodriguez-attrition meme. I think the truth lies somewhere in between it and the MNB piece. The problem was that Michigan needed to have a run of below-average attrition after late Carr-era departures and didn't get it. Robocop speaks to the city of Detroit: statue yes. Denard Robinson was a clue on Jeopardy.

This could be you!

Brian,

Is it possible that Rich Rodriguez's style of offense doesn't give his defense enough time to rest between drives?  Using numbers from cfbstats.com, I calculated the following "time per drive" stats for Michigan and three other Big Ten teams:

Michigan: 2.18 (minutes per offensive drive)
Michigan State: 2.73
Ohio State: 2.83
Wisconsin: 2.95

Defenses for the latter 3 teams have about 30% more time to rest between drives.

I thought of this because, after the Washington Redskins fired offensive guru Al Saunders, some defensive players said he had a bad tendency run his offense without any concern for the effects on the defense.  Maybe Michigan's defensive woes aren't entirely a product of bad defensive coaching and youth.

My edition of Windows Live Writer automatically links to a post discussing how I hate time of possession whenever I type the words, so I'm probably not the guy to make this argument to. While it is possible that Michigan's lack of rest between drives contributed to the terrible defense,the goal of Michigan's varying tempos and generally quick pace is to place stress on the opposing defense. Arguing that short drives stress the defense is one side of the coin; the other is that they contribute to the offense's success.

The actual difference in rest is lower, too. The 45 seconds on game clock Michigan's isn't running isn't much when you account for TV timeouts and stoppages for first downs and incomplete passes and reviews and etc etc etc. I'd guess the difference is considerably less than 30%. Amongst the many factors that led to the defense's demise this year, "tiredness because the offense has short drives" is well down the list.

Hi guys,

I'm a lifelong Michigan fan and moderate supporter of Rich Rodriguez.  Here is my question...  What can happen with the D coordinator position?  We know Robinson should be fired, who are some good candidates to replace him if they stick with RichRod?  Also, with all the unknowns regarding RichRod, does this mean that Robinson won't be fired until there is a firm decision about Rodriguez?  Do we really have to keep him until New Years?  Thanks guys,

Faithful supporter,
Derek

The answers change significantly based on what defense you want to run. If Michigan is sticking with a 3-3-5 they should get someone who knows how to, you know, run the defense. The old and proven version of this coordinator is San Diego State's Rocky Long*, the former New Mexico head coach. He had a fairly successful decade-long run before running out of energy a couple years ago. The younger and not so proven option would be someone like Louisiana-Monroe's Troy Reffett, who's about 20 years younger than Long and has bounced around smaller schools, coordinating 3-3-5s at UTEP, New Mexico, and now ULM. ULM was seventh in the Sun Belt in yardage when he arrived and has finished 2nd and 3rd in his two years as the coordinator.

I don't think that should be a factor, though. From the outside it looks like they brought in Robinson, let him do his thing for a season, realized he was Greg Robinson 2010—not 1997—and tried to triage as best they could. This went not so well. The best thing to do is learn from your mistakes like a human, bring in a guy with an actual track record of success and let him run the defense. The less wacky the better. This means changing the D for like the fifth straight year, but we're doing that whether or not Rodriguez is retained so you might as well get used to the idea now.

As for who those might be:

• Randy Shannon was discussed in a previous mailbag. As an unemployed guy with a recent barrage of defenses somewhere between good and great, he's obviously appealing. He'd help Michigan's Florida recruiting while running a defiantly Big Ten-style "this is our 4-3 cover two we run every play, try to beat it please" defense. Downsides: he's never done anything but coach at Miami and may call the fire marshal when he sees an actually full stadium, and other cultural whatnot. He may hold out for another head coaching job, or leave if he gets offered one.
• The other interesting unemployed college DC is Pitt's Phil Bennett, a 52-year old who was SMU's head coach before June Jones came in. In three years at Pitt he posted FEIs of 27th, 26th, and 31st. His SMU years were moderately successful until the 1-11 crater that cost him his job; before that he was the K-State DC from 1999 to 2001, during which time the Wildcats finished in the top five in total defense every year. All K-State stats under Snyder should be taken with a heavy pinch of salt, but that's still a pretty good record for an available guy.
• Mike Trgovac is the Michigan Man/chaperone option most commonly presented. He was the Panthers' DC for six successful years before turning down a contract extension and leaving to be a DL coach at Green Bay, which is bizarre but whatever. He's 50—the coaching sweet spot—but hasn't coached in college since 1994.
• Another option is throwing scads of cash at a guy whose existing school can't afford to keep him. This might bode unwell for our bowl game but Manny Diaz's maniacal maniacs at Mississippi State are 14th in FEI this year. He's working under an offensive-minded head coach and is obviously the motive force behind that ranking. Diaz is young and fiery. This is an upside, but the downside is he has only one year under his belt in the SEC. At Middle Tennessee his last three defenses were 44th(hey, pretty good for MTSU), 103rd, and 84th (not so good).

Depressingly, a scan down the FEI defense list for good units at schools Michigan can drown in 100 dollar bills doesn't hit much of interest past Diaz until you get to #34, which is Syracuse and Scott Shafer. Everyone else is either not happening, dodgy because the head coach is the defensive mastermind, or TCU's Dick Bumpas, who's probably not happening.

*(Savor long and deep the irony of the quintessential "Michigan Man" candidate running a 3-3-5.)

Do you and Tim have a pretty good idea of the total number of recruits we can sign this year?  I've heard people say about 18-19, but with all of the unexpected departures (Vlad, Turner, LaLota, White, Rogers, Dorsey, CJones, Kinard) that last year's class was a lot smaller than originally thought and that there are more roster spots available.

The Depth Chart By Class shows 77 scholarship players, ten of whom graduate. I'm assuming that Jordan Kovacs is now on scholarship but Will Heininger, Kevin Leach, Seth Broekhuizen and the various fullbacks are not, at least not until Michigan ends up with fewer than 85 scholarship players. That would leave a class of 18. In addition, I think it's unlikely Steve Watson and Mike Williams get fifth years, bringing the total to 20. They've currently got:

• QB: 0
• RB: 1
• WR: 0
• TE: 0
• Slot: 1
• OL: 3
• DE: 2
• DT: 0
• LB: 2
• CB: 4
• S: 0
• K: 0

That's 13, leaving seven slots for a kicker, a safety, a DT, a guard, and then three slots that could go to whoever they want. Chris Bryant is likely to be the guard, and two of the wild-card selections seem likely to be DE/DT Anthony Zettel and WR/LB Kris Frost. There are no likely options at DT right now and the safeties Michigan is in on seem like longshots, though it's possible Greg Brown ends up at FS. I'm also guessing Cullen Christian moves to FS this spring.

Are you a student? Do you like costumes?

Brian,

After watching the dissapointing Bball attendance, myself and another remote alum and bball fan would like to help support the team but unfortunately are too far to make it to the games. We'd like to sponsor tickets for 2 students for the remainder of games provided they wear Big Bird costumes and Blake McLimans jerseys or T-Shirts.

The problem is, we don't know where to start finding 2 students willing to go to the games dressed as Big Bird and take our sponsored tickets. After reading the blog, I feel like this is a project you could get behind.

Dave

Behind it I am. Email me if you're interested in being the Blake McLimans fan club and I'll send your information along to Dave. Anyone else interested in exchanging money for shots of someone looking silly at a basketball game should contact me immediately.

Formation notes: Against a bad spread rushing attack Michigan went with the stack most of the game, with occasional changeups to a slanting four-man front and extremely rare eight man fronts as Michigan spent the entire day in a two deep for the first time in a while. They got away with this despite not having Martin or Mouton, but I don't think that will hold up against non-Purdue offenses.

This got pulled out occasionally. It's more of a 3-4 look with the stack linebackers pulled to the strong side and Gordon coming down from his position over the slot:

When Michigan moved that DE inside to be a three-tech I called this "4-3 light".

Substitution notes: Mostly Patterson with some Sagesse at NT. Black and Banks got spot duty replacing Roh and RVB at DE. Demens went the whole way at MLB with Ezeh, Moundros, and Fitzgerald rotating through the OLB spots. Cam Gordon got almost all the time at spur with a few plays from Johnson; the secondary was Rogers/Avery/Vinopal/Kovacs the whole way.

So did that mean anything?

No. Let's just get that out of the way. No, it did not mean anything. Purdue's offense has now scored 19 meaningful points over the last four weeks and while OSU, Illinois, and Wisconsin all have much better defenses than Michigan so many of the stops Michigan got were Purdue shooting itself in the face that it's impossible to tell if anything got better in a real sense.

If you look at the—

Chart.

Chart, you'll see this in numbers:

[RPS is "rock, paper, scissors." Michigan gets a + when they call a play that makes it very easy for them to defend the opponent, like getting a free blitzer. They get a – when they call a play that makes it very difficult for them to defend the opponent, like showing a seven-man blitz and having Penn State get easy touchdowns twice.]

The pressure and coverage numbers are incredibly low, as are the overall secondary numbers, which points to the thing you already knew: Michigan's weak point had virtually no pressure on it all day. How much is this going to matter when Michigan plays Tolzien and Pryor in (probably) dry conditions on turf? Probably not at all.

I see Demens didn't grade out well.

No, not so much, as two of Purdue's long runs seemed to be directly on him. The first:

This is similar to the Purdue run that was picture paged this afternoon with the line slanting one way but whereas on the Purdue play the MLB tears outside to fill the hole here Demens doesn't and gets clunked by a blocker, opening up a big gain. You can argue that Fitzgerald and Roh didn't do Demens any favors but they are slanting and that means Demens has to get behind them.

The second is just bad:

Moundros blitzes up the middle and when the handoff comes he fights to funnel the guy back to Demens, but Demens has wandered out of the middle when it's clear Roh is tearing at the QB and Kovacs has that space.

And then I'm not sure how I feel about this. Watch Demens hop outside the tackle on a stretch:

He does tear down the line and gets in on the tackle, so maybe that's okay. It gives me the heebie-jeebies, though.

Ezeh did, though, and you are an avowed Ezeh hater who really really hates Ezeh and would like to see him dipped in acid, right?

Er. I just think he hasn't been a very good linebacker.

You are also an avowed GERG hater who wants GERG dipped in acid and he's got a +4 RPS, right?

I would appreciate it if you stopped claiming I have a bias for or against certain players and coaches by using UFR numbers that contradict previous UFR numbers. This makes me want to stab you. Performances vary, and collecting those performances gives you a picture of a player. I try very hard to be systematic about the numbers handed out and as a result sometimes disagree with those numbers in the very UFR they are published in. They exist as a sanity check and a guide.

You're defensive, so it must be true.

ARGH STAB

Anyway, as to GERG. In this game the 3-3-5 seemed to make sense. This is because the linebackers were all at linebacker depth and Michigan did occasionally stem to different fronts that gave Purdue trouble. Here's an RPS +1 that sees Michigan move Banks down to a three tech, slant him under an unprepared guard, and force the play back into unblocked contain:

That's a concrete example of a "multiple" look being an asset. But it's against Purdue and their ramshackle lean-to of an offense. It's too little too late unless the team really surprises in the last three games.

You clipped a punt?

Damn right.

What was the best part of the game, and perhaps any game ever?

Sarcastic Hurray Guy after the Cam Gordon touchdown:

Win.

Heroes?

Obi Ezeh and Adam Patterson for filling in admirably for downed starters.

Goats, or as much of a goat you can be when the opposing offense scores six points?

Demens got lost a few times and opened up most of Purdue's successful runs; Avery made a big mistake that turned into Purdue's best play of the day.

What does it mean for Wisconsin and beyond?

Nothing. Seriously.

If you really want to stretch you can slightly downgrade your Demens enthusiasm, upgrade your Roh enthusiasm, and maybe vaguely hope Patterson is functional when he fills in for a (please God be) healthy Mike Martin. Ezeh may be okay as an OLB the last couple games, and will almost certainly be better than Roh was. But this was a terrible team playing in terrible conditions and Michigan's performance rested largely on their lack of competence. Wisconsin will probably bring Michigan back to earth with a thump.

Formation notes: More of the same mad scientist business, with Michigan rolling out a 3-4, a 4-3, and a 3-3-5 on various occasions. With Roh's move to the defensive line the fourth "defensive lineman" in the 4-3 was either Obi Ezeh or JB Fitzgerald, which had predictable results. Michigan seemed to save the stack mostly for spread alignments and used the other two in more traditional situations.

Substitution notes: The secondary was Vinopal, Rogers, Avery, and Kovacs the whole way. Fitz and Ezeh seemed to get equal time at the OLB/DE spot, with Cam Gordon getting maybe 80% of the time at spur. Thomas got some snaps. Demens and Mouton went the whole way at MLB. On the line Martin, RVB, and Roh started; Patterson, Black, and Banks spotted them periodically.

 So this sounds insane after a 67-65 game but that was… less depressing?

Yeah? Penn State had nine drives on which they tried to score. On those drives their average field position was their 32. They scored 4.6 points per drive. They were the worst offense in the Big Ten before the game. Illinois was not a good offense, but they had 19(!!!) drives with an average starting position of their own 48 and scored 3.4 points per drive. Michigan forced six punts and had two other three-and-outs that Illinois got field goal attempts on because they started around the Michigan 30. Two of Illinois's touchdown drives also started around the Michigan 30.

By the Mathlete's reckoning, an average offense would expect to score 40 points given the 16 drives with great field position Illinois had in regulation; Michigan gave up 45. That is almost not awful.

But still pretty depressing?

Also yeah. "Almost not awful" does not include the three consecutive TDs Illinois scored in overtime. Also, an average defense going up against an average offense would expect to put up 40. Illinois does not have an average offense. Even after Saturday they're 71st in total offense; before it they were 85th. Illinois put up 43 on Indiana and 44 on Purdue. Multiple breakdowns were plays Illinois ran over and over again (triple option, wheel of doom, a simple zone read keeper) on which there was no Michigan defender with even a plausible chance of defending. The sheer number of wide open guys on passes, option pitches, and zone read keepers caused me to burble in disgust as I saw carbon copies of previous errors made deep into the game.

In addition, a number of the stops were of the Illinois-stops-self variety. UI receivers dropped two third down conversions, one of them a very long gainer, and their fumble was just a guy dropping the ball. Michigan had some fortunate breaks go their way to get the not-awful-by-the numbers performance.

I think there's some hope from individual players, but when some of that hope comes from Craig Roh checking in with a positive number because he's at DE after he was moved to LB in the fall, did poorly, played DE against Iowa and MSU, did well, and then was put back at a linebacker against Penn State and Michigan puts Obi Ezeh and JB Fitzgerald at defensive end for big chunks of the game, your coaching sucks.

I keep talking like this? Inflecting my sentences to make them questions?

You do. I wasn't going to say anything but you brought it up.

Chart?

oic. Chart. Remember that these are going to be high amplitude because of the sheer number of plays and that you should turn the volume down by a third or so.

[RPS is "rock, paper, scissors." Michigan gets a + when they call a play that makes it very easy for them to defend the opponent, like getting a free blitzer. They get a – when they call a play that makes it very difficult for them to defend the opponent, like showing a seven-man blitz and having Penn State get easy touchdowns twice.]

Shave about a third off all of those and you get approximately a normal game. The defensive line did decently. The linebackers were slightly below par, the secondary was all right individually but as a whole there were vast openings in the zone that probably fall more on the LB's heads than anything else, and everything that's ever happened good or bad is because of Jonas Mouton.

Isn't Mouton supposed to be one of our better players?

Yes, I guess. I have been complaining about him all year, so not to sound like a broken record but man, whenever something awful happened to Michigan it seemed like the linebacker running his ass off in a vain attempt to get back in position was Mouton. Sometimes it's tough to tell exactly who has what assignment when Michigan is defending the option but 1) almost all of Illinois's successful option pitches came to Mouton's side of the field*, 2) on most of them they were playing three deep and blitzing a rolled up safety into the QB, and 3) Mouton was hanging out on the inside when a DE was crashing the dive.

This was the most blatant example—watch Mouton as Kovacs screams in on Scheelhaase:

There is absolutely no reason for Mouton to be anywhere near the interior of the play. Kovacs has the QB. The line/DE/Demens has the dive. The secondary is in a three deep. He should be the force defender and is so far out of position that if Scheelhaase manages to make an accurate pitch this is at least ten yards and possibly another touchdown. Either this is his responsibility or GERG's scheme to defend the option literally cannot work. I'm honestly not sure which it is.

On the 64-yard TD Mouton probably was supposed to be inside and Kovacs got blocked out of his blitz but man this is ugly when he tries to tackle:

Vinopal comes up and lets the play outside of him but either way Michigan's giving up lots of yards here since Kovacs blitzed inside the tackle and Mouton never scraped.

But wait! There's more! I'm not exactly sure who this was on, but Roh kept shuffling down on Illinois's inside zone keepers and Scheelhaase pulled, finding tons of open space because Mouton was sitting on the interior again. Since Roh is younger and just moved back to DE I thought it was on him, but I'm not sure if Mouton should get the benefit of the doubt. He gives up contain a lot. Roh shuffled on the third drive of the game and led to a keeper that Kovacs had to deal with, and kept shuffling, and Mouton never, ever scraped. One of these two people must be told to do something differently.

The most frustrating part of all of this is that these things kept happening. Michigan did not change their scheme at all and the option pitch was still open and Scheelhaase could pull in overtime just like he did before. No Michigan player altered their play, which makes it difficult for me to tell who was at fault because no one changed their behavior.

In Mouton's defense, he also made his usual array of flat-out great plays. The most obvious was the final one where he leapt an offensive lineman and shot in on Scheelhaase before he could force a fourth overtime, but scattered in between all that contain business was a guy who took on a lot of blocks, made a lot of tackles, and displayed the athleticism that made him a hot recruit and will probably get some NFL team to take a flier on him. So he's not all bad.

*(The one that worked and didn't featured Cam Gordon failing to maintain leverage on the RB as he was getting blocked by a slot, but at least in that instance there was a player in the vicinity who just made a mistake; there was not an obviously blown assignment.)

This will be a good segue: how intense does your GERG hatred run this week?

I'm keeping steady at a thousand suns. The inability to adjust to the option—the one time Michigan stopped it late they ran away from the twins side into Kovacs and Avery, who was in overhang mode and could get outside the TE easily to contain—or the wheel of death or a simple zone read keeper led to another monster negative RPS day. Whenever I'm not sure which Michigan player is making errors on a dozen different massive gains the defensive coordinator is going to get a huge negative RPS.

Meanwhile, Michigan finally put Roh where he should be but we're addicted to playing guys out of position so for long stretches of the game we had the privilege of watching two linebackers try to play defensive end, which they did not. They got no pressure and were blown up in the run game. They were better as 3-4 OLBs but Michigan had a gameplan and stuck with it, putting four men on the line in power situations much of the day and paying for it. I know Greg Banks isn't spectacular but he does make the occasional good play, unlike Fitz and Ezeh when they're shoehorned into playing defensive end. Fitz was particularly woeful. I'm not sure how he even got that massive minus but there it is. He only had one tackle, so there's some circumstantial backup.

This game provides no evidence Greg Robinson should be kept. Not that I have to tell you that.

Heroes?

Demens was again consistent on anything that got pushed to him, making a couple impressive tackles in space and making a breakup on a short third down attempt. Avery didn't seem victimized on anything and made a couple big tackles

Goats?

Greg Robinson, for putting Ezeh and Fitzgerald in a position they'd never played before, and for moving Roh to linebacker in the spring, and for moving Cam Gordon to safety, and for never ever adjusting to 1) simple zone read keepers, 2) the basic triple option play that is Illinois's offensive staple, and 3) the wheel of death. I'm not even sure he knew what was going wrong. On film it's instantly obvious that either the DE or LB is not containing and something must be changed, but in the third overtime Roh was still shuffling and Mouton not scraping as Scheelhaase ran down to the three.

The alpha and omega, beginning and end of all things, the snake that eats its own tail, the world tree, the ever-expanding universe itself, the very Big Bang that brought matter into existence?

Jonas Mouton.

What does it mean for Purdue and beyond?

Michigan should either scrap the four man line or play an actual lineman on it. The 3-4 seemed to work much better, but what I really want to see is a personnel package that is simple and makes sense instead of Michigan trying to shoehorn every front they can think of into the same personnel. Be one thing and be good at it. I was so wrong about this in the preseason.

Long term, Demens now has three games to his name and is on the verge of establishing himself a guy Michigan can expect somewhat big things out of next year. Van Bergen is becoming a guy with some impact, Roh (surprise!) can rush the passer and is a much more effective DE than LB, and the guys moving around in the secondary seem less bewildered; Cam Gordon brings some pop and potential to spur if he can just get settled.

I'm not sure what to expect against Purdue. Maybe they'll play Denard at nose tackle. More likely they'll stick with the 3-4 that was the default against spread sets against IU and try to corral the Purdue running game. I hope to see a coherent defense next week, but don't expect one.

Profiling, again. The Daily continues its streak of crushing everyone out there with Michigan football profiles, this time hitting up Deerfield Beach for the Denard Robinson story. Cue adorable child who doesn't like you stealing her soul:

Also let's not forget that making Shoelace, Denard Robinson, for uh, shirt, you know, within the NCAA—that isn't legal.

The story itself is another epic five-pager. Sounds like he was a natural:

“He loved to run that ball,” Huggins says, looking over his old stomping grounds at Westside Park. “He’d tell me, ‘Coach, call quarterback sneak!’ I’d tell him no, to hand it off, and so he’d fake the handoff and keep it and run for a ton of yards.”

Zone read from the start. This is a read the whole thing situation.

From "it won't work in the Big Ten" to this. Illinois blog Hail to the Orange (wait… what?) on Saturday:

The difference is, and the major problem on Saturday, was that with Michigan when we bit, we paid dearly, every time. It seemed as though just one missed tackle, one bad angle and the punishment was a touchdown. We were running a contain game most of the day against Denard, and we paid because there was relatively little pressure against him, giving his receivers too much time to get open, and when combined with a play action always were open. The result: 305 PASSING yards from the Nard dog.

There were of course some bright spots. We have continued the trend of taking the ball away from the other team and not giving it back. (Five TO's recovered, to one lost.) Against teams not made out of tiny track stars coated in butter, this will equate to a win.

We will not see another team this offensively talented this season (pending a bowl bid) generally we can improve our decision making in the secondary enough to not give up constant 75 yard bombs, at least I hope not.

Here's the crazy thing: that first bit on "paid dearly, every time" isn't even true. You know that interception Denard zinged over Webb's head? That's either a touchdown or Webb gets run down from behind as Michigan switched up the QB Lead Oh Noes from the slot receiver to the TE. The safety who intercepted the ball was headed for Roundtree and dead meat until the ball went ZING. I've got two separate RPS+3 plays that end in disaster for Michigan already. If anything, Michigan's immolation of the Illinois defense is even more impressive on review because it could have been considerably worse if Denard makes a few better throws. I think we've established that Denard's not going to make great throws all the time, but man… in the UFR Michigan's going to have a huge RPS number.

The whole thing's driven Vic Koennig to despondency:

"They get you in a run, run, run mode then they drop back and hit a pass on you. They had us running around and not doing anything well."

Srs, his postgame presser is like watching a dog get kicked. Meanwhile on the Michigan sideline, Illinois has just scored to go up 45-38 aaaaand…

Fair? No. Accurate? Yes. User Tom Pickle with the win.

Sorry about nearly killing you. That guy who got plowed on the sideline during Tate's double personal foul keeper in overtime was actually Channel 7's Don Shane. The two shared a heartwarming moment afterwards:

He's got the flags to prove it, Don.

More advanced metricing. Michigan's moved up to #3 nationally in FO's S&P ratings… on offense. They're just behind Auburn and Boise State, #1 on "standard downs" and #6 on pass downs. Ohio State(!) is a surprising #5, and then the next Big Ten team is #17 Wisconsin. Michigan is #98 on defense. Woo.

I also asked Brian Fremeau for Michigan's kickoff numbers to see if that aspect of the game is actually hurting them much. I asked him last week and never got around to posting them, so these are a little out of date. In an effort to reduce confusion I'm going to flip signs so negative is always bad and positive is good. The units here are in average points away from expectation.

Kickoffs: –0.054 (79th)
Kick Return: –0.099 (95th)

Punts: +0.101 (13th)
Punt return: –0.023 (77th)

What this means is for every ten Michigan punts Michigan has saved a point in expected field position; for every ten kick returns they've lost a point in expected field position. So.

• Points on kickoffs (58): -3.1
• Points on kick returns (56): -5.5
• Points on punts (30): +3.0
• Points on punt returns(40): –0.9

Grand total: around –6.5 pending how Michigan's performance against Illinois changes the numbers (I'm guessing it doesn't change much since Michigan gave up some good returns but also busted the long one before the half).

Meanwhile, Michigan's no longer national-worst kickers (up to 117!) are –1.0 per FGA. They've attempted 11, so the field goal situation is almost twice as damaging as the rest of it. All told Michigan's losing about two points a game on special teams, which doesn't sound like much until you consider that flipping that stat would take Michigan's scoring margin from +5 to +9.

Belated Free Press denouement. I had football to talk about and didn't get around to this but a few bits and pieces to wrap up the jihad. A national take from Doc Sat:

The tepid infractions that came to light as a result of the Freep's digging are the minimum you'd expect to find at any sprawling program operating under a massive handbook, as the basic cost of employing fallible human beings while continuing to dead-lift with the Joneses. Other programs, however, weren't the target of an investigation by a major metropolitan newspaper that left no stone unturned in its efforts to make a splash against a high-profile coach who almost immediately cleaved the fan base down the middle. Michigan was, which is why it was Michigan that was forced to roll its eyes and slap itself on the wrist in halfhearted contrition as the "probation" label is applied for the first time in school history.

Chait drops Chaitbombs to the point where the fiancée thinks she should use this…

Here's the headline of one report: "RichRod gets win, but still needs more on field" Here's the headline of a second: "UM's violations deemed major, but not serious" And here's a third: "NCAA's verdict: Rodriguez ignored rules; U-M gets more probation"

Those headlines came from ESPN, the Detroit News, and the Detroit Free Press. You can probably guess which was which.

…as part of a media framing discussion in future classes she teaches. MVictors has audio from Brandon's appearance on WTKA wherein he said

“We apologized yesterday because we made mistakes.  I’m kinda waiting for somebody from the media to apologize for mistakes they made.  And I’m not sure that’s ever going to happen, but that would be a nice thing, wouldn’t it?”

And of course the guy who asked if Rodriguez would be fired and got a death glare was Drew Sharp. Brandon should have asked "when is the Free Press going to fire you?"

Etc.: Wisconsin's John Clay and starting center Peter Konz are "iffy" for this week's game against Indiana. Sounds like they should be good to go for Michigan but sprains can be weird. This Week In Schadenfreude does not feature Colorado because no Colorado fans care anymore. Anything can happen in dead coach walking situations and fans will just shrug and talk about who the next guy is going to be. Michigan State is 9-1 for the first time in a million years and they still can't sell out their game against Purdue without resorting to two-for-one deals.