Ohio State Snowflakes: The Defense

You’d better be ready to give Minter a raise, because he’s going to be getting phone calls before too long.

He won the Broyles after today. Holding OSU to three points in the second half, on the road, against that level of talent, that is one hell of a coaching job.

Can't believe it but they are better than last year. Probably the best unit in the country. Amazing. Mikey is the key to this D. Can't believe how good he's been this year. 

The DC is a goddam second half savant. 

Mike Sanristil.    My god, what a find for the defense.    I never would have imagined the difference he could make coming from receiver.  He’s a flat out stud on defense.   

Holding OSU to 3 points in the 2nd half - and in particularly the 3rd quarter:

0 points

1 First down

13 net rushing yards

34 net passing yards

0-2 3rd down conversion

8 plays for net 47

Michigan offense in that time ran 20 plays for 144 and pulled away.

Sainristil was legendary, but the entire secondary was perfect. Such a dominant performance. 

We finally won the turnover battle for once against them.

Definitely once again had Stroud confused and off-balance. This has a lot to do with the defense, of course, but also says something about Stroud. There were many times when he had all day in a clean pocket and still missed. Not much mobility. Gets rattled when forced to move. He strikes me as another Dwayne Haskins.

Ho hum...the D

Beautiful team effort. Huge game by Braiden McGregor, Jaylen Harrell, and a Taylor Upshaw and of course the secondary. Just a beautiful team effort. 

How much did Morris even play?  That was incredible

Sainristill, is he better than Daxton Hill last year. I know Daxton has the greater measureables, but as far as play, he arguably outplayed what Daxton would have done.

I was most impressed by the confounding of our pregame expectations - that in order to slow the OSU Death Star, they'd have to get pressure on Stroud.

They really didn't - there were a lot of plays where he had time to sit in the pocket and look at everything.  And yet, he usually couldn't find anyone.  Even in the first half, the secondary was holding up much better than I expected, and the key was in Minter's game plan.

When I rewatched, I noticed that they almost always rushed four - sometimes even three(!) - but they were blitzing from everywhere, and the players dropping into coverage almost always knew what the first and second reads would be and positioned themselves near perfectly.  Stroud had time, but couldn't take advantage because his pre-snap reads didn't match what they were actually doing.  He rarely seemed to know what he was looking at, and there were very few easy reads.

Conversely, the two long passes came not because of coverage busts, but because Stroud identified a weakness pre-snap and hit it.  The long TD to Harrison came after he saw the safety start his blitz (I think he should have run up earlier to make it work) and knew that Harrison would get 1-1 coverage on routes upfield.  Similarly, the long pass to the WR up the middle came when the safety had to roll over the top of Harrison on the right sideline, leaving him out of position to get over the top of the middle-vert.

But the rest of the time, Stroud would drop back, look at his reads and find them covered.  He's good at his pre-snap reads, and deadly accurate when he knows where he's going, but Minter schemed to take that away.

A brilliant game plan that took our strengths (versatility on the DL/LB, smart players who could handle a complex approach, downloading their playbook) and weaknesses (no NFL DEs to give us organic pass rush, few LBs to handle the Uche-type roles) into account.  Kudos!