Immediately place your mouse here, tap your index finger, and be whisked away to my all-time favorite series of preview diaries: EGD’s Four Plays. He draws up two base offensive plays for Michigan and two base offensive plays of the opponent, shows how each team defends those plays, and then breaks down the individual matchups. A sample:

Assignments:

WDE Frank Clark: Gap-exchange with WLB Joe Bolden; backside pursuit of RB Devontae Booker

NT Ryan Glasgow: Defend backside A-gap against LG Junior Salt

DT Willie Henry: Defend playside B-gap against RG Isaac Asiata, constrict playside A-gap

SDE Brennan Beyer: Defend playside D-gap (outside TE) vs. TE Westlee Tonga; backside pursuit if QB keeps, set edge point and force run back inside if QB gives

WLB Joe Bolden:  Gap-exchange with WDE Frank Clark; defend backside C-gap vs. LT Jeremiah Poutasi, set edge point and force back inside if QB keeps, backside pursuit if QB gives

Make this part of your preview regimen. In other O’s, Brhino mini-UFR’d the Shane Morris plays (both rollouts so pocket presence information is unavailable).

Coaching searches are like recruiting: five stars wanted. The other big diary this week is resph1’s look at all the coaching searches among Power Five programs since 2007.

Coaching search lesson 1

By year four most guys in the study had their programs in better shape than the previous three seasons. Also very few of them were still around:

Only half the coachs on our list of 36 are still at their schools. It gets worse as you go farther back in time. Of the 8 coaches hired for the 2007 season, Nick Saban and Mark Dantonio are the only ones still around. A whopping 5 were fired and another (Harbaugh) left for the NFL.

Even among the 14 “winners” covered above, the story is not much better. 5 guys capitalized on their success and moved on to other positions, and 2 were fired (one scandal, on failed to sustain their initial success), only 7 remain (Snyder, Saban, Briles, Hoke, Kelly, Fisher, Cutcliffe).

I did a somewhat similar study of Big Ten and SEC coaching hires since 1999 in this year’s HTTV, breaking them into categories of “Strong” (like stealing another BCS team’s HC for unholy money), “Average” (like upgrading a proven mid-major coach or BCS/NFL coordinator) or “Cheap” (what Purdue does). Of the SEC’s 30 head coaching hires, 18 were in the “Strong” category, while economy class was reserved for only Vandy, Kentucky, and Arkansas needing a one-year stopgap; only three (Rodriguez, John L. Smith, and Urban) of the Big Ten’s 22 hires rated that, and 13 were on the cheap.

Things Brian linked already on the front page but bear reminding: what’s going on in the student section, another non-reflective boxscore, Best & Worst called Gardner a chaotic neutral.

Etc. Gulo Gulo reviewed betting lines, Ron Utah reviews the last few years of Michigan football and wonders if maybe we just should feel sorry for ourselves, LSA on where Michigan stands in basic stats.

[Jump]

Best of the Board

HOW OREGON CRACKED DANTONIO’S DEFENSE

Hey what if we wait until they open their main weapon and shoot a rocket into it?
Quiet Yuri, not until the American president gives his speech about how it’s July 4

A flaw in the MSU defense you say? Yes, I’m interested. I qoute Space Coyote from that thread:

… Their leverage put the CB inside the receiver in a "lock" formation, which allowed him to be rubbed off on the wheel by the post. The coverage fully accounted for everything no problem, but the gaps the defense was responsible for left them susceptible.

MSU here has to do better at the CB position to stay tight to their man off the LOS. Reduce the cushion between man to man and force that player closer to the sideline. What that does is help squeeze out that gap they aren't covering, it makes it nearly impossible for the post receiver to pick the CB without picking his man, and it forces the wheel into the sideline.

Apparently what Oregon found was that MSU’s run scheme gives edge defense to the cornerback and packed two defenders into the “C” gap. There are other ways to attack that edge, but Oregon chose the quickest that’s part of their offense: the bubble screen, which is essentially a running play. So when MSU’s cornerback saw the slot going on a bubble route, he came up to hold the edge, giving up the zone behind him. The cornerback on the X receiver tried to stay with him but since it 1) wasn’t his part of the field and 2) meant going through a pick route by the Z receiver, he really had no chance of catching up on a well thrown ball. Below is a screenshot from Neuheisel’s breakdown, and then I drew the play up, showing the gap assignments.

Get on the wire; tell them how to bring those sons of bitches down. Except this was an adjustment MSU made to their base D (matching slots with DBs), not their base D. Still good to know they can be beat.

TOUCHDOWN TOM’S FALLBACK

That’s Tom Brady’s resume in case things didn’t work out with the NFL draft. For those who care about late 1990s conspiracies, a guy I worked with at the Daily investigated players with jobs at UM golf course while following up on all the then-unraveling basketball scandal. He found the job was cushy but the players who were supposed to show up were doing so. The Dudlars are a Brother Rice and Michigan family.

FROM THE YOOTS

A Utah fan posted some notes on his team. Dangerman:

WRs - Some real danger here if Wilson is not pressured.  Lost 3 of their top 4 WRs but their top guy is Dres Anderson who has a modest 27.9 average reception thru 2 games. That's not a fluke, he average 18.9 per catch in 2013 ... and he had 1000 yards last year even with a meh QB.  He is 6'2 190 so think a tall Gallon.  In a very offense friendly conference he is an All Conference candidate.

CALL FOR STATS HELP

ShoelaceToJunior46 (aka Nate) is the guy helping us convert all the play by play data into a complete statistical database, which will eventually be available for free on this site with team pages with sensical stats. We’re now at the parsing stage; if you are good with data Nate could use your help to scrub out bad things.

NOBODY CHECKS DEGREES AT THE GATE

If you root for Michigan to win you’re a Michigan fan; the only people in the world who care whether you went to the school are a tiny group of asshats that every school has, and Michigan State fans because they mad when the free agents don’t choose them.

“Walmart Wolverine” is Sparty’s term, not ours. Its prevalence is merely a symptom of how MSU fans don’t understand that smack talk is supposed to be fun. They care because they imagine most of Michigan’s fanbase—the thing that’s always kept Michigan at an advantage—is made up of people who couldn’t get into Michigan State yet are still going around denigrating degrees from State. Like wackos on the edge of the political spectrum, they imagine these straw hypocrites are legion and must be stopped.

ETC. Utah coverage map. I did a Podcast with Todd Howard. Ann Arbor has more degrees per square mile than everywhere, including the place where they make up fake classes. UM advertising on Facebook is too small to complain about; it’s free, so why should we care? Try to stump our resident know-it-all Wolverine Devotee.

Your Moment of Zen:

This isn’t the thing Oregon did to MSU; it’s a coverage bust by the safety overplaying the bubble screen, though.

Long live wide open receivers (for us) (and for rivals’ opponents). Long live tiny slot receivers. Long live Denard.