Iowa Snowflakes: The Offense
December 3rd, 2023 at 7:45 AM ^
Mullings runs better than Edward's. Handing the ball off to DE is 3 yards or less 99% of the time.
December 3rd, 2023 at 10:21 AM ^
Agree with all except the OL down ZZ doesn’t give me confidence of opening things up if down in the second half
December 2nd, 2023 at 11:40 PM ^
That was an ugly way to score 26 points
December 3rd, 2023 at 12:20 AM ^
And yet they won by 26. Iowa defense is legit. There was no openings for the run game or passing game. Iowa didn't have anybody on defense trying to play hero ball they played team defense. A win is a win
December 3rd, 2023 at 8:31 AM ^
Can't disagree with anything you said, but the team was basically handed 21 points by the special teams and defense. Offense really was responsible for about 6 points today.
December 2nd, 2023 at 11:40 PM ^
Hopefully Nugent can heal up, and the OL can gel better.
We've got a month now to adjust the game plan to not having Zak.
And solve whatever was going on with the TEs' hands.
December 3rd, 2023 at 10:29 AM ^
Haha - well 26-0 with two drops by hands guys and JJ slipping out of bounds.
December 2nd, 2023 at 11:40 PM ^
Blake scored two more touchdowns. What a season! What a career! What a human!
December 3rd, 2023 at 12:30 AM ^
I'm about to score a touchdown. I think. hope.
December 3rd, 2023 at 1:02 AM ^
55! Sammy Hagar approves!
December 2nd, 2023 at 11:40 PM ^
I didn't see a national championship level team tonight and that's fine. We beat OSU again and won the big ten so the season is a success in my opinion. Hopefully the O-line gets fixed in the playoff practices but I'm not getting my hopes up for anything.
December 3rd, 2023 at 12:39 AM ^
TBF, I didn't see natty level play across any of the conference championship games. Washington looked to have many flaws, and bama had many things go their way to beat a GA team that looked better in my eyes.
December 3rd, 2023 at 7:46 AM ^
Let's be real here, the GA/AL game was played at a level us michigan fans haven't seen in 13 games. Those players make plays on offense we haven't seen since Mario Manningham
December 3rd, 2023 at 7:52 AM ^
I strongly disagree. The michigan/OSU game was far more impressive to me and played at a much higher level
December 3rd, 2023 at 8:12 AM ^
Defensively I agree. But the offense? No way, the offense it literally designed to get 1 inch over 10 yards in 3 or 4 plays and control the clock. At no point in the last 6 games have they even tried to be explosive. That means one thing to me....they aren't explosive on offense. Pretty chilling to think we have a 1st round QB too....
December 3rd, 2023 at 9:07 AM ^
oh, the season is a success, “in your opinion?”. thanks, i wasn’t sure, myself.
December 2nd, 2023 at 11:41 PM ^
The snow melted on the offense tonight but they didn't make catastrophic mistakes and that is the strategy for beating Iowa
December 2nd, 2023 at 11:41 PM ^
Some dumb sacks, but with the defense and special teams dominating like that the offense really only had to avoid turnovers.
December 2nd, 2023 at 11:41 PM ^
Double post, please delete.
December 2nd, 2023 at 11:41 PM ^
It's not good enough to win a national title, which is all that matters from this point forward. The offense lost something over the bye week. The passing game in particular has been much less efficient and JJ has thrown many, many more turnover-worthy balls than he did before (minus BGSU).
The bigger problem is that this team cannot run the ball like the last two Michigan offenses. You pair this year's version of JJ with the 2021 run game, and you've got the 1997 team. But that's not where we're at and beating some combination of Texas/Bama/Washington is going to be really difficult with this offense.
December 2nd, 2023 at 11:47 PM ^
Yup. The O-Line has taken a major step backwards, and that was BEFORE any injuries. They just aren’t controlling the line of scrimmage like the last two years.
December 2nd, 2023 at 11:53 PM ^
It is what it is at this point. The last two offensive lines were generationally good, especially the 2021 run game. No one should ever take for granted what that o-line did to OSU in the second half of the game that year. It's pretty much impossible to keep up that level of line play, and we're starting to see that now. They're still good but the scheme requires them to be great if this team's gonna compete with schools that sign 5-6 five starts every cycle.
December 3rd, 2023 at 12:20 AM ^
What we lost after the bye was playing 3 of the top defenses in the country
December 3rd, 2023 at 12:33 AM ^
Other than Washington, all the other playoff teams have defenses ranked in the top ten of SP+.
December 3rd, 2023 at 12:36 AM ^
JJ was making NFL-level throws before the bye. For the most part, he hasn't since. There were a couple of hugely important exceptions last week, and that gives me some hope. But he peaked with that seam pass for a TD to Loveland against MSU at the end of the first half and hasn't had the same form since.
December 3rd, 2023 at 1:30 AM ^
So JJ hasnt made NFL level throws since the bye week except the ones that he has made? Got it 👌
December 3rd, 2023 at 12:46 AM ^
The 1997 offense was at least 10 ppg worse than this year’s offense.
December 3rd, 2023 at 1:18 AM ^
I agree with the identification of the issue being the OL, but with none of the rest of this. And it's worth noting that the OL's biggest problem is pass protection, not running.
Nothing mysterious happened at the bye week; Michigan's HC, an offensive guy, got suspended for three games, and Michigan built two-score leads against excellent teams with dangerous defenses, and were a bit conservative. The result? They're the #1 team in the country.
The 1997 comparison isn't great. The 1997 offense wasn't impressive, and in fact ranks pretty low by Lloyd Carr standards, with only 1996 and maybe 2001 being less talented and less capable units under Carr. Griese was a fine player, but Brady and Henson and Henne were better; Carr had a handful of better receivers than Tai Streets, and your namesake was a spot contributor as a freshman on a team that featured Chris Howard, a decent back bettered in the Carr era by four different magnificent RBs in different eras.
This is a better offense than 1997 by some distance. JJ is a terrific passer, and the real question is whether or not Michigan is able to give him the time to use that ability when it counts if they actually have to play from behind in January. That's the part of the playbook they won't stretch out much, as they perceive a risk. And that's the part that has pages to use if they are needed.
December 2nd, 2023 at 11:41 PM ^
Remember we were playing against literally the #1 defense in the country
December 2nd, 2023 at 11:57 PM ^
They gave up 31 points to Penn State. Whatever "opponent adjustment" that goes into SP+ and other similar metrics isn't enough to capture reality.
December 3rd, 2023 at 12:06 AM ^
Penn State ran just about 100 plays against them
We SHOULD have done that, but given that Michigan doesn’t operate at that speed…we did alright dude
December 3rd, 2023 at 12:18 AM ^
I like to think that I'm pretty measured on here, and I'm gonna say that it's really hard to justify that conclusion. The two TD drives began inside of the redzone. The offense that played tonight struggled to put more than two good plays together at a time and has, for several weeks now, been unable to create anything resembling an explosive play. These are not good data points for predicting future success.
December 3rd, 2023 at 12:19 AM ^
Zero sustained drives. That is not o.k.
December 3rd, 2023 at 12:41 AM ^
Iowa had 6 fumbles in that game. Thanks for looking into context
December 3rd, 2023 at 12:51 AM ^
I get where you’re coming from. Iowa essentially had 5 turnovers in this game if you include “turnover on downs they wouldn’t have attempted if they were not down multiple scores.” It was a pretty similar game.
I did think Iowa’s D was pretty good. Multiple moments where the run game looked like it had a big gap only for it to close down almost instantly. I honestly think they would have been better off just running almost every play (OMG WHERE IS THE PLAY ACTION), straight drop backs that were not 5 yard outs were not great.
December 3rd, 2023 at 1:00 AM ^
"Multiple moments where the run game looked like it had a big gap only for it to close down almost instantly."
What do you think is going to happen in the playoff?
December 2nd, 2023 at 11:41 PM ^
It sucked.....maybe involve Campbell in play calling. Feels like a step back from previous 2 yrs
December 3rd, 2023 at 12:59 AM ^
The game for which Campbell was OC showcased the smoothest looking offense. That quite possibly was the opposing D responsible for that however.....
December 2nd, 2023 at 11:42 PM ^
ain't gonna win much more with that showing. But, tough to be high so many weeks in a row. Take some time off and let it rip during the playoffs...
December 2nd, 2023 at 11:42 PM ^
Get the OL back in the Sherrone lab pronto! Otherwise, more Mullings and get the TE's some stickum. We'll be fine, this is a team of destiny!!!
December 2nd, 2023 at 11:43 PM ^
Nothing special. They weren’t throwing absolutely everything at Iowa, naturally. Frustrating not to get more done, of course, but the whole reason we want to see more is to see how good Michigan might be against other teams.
And we get to find out ourselves. So I’ll watch it play out.
December 3rd, 2023 at 12:20 AM ^
This is one of the enduring problems of fandom on this blog. Everyone thinks that coaching staff is playing things vanilla in order to set up some amazing "Gotcha" moment. But then the "Gotcha" moment doesn't happen.
December 3rd, 2023 at 12:45 AM ^
But let’s also not pretend that they’re going to play the same way against Iowa as they did OSU.
They played this game knowing Iowa wasn’t going to do much on offense. They will adjust strategy based on opponent. They will be better in the playoffs.
December 3rd, 2023 at 2:01 AM ^
You're right, we're definitely losing, might as well not even waste time playing the games.
December 3rd, 2023 at 8:26 AM ^
Understood. Pepcat will be forever on my mind. However, the offensive sets were rather limited against Iowa. We have seen a lot more variety in other games. Therefore, I am hopeful that it was vanilla because the staff was pretty sure that Iowa was not going to score.
December 2nd, 2023 at 11:43 PM ^
Would have loved to see receivers get more separation. Would like to see the line hold their blocks. Need to see line open up bigger gaps.
Did plenty to beat Iowa. Will need more to win a playoff game.
December 2nd, 2023 at 11:44 PM ^
213 total yards isn’t going to cut it in the Rose Bowl against Texas or Alabama. Only 27 more passing yards than Iowa. 0 touchdowns on drives that didn’t begin inside Iowa’s 10 yard line. I’m unsure as to why the passing game has become so stagnant.
December 2nd, 2023 at 11:47 PM ^
Drops don’t help.
December 3rd, 2023 at 12:23 AM ^
Combine the drops with the wide receivers struggling to get open on routes longer then 10 yards and the pass protection being pretty iffy and you get an ugly day from the passing game.
December 2nd, 2023 at 11:44 PM ^
Roman only had one reception tonight.