2012 northwestern

[Note on these posts: Yes, gifs are very bandwith-heavy, which is why we put all but one below the jump. There's not really a way around this that doesn't involve people having to click through to a new page for every gif, which isn't exactly ideal. If your page is lagging severely, try hitting 'escape' on your keyboard (unless you have Chrome, in which case you're SOL), which will stop the animation, then you can right-click and hit 'view image' to open each gif individually.]

We're expanding the MGoGifs beyond recapping each game; starting this week, we'll be taking a look ahead with gifs of great (or at least gif-tacular) moments from past games against Michigan's upcoming opponent. So, today's One Frame At A Time features Northwestern gifs of yore, and there's only one place to begin—Jason Avant's absurd one-handed catch in 2003's 41-10 victory.

First, however, I just want to thank everyone who sent in suggestions on Twitter, and also express my eternal gratitude to WolverineHistorian, whose videos provided the source material for most of these. The man is a treasure. And now, here's Avant:

[When you've finished watching that on a loop for, oh, 20 minutes, hit THE JUMP for the rest of the gifs.]

Northwestern, Michigan's upcoming opponent, had a bye last week, so I went back to the only Northwestern torrent I could find—their week six loss at Penn State—for this week's FFFF. The Wildcats allowed three fourth-quarter touchdowns to blow a 28-17 lead, one gained mostly by fortune and a Venric Mark punt return touchdown—PSU held the final edge in yardage, 443-247.

It's worth noting that Northwestern has been playing two quarterbacks this season; in the PSU game, Trevor Siemian got the majority of the snaps over the more mobile Kain Colter, who spent much of the game in the slot. Last week, however, it was Colter who got the starting nod as Siemian threw just one pass in a win over Iowa; this week's game notes have Colter at the top of the depth chart, and considering Siemian's ineffectiveness I'm going on the presumption that will be the case.

OFFENSE

Spread, Pro-Style, or Hybrid? Spread. Very, very spread. Northwestern ran exactly two plays from under center—both came when they were backed up on their own goal line after a Penn State punt pinned them deep. Otherwise, Northwestern ran 48 charted snaps out of the shotgun and six out of the pistol (all of the latter with Kain Colter at QB).

Basketball on Grass or MANBALL? Basketball on grass—the Wildcats, especially with Colter at QB, lean heavily on the zone read. Honestly, they should've leaned on it more heavily, as you'll see when we get to Siemian's HenneChart.

Hurry it up or grind it out? Northwestern rarely huddles and plays at a very fast pace, going so far as to often line up Siemian at wide receiver when Colter takes snaps at quarterback so they can switch betweens QBs without making subsitutions. Pacing the defense is a huge part of their offense's success.

Quarterback Dilithium Level (Scale: 1 [Navarre] to 10 [Denard]): Colter is one of the better-running QBs in the conference, probably behind only Denard and Taylor Martinez [EDIT: and Braxton Miller], so I'd give him an 8. Siemian, on the other hand, rarely looks to escape the pocket and gets maybe a 4—he did manage to scramble for a 15-yard gain against PSU but it occurred when the proverbial seas parted.

Colter has averaged 5.5 yards per carry and already has 11 rushing touchdowns this season. He's very adept at running the read option—his ability to wait until the last possible nanosecond before pulling earned him a touchdown here as PSU's DE gave up the corner:

Why Northwestern ran Colter five times while allowing Siemien to throw 36 passes in a close contest is entirely beyond my comprehension.

[For the rest of this week's opponent breakdown, hit THE JUMP.]

Bullets:

• Both Denard and Russell Bellomy are day to day. Hoke doesn't want to comment on it, so don't ask or he'll get mad at you.
• All's quiet on the Devin Gardner redshirt front.
• Mario Ojemudia is not 100%, still limited in practice. My guess is he probably won't play Saturday.
• Jeremy Gallon is "good." My guess is he probably will play on Saturday.
• Joey Burzynski and Jack Miller have taken reps with the ones this week. If they do get shuffled into the offensive line rotation, that decision will be made after tomorrow's practice.

From the mixed up files of Dr. Basil E. Heikoyang

Opening remarks:

“It was a good practice, and I think it’s been like that most of the year. I think we had really good energy. We had good tempo. I think our team -- I know our team understands we’re playing an awfully good team this week. They’re very difficult in some ways to defend from an offensive perspective. Their playmakers on both sides of the ball with Mark and Colter, and Siemian throws the ball awfully well. They have a group of receivers that play the ball well in the air. I think they run after the catch very well. When you look at the big plays they’ve had defensively, they’ve had 20 plus runs. I think they have 12 touchdowns of them. And then throwing the ball, they’ve had a number of those they’ve done a good job with. And then defensively you look at them and, you know, Mike Hankwitz, who played here, the coordinator, does a tremendous job from a defensive perspective. Sound, disciplined, run to the ball, all the things you want to see a defense do. We’ve got our work cut out for us.

“Regarding our two quarterbacks, I’m not going to talk about it as far as what’s going on with Russell and Denard because it’s day to day and in fairness to those kids, I’m not going to give day to day updates. So that’s where that’s at.”

Oh, hello you. You may not realize this, since your school isn't quite as, how do I say this without sounding rude, enlightened as the one in Evanston, but it seems you Michigan fans have been bequest a rather charitable opportunity to acquire certain (clever is too strong a word) droll affects—or "apparel" if you are yet unfamiliar with the more obscure uses of that word—for an act as uncomplicated as publishing a simple educated guess. So as not to parse words: a contest, in which you may win clothing that acclaims your allegiance to a particular company of sporting men, by accurately adumbrating the final numerical representation of the upcoming, barbaric contest of football prowess between your vulgar Wolverines and the Wildcats of the fair, genteel, and eminently more sophisticated Northwestern University.

For the boorish:

1. Wednesdays I put up a winnable prize that consists of a desirable good.
2. You guess the final scores of this weekend's designated game (football or hoops, depending on the season), and put it in the comments. First person to post a particular score has it.
3. If you got it right, we contact you. If not, go to (5)
4. The desirable good arrives at the address you give us.
5. Non-winners can acquire the same desirable good by trading currency for it.

About Last Week:

Finally someone got it. Fitzmel will be receiving a package of many goods.

This Week's Game:

The Vainglorious Wildcats of Pretensiousestern, versus the High and Mighty Michigan Wolverines

And the Prize:

The lunar chapter of the University of Michigan Alumni Association may have had worse turnout than Ryan Field for its events over the last 30 years. Nevertheless this shirt remains available only in maize and blue, unless the purple people have lately made a similar accomplishment?

Note: If you win the shirt and prefer another shirt, that's cool; pick an MGoShirt.

Fine Print Stuff in the Usual Print: One entry per user. First user to choose a set of scores wins, determined by the timestamp of your entry (for my ease I prefer if you don't post it as a reply to another person's score--if you do it won't help or hurt you). If nobody gets the score, this week's prize carries over to the following week's. Deadline for entries is 24 hours before the start of the game (since I won't have time to pull them on gamedays). MGoEmployees and Moderators--anyone else with moderator privileges--are exempt from winning because you could change your timestamp. If you choose the score that Brian published in the official preview and it actually ends up the final score, well, that would be pretty amazing because Brian picks scores like 29-11 all the time.

file

“There’s Heiko. What’s up? … Where’s your glasses?”

I left them in Minnesota.

“They’re cerebral. That’s why Heiko wears his.”

MGoOhMyGodAlBorgesKnowsMyName@_@: Yeah!

“That’s why I wear mine. Put glasses on and makes you look smarter. I’m just a dumb guy with glasses. What’s up? I’m sure you guys don’t have any questions, so.”

Did you vote today?

“Of course I voted! That’s a ridiculous question. I won’t go into it, but I am very politically minded, okay.”

When did you know Denard wasn’t going to play?

“Kind of right up until we played, because we kind of nursed him along all week just to see how he’s doing, so we’re going to give him a chance to take it all the way to game time. He deserved that. The team deserved that.”

file

Hey coach, how ya doin’?

“Better than last week, that’s for sure. It was good to get a win on the road. Glad that game is over with. Now it’s time to get these guys back at home and g et our seniors one of the last two times back in that stadium and play defense like we’re suppsoed to play.”

Can you talk about the early defensive effort in the game, particularly in light of having a new starter at quarterback?

“Yeah, I mean we understand the situation that we were in in that ball game, and we talked about it. That if you’re going to be a championship defense, then you have to do whatever you have to do to not let people score. It doesn’t matter how many times, what happens, turnovers-wise, where they get the football, then you have to stop them or you have to get the football back. And that takes everybody playing hard, everybody running to the football, and the biggest thing is you can’t give them big plays. You cannot allow in that situation someone to get a cheap one, and that’s what our guys preached. I was proud of them. Again, you hear us say this, we aren’t close yet, but they did do some good things. They did a really good job in the red zone. They did a really good job by the goal line, and that’s one of our big things is ‘Give me a place to stand, don’t let them in until they’re in,’ and we did that, but they shouldn’t have gotten there. That’s the thing we looked at. When we had a short field, we played pretty good at times, but when we had the long field, we let them get down there to make it a short field. We’ve got to get that corrected and we have to get that changed.”