holding never gets called

UFR GLOSSARY is here.

FORMATION NOTES: PSU gets weird so some nomenclature reminders. This is Gun Wk Stack, which they used a lot.

This is Pistol Diamond.

And a reminder for some of my nomenclature, this is Gun Trips (H) Y-SB:

Trips is the receiver alignment and I use parentheticals around the (H) because the slot receiver is covered/an ineligible receiver. A dash means motion, so Y-SB means the tight end motioned to a superback spot. "Empty 2x1" means 2 wide to the field, 1 wide to the boundary, and the rest are tight ends. You should be able to interpret the rest of the weirdness from there. You also won't need it again because PSU fired their OC on Sunday.

SUBSTITUTION NOTES: Penn State often used a TE as a slot receiver; M sometimes matched that with regular nickel personnel but often had an extra safety in the slot and moved Sainristil out to cornerback. Snap counts are in the chart now but there was finally a clear delineation between "starters" (Graham, Jenkins, Grant, the four DEs, Colson, Barrett, Paige, Moore, Wilson, Sainristil, and Johnson) and "rotation players" like Goode, Benny, Hausmann, Q-Jo, and Sabb. That's everybody who played.

[After THE JUMP: Draft ding-a-lings.]

Formation Notes: I should have thought of this before; I’m going to designate covered formations by putting the covered player in parentheses. So  “Gun 13 Quads (Y)” means shotgun with 1 RB and 3 TEs, with the Y (inline TE) covered.

I called this “Racecar B” to denote the four-DE personnel.

I called this formation Old Deuteronomy.

Because numbers, you see.

Substitution Notes: Michael Barrett continued to get run as a slot safety/LB hybrid. Rod Moore got the start at safety over RJ Moten, who was in on the last play so that appears to be a depth chart thing not an injury. The DT rotation included Morris but only a tiny bit of Jenkins. Snap counts are in the chart.

[After THE JUMP: A three-act structure.]

SPONSOR NOTES: Man, that fourth quarter was irritating. Like wearing pants. Also, Dan Gilbert just gave MSU 15 million dollars so you clearly can't get a loan from him even before we consider his major role in the financial crisis. Instead of feeding him more money with which to write in comic sans, try a local guy.

In addition to being a gentleman replete with Michigan tickets, Matt 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: Not much. This was "goal line H" for MSU and made several increasingly less effective appearances. Michigan had one wacky 3-man-line snap on the first drive and then threw that away permanently, so the rest of the game was more or less this:

Of note: against these big formations M swapped their corners and safeties to get a couple bigger guys on the line.

SUBSTITUTION NOTES: 74 snaps for the defense, with the starting secondary and Gedeon getting all of them. McCray missed just two snaps; Peppers missed six with various minor issues. Furbush got those six.

DL rotation was severely reduced, with Charlton getting all but ten snaps—Winovich got 14, and I think all of those after the first drive were in pass rush packages. Wormley and Glasgow were close behind at 59 and 57; Godin and Hurst did split their snaps about down the middle. Gary got 21 snaps; Mone got 3 before limping off.

Metellus and Watson got various dime snaps.

[After THE JUMP: not great bookending pretty great.]