Previously in this series covering the 2010s: Favorite Blocks, QB-RB-WR, TE-FB-OL, Defensive Line, Linebacker, Secondary, Worst Calls, and Dumbest Plays so might as well do the flipside.

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10. Martin and Van Bergen, Coaches at Large

2012 SUGAR BOWL

Football hmmm… [Eric Upchurch]

The press got word after the 2011 Ohio State game that senior DTs Ryan Van Bergen and Mike Martin had been given the green light by their coaches to make the line calls for each play, including when and how to stunt. That in itself wasn’t highly remarkable; the modern Michigan equivalent of RVB’s position, the Anchor, makes line calls for the defense today. The reason it goes down in the lore of these guys is they got so good at it.

They were also the two who lined up and dove into the A gaps to stop VT’s hurry-up 4th and 1 sneak, called the slant that got Frank Clark in to intercept a screen pass, and the slant that got Jake Ryan inside the tackle then chasing inside out on the ensuing rollouts. RVB was doing it on a broken foot too.

-Seth

[After THE JUMP: Glasgows be here]

9. That's Bait… I Love Bait!

2017 PENN STATE

This is one of two opponent gambits to make the list, because sometimes you've just got to tip your hat. The Michigan-PSU series had a three year period in which the teams exchanged humiliating blowouts; 2017 was Penn State's turn with the giant cartoon mallet. They kicked things off by debuting the Quon Gun to devastating effect:

Flipping Saquon Barkley and Trace McSorley made Barkley the primary runner on the inverted veer, and then Joe Moorhead noticed a thing on film: Rashan Gary would often get way upfield early in games. Indeed, the play right before this featured Gary, at the top of the screen, nearly getting a sack on an edge rush:

One pass set from the left tackle later and Joe Moorhead's magnum opus was on. "Well… shit, here we go" was my reaction at the time. It still is.

-Brian

8. Power for All Occasions

2015 NORTHWESTERN

Before it was #SpeedInSpace, the theme for Harbaughffence was a wholesale strategic commitment to God's Play—Power. Power concepts are simple and a century old: kick out the edge, pin down the frontside, and pull a lead blocker from the backside. The Power obsession even bled into special teams, then managed by John Baxter, and manifested in this glorious opening announcement that the days of stupid Michigan-Northwestern games were mercifully over:

It's POWER! Specifically they're running Counter Trey, which feints to the frontside to set up a cross-formation kickout and backside puller(s) while the frontside pins down all of those defenders who read the feint and ran the wrong way. 

Michigan rode their 7-0 start to a 38-0 victory—God's score.

-Seth

7. Worst Waldo

2010…ILLINOIS?

So simple, yet so evil. When the Rich Rodriguez offense got it together, the results were so good they were often comical. With one base play created by accident—the zone read—and the variations that followed, the right playcall at the right moment would make a defense look inept.

I can't find the tweet or post where Brian coined the term "Worst Waldo" for a play that got a receiver so open you could spot them from a blimp. I first thought to check the ludicrous 2010 Illinois game, which opened with the most common connection this play produced—Denard Robinson hitting Roy Roundtree in acres of space after a run fake:

Perhaps, then, Brian brought it up after the 2010 Notre Dame, which occurred earlier on the schedule. In that game, Michigan's first touchdown came after an even more overt effort to get the defense's eyes on Denard, using the running back as a lead blocker:

No luck. I then checked that season's opener, when a fake bubble screen—which itself was a fake off the zone read—created so much space for Terrence Robinson that Matt Millen yelled "oh, nice!" before he even caught the ball. Still nothing. A google search for "mgoblog worst waldo" spanning the 2009 and 2010 seasons provided no more answers. I've found plenty of references showing that it predates 2011, just not the origin.

I'll leave it a mystery. Opposing defenses in 2010 can sympathize with my inability to find all the answers.

-Ace

6. The Third Glasgow Emerges

2016 OHIO STATE

This should've been a smartest play for Ohio State. Prior to the 2016 game, the Buckeye coaching staff spotted a weakness in one of Michigan's punt return formations; one side of the field was undermanned, so OSU put in an automatic check to a fake punt run should the Wolverines line up that way.

In the third quarter, punting from their own red zone, Ohio State's opportunity arose. Brian (don't click that):

The aftermath of OSU's fake punt was fascinating, as it quickly became apparent that Urban Meyer told the ESPN crew that they were going to going to run it against a certain Michigan formation no matter what. They got the formation, they ran it, and Jordan Glasgow stoned it. Glasgow set up outside, got off a block, got held, still got off that block, and make a tackle with help from Chris Wormley to turn OSU over on downs.

It's a play that is best viewed through the lens of someone's camera phone pointed at their television, a warped reality, which is how it's immortalized on YouTube:

The rest of the game? We're not here to talk about the rest of the game. While the third Glasgow had made impressive special teams plays before, this was the sign—other than his last name—that he'd join his brothers as an impact every-down player.

-Ace

5. We Broke Spread Punting

2016 INDIANA AND BEYOND

One of our ongoing complaints in the Hoke era was that Michigan was still using the NFL-style "Tornado" punt formation when college rules allowed the provably more effective "Shield" or "Spread" formation. Baxter took us back to the shield style in 2015, but once he was gone, Harbaugh and new special teams coach Chris Partridge devolved again to the pro style. This made no sense unless it was because they figured out how screw with the new, unleashing young vipers Khaleke Hudson and Jordan Glasgow for the greatest punt-blocking fest since Marquise Walker.

Here's how they did it:

The key is doubling then optioning those two guards. Whomever the guards chose not to block would become the 3rd and 4th rushers up the middle when the shield is designed to stop three. Punt team coaches figured out how to avoid this by rolling the punt outside, but that requires a punter who can kick on the run, and removes the punter from the area where he can't be interfered with, and also puts an offensive lineman in a lot of space with an assassin.

-Seth

4. MOVE!

Look, you don't want a game against Army to come down to outwitting one of the most well-coached teams in the country while in the shadow of your own goal line. If you do find yourself in that situation, however, you want Don Brown coming up with some trickery. I'll let the man explain it himself—the relevant part starts at 1:09:

Don Brown being......Don Brown pic.twitter.com/E6vLbtT5r2

— angelique (@chengelis) September 9, 2019

Is it entirely sporting to draw a false start by installing a line shift where your defense screams "MOVE" to spook the offense? To hell with sporting.

It saved the game in large part because the defense fully committed. You can actually hear them yell "MOVE" on the broadcast:

Football gets ludicrously complicated. Sometimes, though, you win a game with a schoolyard gambit. That's half the beauty of it.

-Ace

3. Thanks For Running This At The Three

2011 NEBRASKA

Nebraska got hammered in this game; on the way they ran a thing that dumbfounded both Urban Meyer and Chris Spielman:

That is a handoff on an inverted veer with a pitch attached, and a couple of the smartest football guys in the country blank out for five seconds of dead air trying to process it real-time.

If I have that play in the hopper I'm running it on my three, because I'm scoring from anywhere on the field. Not that it mattered in a game where the Cornhuskers gave up 45 points. This play has been regularly referenced in MGoSlack ever since as a pinnacle of wasted offensive design. It's an underwater cathedral.

-Brian

2. The Triple-Option Countered

2012 NORTHWESTERN

Michigan shouldn't have gotten to overtime against the Wildcats but for one of the dumbest plays of the decade, but won in overtime thanks to the best-laid plans of Greg Mattison. It's now 4th and short, after Michigan's scored a touchdown in the overtime's opening frame, and a great play by Will Campbell against Belly to keep 2nd and 3 from a first down, and a great RPS win against a Northwestern pass on 3rd and short.

This brings up 4th and 2, for which we'll go down to Brian Cook's third Picture Pages of that (bye) week:

Michigan comes out in… this. I guess. Whatever this is. Weird is what it is.

3-3-5 WTF

Please note that Northwestern has also brought their share of weird to the party. They're in a two back set with all three WRs to the field, which means one of those slots is covered up. Michigan is seven on eight in the box, with a safety—Gordon—hanging out deep. If Northwestern can get guys blocked they should have a guy running free. As we'll see, they don't.

It's not so different from Don Brown's strategy against Army last year. NT Jibreel Black shoots straight upfield in the gap to the center's right, which invites Colter to hand off before the rest of the defense has declared its intentions and forces whichever option is up the middle to go up the middle to the offense's left. It's also where all of the linebackers aren't; in fact the LBs are bunching in something like a counter step to the offense's right. As soon as those blockers release they don't know whom to get and don't have the angle once the LBs leap back to the backside.

Video:

-Seth

1. The Twist, Finally Defeated

2016 MICHIGAN STATE

The Michigan State series took a u-turn midway through the decade that exactly corresponded with Jim Harbaugh's arrival. Michigan points before Harbaugh was hired: 17, 14, 12 (a win), 6, 11. After: 23, 32, 14 (the O'Korn one), 21, 44. Harbaugh is one act of God away from being 4-1 against MSU after 1-6 streak prior to his arrival.

There are many reasons for this but foremost among them is Michigan finally, finally, finally picking up Michigan State's staple double-A gap twist blitz. Mason Cole moved back to center in 2016 and the twist blitz went from doom on a stick to a call Michigan seemed to invite:

Smith's six yard TD late in the second quarter was another double A blitz that Michigan had the answer for:

By this point it seemed clear that shotgun snaps got double A blitzed a lot, so Michigan might even have gone with the gun here specifically because they wanted the gut of the D to be linebackers instead of DTs. McDowell rips outside and finds air.

…The trademark MSU defensive playcall was comprehensively beaten. Finally. All of these plays feature the extreme aggression of the MSU linebackers being used against them, something that Michigan hasn't been able to do in forever. Can't block 'em? Run right by 'em.

The disastrous 2017 line saw a resurgence for the twist blitz, and then the last two years Cesar Ruiz obliterated it. Two years later:

What happened to that double A gap blitz MSU used to run all the time?

They still run it a bunch.

uh

It just gets picked up. Ruiz got beat for a pressure on it on the first play of the game. Every other instance was a pickup and a reasonable amount of yardage.

M #51 and #74 C, and LG

The above was consistent. Double A blitzes after the first pressure: 6 yard run, 16 yard TE screen, 5 yard run, 9 yard run, 4 yard run.

MSU was built on defense under Dantonio, and the many humiliations suffered during the Rodriguez and Hoke regimes all started with a healthy dose of TFLs and sacks generated by this one blitz. The two NFL centers Michigan generated over the back half of the decade, and their sidekicks at guard, sussed it out to turn the tide of the rivalry.

-Brian

 

Honorable Mentions

The play they drew up to stuff Minnesota’s QB sneak in 2015 was up and down and in and out of this list the whole time we were making it. The Patriots-inspired two-point conversion that caused “Good shit, Jedd.” Various frippery (and Fritzery) vs Minnesota in 2011 including this Vincent Smith RB pass. MSU’s damn fullback throwback screen. The Spin-o-Rama. Train. Going 3-3-5 to unleash the rabid squirrel on UF, 2017. Jabrill’s business decision and Jourdan’s tweets. The 2-point conversion in the Copper Bowl outside of context. Blake Countess coming of his route to intercept ND. Desmond Morgan baits UConn QB into game-sealing INT.