3-3-5 stack

He's all happy he's got his blackshirts back. [Patrick Barron]

With Michigan's non-conference schedule behind them I thought we'd look ahead to their next Big Ten opponent, and their interesting defensive system. Nebraska's new defensive coordinator Tony White runs a Rocky Long 3-3-5. We've come across this defense before—even installed a version of it 14 years ago. A different branch of it is the basis of the TCU and Ohio State defenses that felt frustrating to play against despite Michigan putting up loads of points in those games.

The Nebraska edition—the 3-3-5 stack—is about as pure of a 3-3-5 as you're going to find in today's modern, Everybody's Multiple age. And it's hard to argue with White's results with it thus far. Bill Connelly has them 28th in defensive SP+ this year, up from 61st in 2022. They're already up to 14 sacks after finishing with 21 and 20 the last two seasons, and are holding opponents to just 5.02 YPA (sacks included) passing and 3.32 YPC (sacks removed) on the ground. In their four games, the defense should have led to a victory at Minnesota, kept them in the Colorado game, and defeated a pair of G5 teams despite offensive struggles.

Where's this coming from? Everywhere.

[AFTER THE JUMP: Stack is back]

this TD Gray gave up in the 2018 spring game is now against a Nebraska walk-on[Patrick Barron]

10/31/2020 – Michigan 24, Michigan State 27, 1-1

At some point over the weekend I was hungry and not in the mood to do something that required time, so I smeared some cream cheese on a heel of bread. When I bit into it, it was vastly more stale than I expected. But it is what I had signed up for. So I ate it.

It was unpleasant, but eventually it was over. And then I did something else. Silver lining: column theme.

I appear to be over it. This is not a decision I've undertaken, it's just what happened after the game: not much. I have become the popular internet meme.

tenor

We're at the Final Season Of Battlestar Galactica stage of Michigan football. (Spoilers for the aughts reboot of Battlestar Galactica follow.) Things really started to go off the rails for Battlestar when the season four finale dramatically revealed five main characters as secret Cylons without any setup, explanation, or plan. They just heard "The Joker and The Thief"—a song that does not exist in their society—and were suddenly activated. Then Starbuck blew up in a plane and mysteriously returned, again without explanation.

I kept watching, but my previous enthusiasm for the show waned. Eventually I was just watching out of habit and hoping against hope that somehow the people writing this suddenly absurd show could pull a rabbit out of their butt. Instead there's like a mystical piano(?) Starbuck plays that leads them to a prehistoric Earth. Then she pops out of existence. Literally! One minute she's talking to Edward James Olmos and then she says some sort of koan and disappears.

There were some poignant moments in there but when it was over I experienced relief that I didn't have to pay attention to it any more. I groaned "oh, come on!" on a weekly basis. This analogy is airtight.

--------------------------------

So the Black Pit Of Negative Expectations was ephemeral. Mad during game; as soon as it was over* apathy set in. This is for the best.

We're in year six of Jim Harbaugh, who has done well enough that no one would ever fire him lest the Curse of Frank Solich descend upon them as it has Nebraska. Harbaugh has done progressively worse against Ohio State, getting nuked the last two years, and is now set to go up against Justin Fields and a zillion five star receivers with one decent cornerback and four guys who run like Wario. He just lost to MSU as a more than three-touchdown favorite. Damning stats follow him around. This was a new one I saw this week: 1-9 in the final two games of the season.

People can talk about firing coordinators or even the head coach. The former won't matter; the latter won't happen. I picked the GIF version of the meme above because it repeats infinitely, one reset after another, an endless weary parade of going again.

*[Actually it turns out before it was over: I turned the game off after MSU recovered the onside kick because I thought Michigan had two timeouts and there were 37 seconds left. It turns out Michigan got bailed out of their initial timeout by the officials? This was not explained, and the chyron said two timeouts.]

[After THE JUMP: press cover defense with nobody who can run]

Michigan after Uche is not done with the Uche position [Bryan Fuller]

Michigan added a couple of defensive assistants last week to replace rising stars Chris Partridge and Anthony Campanile. Both losses grate for different reasons—Partridge was due to move up but chose easily the least respectable program in the Power 5, Campanile took a lateral move into the NFL after Michigan fought off other suitors, possibly botching their own chances to retain him in the process. On the recruiting front, neither is replaceable, especially Partridge, who was the first assistant at Michigan since Cam Cameron to have sustained success recruiting the Deep South.

Some of that ground will be made up for with Brian Jean-Mary, a scion of Apopka who's been recruiting the Confederacy since the first time I swiped my M-Card at the Union—for example I noted while doing his hello post that 9 of Louisville's top 10 recruits in 2013 were Floridians. I suspect, however, that there was another goal in mind with Harbaugh's recent hires. I can't say Harbaugh hired Bob Shoop and Brian Jean-Mary because those were the two most experienced former defensive coordinators on the market in the kind of defense Michigan was running a lot last year. But if the goal was to find guys who know more about zone blitzing than anybody not in a job, Shoop and Jean-Mary were #1 and #2. And given the types of players they've been recruiting, and the types of weaknesses on the depth chart, I think it's fair bet that Harbaugh and Don Brown are at least a little zone blitz curious.

As are we.

The Path of Shoop/The Don Brown Connection

Though best known as James Franklin's DC at Vanderbilt and Penn State, most of Shoop's coaching career has been either as a secondary coach or defensive coordinator in the same New England coaching circle as Don Brown. The 53-year-old Northeasterner played for Yale in the late 1980s, was the head coach of Columbia for three years, and spent a year coaching defensive backs under Don Brown at UMass in 2006.

From there Shoop moved on to the defensive coordinator job at William & Mary, where he won the FCS version of the Broyles Award, whence Franklin hired him as the new Vanderbilt DC and safeties coach. In 2016 Bob surprisingly left Penn State to join Butch Jones at Tennessee, which means yes, Shoop had Brady Hoke as his defensive line coach and was then Hoke's defensive coordinator for half a season after Jones was fired. Shoop was also key in recruiting Joe Moorhead to join Penn State's staff in 2016; Bob was most recently Moorhead's defensive coordinator at Mississippi State. I posted the path in full on the message board this week.

Shoop left Penn State after two seasons, and not on good terms—the university sued him for for just under $1 million for breach of contract for departing for Tennessee in January 2016. Shoop was countersuing under the claim that Franklin had already all but fired him at that point (their linebackers coach and current PSU DC Brent Pry had already been elevated to "co-coordinator"). The countersuit also claims Shoop was subjected to a "hostile, negative work environment" at Penn State. The suits were ultimately settled in February 2018.

Shoop was also the guy who got Gattis on James Franklin's staff. Bob's younger brother John met Gattis when the latter was finishing his pro career with the Bears, shortly before the former took the offensive coordinator job at North Carolina. John Shoop gave Gattis his introduction to coaching offense at UNC, then lobbied his brother to snag the up-and-coming assistant when Franklin had an opening for receivers coach at Vanderbilt.

[After THE JUMP: Examining the defenses Shoop and Jean-Mary came from]