tate forcier

via reader Brian Hale

Take his and graduate 'em, take yours and graduate 'em. It's not noble to take guys with two good parents and a Catholic-school education and not screw them up. That's one of the things that's always bothered me about Notre Dame's smugness. They've positioned themselves as the nationwide destination for kids who end up at places like Oaks Christian, and when these kids fail to screw up they take pride in it. Michigan, meanwhile, has been more willing to take on potentially troubled kids. Not as willing as some other schools, but willing.

This is always spun as a negative when you get a Feagin situation. When you take kids out of Pahokee or Detroit or Delray Beach who did not go to a good high school and didn't have a stable home life and are just looking for a way out, some of them are not going to overcome their backgrounds. It's tough to do that. It's no accomplishment to graduate Craig Roh. That kid grew up like  an enormous, athletic, magnificently-eyebrowed version of me; he's going to graduate no matter where he is. It's a risk to stick out your neck for a talented kid who went to a school with textbooks from 1978 where dropouts are more common than graduates.

The reason I bring it up is an epic article on Pahokee, the home of three current Wolverines, in the Daily. I've been reading the Daily for twelve years now and it's without question the best article to appear in it in that time frame. It wouldn't seem out of place if you threw it up on ESPN.com in one of those fancy presentations they give Wright Thompson. It highlights the environment these guys come from:

He pops in one of the myriad discs. It’s a guerrilla-style video called “Palm Beach County: Gangstas and Thugs.” Local gun-toting gang members flash across the screen, beating each other senseless and shooting AK-47s into the air.

“That’s my cousin; he’s in jail,” he says pointing, to the screen. “Oh, and that kid’s dead. He was 17.”

Trouble in such places is easier to get into than avoid, and honestly working with these kids so that they get out of college and go somewhere else is a calling beyond giving kids who went to Catholic school calculus exams. Michigan has to live up to that charge, of course. In four to six years we'll have Rodriguez's graduation numbers, and in five more we'll have some sense of how the institution has served them. I'll be watching it carefully. I hope—and think—Michigan will do right by them. They are owed that.

No, you can't do that. Apparently ABC never showed the Armando Allen taunting penalty, but the News got a shot of it:

NCAA rulebook on unsportsmanlike conduct:

a.  Specifically prohibited acts and conduct include:

1.  No player, substitute, coach or other person subject to the rules shall  use abusive, threatening or obscene language or gestures, or engage in such acts that provoke ill will or are demeaning to an opponent, to game officials or to the image of the game, including but not limited to:

(b) Taunting, baiting or ridiculing an opponent verbally.

(c) Inciting an opponent or spectators in any other way, such as simulating the firing of a weapon or placing a hand by the ear to request recognition.

Ssssh-ing the student section is an obvious flag that will get called 1000 of 1000 times. It doesn't matter if he said anything or not. Weis being an ass in the postgame (no, seriously, watch his bitchy press conference… what a horror it would be to have such a thoroughly unlikeable person* in charge of your football team):

"Armando was really distraught at the end of the game, because he felt that he  got called for a 15-yard penalty for going 'shhhh' when he got to the end zone," Weis said. "Now I guess, technically, that's taunting, but he felt really bad about that and I told him we're all part of this loss and don't put it all on your shoulders."

Indeed, it is "technically" taunting in the way Michigan's pass to Mathews was "technically" a touchdown. Meanwhile on that same play, Clausen was doing a fey little dance that could have drawn another flag. Why must Weis recruit these thugs? Why can't he have nice boys like Greg Mathews, who politely handed the ball to the referee after his gamewinning touchdown?

A note on one of the other ND refereeing complaints: Theo Riddick did touch that kickoff, as was extensively discussed on Sportscenter, so running two seconds off the clock was appropriate. And when Tate caught the ball on the last play of the game and got tackled with one second left, the key distinction to note is that the official timekeeper doesn't stop when he thinks the play is over—not his job—but when the referee signals him to. You can clearly see that the referee signals to stop the clock well after :00 is hit. (Yes, maybe that's a conspiracy too.)

*(dollars to donuts that caused any West Virginia, Michigan State, or Ohio State fan reading it to have a head asplode moment, but… seriously. Watch the video. There is no comparison between that and corny jokes and twang.)

Tempting fate. If Michigan loses the next two weeks you can stick my head in a blender for what I'm about to do.

Let's talk about Michigan State, Michigan's first road game of the season and next opponent against whom the spread will be in the single digits. State lost to Central Michigan in quintessential "Sparty, No!" fashion, but don't let the flukes at the end of the game overshadow the overall theme of the day. A worried The Only Colors explains:

While hanging our heads obviously doesn't do any good, I really have a hard time seeing Saturday's outcome as a fluke.  Sure, the events of the final 30 seconds all broke in the Chippewas' favor.  But we'd been outplayed by a significant margin for the 59 minutes and 30 seconds that preceded those 30 seconds--outgained by 74 yards and outconverted by 8 first downs.  And when it mattered most, we couldn't stop them.  Central gained a total of 147 yards to reach the endzone on both of its final two non-onside-kick-commenced drives.  We were lucky to be in position to win the game with 30 seconds to go.

Maybe CMU's a top-40 team and this loss isn't quite as bad as it looks right now.  But they certainly didn't look like a top-40 team against Arizona a week ago.  And you have to beat top 40 teams at home to get to a New Years Day bowl.

That is a strong indication that internet skepticism over a team that was outgained in conference play last year was better founded than the assembled Big Ten Media's assertion that Michigan State was the third-best team in the conference. Not that we needed anyone to tell us that the internet tends to do better research than newspapers. State should get better as Kirk Cousins solidifies his hold on the starting quarterback spot, but after some initial optimism in the comments that post bogs down into pessimism about a ton of things, most prominently the pass rush.

Compounding things for State in their matchup against Michigan: Central Michigan is headed by the Rich Rodriguez coaching tree, also known as Butch Jones, and quarterbacked by Dan LeFevour, a mobile, accurate quarterback that's a more veteran but less hyped version of Tate Forcier. LeFevour was 33 of 46 for 328 yards, three touchdowns, and an interception. The State game now looks very winnable.

The move? Freshman Cameron Gordon's seemingly inevitable move to linebacker may be a fait accompli according to MGoPoster Jaggs:

Was at the ND game this weekend and my dad ran into a guy purporting to be Cam Gordon's dad (I have no reason to doubt it was him). The guy told my dad he was a father of a player on the team etc, and my dad asked him who he said his name which my dad forgot but remembered the guy said #84 a linebacker. A quick search of the program and mgoblue.com shows Gordon as the only #84 so sounds like Gordon.

Quick check shows 86 points, which isn't much, but also that this guy's been registered for eight months. Credibility rating: at least moderate. We're still looking for confirmation and will provide it if/when it comes.

Yeesh. I think this was just an mgolicious link. The numbers say, I don't know, something:

3. Inbound links checked daily. The day before I visited, logs for the Chronicle’s WordPress site reported that it had drawn 277 visitors from a local sports blog, 28 from a local school blog and 23 from annarbor.com, the reincarnated Ann Arbor News.

Probably what it says is that AA.com's traffic is far more dispersed, where this site is basically a single framework with varying content presented.

Etc.: Been struck with a burning desire to have Zoltan's biff immortalized for all time on your wall? Michigan obliges. Bleed Scarlet notes the one-year anniversary of David Foster Wallace's suicide.

Rich Rodriguez

• Injuries: David Moosman popped his shoulder out, might sit for 1-2 weeks. Some combination of Ricky Barnum, Elliott Mealer, John Ferrara, and Patrick Omameh will fill that in. Boubacar Cissoko was still banged up against ND, but he'll continue to play. Mike Williams sat because of cramps, and he should be healthy. Junior Hemingway should be back soon, but Rodriguez won't know until later today. The full injury report will come out Thursday.
• The secondary didn't play its best on Saturday, but a lot of the stuff can be corrected. They want to be able to play JT Floyd, Teric Jones, and Justin Turner to build a little more depth there.
• The QBs are still listed with an "OR" on the depth chart. Tate has earned the right to take the first snap each week so far, but the competition in practice has been pretty close. Denard is a QB now, and will continue to be in the future. They aren't looking at moving him to another position.
• Rodriguez gave some veiled criticism to Charlie Weis's excuses about the refs. "I didn't see anything." He typically will send a couple plays into the conference office, though he didn't after the Western game. The refs do a god job, and they'll call things if they see them. When the Armando Allen touchdown was overturned, Rodriguez called a timeout instead of a challenge because he wanted to save his challenge for later in the game in case they needed it.
• Rodriguez talks to CMU coach Butch Jones twice a week. He's a good coach and a good person. Rich knows he'll have
• Rodriguez interviewed the entire football staff (not just coaches) when he came to Ann Arbor. He didn't re-hire Coach English, though he was an outstanding defensive coordinator. Rodriguez had something else in mind defensively, and now he's happy where they are. He talked to Coach E to congratulate him for landing the EMU job. "I know he's got a lot of friends here, and as you'd expect, when you spend a couple years at a neat place you're going to make some friends."
• Rodriguez wants fans to not only be at the game, but also to be active participants. The piped in music is art of that, along with exciting things like the Circle of Death, aka the "Team Unity Circle."

Troy Woolfolk

• The defense was playing off receivers for most of the game, but they got a little more aggressive because they got sick of giving up the underneath stuff.
• English was Troy's primary recruiter at Michigan. The two don't talk anymore, because Troy has lost Coach E's number, but he wants to play well this Saturday to show that he was worthy of being recruited.
• "I'm just glad that we got a chance to show the nation that Michigan is back."
• Some day in the future, Troy and Denard are going to race to settle once and for all who the fastest player is.

Stevie Brown

• Brown wasn't surprised to see ND go deep on second down with a chance to ice the win late in the fourth quarter. "That's what they'd been doing all game, and that's what was working for them."
• Stevie doesn't keep in contact with Coach English. They talked when Ron was hired at Eastern, but not really since.

Tate Forcier

• Although the team is ranked, they're only at the very last spot (35). The team needs to continue working hard if they want to move up. The team made lots of mistakes (Tate's fumble on the 2 yard line, a missed field goal), so there's definite room for improvement.
• Tate had 400+ text message following the game yesterday. He doesn't have a big lecture until tomorrow, but he's sure lots of people will talk to him about the game.
• He caught the big nighttime tilt and saw Matt Barkley (the nation's other golden boy frosh) perform pretty well. "It was kinda hard; I didn't know who I wanted to win because I don't like USC or Ohio State."
• The rushing touchdown was a pass/run option, and the defensive end forced him to head back inside "Right when I cut it up, I didn't see anybody. Right away I knew it should be pretty good." He was confident on the final touchdown to Mathews as well. "I thought it was a perfect play call." The corner was playing with inside leverage, giving Greg room to the outside.
• Tate said he wasn't really going to look at Michigan until the new staff came in.
• There's no animosity between Tate and Denard, and Tate expects a big play every time Denard hits the field. He hopes Denard will get more chances to shine in the next couple weeks.
• "Just beating Notre Dame is great, but beating them the way we beat them made it even better." Tate's family was in the crowd,and he heard they were all so happy they cried. "I wish [Jason] could have been out there playing with me."

9/12/2009 – Michigan 38, Notre Dame 34 – 2-0

When Michigan headed in at the half down only three because of a confluence of events I saw splattered across "Life on the Margins" in the near future, I wrote the game off. When Michigan turned first and goal from the one into a missed field goal, I wrote the game off. When Armando Allen ran the ball into the endzone and Clausen did his fey little "butt dance," to steal a term from MVictors, I wrote the game off. When LaTerryal Savoy dropped the touchdown pass* that would have given Michigan the win, I was annoyed.

Some things, among them faith and love, reveal themselves only after they form, when some other event makes it clear you have had powerful emotion X about object Y for an indeterminate amount of time. Love tends to brew a long time and reveal itself in spectacularly inopportune fashion. Faith… well, if you let X equal faith and Y equal Tate Forcier, the process is considerably expedited. For the author it came to its enzyme-aided conclusion sometime between Junior Hemingway's second touchdown against Western Michigan and the wild bumper-car rollout that ended in a dart to Savoy and first and goal.

When, exactly, is impossible to tell. Like Denard Robinson, attempting to observe it changes it. But here it is rewarding us with all sorts of dopamine and serotonin and other whatnot on this finest Monday of all Mondays in a fairly long time.

What is up, faith. I am feeling goooooooood.

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

Rich Rodriguez had spent twenty years earning a little faith as his teams performed, time and again, above their talent level. But the instant he decided to extract himself from what seemed like a poisonous relationship with the rest of the West Virginia athletic department, all of it evaporated.

Almost from the instant Rodriguez arrived on campus the media—first from West Virginia and then locally—painted him as a mercenary, a swearing robot, a rube. It's been covered here a thousand times before so let's just focus on the giant flashing insanity: Rodriguez took a metric ton of crap for breaking his contract, something literally any coach who's ever moved jobs has done. Something that the contract has explicit buyout provisions for. Something that universally-loved John Beilein did one year earlier.

When 3-9 followed the amplitude went up by an order of magnitude, culminating in the Free Press hit job the nation knows and loves. Faith did not exist except in battered, weary pockets. This pocket wavered. It would be impossible not to.

In this space I've alternately mocked and panicked at the idea that external forces or internal dissent could strangle the Rodriguez era in the crib and set Michigan on much the same path Notre Dame has traveled these last 15 years. The parade of inept coaches, inept coaching searches in the frequent interregnums, and mostly unrelenting failure during the brief periods in which the school is not searching for a new inept coach could easily have happened here. Michigan was in the process of chaotic, inept coaching search number one when WVU athletic director Ed Pastilong and Pat White's thumb dumped one of the premiere coaches in college football in Bill Martin's lap and Martin jumped at it without thinking it over.

The public reaction since threatened to undo that stroke of fortune and set Michigan into the spiral that consumed South Bend. The danger was that all those sneering generalists who glanced over from their NBA game to snort "lol" and moved on would actually impact Michigan's ability to reason.

Did it? Will it? It's impossible to tell. Rich Rodriguez and Tate Forcier plan on making the question moot, and have already gone a long way towards doing so.

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

This is Michigan now, a strange collection of 3.8 GPA kids from New Jersey and Arizona and locals who grew up loving Michigan and kids with dreads from poor, broken places mostly in the south who have one way to get out. Receivers who score game-winning touchdowns and almost lose their cool before apologetically handing the ball to the referee, sir. Woop-gone cuts when the defensive end beats you to the corner in cover zero. The fetishization of work to the point where the S&C coach is the target of adulation so intense that you can call something "Barwis Porn" and not be 100% joking. Hype videos and piped in music. Shotgun hurry-up and quarterbacks slipping by linebacker kill shots. The circle of terror, chest bumps, awkward press conferences, a tear here and there. This is it. This is block-M Michigan.

It's not all great. But take it from a guy who remains a programmer in spirit: life is tradeoffs. Give Rich Rodriguez six dwarves, some baling wire, a walk-on safety from Curtice, Ohio, and someone to spatter paint all over everything and we're good. This is a program of moxie and MacGuyver.

While Terrelle Pryor labors in an offense that has him throw 25 times and run nine against USC, previously run-manic Rich Rodriguez has taken his collection of half-man-half-velcro tight ends and pounding fullbacks and moosebeast tailbacks and forged them into a machine that, for two games at least, is the explosive equivalent of his White-Slaton heyday. He has integrated this crazy wheeling Jackson Pollock of a quarterback to the tune of 70% completions, five touchdowns, and one interception in his first two games in college. In the process he's made the men who looked at twenty years of wildly successful offenses, wildly successful programs at every level of college football and saw nothing but an inflexible, lucky hick look like fools.

He's repaid the faith shown him by his team, by the guys who stayed and waved their arms madly and jumped up and down last week when the students took up a "Rich Rodriguez" chant and did not stop until most of the stadium was doing it. They stayed, and they're on their way, and it doesn't take much faith to say: this is Michigan now.

via reader Nick Stratton

*(It would turn out to be tipped but from the stands all I saw was a ball hit Savoy between the eight and the two and ricochet away; the crowd's reaction was such that I thought Notre Dame had somehow intercepted it for a split second.)

BULLETS THAT CHANGE DIRECTION SIX TIME A SECOND

• 10,000 cocktails to the guy working the replay board who got the Armando Allen screen touchdown on the board almost before the play was over, thus causing the stadium to explode and Rodriguez to take a timeout that would eventually save Michigan four points. Those four points were the final margin of victory and while there's a chance the replay would have come down on its own, the quick thinking of that guy made it inevitable. Someone ferret out this guy's name so he never has to buy a drink in town again.
• To really discuss what's wrong with Weis I have to dig into the poker metaphors. If Carr was a weak-tight calling station—a guy who doesn't take many risks and can be easily dissuaded from taking them—Weis is a loose-aggressive donkey—a guy who just bets and bets and bets and rides it. The LAG (loose-aggressive) is a better player, much tougher to win against, but is prone to huge, fatal mistakes. So the problem with that second-and-ten bomb was not that Weis threw, it's the sort of throw he called for. Running or whatever strips Michigan of its timeouts and has relatively little value compared to a first down. A first down just about ends the game. I had a perpetual frustration with Carr's playcalling in similar situations because it was run run run punt almost without fail, or possibly run run third and ten pass punt. So a slant or a hitch or some sort of high-percentage pass that can break for a first down is a great call.

  The bomb is going all in with a middle pair after you get a couple overs on the flop. (I was in the World Series of Poker once!!!) It might work. But if it does, it's not because you're a good poker player.

  Weis is a guy who thinks "they'll never see my 4-6 unsuited coming." And he thinks it all the time. I know, I know: Gus Hansen exists. The thing about poker on TV is that it throws out all the "boring" hands and therefore disguises Hanson's insidious brilliance. I've seen all of Weis's hands. He's not Gus Hansen. I mean, even if you're going to throw that, why throw it against Warren instead of the guy you've been torching all game?

• On the other hand: I haven't seen anything from Rodriguez yet that makes me think similar thoughts. I have instant go-punt reactions on all fourth downs and get very upset when the coach in question defies an obvious one and haven't been very upset with Rodriguez yet. He may call a hotel a "ho-tel" but he's a better poker player than Carr or Weis. Even when Michigan was up eleven, it seemed like they needed one more touchdown to win, and it appeared Rodriguez thought the exact same thing.
• Speaking of Beilein: there have been persistent rumors that Beilein and Rodriguez have a frosty relationship, but one of the things I caught as I watched the team leave the field was the two coaches meeting around the forty yard line and sharing a deep, lingering man-hug. I don't think that rumor holds much water anymore.
• I'd been bitching about Forcier thinking he's in high school on many of his runs. Often he had an opportunity to cut upfield for solid yardage but instead tried to pop outside a corner or safety and turned it into a three-yard gain because he can't just outrun members of the opposition secondary anymore. (There's a play in UFR last week where I question whether a similar incident was a good idea.) So, yeah, a little smug on that touchdown run after I went WOOOOO a lot.
• Cissoko… man. I've seen a fair number of people defending him but he was bad. Maybe I'll think different after the UFR but the guy got torched. Hopefully that's an effect of going up against two crazy good receivers and a quarterback who wasn't so terrible himself. I don't think so, though. He was lost.
• I really hope I see even more holding than they called on UFR because Clausen had all day basically all day. I vastly underestimated the pressure he'd face; when he did get pressure he just chucked it OOB. So I was kind of right about that.
• Brandon Minor is way better than any other back on the roster. Q: why did Michigan go away from the up-the-middle gashing that worked so well in the third quarter? Notre Dame was clearly vulnerable to runs that went directly at them but did well against the stretches.
• Warren, on the other hand, basically lived up to the hype this blog perpetuated.
• It's amazing how vastly different real live Notre Dame fans are from their internet fanbase. The worst thing you can say about them is that a disproportionate number look like they're huge Steve Miller Band fans. The worst things you can say about Notre Dame fans on the internet would take thousands of words to describe.
• WOOOOOOOOOOOOO

ELSEWHERE

Charlie Weis caused the potato famine, says one Irish fan. Also check the Chips shirt.

MVictors wasn't in the press box for this one and thanks God for that stroke of luck. Also check the spectacular Brandon Graham mugging picture and the guy in the comments who claims Armando Allen called the student section "faggots" to draw his flag. Can anyone in the front of the student section confirm that?

While we're on MVictors, nice catch from the NYT:

Central Michigan beat Michigan State on a 42-yard field goal with 3 seconds left. As the game’s final minute ticked away before the start of the game here, news media in the press box gathered around televisions to watch.

Central Michigan initially missed a potential game-winning 47-yard field goal, but got to try the kick again after Michigan State was penalized for being offside. The announcement of the penalty that set up the game-winner prompted clapping and an announcement in the press box.

“Cheering is not allowed in the press box,” the announcer said, “but it is right now.”

Something something pride something fall.

Doctor Saturday's takes on Michigan State, Michigan, and Ohio State are fantastic.

I grabbed a bunch of complaining from ND Nation in anticipation of a flush, which did happen.

Picture Pages: you see, Rudy, sometimes you just need to break down a play that's representative of a larger trend. This series picks out a play or two per game that seem significant in the grand scheme of things, Theo, and attempts to explain why. Vanessa.

I brought this up in UFR and wanted to make it clearer so here goes. This is a first and 15 on Michigan's first drive of the day.

Michigan lines up in one of their common sets, a three-wide shotgun look. Here the tight end is lined up as an H-back. Michigan often used the h-back as a pass blocker for Forcier rollouts, but this time he's going to go with the play. Western aligns in a 4-3 look with the nickel back shaded inside of the slot receiver. Michigan will run a zone read, and Western will do a version of a scrape exchange. In brief: in a scrape, the backside defensive end will take off after the tailback instead of maintaining contain. A weakside linebacker or corner will provide QB contain, thus hopefully minimizing or eliminating the quarterback's athleticism edge over the defender he's dealing with.

Below is the handoff point. As Western did basically the whole game, the unblocked backside end takes off after the tailback. Since this is the guy Forcier is reading, he pulls the ball out. A couple points: Michigan has six blockers against six defenders here and should be content to hand the ball off. As we'll see, Brown's going to end up with a lot of room.

A few moments later we see the scraper coming in: he's the corner/LB who was lined up over Grady. He comes flying in and threatens to tackle Forcier in the backfield. The scrape exchange Michigan saw a lot last year saw the WLB head outside; this one is less vulnerable to the veer or other quick-hitting backside plays that exploit the fact that your WLB is flying around the edge. But there's an obvious cost: HOLY GOD LOOK AT THE SLOT RECEIVER.

Forcier is, in fact, looking at a spectacularly open guy on a bubble route. One of the Western safeties is coming up but he's inside of and ten yards away from a guy who's quicker than him. At best he squares up and holds the gain down. If he misses a tackle Grady is born to run.

Also note the line moving to the second level and sealing those defensive tackles. Michigan had three or four plays like this where the tailback shot up to cavernous gaps in the line of scrimmage without the ball. And this isn't a reaction to Forcier's decision to pull the ball yet; only the WLB has seen that. The frames above make it pretty clear that if Michigan had handed the ball off Schilling was going to cut this guy off.

Forcier, unfortunately, decides against the bubble and cuts directly upfield:

Molk has finished burying the playside DT and if Brown had the ball he'd be cruising, as the WLB who peeled off to Forcier was about to get his clock cleaned by Schilling. But Forcier pulled the ball and then made a poor read, so he's got one option:

Four yards.

Takeaways:

• Just because the backside DE is crashing down doesn't mean you have to pull the ball. This would have been a big gainer if Forcier handed it off.
• Scrape exchanges are not a magic pill. They pull defenders out of position and the right play call—or read—can exploit them.
• Forcier is, yes, a freshman. He made a number of mistakes against Western of this variety.
• But even so it's nice to have a guy like Forcier who can turn his mistake into positive yards. Michigan had a lot of screwups in game one but most of them still went forward. That's a huge difference from last year.

Offensive UFRs come with a bit more lingo you have to understand. So, on passing plays you'll see (CA, 3, protection 1/1) or something similar. The first item is how I classified the throw. This goes in the Hennechart, which I guess is now the Tatelace chart or something. The second item is what I rated the ball for the wide receiver. 3 is routine, 2 difficult but catchable, 1 a circus catch if made, and 0 is totally uncatchable. The last number is a protection rating assigned to the offensive line. Depending on how long the QB stuck in the pocket and how many rushers there are, the OL can get from 1-3 points. When the opponent gets pressure the OL will lose points and I'll assign the negatives to either a single player (if he was beaten) or the team (if there's a missed blitz pickup that's not easily localizable). I do hand out +/- but don't aggregate them because they don't mean much on offense. For the last couple years Genuinely Sarcastic has been putting together RunFRs that focus just on the ground game and do provide systematic evaluations for the OL and backs; hopefully that will continue.

UPDATE: It was already posted by the time I got it up. You win this time, GS.

A note on Western's defensive alignments: their smallish slot-covering OLB/S guy may technically be a linebacker, which would make all the "nickel" packages below 4-3s but he was real small and the distinction doesn't matter much.

 I think I remember this, but what is it called?

Football.

Ah yes. I suppose there are charts?

Charts.

Quarterbacks of all descriptions (Hennechart again; MA is "marginal"):

TATE FORCIER

DENARD ROBINSON

NICK SHERIDAN

Robinson and Sheridan obviously didn't do much throwing. I have Forcier down for five screens, all catchable, which leaves his downfield success rate (DO + CA / DO + CA + IN + BR + TA + PR) at 58%. That's not Chad Henne at his apex but it's far, far better than the average performance last year and also far better than Ryan Mallett's debut.

And as far as Forcier equaling accuracy go: two incompletions were throwaways, two were drops, and one was pressure-induced. The only throws on which Forcier was inaccurate were

• a long bomb to Webb after rolling out of the pocket that probably would have been complete if it wasn't thrown to a TE,
• an out to Kelvin Grady that was wide, and
• the Koger circus catch.

That is stupid. Forcier has a bunch of issues with reading defenses and having patience and dealing with scrape exchanges and etc etc etc but hot holy damn, man. Everything we were led to believe about Forcier's accuracy is true after one game.

Also note that all five screens were filed CA, and none were remotely close to anything else. That's a huge leap from last year, when Threet actually threw one backwards in the Notre Dame game and was hugely erratic much of the rest of the year. It's sad that we're talking about screens as a huge leap forward, but it's sad about the past so ooookay.

Receivers:

(remember: 0 is uncatchable, 1 is a circus catch, 2 is a somewhat difficult one, and 3 is a routine one)

Only one straight drop, that from Kelvin Grady on his first catch opportunity in three years, and then there was, of course, Koger's circus catch. Items that jump out to me: look at the distribution. 11 players were targeted in one game. And look at the large reduction in 0s and 1s. Last year there were 28 opportunities to make a circus catch; Michigan is on pace for 12 this year.

and PROTECTION CHART: 22/25, Moosman –2, Ortmann –1.

Michigan spent the game in a lot of rollouts, holding these numbers down. Good performance overall.

What about that Odoms call?

I'm pretty sure it was wrong. There's even a call-out in the rule book for that specific situation:

A30, lined up legally as a back, starts in motion legally. He then turns
so that he still is legally in motion but is facing his line of scrimmage
using a “side-step” motion. At the snap, A30 is bent slightly forward
at the waist and is either continuing his “side-step” motion or is
“marking time” in place. RULING: Legal.

Odoms had definitely not taken more than a step or two and was not moving towards the line of scrimmage; at that point he hadn't even turned his shoulders upfield. I think the ref was anticipating forward movement instead of seeing it.

Anything particularly worrying?

Michigan's zone stretch game kind of stank, didn't it? Michigan picked up numerous holding calls, never broke a long run (in the framework of the offense), and had more success on quarterback runs or straight ace or I-form pounding. From under center Michigan ran 13 times for 62 yards before charting ceased, which is 4.8 YPC. Tailbacks from the shotgun had 13 carries for… uh… 61 yards. Wait. Nevermind.

Okay, you should still give an advantage to under center because five of those carries came at the end of the game when Michigan was just pounding the clock out and three others were short-yardage situations. Also, Moundros missed most of the game and when he returns you figure he's best at isos and whatnot.

In any case, 4.8 YPC against a MAC opponent isn't stellar.

Is there anything in what WMU did that future opponents can emulate?

I think they do so at their peril. As discussed in an earlier mailbag, WMU was shooting the DE down the line and having a scraper deal with the quarterback. This guy was the WLB or a corner, and the scrape opened up a lot of those holes on the outside that Michigan exploited with the zone-keep-to-screen series; it would have been worse if Michigan was used to the read, because there were three or four times that Michigan didn't chuck it to the WR where he was wide open. When Minor returns, Michigan loves that quick backside veer play, possibly with a pulling h-back or Moundros—that hits so quickly the DE can't do anything about it except watch the tailback shoot into the hole the scraper is vacating. Michigan clearly spent a chunk of the offseason devising counters to the scrape, all of which they put away once the score got out of hand.

Heroes?

Pick a quarterback, and Junior Hemingway was the first amongst equals at wide receiver.

Goats?

David Molk picked up two deserved holding flags and had numerous instances where Western's small, nimble defensive line hopped past him to disrupt plays. The rest of the OL also gets some mild disapproval.

What does it mean for Notre Dame?

The thing that leapt out during the Nevada game was a play on which two Nevada OLs double-teamed Ethan Johnson and deposited him somewhere around the first-down marker. Johnson's a DT who looks like a tight end, a hyped recruit who appears to be playing badly out of position. Unfortunately, this could be an advantage against Michigan since agile guys who can get down the line can fare better than your conventional pocket-crushing DT sorts. Meanwhile, NT Ian Williams is thoroughly mediocre, blown out time and again by Nevada and a primary reason Michigan was finding acres of space during last year's monsoon. He's not real mobile.

If both of those guys had the same flaws it would be easy. Finding a recipe that works against those two… well, it's probably ram it down their throat a lot. Nevada had good success doing that with their slow WAC backs throughout the game. Putting Johnson on skates and having faith that the backside can contain Williams with a candy bar seems advisable, and Michigan should have an opportunity to break several big gainers what with TAH-NOO-TAA going blitz mad in game one. Last time a TAH-NOO-TAA defense ran up against the spread 'n' shred things worked out all right:

(This video comes with a HORRIBLE MUSIC WARNING.) West Virginia put up 440 yards of offense and 38 points in a three-point win against a team that gave up 17 PPG to all other opponents. So… yeah, there will be the potential for explosive plays.

As far as the passing game goes, well… with all the blitzing Michigan will deploy a bunch of screens of all varieties; I'm looking for that bubble counter that Kelvin Grady dropped to make a potentially lethal return. Michigan will roll the pocket a ton, reducing the effectiveness of some blitzes and requiring Forcier to throw before his head gets taken off on others.

Tate! The people have spoken and MGoUnderground has listened. The Tate shirt is available for purchase.

If you're interested in the details, Enjoy Life pretty much liveblogged his shirt purchase and washing. Everything is AWESOME. He cannot BELIEVE what a deal he got. CONSUME.

I really hope this is just random. If this sign is just random, it's funny. If it's an obscure sexual act—and these days punching BLANK almost always is—it's not:

There is, unfortunately, an Urban Dictionary entry for "Dolphin Punch" but there's only one and it seems obscure enough that unless it's this particularly house/frat that initiated the term they're literally talking about punching dolphins, which I approve of as a ridiculous fashion via which to express your disapproval. [Update: the house had a sign featuring a fist punching an incredulous dolphin, so it was literal. Good work, BOX.] Multiple emailers have mentioned that Drew Sharp—freshly returned to the local airwaves hoorah—spent a lot of time on WDFN the other day bemoaning this sign and others along the various frats and apartment buildings en route to the stadium. An emailer:

Drew Sharp was going on about how there were some "reprehensible" signs that he saw on the way to the game regarding Rosenberg.  He said that he talked to unnamed "U-M officials", and was told that the Freep needs to understand that emotions get high when they write on a sensitive subject, and that their inaction was the first time that Sharp was embarrassed by his degree, blah, blah, blah, won't someone think of the children.

…So, I called in.  I asked him and Matt Shepard where the signs were.  Sharp hemmed and hawed, and it turned out that unsurprisingly, they were on private property  (although one of them "might have been on campus").  They hung up on me before I could blast Sharp for what he is, but Jesus.  No wonder the print media is dying- this isn't rocket science.  Hell, even Shepard understood the First Amendment.

How is it that this man has a job that doesn't involve scrubbing something, but nothing too important?

While we're on the subject of, well, you know, Jay Bilas' latest insider piece argues along these lines:

If the allegations concerning Michigan are true, which would assume that the players making the allegations had a full understanding of what constituted countable and non-countable hours and what constituted voluntary and mandatory workouts, then Michigan is guilty of working too hard on football.

Which is nothing anyone hasn't heard—probably dozens of times—in the last two weeks. But Bilas has toned down the Amaker stuff after the Manny Harris elbow overreaction and remains one of the best analysts (alternatives: Vitale) in college basketball. Maybe Michigan fans can take him off the Enemies List?

And hey guess what now it's time to talk about Notre Dame. What the hell is Charlie Weis 1) talking about and 2) attempting to imply by this:

When Weis was looking at Michigan quarterback Tate Forcier, he said he couldn’t keep track of him because he said he bounced to four high schools in four years.

Forcier transferred from his original high school to Scripps Ranch after his freshman year, and then, you know, played at Scripps Ranch the next three years. Our source on this: Tate Forcier and his interview with Tom for Hail To The Victors 2009. Our hobo quarterback needs to grow a beard and get on the tracks, man, before all the other hobos laugh at him when he says he hasn't been to El Paso.

HOBO #1: You've got to go to El Paso.
FORCIER: I keep hearing that but I've never been. I mostly stick around Scripps Ranch High School because I'm the quarterback there.
HOBO #2: LOL wait till I tell Weis the exact opposite of this.
HOBO #1: Word. I remember our days at Our Lady. Remember what it was like to consider the vague possibility of touching a woman, even if she was the metaphorical embodiment of a religion and not actually, you know, a person?
HOBO #2: No.
HOBO #1: No, me neither.
FORCIER: Yeah… how about that. I'm going to take off, I have to go throw some ridiculously accurate passes. [leaves]
HOBO #1: 40 year mistake, that guy.

Hobo #1 revealed! It's Tommy Kilborn, sometime EDSBS guest columnist:

I certainly respect what the Nevada Wolfpack did, but they just couldn’t hope to keep up with the brilliant scheming by Charlie Weis and his offensive staff. The energy in the stadium was unreal! I saw several alums even stand during plays because they were so excited, though they did sit down quickly and courteously when the ushers came along to settle things down. You can’t blame them, ushers: Charlie Weis football in its full glory has that effect on people.

As always, Kilborn is a brilliant non-parody of Notre Dame fans. NDNation is going to look at you very sternly, Orson.

Speakin' of the hobo. Guy seems to have a good grasp of both train routes and defenses:

Mmmm talky QB porn. Also Rotel ad. I don't think I've ever even seen Rotel available in local supermarkets, but buy anyway. HOBO QB DIRECTS  YOU TO.

Etc.: There is now a blog dedicated to Microsoft Paint as it relates to Michigan football. As you might expect, it is spectacular. Future expansion was part of the Michigan Stadium renovation plans. Mustaches for Michigan came off.