Previously: Western Michigan, Notre Dame, Eastern Michigan, San Diego State

[Note: I plan to do these twice a week from now on so that we (I) can have closure with the 2011 season by sometime in February. Apologies if you find this content dated, but since there are people still writing papers about dinosaurs, I feel somewhat timely, relatively speaking.]

Minnesota

Schedule:

• @ No. 25 USC, 17-19 (L)
• New Mexico State, 21-28 (L)
• Miami (NTM), 29-23 (W)
• North Dakota State, 24-37 (L)
• @ No. 19 Michigan, 0-58 (L)
• @ Purdue, 17-45 (L)
• No. 13 Nebraska, 14-41 (L)
• Iowa, 22-21 (W)
• @ No. 17 Michigan State, 24-31 (L)
• No. 18 Wisconsin, 13-42 (L)
• @ Northwestern, 13-28 (L)
• Illinois, 27-7 (W)

Record: 3-9 overall, 2-6 B1G, 6^th place Bo Division

Stats:

Recap: There was a time not too long ago when Michigan fans could look at a team with a new coach that had finished a season with a 3-9 record and say, “I have no idea know what that’s like, but that must be terrible.”

Now that we know exactly what that’s like -- and yeah, it’s pretty terrible -- let’s take a closer look at how coach Jerry Kill and his Minnesota squad ended the season 3-9 and weep together as repressed memories begin to surface.

(more after the jump)

I said I would write a final opponent watch to recap the season. This is not it. I'll have that one next week.

About Last Saturday:

Bad guys - 0, Good guys - a billion

HELLO.

(more after the jump)

(Wait. Which one is Michigan playing again?)

About Last Weekend:

No. 16 Nebraska 17, No. 18 Michigan 45 (W)

"Guess why I smile a lot."

"Why?"

"Uh, 'cause it's worth it."

The Road Ahead:

Ohio State (6-5, 3-4 B1G)

Getty / via the Huffington Post

Previously:

• Akron, 42-0 (W)
• Toledo, 27-22 (W)
• @ Miami, 24-6 (L)
• Colorado, 37-17 (W)
• Michigan State, 10-7 (L)
• @ No. 14 Nebraska, 34-27 (L)
• @ No. 16 Illinois, 17-7 (W)
• No. 15 Wisconsin, 33-29 (W)
• Indiana, 34-20
• @ Purdue 26-23 OT (LOL)

Last game: No. 21 Penn State 20, Ohio State 14 (L)

Recap: Recap. Have to do a recap. Last recap. Gotta finish by the end of Tuesday. Tuesday's over. Damn. Gotta finish by Wednesday. One-day-late Championship recap. Okay.

... Ohio State fell into a hole early. Penn State RB Stephfon Green took a run up the middle, evaded some tackles, and sprinted 39 yards for a touchdown. 7-0 Nittany Lions.

The ensuing Buckeyes drive stalled because Ohio State C Mike Brewster snapped the ball into his ass while QB Braxton Miller was in shotgun formation. (I think this is when this particular bad snap happened. Bad snaps happened many times throughout this game. I think Brewster ended up blaming it on his gloves.)

Penn State drove and got a field goal, miring the Buckeyes in their third 10-0 deficit in as many weeks.

Ohio State wasn’t dead, though. Not yet. Miller ran the option to good effect and scored on a 24-yard keeper; most of the Buckeyes’ large chunks on the ground came from his option keepers, which is to say he kept the ball every time. He and Denard are both members of the “never pitch” movement.

That’s not anything relevant, but I google imaged “option keeper” and it’s what I got.

Also, WR DeVier Posey returned from suspension. He didn’t make a huge impact (4 catches, 66 yards), but he was pretty much the entire passing offense, and he did do this.

All of this game’s points were scored in the first half before the allure of B1G football got the better of both teams. Penn State scored another touchdown and field goal in the first half but failed to convert on a redzone opportunity in the second half when Ohio State turned the ball over on a fumble.

On that possession, the Buckeyes defense mounted an impressive goal-line stand to keep the Nittany Lions out of the end zone.

The second Buckeye touchdown came in the second quarter when Braxton Miller found TE Jake Stoneburner on a deep crossing route in the end zone. It was an impressive throw. Something tells me that he might eventually be pretty good when he’s given a real offense to work with.

You probably know the rest. Ohio State drove ferociously for a Hail Mary opportunity in the final minutes, but the first fourth-down conversion fell short when a Miller scramble, set back by a false-start penalty, fell short of the first down marker. The second attempt after a quick Penn State three-and-out fell incomplete because Penn State actually knows how to cover receivers. Unlike you, Wisconsin. For shame.

Right now they are as frightening as: Voldemort down to his last Horcrux.

Michigan should worry about: When you look at Miller’s highlight reel, the thing that stands out is that he scrambles effectively to buy time for his receivers to get open. He keeps his eyes downfield, and his instincts are usually good when it comes to finally tucking and running. A lot of his game-winning or almost-game-winning touchdowns came when he danced around in the backfield for some length before finding his target.

To get to him, Michigan’s secondary will need to stay on receivers for a lot longer than they’re used to, and D-line discpline will be essential. If he’s able to break through the containment, Miller will make plays.

Michigan can sleep soundly about: The Nittany Lions rushed for 239 yards on not that many carries. Their running backs consistently found enormous holes in the Buckeyes defensive line and frequently had to be tracked down from behind by linebackers. It looked like Ohio State’s defensive line was caught in pass rush mode at the wrong times -- the ends were way overcommitted, allowing the backs to run right by them.

Next game: No. 15 That School Up North 

(more after the jump)

The difference between this season and 2009-'10: 100 percent more Jug.}
Photo: Eric Upchurch.

[ED: LATE BREAKING is this week's edition of Pick Six.]

Michigan is 5-0 and beat a Big Ten team 58-0. The only thing tempering effusive celebration and Pasadenic predictions right now is Michigan made it to 5-0 last year too. Quick this year v. last year table (EDIT: now FIXED):

I realigned '10 a bit to kinda sorta match the level of competition (so like beating up on BGSU = beating up on Minnesota) but last year had two road games. It also had an FCS team put up 37 and Indiana put up 35, while the season on the right side seems to keep getting better as it goes along. "This isn't last year!" was this week's rallying cry in the diaries, where justingoblue is trying to figure out how tough the schedule has been so far, and 909Dewey is taking way too small sample sizes to put 58-0 over Minnesota in the context of Michigan 2005-present.

Blazefire is preparing himself for a "Rationality Juncture," ie the swings that sports fandom brings:

We are fans because we believed that a five foot ninja could stop North Dakota. We are fans because we believed Darius Morris would shoot successfully. We are fans because we believed in 30 seconds.

This one paragraph puts him in the running for Diarist of the Week. Of course he wouldn't have a chance except BlueSeoul is exempt from winning. That does not exempt you from reading his latest masterpiece Game Wraps:

Little Brown Jug Total Gopher Destructo, with pics:

MSU-OSU Total Rival Self-Destructo, with pics:

How we know it's not 2010: Michigan State actually played Ohio State.

While we're on the subject of Mansmash vs. Brotough, see if you can guess which of the following names are 2013 prospects recently profiled by Ace, and which are MST3K space jocks:

Big McLargehuge has camped at Michigan but needs to improve his shape before he earns a Michigan offer. This week's points bonus opportunity goes to whoever can best apply the above names to characters from this year's OSU-MSU debacle. Last week's goes to Gwhizz for his chewbacca costume.

After the jump, more evidence that 2011 =/= 2010, and more diaries.

Substitution notes: Obviously there was Gardner. Hopkins played quite a bit of fullback and got a couple carries. Shaw got a little run today after missing SDSU entirely. Watson appears to have locked down the second TE spot. Unless he shows up against Purdue, Mike Cox has probably seen his career end without even the random 50-yard run against a terrible opponent.

On the line, Barnum missed the game and was replaced by Schofield. When Michigan put in its second team line it read Schofield-Burzynski-Khoury-Omameh-Mealer from left to right. Burzynski is a redshirt freshman walk-on who the official site notes has been liked four times on Facebook.

Formation notes: Fritz has been discussed plenty already, but here's Fritz anyway:

Denard is the left wingback, Smith the right, Toussaint deep. It seemed like they were flipping Denard when they were on the other hash.

The usual other than that with even less under center. When they went to it they usually passed, which is a really weird thing to realize. "Oh, it's the I. They must be passing." /head explodes

Show? Show.

SHOULD HAVE SENT A POET

That was fun!

Yes, our quarterback threw it at people!

Except when there was a rollout!

And our linemen often found themselves on the second level wondering if anyone was going to validate their existence!

Except when they went under center!

Which, to be fair, they did about twice!

So… same question that we asked about the D applies here: anything of meaning to be found?

Yes, probably moreso than the defense because certain things on offense are defense-independent, or at least sort of defense independent. The best way to show this is with a—

Chartttttt.

—chart. One you don't even cower in fear at.

[Hover over column headers for explanation of abbreviation.]

Happy pony forever!

Now the caveats: Minnesota, for one. For two, virtually all of that was short stuff, with the Hopkins go route and another pass to Hemingway the only moderately long passes thrown. It is progress. It may not be meaningful against teams with a secondary.

Now the anti-caveats: The MA was a not-too-difficult completion that gained six and could have been a shaky CA, and I don't really blame Denard for any of those INs.

Who do you blame?

Not to tempt the wrath of Gordon Borges, but Borges. (Michigan was +12 RPS, FWIW, so regard this as the nit it is, Mr. Borges sir.) Rollouts are killing me, man. Maize Pages has been charting the Denard throws in some detail and reports back on the rollout situation from the last game:

There are so few incomplete passes that it's easy laying all 5 of them (4 + 1 PI call) out again:

• 1+20 | shot | PA, rolls left, sets feet, pumps, bad feet, P3, throws up jump ball, PI called (incomplete)
• 1+10 | shot | PA, rolls right, moving feet, P2, overthrows Hemingway (incomplete)
• 1+10 | shot | takes 1 step back, sets feet, P0, throws to a tightly covered Koger out route (incomplete)
• 2+10 | shot | rolls right, doesn't set feet, P1, throws to Dileo who bobbles could have been caught (incomplete)
• 3+10 | shot | rolls right, sets feet, P2, overthrows Hemingway (incomplete)

Notice a trend? 4 of his 5 incomplete passes were on roll-outs. On my count, Denard rolled 6 times all game, giving us a completion rate of 2/6 out of the pocket. While it's become clear that Denard is more comfortable from the gun, rolling the pocket seems to be the bad within the good, unnecessarily complicating his footwork and taking him out of his comfort zone.

Borges referenced some of these incompletions in his presser and blamed footwork and protection, both of which are right. Denard's footwork was poor as he pulled up to throw off his back foot; on two of those the pulling G who's supposed to provide Denard some protection pulled up when two guys burst upfield and he couldn't decide who to block. If the guards shoot into the outside guy without hesitation…

Well, they probably still end up letting him onto the edge because he is coming hard, and then Denard has to deal with the guy on the inside, and you still have issues. You have fewer issues than you did in the last game but it's still not an ideal situation.

I'd rather keep Denard in the pocket, where people rush him gingerly, if at all, and have him zip it into receivers without having to set his feet. That's right: Denard is a pocket guy.

Meanwhile, BWS picture-paged Gardner's crazylegs scramble that started when he turned around on a waggle only to find a Gopher in his face:

The moral of the story is that when you put a Michigan quarterback on the edge you are exposing him to rushers that are unblocked or almost unblocked because the first priority of any opposing defense is to prevent #16 (or #7) from getting the edge. The only time a quarterback could get the edge was when the defense was freaking out about the other quarterback getting the other edge.

Okay, there was also this time:

When they didn't need it, Robinson had the corner wiiiide open.

And the waggle… guh, man, guh. That is the Atari 2600 version of the spread 'n' shred. You are turning your back to the defense and hoping that when you turn around you don't find an angry 250 pound man in your face. Since This Is Michigan (2011 edition) that always happens because power gains two yards and the quarterback leaves neutrinos in the dust. Priorities one through five for the defense are containing the QB.

This is why all that throwback stuff is working so brilliantly. How can we keep that—which everybody likes—and ditch the incompletions? I don't know, but apparently doing max-protect rollouts fools everyone all the time even without an actual threat of gaining yards on the frontside so lets keep doing that.

ANYWAY, you crab.

I'm not a crab. Let me prove this with more charts.

Hey, look: numbers. At this point in the season we can say that the top two receivers seem to be Hemingway and Gallon, with Roundtree evaporating but still third and Dileo seemingly fourth. Odoms and Grady appear to be down the depth chart as seniors, which is surprising. Odoms does have the hand injury.

Offensive line, keeping in mind that only 35-ish carries were charted after around 50 last week.

The offensive line did about as well as it did last week, which may qualify as something of a disappointment or may just reflect how hard it is to get five to seven guys all doing the right thing on every play. The backs and receivers had excellent outings—that's how you get to 7.9 YPC from the 7.3 posted against SDSU.

So this Omameh business?

I can't help but wonder if he is struggling for reasons other than awkward change to a new system. When Michigan threw the second team OL out there they left him on the field. Michigan doesn't have much depth on the OL but they've got someone who can go out there leading Minnesota by 50 in the fourth. The other guard was a walk-on.

The lack of depth on the line is an argument to get Omameh out in my mind, since you really don't want one of your 7-ish plausible OL going down in garbage time. Leaving him on the field makes me think they're not happy with his play and are trying to get him more reps because they don't have other options.

And the shotgun/center run dichotomy?

There's nothing to talk about this week, as the only under center runs I have charted are two short yardage plays (a one yard Fitz TD and a three-yard Fitz iso on third and two) and a single second and two power from the eight that lost a yard. I think there were one or two more after charting stopped that also did poorly.

So we can't do it. Fine. Borges is adapting, which is great, and seems to be getting his MANBALL from other sources, like shotgun isos at spread out teams and a hell of a lot of sprint counter.

Sprint counter.

Yessssss. It's not quite TGDCD but it is ver' nice, especially when Molk gets his Lewan on. Minnesota was clueless the whole day and since it looks virtually identical to the QB going off tackle it is going to kill guys. They might have to break a key or two to keep it working later in the year since that tackle pull is a dead giveaway, but you know me, I love those interlocking plays.

You are still a crab.

So here's this, bolded alter-ego: I am going to go all sports talk radio on you, in gushing fashion. Maybe it was the proximity of this game to the flaming garbage dump that was MSU-OSU, but these players look exceedingly well coached. There were a couple plays where having that extra beat of patience paid off. One was the first third down of the game:

That extra beat he waits gets Minnesota's linebackers to drop into coverage and gets him the room he needs for the conversion. He moved so late that Gallon (who had a day blocking people, yo) has already buried the rolled-up safety by the time he reveals his intent.

And then there was Vincent Smith thespian school:

You know how you're watching a football game and it's just bleeding obvious that the RB/WR is going to throw? You ever get that feeling? I do all the time. I was shocked when Smith pulled up to throw, and so was Minnesota. I bet 95% of teams would have gotten suckered there.

Weekly tailback opinion?

I'm still in Toussaint's corner but the current breakdown between Smith and Fitz will find no complaints here. I think he's got better burst than Smith:

Smith brings a bunch of other things to the table and deserves about half the carries; I think Toussaint will end up the leading non-Denard rusher.

Heroes?

Pretty much everyone. Special commendation to the tailbacks and Borges.

Goats?

Lewan did not perform up to his usual standard on the ground.

What does it mean for Northwestern and beyond?

The primary takeaway is that when in the correct situations Denard can be an effective passer. While his limitations are obvious by now, having him throw in better situations and giving him quick rhythm passes results in a 73% DSR. Borges is right that they have to open it up deep. There's a pretty good way to do that without jump-balling it: oh noes.

I hope what we saw against Minnesota is a precursor and Borges is going to continue installing and using innovative packages based on Denard's legs. There is a little bit of lingering fear that this was just a dog and pony show that they'll put away the rest of the year now that they've gotten everyone to prepare for it, a strategy that seems far worse than using those plays against a plausible opponent, but Borges says that's not the case and he seems pretty rad so far so I believe him.

The I-Form seems dead. They're not even bringing it out in garbage time against Minnesota to practice it against real opponents and they're using a two-back TE look from the shotgun that seems like a direct attempt to replace it. I'm okay with that since the shotgun still gives you that advantage by forcing the D to account for Denard's legs.

Other item: Shaw just confirmed the Smith/Toussaint 1-2 punch in the backfield.