2016 ucf

29440145935_b526fde0a4_z

[Fuller/MGoBlog]

“How’s everything goin’?”

Good. How about yourself?

“Good, good.”

You look kinda tired.

“Eh, a lot of early mornings.”

Talk about some of the issues that you guys had the last week with the plays in the passing game.

“We gave up two big pass plays. I mean, those are issues. Obviously we’ve got to do a better job. We’ve got to clean it up. Worked really hard in the run game, obviously, coming off the UCF performance. Maybe too hard. I also attribute, you know, we’re still learning how to play this style of defense.

“The good thing is I think our guys have understood enough concept that we’re able to adjust as the game goes on and play much better in the second, third, and fourth quarter. Really disappointed with a fundamental coverage mistake that we made, and I thought there was a 10-play period during the course of the game where we needed to do a better job of tackling.

“Like I told the kids yesterday, all the mistakes belong to me, so if anybody wants to point the responsibility I don’t want them to have any. It’s right here. That’s the way we handle it, and I just tell them I want you to play as hard and as tough as you can and all your mistakes belong to me.”

The stretch of bad tackling: is that because they’re still learning and just--

“I don’t think so, no. Just think we didn’t do a great job. It was a ten-play segment during the course of the game and there were three missed tackles. You know, we were fortunate because the one that resulted in a 48-yard gain we were able to find a way to get off the field and they missed a field goal on one of those opportunities. Thought we settled down and played really well throughout the second quarter.

“We come out and have the bad play in the third quarter. The disappointing thing there is it’s happened to us coming out of the locker room two games in a row, so we’ve got to pay more attention. And one of our goals is a third-quarter shutout, so that’s a disappointing deal.

“I thought we really settled in. What did we give up, 200 yards in the first quarter and basically 100 yards in the second, third, and fourth. What were they, 0-for-12 on third down against our ones and 1-for-whatever counting fourth down. So there’s some things I’m feeling really good about. The best part of it is we were able to make adjustments moving forward as the game kind of progressed. And we’ve been tested with no-huddle, up tempo.

“I think they were faster than UCF. With all credit to Scott Frost; he’s probably one of the fastest guys in the country. And if you watch our tape, and, you know, you can come up and look at it all you want, we’re lined up ready to go every snap. I think we’ve made significant improvements in terms of our sense of urgency to get line up and get ready to play, we just need to play better during stretches. It’s 41 snaps or 46 in the run game against UCF [and] they have 63 yards.

“Now you come back and you’re looking at your deal here, we give up, what, three pass catches. We give up 100-whatever yards of offense. You must be doing a pretty good job during the course of the rest of the game. We just need to make sure we’re totally clean and as I told ya, understand the concepts. But our mistakes belong to me, not the players.”

[After THE JUMP: Don Brown’s defensive disquisition]

29594277695_2c0ce1ee4d_z

[Upchurch/MGoBlog]

Welcome to the first 2016 edition of Moving the Stati-Sticks, our weekly deep-dive into the advanced stats that have become increasingly popular in college football and the weekly in-season post that you most likely forgot existed. I’m hoping to change that this season. Instead of a bunch of tables or numbers in text, I’ll be creating graphs (and they’re mostly intelligible!) for items of note. This won’t be an exhaustive look at every single line item in the advanced stat profiles that are out there, but rather items of interest spun out of last week’s game, followed by a quick look ahead to Saturday’s opponent.

We’ll start with a thousand-foot view of Michigan, and the view’s pretty nice, actually. ESPN’s FPI predicts Michigan’s record will be 10.8-1.7 with an 11.9% chance they win out and a 39.9% chance they win the conference. Bill Connelly’s advanced stats profile at Football Study Hall, from which most of the rest of this post is derived, gives Michigan a 9% chance to win out and 35.2% chance to finish 11-1 or better. Brian Fremeau’s FEI doesn’t have opponent-adjusted stats available yet, but Michigan’s first in the country in unadjusted game efficiency. They’ve also played teams that FEI ranks as either below average (ranked 71-90) or awful (ranked lower than 116), but, uh, wooo we’re number one. More detailed stats are obscured by a lot of garbage time, but on a macro level available projections are very favorable to Michigan.

[After THE JUMP: the run game, quantified]

HomeSure-Lending_logo_tag

SPONSOR NOTES: Oh man Sauce Castillo, you're in for it. You already turned El Assico(!) into a blowout. I'm supposed to talk about mortgages. Right: low rates right now, and Matt will take these rates and turn them into a home if you qualify for things such as loans.

In addition to being a gentleman replete with Michigan tickets, he is also a good man to know if you need a mortgage. It's striking that we actually get non-astroturfed comments about positive experiences with Matt not infrequently.

If you're buying a home or refinancing, he's the right guy to call.

FORMATION NOTES: UCF was a 3-4 front with a couple of adjustments. This is their base front; Michigan is in "ace diamond TE," with Asiasi at one of the FB spots.

ace-diamond-te

On passing downs UCF would go to a nickel with two DL on the field and standup ends:

nickel standup end

And they'd frequently line up their three DL right next to each other and shifted to the run strength of the formation:

pinched 3-4

Called this "pinched 3-4."

PERSONNEL NOTES: Michigan cut down on the rotation severely despite having a huge lead. With the exception of left guard, the starting OL got almost every snap. Non-LG starters (Newsome, Cole, Kalis, Magnuson) got all 81 snaps. Braden and Bredeson platooned at LG with Bredeson(49 snaps) getting the plurality of time. Bushell-Beatty and Onwenu came in very late in a 7 OL package.

At WR, Chesson and Darboh got most of the run in a game featuring a lot of heavy packages. Grant Perry got just 15 snaps. Butt was near omnipresent; Bunting was the next-most utilized blocky/catchy guy. Poggi and Hill are still splitting things down the middle.

Smith got about half the work at RB(37 snaps), with Evans, Isaac, and Higdon splitting the rest about down the middle.

[After THE JUMP: pass great, run not so much]