Is Michigan's offense as predictable as Joel Klatt says we are?
Was listening to the Fox broadcast Saturday and late in the game Joel Klatt (pretty sure it was Klatt and not Gus) went into an extensive talk that the Michigan offense was very predictable and didn't put defenses on its heels in that we don't do a lot of motioning or confusion. He also said that in that the offense only runs when it puts someone in motion and passes when there is no motion. Can anyone who watches X's & O's a little better confirm his assessment on the former or the latter? Right after the latter comment (as if on cue) someone went into motion and Corum ran the ball. Is the offense really that predictable?
October 10th, 2022 at 1:38 PM ^
Its been soft vanilla for a reason I think.
October 10th, 2022 at 1:48 PM ^
Exactly what I was thinking. UM introduced a lot of new wrinkles vs osu last year and I'm certain there are portions of the playbook that they're sitting on.
October 10th, 2022 at 2:50 PM ^
2008 - no way. I'm sure that Michigan has completely exhausted their playbook and cannot design any new plays for the remainder of the season. Ok, I'm being sarcastic. I completely agree with you.
Why use a flea flicker in the OOC? Why do something extremely creative on the road with a QB who is playing in his first two games? Why risk turning it over when ball control should enable the team to win?
Crazy like a fox. This staff knows what they are doing. I trust them.
October 10th, 2022 at 5:43 PM ^
I am actually pretty sure Michigan has emptied the playbook already. Seems obvious.
October 10th, 2022 at 5:55 PM ^
Can't tell if serious.
I don't think I could disagree more.
October 12th, 2022 at 4:19 PM ^
It was a joke :)
October 10th, 2022 at 2:02 PM ^
Isn’t there a reason for everything?
October 10th, 2022 at 2:16 PM ^
No. Everyone who you love will eventually reject you or die. On a long enough timeline the survival rate for everything will drop to zero.
October 10th, 2022 at 2:36 PM ^
Eat arbys
October 10th, 2022 at 2:58 PM ^
They have the meat
October 10th, 2022 at 11:28 PM ^
Chuck Palahniuk FTW.
"All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring."
"Today is the sort of day where the sun only comes up to humiliate you."
October 10th, 2022 at 4:59 PM ^
No, but there is a season...
October 11th, 2022 at 1:21 PM ^
turn turn turn
October 10th, 2022 at 2:25 PM ^
You don't break out the fine china for a little kids party.
October 10th, 2022 at 2:33 PM ^
We tend to forget that JJ does not have a lot of full-game experience, and this plays into Jim's overall thinking. Jim is conservative and belongs to the school where "making self-inflicted mistakes against inferior teams are the only way he would lose". That means running the ball and asking JJ to make easy throws. He might be hiding stuff too, but his instinct is avoiding risky plays against inferior teams. He did it that way at Stanford and SF, and that is the way he will do it here.
October 10th, 2022 at 2:52 PM ^
IIRC, Cade was in a similar situation last year. His passing yards were low beginning of the season then, too. All of this isn't out of character for JH, nor something to worry about yet.
October 10th, 2022 at 4:50 PM ^
^^ This is the correct answer. One awesome season and have we all forgotten how frustratingly conservative JH has been in basically every game he's ever coached? And every close loss? IIRC we've had plenty to say about it here in the past....
October 10th, 2022 at 3:12 PM ^
Agreed fully and this is the exact same thing we talked about last season. the coaches show what they want to show to beat the lesser teams on our schedule and hide a lot for Penn State/Ohio State/Michigan State/etc. Does it look boring? Sure. Is it exciting? At times, but not always. Are they winning comfortably? Yes.
October 10th, 2022 at 3:34 PM ^
Surely we have boring pass plays and don’t need to run into stacked boxes for an entire half.
October 10th, 2022 at 4:37 PM ^
Glad to see a positive comment followed by many positive comments. This would have been a doom and gloom thread last year.
October 10th, 2022 at 5:59 PM ^
Every loss in the past 30 years was because we didn't want to put our best plays on tape
October 10th, 2022 at 6:41 PM ^
Don't want this buried and did a search that came up with nothing mentioned in this thread so I'll comment here. Space Coyote just put out a thread on twitter discussing this question thats really great and informational. Sorry if I'm breaking some protocol I'm unaware of. https://twitter.com/SpaceCoyoteBDS/status/1579580432563441664?t=5Dyau4mTbJ_BTNacFptBvA&s=19
October 10th, 2022 at 7:11 PM ^
To the top
October 11th, 2022 at 7:28 AM ^
dunno how i missed that, it’s really fantastic, must-read stuff. thanks for sharing it.
space coyote has the goods.
October 11th, 2022 at 5:06 PM ^
It's also mentioned in the Michigan Monday:
https://buckeyehuddle.com/2022/10/10/michigan-monday-bury-indiana/
Watching the replay of the game, FOX’s color commentator Joel Klatt mentioned a tell that Michigan has when they have motion. I don’t know how true that is, but it did make me want to chart some stuff, and I was reminded of Ohio State’s tendency to run the ball almost every time they were lined up in the pistol last year. So I decided to chart Michigan in the pistol. Then I broadened that to every snap that wasn’t under center.
Of the 11 snaps that I charted in the Pistol, all 11 were runs. More telling than that, of the 30 times that the Wolverines lined up in the shotgun with the running back’s depth even with the quarterback, Michigan threw the ball on 29 occasions. The lone running play saw the Wolverines backed up to the own 1-yard line.
Of the 17 snaps in shotgun where the running back is lined up off to the side and a step or so behind the quarterback, Michigan ran the ball 14 times. And the only three times they threw from that formation, the running back was to the right of the QB, keeping the ball visible to the defense the entire time.
October 10th, 2022 at 1:39 PM ^
They're probably hoping that James Franklin is dumb enough to think that's what they'll do Saturday. Harbaugh likes to hide stuff until he plays tougher opponents,
October 10th, 2022 at 1:42 PM ^
Brian mentioned this on the podcast, that it's too obvious that play action is coming out of the pistol but:
1) their secondary has no idea of the routes the WRs are going to run on that play
2) that means they won't overcommit to the run, which means when you do run it'll still be more effective
Tendencies are only an issue if you aren't aware of them.
October 10th, 2022 at 2:33 PM ^
So the best case scenario is that you catch the safeties cheating on a run look maybe one time, which might be a big play if you execute it well.
But after that - PSU (or OSU, whoever) just goes back to playing regular defense. Passing out of pistol, or under center play action are not dark art trick plays that the defense will be totally gobsmacked by. They are themselves pretty vanilla at this point.
Just not sure it’s worth being stupid and running the offense at 50% efficiency all season just to convince OSU that you’re stupid and then pull out the “trick” of doing something that almost literally every other team already does.
October 10th, 2022 at 2:41 PM ^
It's not a trick.
Harbaugh wants to run the ball out of the pistol. If they overcommit on that tendency, you can punish them. If they don't, you get to run what you want to.
October 10th, 2022 at 2:48 PM ^
Indiana overcommitted, badly, and was not punished, despite successfully nerfing our running game for most of Saturday outside Corum playing Houdini for a snap.
If it’s not a “trick”, why are the coaches treating it like one?
October 10th, 2022 at 3:06 PM ^
You can still win by 3 TD's without showing a counter?
October 10th, 2022 at 4:01 PM ^
Sure, at the downside risk of dropping a stupid game you really shouldn’t have because you kept the game within reach for a long time with predictable play calls.
But other than proving how tough and manball you are, what’s the point? Whatever you gain in minor surprise when the OSU DC realizes you aren’t actually a pants-on-head dim playcaller with no self scouting is lost by not getting the opportunity to rep those counter plays in a real game.
On top of that, running less efficient offense puts more wear and tear on your starters. Slamming Corum into the line 30 times a game for 3 YPC, or exposing JJ to hits trying to get a first down in the 4th quarter are things you can avoid by calling balanced plays, blowing out the overmatched team, and putting the starters on the bench at the end of 3Q.
October 11th, 2022 at 8:42 AM ^
Slamming Corum into the line 30 times a game for 3 YPC, or exposing JJ to hits trying to get a first down in the 4th quarter
(citation needed)
October 10th, 2022 at 1:44 PM ^
Sometimes. We’ve also endured seasons when we kept waiting for the trap to spring, only to realize that yes, that was all they had. It’s especially suspicious when they stay “vanilla” in close games like, oh, a 10-10 tie in a conference road game at halftime?
Seth watched Gattisbaugh run split zone without any of its counters for half of last season. They didn’t build off it; they eventually stopped running it. All the downs they set on fire had zero payoff.
October 10th, 2022 at 1:46 PM ^
The eye-opener for me was when they badly needed a big play in the first half against Maryland and they went to a Ronnie Bell end-around pass that they showed three times last year and it got blown up because of course it did. That was somewhat foreboding.
October 10th, 2022 at 1:59 PM ^
but OTOH, they got the opening TD against Iowa on a fake counter-yoyo-end around to Ronnie Bell that was a thing of beauty. In that Maryland game, they had a couple of neat RPOs that JJ didn't execute, including on the 3rd and 2 that went to...I think Gash?
This O has flashed some neat looks this year. They've had periods - specifically the first halves against UMD and IU - where they've looked out of sorts. Maybe the 4th quarter against Iowa but they also were in run-the-clock mode against a bad offense. We'll need to have 4 good quarters from them Saturday, but I think they've flashed brilliance.
October 10th, 2022 at 2:38 PM ^
They had already run a similar play against Hawaii. It still worked against Iowa because it was well set up by the rest of the drive. It didn’t take six games of setup, just six plays.
Plus, that’s a legitimately unusual play that only works well when the defense has committed strongly to your base play.
Basic play action or the occasional pistol set pass play are just normal ways to keep the safeties from clamping down your run game. They are (or should be) basic elements of a balanced offense.
October 10th, 2022 at 5:09 PM ^
An unusual play that is called at the right time is a well designed play. Likewise, some of the RPO looks don't seem exceedingly complex - and do seem to be basic elements of our O that put the LBs/edge defenders in conflict. I guess we'll find out Saturday
October 10th, 2022 at 1:40 PM ^
Pretty lazy post :(
October 10th, 2022 at 1:42 PM ^
Dammit. Another person discussing their football observations with other fans on a site dedicated to their team. Sinners everywhere.
October 10th, 2022 at 1:53 PM ^
The question has already been discussed ad nauseum on the blog/podcast.
October 10th, 2022 at 2:14 PM ^
for at least two weeks. Klatt has been banging on us for having co-OC’s all season. I’ll trust JH.
October 10th, 2022 at 3:04 PM ^
Assuming you must have a mouse that automatically opens any thread your eyes set upon? That's why you can't simply ignore threads that don't interest you?
October 10th, 2022 at 1:55 PM ^
There was nothing net-new in the OP. Almost all others on here would have heard the same comment from Klatt and it was also discussed on the podcast. If saying, "I heard this thing, somebody else go figure out if it's true" - while adding nothing new or substantive is a good post, then I'll gladly take the negs.
Also, saying somebody that's better at X and O's should figure it out is... pretty lazy. Watch the play -- was there motion? Was it a run/or pass? = does not take a PhD in Offensive football to figure out. Am I going to do that work? Absolutely not, but I'm also not going to come on the board with nothing to add and create a thread asking others to do it
October 10th, 2022 at 2:01 PM ^
You did come on the board with nothing to add, only to bitch
October 10th, 2022 at 3:43 PM ^
it was also discussed on the podcast.
Not everyone here listens to the podcast...
October 10th, 2022 at 1:43 PM ^
Yup. Instead of asking the question OP could have (should have) done the research and answered it himself/herself. Then OP could have shared the findings. That would have been post-worthy.
October 10th, 2022 at 1:49 PM ^
No, that would have been Diary worthy.
October 10th, 2022 at 1:55 PM ^
Agreed