2012 nebraska

About Last Saturday:

Funny bone 9, Serious bone 23.

Upchurch

Denard suffered an ulnar nerve compression. [UPDATE: Mgoreader drbogue suggests that it is more likely classified as a traumatic neuropraxia of the ulnar nerve, and I think that's accurate. The following explanations still apply because tomato tomato. 90% of you just tuned out anyway.]

Whence the ulnar nerve? Brace yourself for the fancy artwork below. Please direct your attention to the stringy yellow thing.

As you can see, the ulnar nerve innervates the interosseous muscles that are primarily responsible for grip. It also innervates the skin covering the pinky and half of the ring finger. When the ulnar nerve gets injured, the symptoms therefore manifest as loss of strength and coordination while gripping and a tingly burning sensation in the pinky and ring finger.

How long does such an injury typically take to heal? The internet suggests anything from "immediately" to "weeks" depending on severity, i.e. I don't really know. UPDATE: I just found a journal article that says that if there is "compression of a sufficient magnitude to sever axons," recovery will require several weeks during which even normal physical stress on the nerve should be avoided. Yikes. Let's hope it's not that.

Why is it sometimes called a funny bone injury? Usually the ulnar nerve is compressed at the elbow. It gets banged into the humerus. Now if you look closely at the humerus ...

You can see that it is indeed a funny bone.

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Formation notes: Most of the game was in the under:

On certain passing downs Michigan did this weird thing with one of the DEs pulled up in a two point stance between the two NTs:

M dropped eight on this and got quick pressure when Roh beat the T around the edge one on one.

Here it is again:

May see that a little more going forward, but it's obviously a gimmicky passing down defense only.

Substitution notes: Back seven was the established starters the whole way with two exceptions: Cam Gordon got a fair number of snaps in place of Jake Ryan and Bolden came in for Demens on the last drive. I don't think Morgan came off for even a snap.

On the line, all spots got a dose of rotation. Roh got the most time; Heitzman backed him up and got a couple spots at three-tech. Washington was also heavily deployed; Pipkins backed him up. Campbell had the edge on Black at three tech but Black got more snaps than he has in the recent past. Beyer went most of the way at WDE with Ojemudia backing.

[AFTER THE JUMP: charts and stuff.]

Denard is Michigan and Michigan is Denard. The defense has stepped up to mitigate that statement on the team front, but it's more true than ever for the offense. More true than last year, definitely.

One fine gentleman on the internet, known only as @jemather prompted me to look into how true it was for Michigan and how the Wolverine reliance on Denard matched up against other one-man shows.

For methodology I looked at every player who has at least 50 combined rushes and passes this season, that got me a group of 313 players. I then compared what the EV (not opponent adjusted) was for each of the plays where they passed or carried the ball. That number was then compared to the per-play average for every play their team ran that they didn’t pass or rush. Based on this route, Dri Archer of Kent State is college football’s most valuable player on a per-play basis. On 71 plays, Archer averaged 0.54 pts/play while the rest of his teammates averaged 0.04 pts/play on other plays. Coming in second, Denard Xavier Robinson. With a significantly higher 247 plays, Denard has average 0.23 pts/play while the non-Denard portion is a mirrored –0.23 pts/play. The only other major conference player over 0.35 is Kansas State’s Collin Klein at a 0.42 difference.

The concept of team replacement value is probably more true when you combine the per play average with number of plays for a total points added. By this measure, Denard still comes in second to a small college player. This time its quarterback Kolton Browning from Louisiana -Monroe. Browning’s 385 plays push his total value to the Warhawks for the season to 129 points, followed by Robinson’s 114 point contribution to Michigan. Here is your major college top 10.

All quarterbacks leading the way. In fact, the top 32 spots all go to quarterbacks, reinforcing my belief that running backs are overrated. Dri Archer is the top running back at 35 points above team average. Venric Mark is the top major college running back at +30 for Northwestern.

The bottom line is that so far this season no player has been more crucial to his team’s success than Denard Robinson. His play hasn’t been perfect but when one player is responsible for half of his team’s points, its probably better to have him in the lineup. I am not looking forward to next year. I am too scared to look at what the best seasons by true freshman quarterbacks have been, but that still might be better than the alternative.

LVP’s

The same concept of most valuable player can be flipped to look at least valuable players. [Ed-S: In baseball they call this the Neifi Perez Factor. e-fact!] These are the players who keeping the ball in their hand is doing the most damage to their own team. It’s not just theoretical, these are the players who on a per play basis are doing less than their teammates are.

Again, all quarterbacks. Hope you are enjoying the Vandenberg/Davis era Hawkeyes!

Game Recap

Biggest swing plays

+9%: Gibbons is good from 52 yards to put Michigan on the board

+11%: Martinez fumbles setting up Michigan with a chance for points before the half

+9%: Ojemudia intercepts Martinez

-8%: Martinez to Bell for the opening score

-22%: Bellomy intercepted by Smith and returned 53 yards

-10%: Maher hits from 51 yards

-8%: Bellomy intercepted by Stafford

-All the percents: Denard leaves the game

Game Scores

Denard Robinson: –1, +2%

Russell Bellomy: –12, –40%

Fitzgerald Toussaint: –3, –3%

Defense: +5, +18%

Wins Projection

Michigan went into Lincoln as the underdog so the loss doesn’t alter the 8-win most likely projection. The performance did knock the expected win chances for the next three games from the 80’s to the 70’s, along with making Ohio a longer shot. The net effect is that although eight wins is still most likely, the odds of hitting nine wins is greatly reduced and seven wins is very much in play. The model assumes Denard plays the rest of the season but there is a negative portion from the Nebraska game for the time he was out.

Dumb Punt

Norm Chow is considered an offensive genius but he is apparently still a conventional decision maker when it comes to fourth down. With about six and a half minutes left, Hawaii trailed Colorado State by 8 and faced fourth and six at the Colorado State 39. Rather than push the field position and try to tie the game, Chow elected to punt, ultimately gaining 26 yards of field position. The Rams would take three minutes off the clock and give the Warriors back the ball at their own eight. Hawaii would not go on to win the game. Norm Chow is your Ron Zook Memorial Dumb Punt of the Week Award Winner.

Honorable mention for the week in dumb game theory is a joint award for Charlie Weis and Mack Brown who were simultaneously trying to shoot themselves in the foot at the end of the Kansas’s failed upset bid over Texas.

If you follow me or more likely Brian on twitter, you know that the blog’s current pet peeve is not using your timeouts on defense when the other team is about to score late, even if you lead. Kansas was leading by 3 and Texas had 1st and Goal at the 3 with 1:16 left on the clock. Texas only had one timeout left so there were two possible outcomes, Texas scores or is stopped. If Texas is stopped, Kansas can run out the clock, there is no downside to Kansas keeping more time on the clock. If Texas scored, the time becomes valuable to Kansas, not Texas. With 1:16 left on the clock and one timeout. Texas has plenty of time to make whatever play calls they want and an incentive to burn the clock. Kansas responds to this situation by not using their timeouts, not after a first down rush and not after a second down rush. Texas responds by rushing to the line each time. The good news for Longhorn fans is they scored a touchdown with only 8 seconds left. The bad news is that they shouldn’t have had to rush, especially with a timeout in their pocket. Kansas should have received the ball with just under a minute left instead of 8 seconds. The good news is that Kanas had two timeouts to use when they took over at their own 27 with 8 seconds left.

Prediction

A game that seemed like a laugher not that long ago is all of the sudden close enough to be nervous. What does Michigan get out of its quarterback? If it's anything close to regular Denard the offense should be fine this week. If not, then who knows. After losing two quarterbacks, Minnesota has found two solid starts from Phillip Nelson, the only Gopher QB to post two positive games this season. The Michigan defense controls the game but the offense is unable to blow the game open.

Michigan 21 Minnesota 15

Yesterday's Picture Pages covered extensive confusion on Michigan's part as they tried to run basic isos against a basic defense but couldn't get the ILBs blocked, with a side of playcalls that leave guys alone in the hopes that accounting for end-around motion or the threat of an option play will draw players away from the actual threat.

A second major reason Nebraska had unblocked guys all over the place was blockers seeing a player shoot past them quickly and reacting. I've been doing this for a while now and this sort of thing has become one of my pet peeves. A blocker will see a defensive player run past them clean. They now have two options:

• Turn around and get that guy.
• Know—or at least hope—that wasn't your guy and find someone else to block.

Door A never works. They don't block the guy they missed, and they don't block anyone further downfield. When another blocker takes care of the aggressive player or the ballcarrier outruns him, the play is still screwed up because another defender is coming free.

This happened to Michigan on consecutive plays at the end of the first quarter. On the first, Michigan runs the veer from a 4-wide formation. Nebraska responds with two safeties at about ten yards and 5.5 guys in the box, as was their wont:

You can see the nickelback cheating off Dileo presnap, and he will come.

Remember earlier in the year when I was complaining that the linebackers didn't seem to understand that when the line slanted one way they should be moving against it since that is where the ball is likely to end up? This is an offensive version of that.

Dileo should know these things when the corner comes:

1. Michigan is running the inverted veer.
2. A blitzing corner is invariably the defense's force player—he contains and forces the runner inside.
3. On an inverted veer the force player will be optioned off by the running back. The quarterback will have the ball going vertically.

So does he need to block the corner? No. Will he block the corner? Well, this post exists, so deduct for yourself.

Michigan snaps the ball and runs the veer. Barnum pulls. Here's the mesh point:

45 degrees from downhill—okay

The playside end is hugging the back of the tackle who's ignoring him. This is normally a give by Robinson, and Michigan has picked up some decent chunks early by giving. Denard pulls this time, which is good because that corner is coming to make the give a likely TFL. Nebraska made it easy by tipping that the nickelback was coming presnap.

Dileo should move to the next level, but he turns and starts pursuing the nickelback.

90 degrees! alert!

Argh. At this point the guy is gone, and even if Dileo makes contact there's a good chance he'll pick up a block in the back call. To add insult to injury, trying to block this guy you can't block is purposeless—he's already going to be optioned off.

Elsewhere:

1. Barnum picks up the end.
2. Schofield gets his free release and engages the MLB.

The coast is clear!

turned around: dead

Tantalizing!

Dawwwww, unblocked safety. Unblocked safeties.

Five yards, and Dileo comes back in at the end to go "dawwwwww."

Video

If Dileo can cut that safety like Joe Reynolds did against State, that is six points. Even if the safety keeps his feet and contains, that's likely a first down.

[AFTER THE JUMP: dawwwww not again.]

Formation notes: Much of the game was spent with Michigan in 2WR looks, leading to a lot of 4-3's like this with the linebackers shifted over the slot and a cornerback overhanging. When the receivers were split instead of twinned Michigan either got a straight up 4-3 even with two deep safeties or a shifted 4-4 look.

When Michigan spread the field, Nebraska defenders would go with them. Against three wide looks you got this:

And against four wide looks it was usually this:

Occasionally a safety would screw down but there weren't enough snaps with Denard on the field and M in a true spread to test it. Interestingly enough, I saw both Oregon and Arizona run double stacks last weekend like Borges does, except when they ran double stacks those stacks were damn near the edge of the field.

Substitution notes: Nothing new except for the obvious switch at QB. Rawls still can't get a snap. Funchess is playing all over the field, but rarely as an in-line TE.

[After the jump: it's okay and then DOOOOM.]

file

“Sup?”

You had to be happy with how you were moving the ball in the first quarter until you got into the red zone …

“Yeah. We got in sync pretty good. We had three drives of ten plays or more. Mix of run and pass was pretty good. I felt like we were starting to really get into sync and it was unfortunate. We’re not doing a good job of finishing drives. That’s our main focus for this week, particularly in the red area. This is not the first time it’s happened.”

Seemed like some plays were there to be made in the red zone, though.

“Yeah. There were some opportunities. There’s some opportunities, but it’s -- we have to run the ball better in the red area, too. I have just found in my experience as a coordinator that the best red zone years we had are the years we were able to rush the football for a touchdown probably about 60% of the time or better. That’ll really improve. It gets increasingly more difficult to throw it down there, obviously, because of the condensed field.”