preview 2016

A wise old political science professor once taught me that there are eight stages to a revolution:

The existence of preconditions

Fall of the old order

The honeymoon phase

Rule of the moderates

A counter-revolution

Rise of the radicals

The reign of terror

The Thermidor

The list very obviously follows the blueprint of the French Revolution - which makes sense, since most revolutions since the French Revolution have tried to follow that same blueprint.

Gazing back at the last 10 years or so of Michigan football, I see vague parallels that I the historian naturally blow out of proportion to try and make my point. I have to shuffle the order and tweak some things, but I think it fits, more or less.

Holdin' The Rope:

Each season begins with its own set of expectations, a reasonable subset of all possibilities. For Michigan, that subset was limited indeed for some time.

Now, though, the whole playbook of expectation is in play. The Jabrill Peppers carry is as much a part of it all as the handoff to De'Veon Smith or the deep throw to Jehu Chesson. Nothing is out of play, too farfetched, too crazy.

If this all sounds hyperbolic, well, maybe it is. But why hold back when it's so plainly obvious?

Robin Wright in the New Yorker:

In 1975, I moved to Mozambique, then a scenic colony on the Indian Ocean, where a ten-year guerilla war was ending a half millennium of Portuguese rule and, in turn, igniting challenges to white-minority regimes across southern Africa. It was a historic time, and I needed a telephone to report on it. Impossible, the post, telephone, and telegraph agency told me—the waiting list was nine years long. I worked through layers of bureaucracy at its headquarters—pleading, cajoling, pressing, and flirting—until I found someone who spoke English with an American accent. He, too, said no. I was about to leave his office when, in one last stab, I noted his accent and asked where he had learned English. “The University of Michigan,” he said. Bingo. I told him I was an Ann Arbor girl, born, raised, and educated.

“If you can sing ‘Hail to the Victors,’ ” he replied, skeptically, “I’ll give you a phone.” I stood on a chair and belted out the Michigan fight song. Then we talked Michigan football. He handed me a phone. I never got a bill, even when I turned the clunky black phone back in.

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

Just under a year ago I stepped out of my car and began my walk to my family's tailgate. The buzz of low-flying craft trailing banners was in the air. I smiled ear to ear like Jim Harbaugh at the spring game. The unusually cool morning had the tang of fall in the air. Every year this is my favorite time, the ritual before you enter your section and see that great bowl—the greatest anywhere—filling with people.

Last year's walk was the best. Forgive me if you think this unkind, but I thought about the fact that the Michigan fanbase had rose as one to eject Dave Brandon from its midst. I thought about Jim Harbaugh's walk. Just a few weeks before in Chicago he'd told the assembled press that his walk was Bo's walk. Told them the actual streets, all the better to stalk him by. And I thought about how one of these things led to the other, how the shape of the Michigan thing that led to the ejection also led Harbaugh back home where he plans to coach and die, God willing and the creek don't rise.

Several years earlier I'd been furious as the shape of the Michigan thing ate itself under Rich Rodriguez and then reaped its reward, so this is a double-edged sword. Hubris always wins eventually. But we've been down. We've been scuffed up, yelling more at each other than anyone else. If there's any hubris left after dead last in TFLs allowed and unable to either protect a guy with a concussion or prevent that story from turning into a week-long fiasco it's hardier than a cockroach. There's certainly none in this program, which is pushing every possible advantage it could ever have and working its fingers to the bone.

This has been a Queensbury's rules kind of program. No longer. Now we take the lessons learned at the bottom and shiv our way to the top.

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[Bryan Fuller]

Go Blue.

121

Preview 2016: Heuristics And Stupid Prediction

Brian •

Previously: Podcast 8.0. The Story. Quarterback. Running Back. Wide Receiver. Tight End And Friends. Offensive Line. Defensive End. Defensive Tackle. Linebacker. Cornerback. Safety. Special Teams. 5Q5A: Offense. 5Q5A: Defense.

Heuristicland

Turnover Margin

The theory of turnover margin: it is pretty random. Teams that find themselves at one end or the other at the end of the year are likely to rebound towards the average. So teams towards the top will tend to be overrated and vice versa. Nonrandom factors to evaluate: quarterback experience, quarterback pressure applied and received, and odd running backs like Mike Hart who just don't fumble.

Year	Margin	Int +	Fumb +	Sacks +	Int -	Fumb -	Sacks -
2007	0.15 (41st)	14	15	2.46(33rd)	14	13	2.17 (67th)
2008	-.83 (104th)	9	11	2.42(33rd)	12	18	1.83 (57th)
2009	-1.00 (115th)	11	5	1.83(68th)	15	13	2.33 (83rd)
2010	-0.77(109th)	12	7	1.38(98th)	15	14	0.85(10th)
2011	+0.54 (25th)	9	20	2.31 (29th)	16	6	1.38 (33rd)
2012	-0.69 (99th)	7	11	1.69 (69th)	19	8	1.38 (28th)
2013	+0.38(33rd)	17	9	1.9 (64th)	13	8	2.77 (109th)
2014	-1.33 (124th)	5	5	2.4 (49th)	18	8	2.2 (63rd)
2015	-0.31 (92nd)	10	2	2.5 (32nd)	10	6	1.4 (28th)

2015 was nothing like the other new-coach uptick in recent history. Michigan recovered and absurdly low 2 fumbles in 2015; Brady Hoke's first team hopped on 20. With very similar pass rush numbers that's just damned bad luck.

With De'Veon Smith back fumbles lost should remain low. Interceptions are an open question with a new QB and new left tackle. Takeaways should increase as Michigan moves to more zone, specifically sneaky disguised zones, and because of dumb luck on the fumbles. I'd be surprised if this doesn't end up in the top 30, except I'm never surprised by turnover numbers since they're so low sample.

Position Switch Starters

Theory of position switches: if you are starting or considering starting a guy who was playing somewhere else a year ago, that position is in trouble. There are degrees of this. When Notre Dame moved Travis Thomas, a useful backup at tailback, to linebacker and then declared him a starter, there was no way that could end well. Wisconsin's flip of LB Travis Beckum to tight end was less ominous because Wisconsin had a solid linebacking corps and Beckum hadn't established himself on that side of the ball. Michigan flipping Prescott Burgess from SLB to WLB or PSU moving Dan Connor inside don't register here: we're talking major moves that indicate a serious lack somewhere.

The dossier:

Chris Wormley to three-tech. Half the time he'll be playing SDE and he's already displayed an ability to play the spot. Concern level: zero.

Maurice Hurst to three-tech. His best spot. Concern level: zero.

Mason Cole to center. Also his best spot. Concern level: zero.

Jabrill Peppers to SAM. This is mostly a relabeling of his previous position and an acknowledgement of modern football. Concern level: zero.

Taco Charlton and Chase Winovich to WDE. Charlton actually moved their last year and got a few starts in. I'm not concerned about that. Winovich as a position-switch top backup who will see time is less than ideal. There have been some reports that he gets edged fairly routinely. But he is the backup. Concern level: slight.

And that's it. This is the fewest number of significant moves in the history of this preview series. It's basically Winovich, the end.

An Embarrassing Prediction, No Doubt

Worst Case Barring Extreme Injury Scenarios

There aren't many games on the schedule that will be single digit spreads for Michigan. They're favored at MSU and Iowa and only a significant dog at Ohio State; while they could stub their toe against PSU or Wisconsin both of those teams are taking new QBs on the road behind shaky offensive lines. Indiana looms because #CHAOSTEAM, but after seeing last night I'm guessing their offense takes a big step back.

They could lose the three big road games. 9-3.

Best Case

Michigan has more talent than anyone they face. Only Ohio State can argue otherwise, and they've got to replace a zillion starters. If they slip up 12-0 feels way more likely than it should.

Final Verdict

This team will be a national championship contender. Michigan is stacked everywhere except OL, LB, and QB. Those slots project to be average-ish, not season-ending debacles. Meanwhile, the schedule…

OOC
9/3	Hawaii	Must win
9/10	Central Florida	Must win
9/17	Colorado	Must win
Conference
9/24	Penn State	Must win
10/1	Wisconsin	Must win
10/8	@ Rutgers	Must win
10/22	Illinois	Must win
10/29	@ MSU	Lean to win
11/5	Maryland	Must win
11/12	@ Iowa	Lean to win
11/19	Indiana	Must win
11/26	@ Ohio State	Tossup
Absent:	Northwestern, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska

…is super pliable.

Here's where I talk about combinatorial mathematics and how it's impossible to predict 12-0 seriously. Let's assume 3-0 in the nonconference. If Michigan has a 90% chance to win every conference game, the chance they go undefeated is 39%. Michigan does not have a 90% chance to win every conference game. There's literally no team in the country you should ever predict goes 12-0. Connelly's S&P rankings think that no team is even 50% likely to go 11-1.

This is why it's stupid to predict 12-0. I've never done it and never will, probably. Predicting 12-0 is an act of bravado not rooted in facts.

12-0.

Preview 2016: Five Questions And Five Answers On Offense

Brian •

Previously: Podcast 8.0. The Story. Quarterback. Running Back. Wide Receiver. Tight End And Friends. Offensive Line. Defensive End. Defensive Tackle. Linebacker.Cornerback. Safety. Special Teams.

1. Does Michigan have a decided schematic advantage and should I sue you for making me ask that question?

Last year's edition of this post had a question about how Harbaugh's ultra-manball ways fit in an increasingly spread world. Despite my long history of spread zealotry I was pretty sanguine. Harbaugh had a fantastic track record and when I went over some of his Stanford-era games and a couple things stood out. One was yes, this:

The other was that in certain ways the Harbaughffense and spread stuff ended up at the same place despite taking diametrically opposite paths to get there:

Harbaugh's offenses put mental pressure on the opposition in a way that previous manball offenses at Michigan did not. This came up constantly during the Al Borges's tenure; I said that having to dodge a safety near the line of scrimmage sucked while Borges's defenders said they'd take it all day and twice on Saturday. It's clear that Harbaugh is in the former category. Like spread offenses, Harbaugh loves to screw with opposition safeties.

Rich Rodriguez did that by playing 11-on-11 on the ground with Denard Robinson. Harbaugh does it by whiplashing the opposition between jumbo sets and four-wide, by flooding the field with big guys safeties have to get around, by constantly screwing with their keys, and by adding new stuff on the regular.

Last year's UFRs were a ton of fun to do because every week Michigan would come out with a new package of plays I hadn't seen before. The sheer diversity of Michigan's ground game fairly boggled the mind, and I say this as a person who has broken down six or seven seasons of pro style offense. Hell, Harbaugh changed offenses across the league. Michigan started facing down trap blocking at a far higher rate than they ever had before.

UFRs pretty quickly picked up a section about the "Stanfordization" of the offense that detailed the tweaks and new packages I picked up on weekly. After Maryland:

The most obvious new wrinkle was the T set, which Michigan used a couple different ways. A counter iso play was successful when Isaac was not fumbling:

The two ILBs went to entirely the wrong hole, buying Michigan a free blocker, and if the Kalis block had gone a little better Isaac is one on one with the last guy for six points. Harbaugh's ability to buy back the extra defender you have to deal with when you aren't running the spread is a consistent theme so far this year; this is yet another example.

Northwestern had been super successful with aggressive linebackers when they rolled into Ann Arbor, and Michigan had a number of plays that made them pay for it:

I did appreciate the Kerridge fullback dive. Here is the play just before it. Watch the linebackers.

Here is the dive. Linebackers again.

That play exploited the blitz-ball mentality to spring a big gain. It also gave us a brilliant still shot demonstrating how weird this offense is to players born and raised on the spread:

"Wait… he's got the ball? Can they even DO that?"

And I loved Harbaugh's ability to see what his team lacked and game plan around it. This was especially validating against Penn State. A few years ago the infamous 27 for 27 game featured snap after snap on which Michigan ignored the fact that Penn State was playing ten yards off Jeremy Gallon; in Harbaugh's first year he felt his OL was a bad matchup:

So this game was… okay.

It was. The default thing that happened seemed to be this:

And, like, I'll take it.

There weren't actually as many of those as it felt like there were. Michigan threw 8. Those picked up 48 yards, a solid 6 per attempt. One was called back on a ridiculous block below the waist call. One could easily have drawn a block in the back call on Perry.

Those eight screens had a minimum gain of three, that on second and four, and picked up four first downs. They also opened up a couple of actual runs when PSU had to get serious about putting their linebackers over slot receivers. They were successful and easy. PSU's defense wanted to give those yards up, and Michigan took them.

I love that Harbaugh is clear eyed enough to work around the limitations of his team—also a major theme against OSU. He doesn't think "the expectation is for the position," he thinks "we're going to get overrun, let's do something about it."

Michigan's offense was a rock paper scissors winner under Harbaugh. I had the UFR RPS metric positive in 11 games with slight negatives against Northwestern and Indiana, and that hasn't happened in a while. They've been pounded over and over in that metric (and everywhere else) by MSU; that was a slight win. And this is just the first, most screwup-prone version of the Harbauffense.

There's a reason he built Stanford into rushing powerhouse with a bunch of three star guys. Not only is Harbaugh a smart and creative football mind, but he surrounds himself with other guys like that. How many offensive coordinators does Michigan have? Three, maybe four. Harbaugh is one. Drevno is one. Jedd Fisch is one. Nick Baumgardner had an excellent article last year describing the way this works in practice:

"It's unique (compared) to what I've done before," Fisch said Wednesday. "But it's something I would always do from now on."

Instead of designating one person to serve as the team's chief offensive play caller, or limit the discussion to himself and one other coach, Harbaugh keeps an open dialogue going with his entire offensive staff from snap-to-snap on the sidelines during game days.

That is terrific.

So yes, Michigan can expect to win coaching battles now. Not every last one, but most of them. Lloyd Carr didn't even try to do this—congratulations to Mike Debord on narrowly escaping his nemesis last night by scoring 13 regulation points—and Brady Hoke was incapable of it. (RichRod was pretty good at it but let's not open that can of worms again.) They have a decided schematic advantage.

[After THE JUMP: QB theme fight, Smith sustainability, OL panic]