A different (and hopefully interesting?) question about the defense.
So, like most everyone, around here, I was pretty devastated on Saturday. But I was able to start watching the game in slo-mo last night and listening to the podcasts of Sam getting thru the day somehow, along with Spath and all the content here, it's given me some perspective.
I have my own ideas about what happened. We still haven't closed the talent gap. Their LB's and OL played much better than tape would suggest they could - quite possibly enhanced by some form of blood magick in those crazy Bucknut rallies they like to hold. /s (not really)
They did a great job of motion pre-snap to get the matchups they wanted - biggest difference I personally saw to explain the coaching differential. And this leads to my weird question ...
Something that has really driven me nuts post Ped St. (and possibly before) - all the energy we expend on defense getting into formation. I am no football guru like Brian, Seth, Space Coyote, Magnus, etc. But I do understand, from reading, that when you play a 4-3 Over (for example) it is important to designate a SDE and a WDE and the system is so prevalent that all the recruiting services pretty much designate the recruits at DE into one slot or the other. And, with us, in 2018 - it's easy to see that Rashan and Chase are on total opposite ends of the DE spectrum. Rashan is almost into the 3 Tech territory and most NFL draft people expect Chase to be an OLB in the pros. So, it seems to be important for them to fit into those opposite slots.
But, this is the thing - the offense (especially one like OhowIhate which uses an H-back much more than a TE) totally has the option of flipping the defensive assignments by motioning the H-back (or TE) to the opposite side and flipping the side from weak to strong - thus putting the DE's in the wrong slots. This seems especially important for us because (at least IMO) Chase plays the optioned DE much better than Rashan on the basic Zone Read.
Also - with DB's defense you have that viper position (which is basically a hybrid Safety/LB playing the SAM position unless he has a slot Rcvr to cover). When the strong side flips then the LB's also have to flip.
Point is - with simple motion they can change up our assignments - A LOT. And it is quite easy for them to get an advantage out of this. The bad guys first play from scrimmage is an excellent example of this. Khaleke, after finally adjusting and getting to the right side, blitzed. It was a Zone Read. Gary was optioned, crashed hard on the RB, Haskins pulled - Khaleke (in a way that I am fairly certain was not drawn up this way by DB) totally ignored Haskins with the ball, and what I would assume to be his gap, and looked like he was trying to beat Rashan to the RB. Rashan noticed it quicker and broke off the RB back toward Haskins and was a good two steps ahead of Khaleke. Yeah, not an auspicious start - and maybe it explains a few things about the year Hudson is having. But all that aside ...
My question is this ... I have a bad feeling about all this energy wasted pre-snap and wonder if it could be the undoing of DB's defense. But, I have an awful lot of respect for DB. You just don't have the #1 defense at Boston College in the ACC facing Clemson and Fl. St. along with others and not know a few things about how to fix your apparent problems. I think he will meet the challenge - and I'm wondering - if this does become a major problem - offenses taking advantage of energy wasted due to switching assignments and formations.
Is it possible Don Brown may solve this particular problem with symmetry? In other words scrap the whole SDE/WDE system since the defense really has no control over enforcing that it ends up the way they designed it. Furthermore, could we see more changes - inducing more symmetry - such as a double viper? He's been recruiting a lot of viper types, it seems to me. And anything to get Devin Gil off the field more has got to be a good thing, right?
So, am I crazy? Am I missing something?
November 27th, 2018 at 11:24 AM ^
I agree with Magnus ... OSU has a plethora of elite WR talent and a tough matchup for anyone. Hill and Long did OK, but everyone else struggled. OSU especially picked on Watson and Gil.
The other talent gap was our DTs versus OSU's interior OL. No push, no havoc. We really missed having Mo Hurst in this game. Even on the quick passing, Mo would have been disruptive up the middle eliminating a clean pocket to step into.
Off-season ... we need to get faster guys into slot/HB coverage and develop the next Mo Hurst.
November 27th, 2018 at 1:26 PM ^
Myles Sims , Ambry Thomas and Jaylen Kelly-Powell are all top 250 recruits and they werent giving a chance.
November 27th, 2018 at 11:21 PM ^
And why didn't msu get torched by osu when they only sacked Haskins twice? The talent gap there is gargantuan. According to their high school player rankings Haskins should have thrown for 800 yards.
osu exploited mismatches by getting speedsters matched up with slower dudes against a terrible Don Brown game plan. And also Brown's refusal to put more speed into the game (Ambry Thomas).
November 27th, 2018 at 8:57 AM ^
Watson has been pretty darn good for 2 years and Metellus is our best safety this year. They both are known quantities and better than their HS rankings you presented.
The real gap was in speed and scheme. Brown foolishly believed Watson could keep up in a foot race against players much faster than him in man to man over and over again. You don't have to be a highly ranked HS player to out-quick a slower corner back.
You say they didn't play to their potential for essentially the whole season of course right up until they played us. I say our coaches had terrible gameplans. Why didn't we watch what worked against osu from Purdue, Neb, and Maryland. And then sprinkle some of those ideas into our offense? MSU has slower dudes all over the field and did really good against osu's offense. Why didn't we review those schematics in case we needed to tweak things? Why wasn't Ambry Thomas, who I read is the fastest player on the team, in when our biggest deficiency was speed and the player ahead of him was burnt toast?
We were over confident in what got us to the game ranked 4th and thought doing everything the exact same was a good idea. Last year, offensively we did well against osu because we broke tendencies and used tons of counters and misdirection all game.
November 27th, 2018 at 9:46 AM ^
I mentioned this in response to Brian's game recap. Yes, OSU has more raw talent, but we have enough to beat them. This result falls squarely on the coaching staff.
November 27th, 2018 at 11:42 AM ^
The coaching error was probably in the game plan. The strategy was to kill the clock on offense and be super aggressive on defense to create havoc 3&outs/turnovers. That was this season's formula for UM success. Neither of those things worked out to stop OSU's offense.
Possibly a better game plan would have been to play more zone "contain" defense and get into a shootout with them as their LB/DBs were the weakness. That is how the other teams seemed to do well against OSU - basically make them work like hell on offense to move the ball against a bend but don't break strategy. Then try to torch their suspect LBs/DBs with big plays on offense. Basically, game plan is to outscore them in a shootout.
November 27th, 2018 at 8:34 AM ^
Those losses are from OSU’s off days. OSU is not likely to look past UM and have an off day. With the personnel gap between their WRs and our cover guys, we would need to catch them on an off day.
November 27th, 2018 at 8:21 AM ^
Without elite athletes this style of defense just can’t work against a decent O.
November 27th, 2018 at 8:44 AM ^
We got outcoached.
November 27th, 2018 at 9:18 AM ^
It seems to me that Michigan has had problems defending slants and jet sweeps for years. It goes way back before this coaching staff. A common sense offense should run those types of plays against an aggressive defense and that seemed to work well for them.
November 27th, 2018 at 9:27 AM ^
This game was bizarre in so many ways
November 27th, 2018 at 9:53 AM ^
To me it seems as if Brown weren't conscientious that OSU would gameplan and go after the exact weaknesses...as if it never crossed his mind. And it got worse as the game went along, so they adjusted to his in game adjustments.
November 27th, 2018 at 9:53 AM ^
I don't know how much of a difference it would make, but why aren't the defensive lineman coached up to put there hands up if they can't get to the ball? I may be wrong but I don't remember any batted balls at the line of scrimmage this year. On offense there was no trick plays or any type of misdirection in this game.
November 27th, 2018 at 10:03 AM ^
What about the whole "Revenge Tour" thing? I loved it during the Wiscy/Sparty/PSU games and I think it gave M an edge. So much so that if the OSU game is played right after PSU, the result may have been different. Instead, you have an exhibition against Rutgers and then a foreshadowing game against IU where M showed no intensity, lost their emotional leader in Wino and saw another teammate get carted off the field. Seems like making the "Revenge Tour" a theme and then essentially taking two weeks off was a recipe for disaster.
I don't know, I'm probably grasping at straws here, but M never got back up to the intensity it had for that 3 game stretch over the past 3 games. I know there are innumerable other factors/variables to why they lost and played the way they did - but the lack of intensity over these past 3 games stands out to me.
November 27th, 2018 at 10:28 AM ^
Urgency seems to be rather one sided here. pic.twitter.com/1u4lkxcsqN
— Due# (@JDue51) November 25, 2018
You mean like this?
November 27th, 2018 at 11:20 AM ^
Not buying any of this. We played the same schedule OSU did and fared much better than their defense did against common opponents. Brown's gameplan was a friggin disaster and he had no adjustment answer for anything OSU did. Fourteen days earlier MSU shut down OSU's offense. This isn't about talent it's about scheme. OSU had their highest YPP average of the year against UM. Not Minnestoa, Michigan. Let that sink in.
November 27th, 2018 at 11:47 AM ^
It just seems like Michigan puts almost all of their focus on improving their execution/technique
and not on exploiting their opponents weaknesses. Can't we do both? When is the last time
we've seen Michigan identify a specific defender like OSU did with Watson and exploit that mismatch?
November 27th, 2018 at 11:59 AM ^
In a Don Brown scheme (aggressive man coverage), we have a talent gap versus a team like OSU. Trying to solve your problems with aggression just did not work. The teams that did well against OSU basically played contain defense to keep the score down enough to get OSU's defense into a shootout. Had we played mostly zone coverage, maybe we could have contained their scoring to the high30s/low40s and been in a shootout at the end. But does that seem plausible given our offensive philosophy of ball control? Just seems so antithesis to what worked for UM all season. That abrupt of a change would have been a huge risk ... to ditch what created a dominate 10-game undefeated stretch of quality football is only a hindsight thing to consider.
November 27th, 2018 at 12:17 PM ^
personally, i think the defensive coaches fumbled big time by not focusing more on osu weeks ago and implementing a zone scheme to slow down their offense. they could have started during rutgers week. i would be willing to win 35-14 vs the 42-7 had we spent significant time preparing for osu that week. then continue during indiana week followed by osu (IU offense on steroids) week. i think 3 weeks should be enough time. we have among the best group of DBs in the country, plus an outstanding LB in bush. plus they are all very good tacklers for DBs. they would have been fine being zone-focused.
i harken back to the joe tiller days of purdue who played a wide open passing scheme; the only one in the BIG with that scheme. from 1999-2004 we played them 6 times. 4 times they were ranked between 10 and 17. they beat us one time with drew brees 32-31 in 2000. the other times they scored 12,10, 21, 3, 14. i remember when they came in ranked 10 and we suffocated them with a zone. they completed their dunk passes, but then they were pummeled. we beat them 31-3 that day. kyle orton was 18-37 for only 186 yards.
now i get that osu > purdue. but i think it is clear that a good zone can slow down an offense like osu's.
as has been pointed out, we just don't need to think about osu each week. we have to devote practice time to beat them each week.
don brown needs to adapt. i'm pretty sure he will. it doesn't lessen saturday's pain, however.
November 27th, 2018 at 12:35 PM ^
I think there is both a coaching gap and a talent gap.
Urban Meyer is a upper end legendary coach. He has won 3 national titles at 2 different schools. How many other coaches have even won 3 titles in the last 50 years? Nick Saban, Bear Bryant, Tom Osborne? Maybe there are more but even some of those on the list are back when there were ties due to both polls. Over the 20 years of BCS and the playoff, Saban has 6, Urban 3, then 11 coaches with 1 - Stoops, Fisher, Fulmer, Miles, Carrol, Swinney, Brown, Bowden, Tressel, Chizek, Coker. Many of the guys with 1 title are legendary coaches. Then look at Meyer's assistants. Kevin Wilson and Greg Schiano were pretty solid head coaches in college and Schiano was even an NFL coach. We don't have that. I get that Meyer and crew have questionable values but they know football.
As for the players, OSU has a team of higher rated players than us. While stars don't mean everything, more 4 and 5 stars on average works out better than less. They have more.
I think Harbaugh and his coaches and the players he is bringing in are good enough that we will win some of time but on average, we are going to struggle with the elite teams.
November 27th, 2018 at 1:29 PM ^
Devin Bush = garbage
November 27th, 2018 at 1:40 PM ^
Michigan was out coached last Saturday and that is the bottom line. Does that mean that Harbaugh should be fired or fire Don Brown? Absolutely not. Does this mean that OSU has MORE elite athletes than Michigan. Yes they do BUT Michigan has great athletes. This game may have a positive upside in that maybe it will finally wake up Harbaugh as a head coach. No one cares how he did at Stanford or the 49er's and because he coached in the pros means nothing. He needs to hire a real OC and step away. Let this person do his job and PRODUCE. Pep Hamilton is NOT the answer and has been let go everywhere he has coached. Hire a good young mind who aspires to be a HC. On defense, Harbaugh needs to let Brown continue to coach BUT needs to approve the scheme and adjustments BEFORE each game. Yes Meyer is a better coach than Harbaugh but Jim needs to drop his arrogance and move on. The program is on the right track man just tweak it
November 27th, 2018 at 5:11 PM ^
Purdue and Maryland evidently have equivalent or better talent than OSU.