Greg Mattison

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Opening remarks:

“Well, it’s getting going in the Big Ten season, and you know we’ll see where we are and we’ll see how much we’ve improved. This is a good football team we’re playing. Purdue’s a much better team than they were last year. Watching them on film, they’ve done some good things, so this will be good. This will be good for us to take the next step.”

What are the things they do offensively that concern you the most?

“Well they throw a lot of screens. They throw a lot of screens, a lot of bubble screens, a lot of X screens, and that’s their way of getting the ball outside, so what they’re going to do is show you a running play and either hand it off in the run, or if they don’t feel like you’re covered down well enough, then they’re going to throw it out there, and they’ve been very successful on it.”

Is there a big difference between how they play this year vs. last year?

“Probably executing much much better this year. The quarterback’s making good throws, and they just look like a much better football team. The thing about it is you always look at who do they play, well they played Notre Dame pretty darn well. I’ve been watching a lot of them against us last year, too, and they beat Ohio, you know. They’ve shown that they can go.”

Moppets: apparently a Michigan thing. HT the Yaker family.

It's been two weeks since Michigan's last home game, and for me and the wife it meant two Saturdays at someone else's stadium: Notre Dame and—unrelated to the Great Meeting of the Bloggerati—Georgia. The first I went with my cousin and her kid, who's about the age I was when his father took me up to campus and I got Desmond'ed. The second was with two of my best friends from college, one of whom married a major Bulldog fan and couldn't bring his kid because you don't bring kids to SEC conference games—maybe Florida-Atlantic, but people still look at you strange.

I thought I'd use the bye week opportunity to share the experiences as compared to Michigan.

Notre Dame

South Bend and Notre Dame du Lac vs. Ann Arbor: If not for the signs (which you should ignore because they tell dirty lies) you wouldn't realize there's a city here. Northern Indiana once you leave the part you pass to get to Chicago is right out of Rudy: small industrial belt homes nooked close together right up to the point campus has to start. We parked (for free) on the south side of Coquillard Park and at this point you notice or somebody informs you that Notre Dame is a fifth of the size of your median Big Ten school. The closest thing they have to a State Street or South University is a one-block collection of chain-ish restaurants in a pair of newer building complexes that straddle Eddy Street.

Their Main Street/downtown is about 2 miles southwest of the stadium and reminds me of Kalamazoo or a smaller Grand Rapids. The College Football Hall of Fame is here but we wanted to tailgate and it's something you rope Greg Dooley into doing with you but probably not a 12-year-old.

Coming from the south you are hitting a collection of buildings constructed or heavily renovated after 2004. The stadium owns this area. Once past (and to the left of) that and the new stuff you're in something a late Bourbon king probably commissioned. And it's here you remember or someone tells you that despite the mascot this started as a French institution, and was designed to French tastes. Having been to Ireland extensively and lived in France, this is a good thing.

On to the stadium and such, after a  jump.

Brady Hoke

News bullets and other important items:

• Bye weeks. They are many, varied, ever-changing, and eternal.
• Aside from the guys who are out for the year, everyone except maybe Brandon Moore and maybe Marvin Robinson should be back for Purdue.
• Also except for Nathan Brink.

Televised presser

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Opening remarks:

“You know, the bye weeks, I think you never know when a good bye week is, when it’s not a good bye week -- I don’t think you really know that until you go through it. I think it was good because of the productivity that we got from having the bye week. I would hope we have that, the productivity, anytime the bye week was, but I think we got to really re-evaluate where we’re at and what we want to do. I think you evaluate yourselves a little bit as coaches. I think that’s always a big part of it. Different things in the aspects that you’re involved with, from the kicking, the defense, the offense. You always look at self-scouting, see where you’re at, what you might want to do different or what you like, what you’re doing.

"I think the other part of it is the teaching part, the fundamentals, and those things that go along with it. I think the other part, which was big, was the guys who are traveling who are freshmen have not been home since June 25^th. We have a lot of those guys from the state, got a lot of those guys within driving distance from Ohio and Chicago. It was good to give them about 36 hours to be a human being and go home and maybe watch their high school play, see mom and dad, grandma and grandpa, aunt and uncles, whoever -- I thought that was positive. And then from the academic side also I think it’s always a help.

"So we’ll find out obviously Saturday. We’ve got a tremendous challenge because I think Purdue’s playing as well as anybody in our league right now. Three and one. Went to South Bend and played a hard-fought tough game, had a chance to win the game. So we got our work cut out for us.”

Formation notes: "second and seven under center play action":

via NDMSPAINT.

Substitution notes: usual. When Lewan went out temporarily they made the same OL switch. No Rawls, FWIW.

Dispensing with chatter.

This was the structural problem with the Michigan offense against ND.

ND:

• often showed extremely soft coverage,
• ran cover zero behind it,
• never had their corners tested, and
• never had their OLBs put in a bind.

I'm not just talking about bubble screens here. In either of the top two frames, a simple smash concept…

A and Z are running a smash concept that high-lows the corner

…is an easy read Michigan—one Denard was doing way back in the day—is in advantageous position on. Michigan ran some of these. They either should have kept going to that and curl-flat or bubble screens until ND was forced out of this defense.

They should also have protected Denard at all costs. Even in this game, when Robinson had time he was zipping it in.

Borges's late under center passes were max-protect sorts that kept Robinson clean and resulted in big gains (or should have) as ND's inexperienced corners got lost on Gardner, sucked up on a short route, opening up a longer one, etc.

On each interception*, Denard got quick pressure. On the first it was a three man rush with a rolling pocket that got a redshirt freshman fullback singled up against Shembo. On the second, Te'o flies up in the pocket unmolested. Smart Football suggested that Smith needs to abort the mesh point and just go block the guy, and yeah if that's what ND is doing and Michigan is prepared for it go for it. They apparently weren't. I've never seen M abort a mesh like that, or have to.

The third is second and seven under center play action that gets Tuitt in Denard's face. Is Gallon open? Yeah. Does that somehow erase the fact that Denard has thrown INTs on his past two throws thanks to pressure, has has thrown the ball away once this year and was amongst the worst guys in the country in interception rate last year? I mean, we know this happens. It has just happened against Air Force and UMass, at home. It is not going to stop happening. Calling plays that emphasize this flaw is insane. Everyone in the stadium knows that when Michigan goes under center a defender or two will make their top priority Denard containment. He'll be unblocked, and Denard will have to form up and make a throw with a guy in his face. Which he sucks at.

If you don't think that's stupid, I don't know what else I can tell you. Robinson was 24 of 40 for 244 yards, a TD, and no INTs two years ago against the Irish in a year when they finished with the #25 pass efficiency D. His regression is obvious despite having two solid years of QB coaching from Borges to raise him up.

If it's not the structure of the offense, what is it? Is Denard in Flowers for Algernon?

*[we're setting aside the Hail Mary because it's a Hail Mary.]

Now, Denard.

Losing this game was of course a joint effort. Passing table:

[Hennechart legend is updated.]

Gardner had an MA, Smith an INX. UFR charts don't fully weight the horribleness of any particularly horrible throw and so the DSR does not reflect the horrible horrible INTs. It's still pretty bad. The run chart is worse for Denard: he ends up –2.5 after fumbling and missing some cuts.

I've gotten so many conflicting opinions on the Gardner route on INT 2 that I don't know what is going on there, but he's staring right at Gardner so even if the route is not as expected he should be adjusting to that. The most authoritative word I've heard said the route was fine in the eyes of the coaches, so the final verdict is it's on Denard (and the combination of events that literally prevented him from stepping into the throw).

Meanwhile, taking sacks or just chucking the ball away on the other two throws saves Michigan 100 yards of field position, with another 71 thrown away by the fumble. Thanks to the heroics of the defense, it took both Denard and Borges having awful games to lose it, but lose it they did.

FWIW, Denard did abort a throw in the second half, which resulted in… a failure to convert a third down and a field goal attempt after he got instant pressure on ill-conceived play action. If he had done that in the first half, Michigan punts and ends up in third and long on the two passes that were just WTF—ie, not the Gardner miss. FWIW, in that half he was 8 of 11 with two of the incompletions deep balls in the hands of his WRs on the final drive. Notably, he was not eating unblocked pass rushers as he did this.

How could the pieces fit together better?

Bubble, etc. Posts written about it before. Or flash screens or what have you, anything that forces opposition corners and linebackers to think about the slot guys on every play. They're more effective as in the box blockers when they are dragging guys out of the box than trying to deal with guys much bigger than them.

That brings the secondary up, and then you're either looking at a deep safety and a more consistent run game, opportunities to hit shots over the top, or zip gone TDs. Here's a nine-yard inverted veer from the second half:

They option off the OLB. The safety sitting twelve yards off the LOS flashes into the screen at the end; he's the guy who forced Denard into the cornerback. If Michigan has forced him to react to the possibility of a bubble screen, he is not available and this defense has just ceded a 42 yard touchdown, or Motta has made a fantastic recovery—look how he's beating Roundtree's block to the outside—and Michigan still gets nine yards.

Meanwhile, Michigan's best running play is that inverted veer.

Michigan has no play action off of it. They have no counter from it. They just kind of run it. And it's great! But if you want to get the explosion back you need to start screwing with opponents by faking your good plays. Michigan tried it last year, couldn't block it, and dumped it. They took an offseason and kept it dumped. Oy.

Michigan should be running more max protection schemes. Keep Denard clean, give him a couple options, and then tell him to take off. Maybe leak Toussaint or Smith (or Norfleet) out of the backfield after a delay.

What was with the Vincent Smith play? That didn't look right.

It wasn't. A reader pointed out what Michigan did against Minnesota, pulling both playside linemen. On the initial pitch play, Michigan pulled both playside linemen. On the ill-fated trick play, nobody pulls. According to Borges that's a call that did not get to the line, which yeah. I punt on the RPS there, shading to plus since if Smith didn't have to pull up so quickly it looked like Dileo was coming open.

Consider my objections there retracted. The play likely would have worked but for the bust on the line call.

Please give me something positive?

The offensive line went from battered to batterer at halftime, inexplicably. Michigan's first play of the half set the tone when Patrick Omameh(!) of all people blows Nix off the line of scrimmage:

Michigan manballed up late and blew a dump-truck sized hole in the ND OL plus got a Dudley-level thump from Kerridge:

On a speed option late, Michigan picked up a third and four by blowing ND down the line so far that it didn't matter that the pitch was unbelievably wide open.

Here's the run chart:

the ratio that is important for the OL. On a lot of plays they do okay and get a push.

So, the protection sucked, and the line was in tough but came out okay, and the ballcarriers didn't do much, and I must be Mike Kwiatkowski's secret dad or something. I don't know about the Kwiatkowski stuff, but he sealed guys away every time when Michigan went for the edge. That gave him a ton of relevant blocks that he accomplished and boosted those numbers up there. I probably should have started with the half-points more, but I'll keep an eye on him in the future. There is a reason he is playing a lot more than Williams in single TE sets (and sets with Funchess).

Receivers:

[Passes are rated by how tough they are to catch. 0 == impossible. 1 == wow he caught that, 2 == moderate difficulty, 3 == routine. The 0/X in all passes marked zero is implied.]

Nothing to see here, really.

Heroes?

Kwiatkowski was a major part of Michigan's success on the ground, along with Lewan.

Goats?

Denard, Borges, Denard, Borges, Denard, Borges, Denard, Borges, offensive line pass pro.

What does it mean for the Big Ten schedule?

I don't know, man. I'm guessing they'll finally look at themselves and say "okay, let's just assume this is what happens when Denard gets pressured" and move to avoid that at all costs. That means more running, fewer plays on which they put Denard on the edge against an unblocked dude, and please sweet baby Jesus more easy quasi-running game throws that get Gallon more touches.

Even in this dismal game, Denard's passes when he did not get pressure were quality, so max protect the guy, give him easy hot reads against those double-A blitzes, and run the ball.

They can and will do better against the Big Ten. Yes. I believe this.

See if you can spot Upchurch in his bucket hat | my phone

There’s a Kryk article in the 2011 HTTV about how Nebraska and Notre Dame spent much of the first bit of the 20th century beating down the doors to the Big then-Nine (actually nine). In the days when everyone had to travel by train, Lincoln was WEST man. As for Notre Dame, they were well within the conference footprint, but far outside the preppy conference’s idea of a fit. Said Kryk:

“[Expanding beyond nine members] wasn’t the biggest reason for keeping Notre Dame out. Academic snobbery was, followed closely by religious prejudice. The Big Nine was run by academic elitists, and they viewed the education provided by religious institutions of higher learning such as Notre Dame as purely second-rate.”

If you know your University of Michigan history, you’ll remember James Burill Angell’s biggest battles with regents and the rest of the brass were around his hiring Catholic  faculty and saying nice things about papists. It’s a little snapshot of the prevailing prejudices of the day, and the genesis of the Notre Dame psyche.

You’ll also know that from these early days we too were arrogant enough to go it independent for a time. But while Michigan evolved toward benchmarks of greatness that involve our in-conference rivalries, Notre Dame’s established themselves as a fearless lone wolf. It’s why we balk when our chief rival is moved to another division, while they see nothing untoward about canceling the Michigan series to guarantee one West Coast game per year.

Fast forward a century with plenty of independent glory and this is what we hath wrought: a group of exceptionalists who are in many ways truly exceptional. Like how a mountain range of new or recently renovated megaliths spring out of an industrial Northern Indiana town. Like how in this craven era they can play on dirt and grass in an 80,000 seat bowl with no jumbotrons, no bad seats, and overlooked by a great big mural of religious figure who may be praying, may be calling touchdown, or may be exclaiming “Oy vey.” And yet they will also exclaim six times, with Michigan in attendance, that their fight song is the greatest. They will mike their band and have them drown out the visitors’ whenever our guys strike up. They’ll blare pump-up music deep into the opponent’s snap count on 3rd downs. And they’ll scoff at our 100-years-late invitation to finally sign on as half-members of the Virginia and Duke conference, keep the extra home game of this now odd-numbered series, and then tell Yost’s team to go screw.

Calling them arrogant when we’re the school that shows up to other stadiums with a trailer painted all over with the message “mine’s bigger” is pot-kettle-ish. They are the hot chick, and we can’t have them anymore. Cue the diaries of Notre longing. Start with conference realignment at the end game as oakapple, rehashes the four axioms that drive college football relationships. Then DanRareEgg reminisces over the latest series that spanned, with a few two-year hiatuses, from Dan Devine to Denard’s derps. Big Will the Gazelle thinks canning the Michigan rivalry to keep MSU and Purdue is a departure from the “We’ll play anybody, any time” ethos that built the ND brand. And if you’re really not ready to let go, here’s k.o.k.Law with a present tense poetic retelling of his ‘06 experience.

Let’s do THE JUMP here, and rejoin for the weeklies and the best of the board.

Formation notes: I called whatever the heck this is "Nickel rush". The two DT types next to each other stunted, FWIW:

This was "okie one": man to man on the outside with a free safety and six guys on the LOS. Okie was rare.

Substitution notes: Roh and Clark went the whole way save for a drive or two on which Ojemudia spotted Clark. Washington and Campbell got the large majority of the snaps on the interior; Black was pretty marginalized. He seems to only be playing in the nickel package, of which there wasn't much.

The usual ILB rotation went down with Demens and Morgan getting a solid majority of playing time but Ross and Bolden featuring as well. Ryan played every snap, I think. Secondary was Taylor/Floyd/Kovacs/Gordon the whole way with scattered nickel plays featuring Avery.

That was rather delightful.

It was. Michigan was one stumble away from holding Notre Dame to under 200 yards of total offense. ND drives started at the Michigan 17, 39, and 48 in the first half and Michigan still gave up a total of 13 points on nine drives (ND had a tenth on which it was not trying to score, FWIW.)

How did that happen?

Well, this ND offense probably isn't very good. Michigan forced a QB switch after Golson's second horrible interception, and neither Purdue or Michigan State had too much trouble shutting down the Irish.

You'd better have a "but…"

Okay: but Purdue gave up nearly 400 yards on 11 drives. ND had 314 on the nose against MSU on 12 drives before kneels took away 14; even if you chalk that long Goodman TD up to punt chuckin' Michigan is about even with what was supposed to be the league's best D, and their performance was on the road instead of at home. Michigan blew up the counter draw MSU fell victim to and the rush yardage comparison goes to M. MSU gave up 4.9 YPC once a sack and some kneel-downs are excised. Michigan gave up 3.3 after taking out a zero yard not-quite-sack on Golson and a knee. Purdue did even better but gave up nearly 300 yards passing to the guy M chased from the game.

It was a bit of a downer that the D couldn't hold at the end when Michigan pulled to within a score twice, but that Michigan was even within striking distance after six turnovers was a little miracle.

You still haven't said how.

I think I need a—

probably pretty dang good CHART

--chart to answer that question.

So, like, yeah. I pulled out that Picture Pages on the linebackers because that was night and day from Air Force, when poor Kenny Demens was picking OL out of his teeth on every play. ND hardly ever got a release and when they did their blocks got beat fairly often.

Defensive tackles! We has them?

Okay, I think ND's interior OL sucks. Sucks pretty hard. Let's put on our caveat berets before we wade in here. Secured? Have your baguette of skepticism prepped? Let's go.

Dang, ND could not single-block these guys. When they tried it Campbell two-gapped dudes and Washington flashed into the backfield. This could have happened last year:

All DL there. Both get penetration and Washington forces a cutback into an unblocked Ryan. A Riddick spin manages to prevent a loss; I'll take it. So ND doubled, and we got results like the ones we saw in the Clean Linebackers picture pages. Occasionally one DT or the other would give too much ground, like on the last run charted. Most of the time they held their ground well enough to make cutbacks awkward and allow linebackers to flow. Like so:

No crease, forced cutback, OL is robbed of his blocking angle, and Morgan gets around him to make the play. There were a lot of half-points handed out for this sort of thing where PLAYS are not MADE but the tailback has nowhere to go. After getting shredded by Alabama, anything approximating quality against a BCS level opponent—one with a veteran line—is welcome.

Washington in particular was impressive with his repeated penetration. He's probably as shocked as anyone about this, so he's continually overrunning things, but whatever, man, he's blowing up blocking. I told you this would happen after UMass! (Pay no attention to the Robinson prediction behind the curtain. Also I didn't really.)

So we're back on the immediate post-Ezeh Demens-is-a-god thing I see.

Hey, man, find a tackle he missed or hole he didn't fill and I'll fire up my minus machine. It's possible his coverage on that Riddick dumpoff was subpar but I chalked that up to RPS because he was one man in all of the space. He managed to hold Riddick basically in place for two moves to limit the damage there.

Meanwhile, Kenny Demens is sneaky good in coverage. This is perfect:

And he flung dudes past him (along with Ryan) to impressively shut down a dangerous looking counter:

Ryan's ability to get around that OL is a squee moment.

Michigan kept guys off their LBs and they responded well. The hesitation was gone, the tackles were made, and everyone said a little prayer of thanks.

Caveat: against a team more likely to screw with your linebackers in a play action game this may go more poorly. ND quickly committed to the run in this game. Teams that can throw a bit are going to make it harder on these guys.

Speaking of Ryan, I'm about two games from declaring him All Big Ten caliber. There's that above and then he shows the same ability to change directions faster than a guy his size should as he comes under the TE on this screen:

I have developed certain rules for grading these things as we've gone along. One is losing leverage == minus… unless you make a play. Ryan would get away with a zero here if he just forced the guy inside of him; instead he gets +3 because of his ability to charge and redirect, which both keeps contain and makes a play.  Sometimes he goes a little too far in the "make a play" direction, but M has another 2.66 years out of the guy.

I'd like a bit more pass rush on the edge, please. Other than that, would recruit again A++++.

Little stingy on the Taylor INT, no?

Ah, man, I'm not giving three points unless the coverage is actually blanketed. Golson had room to drop it over the corner. He is sinking and it is a tough throw to get it over a guy, but this was not exactly Woodsonesque.

Later Taylor would blow a coverage on a similar play in which he was in man press on a fade like that, thus his minus, but so far he hasn't been a big problem. Tentatively hoping he'll get through the season well and we get to be pumped up about Michigan's starting corners going into next year. He certainly looks the part athletically.

What about our corners this year?

Floyd stumbling out of a break sucks but it'll happen. I'm more annoyed by the guy is still not coming hard on outside runs on which the receiver is booking for a block along the LOS:

Now, Clark—this is part of ND's Kill Clark gameplan at the beginning of the game—gets blown way down the line and this forces Kovacs to come further inside than is ideal on his contain, because otherwise the RB is going upfield. Okay. That's some yards ceded already.

Floyd is still eight yards downfield when he breaks down to tackle. He should be reading run a lot quicker. At this point I don't think that's in the cards consistently, though he did make a couple good reads late. One was on the 20 yard Wood run, but that wasn't his fault.

Let us all say a prayer of thanks that we can be annoyed about this kind of thing from cornerbacks these days. 

Kill Clark, you say?

Clark was obviously IDed as a weak point by the Irish and they spent most of the first quarter running at him. He got blown up a lot. He ends up even with Campbell in the video above, which is bad. (SCIENCE!) In this one he ends up pancaked:

That's a loss thanks to Ross and Kovacs hitting the hole lickety-split if Clark can just hold the corner; he ends up buried. He took a bunch of minuses for that and then ND went away from it because they weren't getting much more than you see on the play above. Also, Clark started getting some upfield push to rescue his day a little bit.

If that's going to be the cost of running him out there you'd like to see some pass rush from him; Michigan did not in admittedly limited opportunities. He got one kind of good rush on which he persuaded Golson to exit the pocket and drew a hold; other than that he was not much of an impact guy. Youth, etc. He's a guy to keep an eye on as one of the remaining wildcards on the D.

Kickoff thinkin': do you have some?

I've gotten some questions about what I thought about Michigan's kickoff strategy at the beginning and end of the second half. To the answermobile!

At the beginning of the half, Michigan is kicking from the 50 after a PF on Notre Dame. Q: should Michigan onside kick? Probably. You're giving up 15 yards of field position for a shot at a turnover. ND had not aligned in a way to discourage that so your chances are pretty decent. Even if they've been told to watch for the thing, the punishment is slight.

Now I have a Q: what would have happened if Michigan booted it out of bounds? The rule says it's 30 yards from where you kicked, which would be the 20. Which is better than a touchback. mindblown.gif

At the end of the game, Michigan has 3:27 on the clock and two timeouts. ND aligns to prevent an onside, and M kicks it deep. The ball hits at the three and squeezes into the endzone. Q: onside? Probably not. With the rule change you have to commit an Iowa-level boner to not recover onside kicks and you have a pretty good setup to get the ball back. ND ended up throwing a bomb on third and four. I'd rather take my chances on that than try to drive from the ten.

Heroes?

Anyone in the front seven other than Clark (and Bolden was iffy). Also safeties.

Goats?

Stretching: Clark was exploitable on the edge.

What does it mean for the Big Ten season?

Increment your hope meters a good chunk, as getting this kind of play out of the defensive tackles was way above expectation. If they can continue that into league play all of a sudden this defense looks plausible or better, if lacking certain components that would make it truly elite—like a big-time pass rusher.

Meanwhile, the linebackers played well, the safeties played well… I mean, 190 yards of offense before final drive. ND got a couple of chunk runs when Wood was improbably not tackled and a couple of fades were completed; other than that ND got essentially nothing. The line was all but impeccable save for some Clark stuff that only gave up 4, 6, 7 yards a pop. The LBs got to the ball and tackled, and Gordon and Kovacs had one and a half missed tackles between them as they cleaned up.

I'm trying to keep things in check… that performance relative to MSU and Purdue's plus the in-season improvement we saw from a lot of players last year makes it difficult. That game was so far beyond the reasonable best-case scenario that it shifts hopes upward.

Offense? Never heard of it.