Previously: Maryland Offense

It’s like we’re in Hell or something.

D.J. Durkin is an excellent defensive coach. Last year, until they ran into Urban Meyer’s historic buzzsaw without any nose tackles, Durkin had Michigan’s run defense playing so well that a non-Rutgers Power Five school offered him a head coaching job. And yet his first defense at Maryland has been horrendous.

Obviously the time continuum has been disrupted, creating a new temporal event sequence resulting in this alternate reality.

English, Doc!

Here, here, let me demonstrate. Let’s say this line represents four yards from the line of scrimmage, and each line break hence is a tenth of a yard per carry, with sacks removed:

---------------------------------------------------------

         <----Here’s Michigan in 2016 (4.33 YPC)

         <----Here’s Michigan in 2015 (4.45 YPC)

         <----Here’s Maryland in 2015 (4.55 YPC)

         <----Here’s the FBS average (4.65 YPC)

         <----Here’s Michigan’s historically bad 2010 (4.89 YPC)

         <----Here’s Maryland right now (5.45 YPC)

Somewhere in the transition Maryland skewed down into this tangent, creating an alternate Durkin defense. Alternate to you, me, and people who watched more than the Ohio State game last year, but reality for everyone else.

Recognize this?

It’s the formation we used all last year with a “buck linebacker” who’s not a linebacker hanging off the edge. I know, because there isn’t a free safety in sight. I found it in the Maryland-MSU game! Along with this…

[After the JUMP: we go back to October 22, 2016, and BTN2Go’s awful streams, to find out how to get good at PFF while being literally one spot from dead last in rushing S&P]

Personnel: My diagram [click to embiggen—should work now]:

Free safety Darnell Savage went out early in this game with an injury, but he’s a 5’11 converted cornerback and whoever’s at free safety lines up so far from the line of scrimmage he doesn’t factor much into the run game. When he went out they had CB Alvin Hill play free safety for a bit, then later inserted true freshman Quantrezz Knight, who had two tackles that might both have been targeting. Savage is expected back.

I must defend some non-star decisions for some other guys with big PFF scores and/or historical MGoLove. Carter I’ll talk about below; he’s a guy I really liked back when he was a gap-attacking blitzball, and a really bad fit for whatever they’re asking him to do now. Ukandu looked like just a guy, and moveable.

Buck linebacker Jesse Aniebonam has 5.5 sacks this year, however he’s been quiet lately, with zero TFLs in his last three games. That has coincided with him sharing more time with Chandler Burkett, who started against MSU and is a better run defender. MSU rarely had to pass so it was hard to gauge either as pass rushers. There’s a third buck who’s kind of a Josh Uche: 6’1/225 Melvin Keihn, who’s a transfer from Virginia Tech. Like Uche, Keihn was mostly an extra edge rusher, but they tried him at SAM and moved Brooks to WILL for a bit when Cockerille was particularly struggling.

I’ll address the sore spots when we get to that run defense.

Base Set? 4-3 over, with some occasional under. As at Michigan, Durkin’s “Buck” linebacker is a WDE, either 6’3/260 Aniebonam or the 6’3/245 Burkett. Neither backed into a coverage zone that I saw.

The formation above the jump has three TE types on the field side. Maryland has their SDE aligned usually to the boundary and the buck to the field. Often he’s head up on the inline TE.

The DTs, true to form for single-gap defenses, were always in off-shoulder gaps, and focused on penetrating and forcing a cut into nowhere. A safety is off screen/deep to prevent big plays. Our play results will be spectacular DL highlights, or 9-yard runs that dipsy doodle around gap-shooting DTs and block-dodging linebackers. This one was the latter.

So it’s very D.J. Durkin, right down to the buck alignment, and overreliance on man-1. The only time they went out of this was for obvious long passing downs, when they brought out a 3-2-6 dime. Here it is against a hail mary:

They’ll blitz one linebacker and have another back into middle coverage.

Man or zone coverage? Almost exclusively man, specifically Cover 1. Not that they faced much passing to tell.

Pressure: GERG or Greg? GERG. The defensive line is really trying to earn the right to rush four. The linebackers sit back and read. Then they eat guards and tackles.

Dangermen: He’s got a huge PFF number so we have to talk about 3-tech Kingsley Opara, who’s averaging over a TFL a game despite opponents running all the dang time. Of all the tackle comparisons we have at our disposal, Opara is most like Willie Henry. He’s strong enough to impressively wrangle blockers to the ground, and when they try to reach him he goes right to the backfield.

But he always goes right to the backfield. This creates havoc occasionally, but just as often results in impressive after-contact stats for running backs who dodge him. He’s eminently dodgeable. This may be a Chris Evans kind of day.

It’s hard to tell because there’s very little passing, but every time Will Likely’s replacement, Florida transfer JC Jackson, was tested he held up. They didn’t throw at Hill much, or Qwuantrezz Knight at all. FWIW Hill has a +2.8 in pass coverage to PFF and a +1.5 in pass rush, suggesting he’s been used as a blitzer in other games.

OVERVIEW

The big mystery with Maryland is they suck at run defense, and yet the PFF scores for DTs and SDEs are all between “decent” and All-American. SDE Roman Braglio is just –0.9 versus the run (he’s –3.1 overall mostly because of penalties). That’s the worst. Backup DT Brett Kulka is +3.2 vs the run. Rotation DT Kavon Walker is +6.5. Rotation buck  Chandler Burkett is +8.0. Starting NT Azubuike Ukandu is +8.2. And the starting DT, Kingsley Opara has a +11.9 run defense grade and a Ryan Glasgow-like +20.1 overall.

So how are they putting up worse rushing numbers than any team in the country except UL-Monroe? For one, they’re really easy to trap:

There behind the line and about to get sealed by MSU’s #70 is the SDE, Braglio, who jumped into the backfield so fast he didn’t realize they’d let him. The other two black hats in the backfield who are getting sealed with a step belong to the two rotation DTs, Kulka (#96) and Walker (#18), in here at the start of MSU’s second series.

Facing two free-releasing blockers are MIKE linebacker Jermaine Carter (#23) and WILL linebacker Shane Cockerille (#2), Carter is a guy we were all mad that Brian drafted despite this year’s Big Ten being chock-silly with MLB types, and who is now grading out –5.8 (pretty bad) against the run. Cockerille, a recently converted fullback, looks like a black hole at –12.7, almost all of that for run defense.

Carter and Cockerille are both listed generously at 235. They’re smallish guys recruited for an aggressive 3-4 that would keep them clean while they read and attacked. Now they’re getting this:

and thziss:

and ziss:

und zis:

und…

Carter’s not helping himself with his Ozeh-level overcautiousness. In the sequence below, MSU is pulling, and the gap they’re going for is clear. Carter’s read it; he just needs to shoot it, like he’s done 200 times before, and this play is ending in the backfield. Instead he held up in the hole and waited to get blocked by #65.

Some MLBs are brick-heavy and standing in a gap ready to pop whoever shows is a good strategy. Carter has a shoulder in his gap still but he’s 100 pounds lighter than the guy blocking him, and with zero momentum this is now just physics. State gets 4 yards and the first down.

I also don’t get the love for Ukandu, the starting nose, who was regularly muscled out of the hole by the same McGowan Michigan just buried repeatedly in the backfield. Here’s another tentative Carter play, where Ukandu’s an under NT and starts with a foot on the hash.

The guard barely needs to help before moving down to the LB level to harass Carter. Carter is again playing the running back rather than attacking a gap, else he’d get getting outside to the hash. Scott would cut out there faster, Carter would get caught in the wash, and MSU would give up another big gain on 1st and 10.

There’s a striking dissonance between the defensive linemen and the linebackers. If the defensive linemen are crazy aggressive to their gaps, the linebackers ought to be attacking gaps too, but the LBs are still acting like the DL are there to erase the OL while the LBs dance around with the running back. It makes about as much sense as the GERG years when Michigan ran a 3-3-5 and had their corners in a passive cover 2: are you even on the same team?

Here Maryland got countered pretty bad, but Opara has totally discarded his blocker at the hash marks and now it’s him and Carter versus Gerald Holmes and a lead blocker. Carter just has to get outside that blocker. Instead both go for the running back, Carter gets blindsided by #75, and Holmes can just outrun the DT for the edge.

On the next drive the DL did a good job to bottle things up and prevent two OL from getting to the second level…

But they were so concerned with blockers coming through that gap that they had no feel for when to go off script. The top LB in that frame, Brooks, would give himself up to prevent the pile lurching forward. That’s one dude sticking two blockers at the line of scrimmage, and thus a good use of his body. The one on the hash (Carter) just analyzed until the safety came in on an awful angle.

Carter didn’t have that hesitation last year: if he saw a gap he would attack it. It’s a transitional cost, and that’s my best explanation for why he’s had such a regression. Cockerille, whom they moved from fullback this offseason, does the same things, is really easy to push around, was at fault for most of MSU’s passing day, and I’m not working off of years of respecting his game before this, so he got the turquoise circle. Honestly it’s just fear of Draftageddon-related fallout from my boss that Carter didn’t get one too.

The OTHER other thing is their safeties in run support are 2010 Michigan-level butt. Here’s what else happened on that play I just screencapped above:

That’s on strong safety Josh Woods, who was pretty bad against the run all day when he happened to show up at all.

When Savage got hurt Maryland had cornerback Alvin Hill play the deep man; he was fine in that role (he split time with the safety starters the last few years prior) but he too was a liability in filling runs. The cornerbacks are usually in man so their backs are often turned.

That’s a good opportunity to segue into passing. Lewerke was 11/24 for 156 yards and an interception, an arm punt Ace discussed last week which ended up in Hill’s hands. Those numbers are damaged somewhat by the last two drives, when Michigan State went into must-pass-score mode with the exact wrong guy to do that with. A few times earlier in the game State converted when Maryland rushed just three and someone had time to shake loose from man to man. Other than that Lewerke’s completions were all on wide open crossing routes that linebackers didn’t drop into—given how run-heavy they were all game I can only harp on that so much.

By the second half Maryland was keeping the backups on the bench, and the starters were just totally gassed. There were also some wholesale disasters, like when MSU forgot to block Braglio on 3rd and 5, and Braglio came in so out of control that Lewerke spun away and got the first down thrice over. Or when Maryland was still getting instructions from the sideline when State snapped the ball:

(Also State was holding their balls off all game but we are past that.)

Anything else Durkin took away from his time at Michigan?

TRAIN!

…sorta. Are we done here? Oh right one more thing:

Special Teams: Their kicker, Adam Greene, put a couple line drive kickoffs at the 10, and one was almost taken back by RJ Shelton. Greene 6/8 on FG attempts, but didn’t try one in this game. He has a –19.8 to PFF because some kicker cost PFF 300 bucks when he rolled their ’46 Ford in a drag race.

The punter, well: AUSSIE ALERT!

By “experienced” they mean he played Aussie Rules Football from the time he dropped out of high school to when he retired from the game because he got caught taking PEDs when he was 24, then spent 4 years @’ing a Buckeye. Yes, he’s a 28-year-old freshman—remember, Weinke fans: you have to graduate from high school to start your clock. I’m sure the Pac 12 is going to be all over this sort of thing eventually, but for now he Aussie punts as well as Aussies do.

Bend Till You Break

Lees’s punting will be a big deal because the one thing this defense has going for it this game was field position. You can grind out 4-8 yards consistently against them until the red zone, when the safeties can activate against the run. State gained ground on a few option plays when they got close. They also burrowed in for a couple of TDs on drives when they managed to not turn the ball over first.