We're baaaack. The 2022 edition of Fee Fi Foe Film makes its grand return this week with a pair of pieces that are going to be pretty ugly. By many measures, Hawaii is one of the worst teams Michigan has played in some time, perhaps all the way back to UMass in 2012. The Rainbow Warriors are 0-2 with two blowout losses against teams that projected to be not great or even very bad this season. And yet, this piece is the better side of the football. Strap in, and get ready. 

The Film: Hawaii has played two games already this season, having played in Week 0 and Week 1. That left us with two options, the former against Vanderbilt and the latter against Western Kentucky. Though WKU may be the better team (time will tell), Vanderbilt is (allegedly) a Power 5 school and has a more talented roster. Neither team is remotely analogous to Michigan but Vanderbilt is probably closer, even if just on the margins. Besides, the decision was made for me due to availability of the film: the Vandy game took place on CBS Sports Network, a cable channel that a number of people have, while the WKU game was broadcast on "Spectrum Sports Pay-Per-View", a streaming service that no one has. Getting a quality version of the WKU game that I could clip was not going to be easy, so Vandy it is. 

Personnel: The return of the chart. Click to enlarge. PDF is here.

Hawaii is engaged in a QB rotation for the opposite reason Michigan is: both guys are really bad. Brayden Schager is in his second year in the program after getting some run last season. He has been largely overmatched, starting against Vandy, getting yanked, then coming back in to finish that one. Joey Yellen came in in relief and then started the WKU contest, before being yanked for Schager. I am expecting Schager to start but it could be either one and it probably won't matter. We will delve more into that later. 

The RB position also has a rotation. Dedrick Parson was a guy I had high expectations for and is still the nominal Dangerman for this piece, but fumble problems have beset him and led to the rise of Nasjzaé Bryant-Lelei, who got a lot of snaps in the WKU game. Jordan Johnson is the #3 back, while the bite sized Air Force transfer Tylan Hines is a tiny receiving back type. 

At WR, there is a rotation of guys. Hawaii runs a pass-heavy offense and normally plays with three WRs on the field, which are typically three of outside receivers Jonah Panoke and Jalen Walthall, as well as slots James Phillips and Dior Scott. Zion Bowens was projected to have a major role in the offense as a lead outside receiver entering the season, but an injury very early in the Vandy game has left him sidelined. I do not know his status for Saturday. 

Hawaii typically plays in 11 personnel, with the TE most often being Jordan Murray, a Missouri State transfer. He is a receiving TE who flexes out often. Caleb Phillips comes on in 12 personnel or replaces Murray on running plays out of 11 personnel, being a blocking-first TE. The Rainbow Warriors have a pretty set offensive line, with returning starters Ilm Manning and Micah Vanterpool at LT and RG, while LG Stephen Bernal-Wendt, C Eliki Tanuvasa, and RT Austin Hopp have slid into starting roles. Sergio Muasau has played some snaps as the 6th OL, but the line is the most concrete area on the offensive depth chart. 

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Spread, pro-style, or hybrid: Hawaii runs a fully spread passing offense that operates entirely out of shotgun, one that is currently somewhere between June Jones' Run N' Shoot offense that head coach Timmy Chang played under while in college and Jay Norvell's Air Raid that Chang coached under last year at Nevada. They love to pass: 

Formation	Run	PA	Pass	Total
Shotgun	23	12	47	100%
Under Center	--	--	--	--

We should note that the play-action number there includes several RPOs. Hawaii heavily skewed towards the pass in the game that I saw and that should be the base expectation. When combined with the WKU game, the 'Bows have attempted 99 passes and 61 rushes on the season, and that rushing number includes several sacks and scrambles, so you're looking at an offense that is going to pass ~65-70% of the time. 

The tendency to pass the football at all available opportunities shows up when you look at the distribution by down and take a gander at the 1st down numbers: 

Down	Run	Pass
1st	8	26
2nd	11	16
3rd	3	14
4th	1	3

The modal three-down series for Hawaii is 1) pass on first down, 2) if medium distance on 2nd down, run, and if long distance on down, pass, and 3) on third down, pass again. You may notice that they went for it on 4th down four times... counting the WKU game, the Rainbow Warriors have gone for it on 4th down eight times already(!). Even worse, they're only 1/8 on those attempts. I don't think that the aggressiveness on fourth down has much to do with Timmy Chang's philosophy as a coach. It could, but I'm not sure we know that with certainty. Rather, it tends to be that Hawaii is getting run out of the building and they have no reason not to go for it on 4th down when they're down five touchdowns. 

Base Set: Hawaii plays in 11 personnel (1 TE, 1 RB, 3 WR) for the most part, though they line the TE up in a flex position a decent amount of the time, which looks like four wide. These two are their base 11 sets: 

That one has the TE in an H-Back position, while the next one has the TE in a Flex position: 

Every so often, they do go with 12 personnel, bringing a second TE on the field. Generally it looks like this: 

Basketball On Grass or MANBALL: Hawaii rarely pulls anybody, so for the most part it is oscillating between zone blocking with the occasional sprinkle of gap blocking. Inside zone and split zone make appearances, as does belly. Every so often they'd pull a guard but most of their forays into gap blocking generally culminated in something simplistic like iso. All this only matters so much given how little Hawaii runs the ball, though.

Hurry it up or grind it out: Hawaii is a hurry it up team, generally speaking. They toss in a couple true tempo snaps, but on a typical snap, they will hike it with between 20 and 25 seconds on the playclock. Their tendency to pass all the time and never run any time off the playclock means that they have a penchant for drives that don't take much time off the clock and games with a lot of drives/plays. They've run ~80 plays in both of their two games this season and that could be the case again unless Michigan stitches together some long, time-draining drives. This game will be another early test of Jesse Minter's defense to see if they're ready for the snap every time or if they have to burn a timeout to get set up (probably the only way this game is a test for the defense). 

Quarterback Dilithium Rating (Scale: 1 [Navarre] to 10 [Denard]): Let's go with a 2-3 here. The QB run is not a feature of the Hawaii offense and neither of these players are particularly speedy fellows. They do use the legs of both Yellen and Schager a little bit in the pass game, on rollouts and bootlegs, things like that, but the only threat here is through the scramble game. Schager has one positive scramble on the season, while most of Yellen's four recorded rushes are sacks. These guys can move a little bit, but they don't do that by design and they aren't going to rip off a long run at all. 

Dangerman: We are still rolling with Dedrick Parson, even though this is very much up in the air. Parson had an excellent season a year ago under Todd Graham, rushing for 5.3 YPC and 8 TD, and he was the only Hawaii RB in rotation last season to remain on the roster for this year. I rated him highly in The Enemy, Ranked back in August but things have since gone haywire, like everything with this team. For Parson, it's the fumbles that have plagued him and that was on display in the Vandy game. 

The good was there. Parson is a strong and compact back, listed at 5'8", 205 lbs., and he cashed in a long TD run when given a big hole: 

Hawaii runs Belly and gets an RPS win with the corner on the playside edge crashing down and taking himself out of the play. Parson gets a window, and he's gone. He's not the fastest but his thickness allows him to shed tacklers and battle for extra yards. Here you see the speed limitations but also the ability to shed the tackle: 

A faster back might be able to turn the corner, but Parson also is able to keep the legs churning and fight off the backside edge defender hassling him, and it takes two Commodores to knock him out of bounds. I liked this show of hesitation: 

Hawaii is running TE Iso and the center gets bowled over in front of him, but Parson waits, adjusts, and then finds a lane to knife forward through for positive yardage.

Finally, Parson is not just a running back... he's also a receiving back. The DBs drop back in coverage and Hawaii uses Parson to take what they are given in the flat: 

Unfortunately, despite all the positive attributes Parson brings, this also happened: 

Fun fact: the player who returned that fumble for a TD was Afernee Orji, Alex's brother! To make the night worse for Parson, it happened again: 

Different guy returned that one for Vandy, but the second fumble led to Parson being benched for the night. The WKU game revealed a near-50/50 split between Parson and Bryant-Lelei at RB, so Parson is one of the flimsiest Dangermen I have named in my time FFFFing.  

HenneChart: This is where we will really get into the meat of the QB discussion. As I stated at the top, Schager is a leftover from last season, thrust into the fire before he was ready as a true freshman by Todd Graham and inherited by Chang. Yellen arrived from Pitt and is now on his third school after starting at Arizona State. Both are learning the offense and working with their new coaches. The fact neither has separated themselves is bad. Their stats? Also bad: 

Schager: 58.8%, 5.75 Y/A, 0 TD, 4 INT 

Yellen: 45.2%, 4.0 Y/A, 0 TD, 1 INT 

Schager has probably been the better QB, but he also has had greater turnover problems (those were largely in the WKU game, which we will dip into in a bit). Let's start with him. Here's his chart from the Vanderbilt game: 

Hawaii vs. Vandy	Good				Neutral			Bad					Ovr
Quarterback	DO	CA	SCR		PR	MA		BA	TA	IN	BR		DSR	Screens
Brayden Schager	1	11			3	3		0	4	9	1		46%	5

Rough! Schager's first pass of the day foreshadowed what was coming: 

A lot of the routes that Schager targeted were like that, short stuff to receivers who had a window open, slants, drag routes, out routes, etc. He hit those routes more often than not, but some were like the duck shown above. More often it was a solid, competent throw: 

The issues with his inaccuracy tended to manifest more on deep balls than on the short game. Schager took his shots down the field, they just tended to land 5-10 yards out of bounds: 

Schager has a big arm but on many of his deep shots, it was too big. He is also still in the rudimentary stages of reading a defense. Here his struggles seeing the open guys downfield and his deep ball inaccuracy manifest in one clip: 

Watch the clip again and focus on flex TE Caleb Phillips (#85) lined up in the slot to the left side of the formation. He breaks for his route and as he's off and running, the defender falls down. As the camera pans to see where Schager threw it, we see that Phillips is all alone standing in the end zone. Instead, Schager throws the seam to Mokiao-Atimalala, who is double covered and the ball flies out the back of the end zone. You could mark him with either an IN or a BR on that one. 

Schager also faced a good amount of pressure in this game and only did so-so against it. Against WKU, he had some horrendous Young QB In Over His Head moments. Here's his second INT in that game: 

📺 𝐇𝐈𝐋𝐋𝐓𝐎𝐏𝐏𝐄𝐑 𝐇𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐋𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓𝐒 📺@YoungLeaf24 with the ℙℝ𝔼𝕊𝕊𝕌ℝ𝔼. @upton_5tout with the ℙ𝕀ℂ𝕂 ‼️#GoTops 🏝️ pic.twitter.com/Nz1QiXuTEC

— WKU Football (@WKUFootball) September 4, 2022

Of the four INT he threw in the WKU game, two were tip drill specials that were more bad luck than anything, but the other two consisted of the above clip, as well as a slip screen that was sniffed out by the defense but Schager insisted on throwing it anyway, right to the DT for a Fat Man Pick Six. 

Schager is a QB who has some raw talent in his arm strength and decent size (6'3"), and I think it's plausible that if you give Timmy Chang a few years to work with him, Schager could become a quality Group of 5 QB in this pass-happy system. But as of September 7, 2022, Brayden Schager should not be starting FBS games at QB, let alone against a potential top 15-20 defense in America like Michigan boasts. He does not know how to handle pressure, he does not know how to read a defense properly, and his arm accuracy needs major improvement. As of this writing, poor Schager looks like a pork chop about to be thrown to the hungry wolves on the Michigan defense. 

The problem for Hawaii is that Joey Yellen isn't really any better. I thought Yellen was better than Schager against Hawaii, albeit in smaller sample size:

Hawaii vs. Vandy	Good				Neutral			Bad					Ovr
Quarterback	DO	CA	SCR		PR	MA		BA	TA	IN	BR		DSR	Screens
Joey Yellen	-	7	-		4	3		-	1	4	-		58%	1

But it should be noted that Yellen turned around and was terrible against WKU, going 4/11 for 3.3 Y/A and 1 INT, while Schager was better. Yellen entered the Vanderbilt game and started pretty strong. His first throw got himself in rhythm: 

From there, he delivered catchable balls on 7/10 downfield throws to start his outing, and the three that weren't were two marginal balls and one under pressure. In terms of doing the short, easy stuff, Yellen was more reliably accurate than Schager. The train de-railed very quickly though, and based on the WKU game, it has not returned to the rails yet. On this 4th & 5, Yellen has Walthall open on a slant for a first down but puts the ball behind him: 

Even if Walthall hangs on, it's a yard shy of the first down. Put it in front of him and he picks it up. This howler (another BR/IN combo) was the end of Yellen's outing against Vanderiblt: 

I get that it's 3rd & 19 and the game has long been lost for your team, but throwing to a receiver who has four opposition jerseys around him is a bad idea unless that receiver is Calvin Johnson. It's an even worse idea if you're going to short-arm it by five yards. Replay review ended up ruling that ball incomplete and not an interception, but he threw one against WKU: 

📺 𝐇𝐈𝐋𝐋𝐓𝐎𝐏𝐏𝐄𝐑 𝐇𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐋𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓𝐒 📺@freshboy_bj is 𝙅𝙊𝙃𝙉𝙉𝙔 𝙊𝙉 𝙏𝙃𝙀 𝙎𝙋𝙊𝙏 ❕#GoTops 🏝️ pic.twitter.com/MRVGjeYg6M

— WKU Football (@WKUFootball) September 4, 2022

Another bizarre tip drill play (there were three tip drill INTs thrown by Hawaii QBs in that game!), but throwing across the body on the run to a double covered receiver is enough to deserve the INT regardless of the luck involved in the caroms of the ball. 

Both of these QBs are poor decision-makers who are liable to throw at least a couple atrocious INTs when faced with enough pressure and neither of them are terribly accurate with their arms either. They don't make the right reads often enough and even when they throw to the open, underneath guy, there's a not-insignificant chance the ball will be thrown into the stands or into the turf. Schager has longer term upside that could make him a piece of Chang's rebuild. Yellen has been in college four seasons and is on his third program. This is who he is. Both guys are bad in the year 2022. 

 

Overview

So, what do I think? I think that this is not a good offense. From a yardage standpoint, the numbers are not too bad right now, I will admit. Hawaii gained 358 yards in the game I charted and a near-identical 360 yards against WKU. Not lighting up the scoreboard but not conjuring images of Iowa, either. HOWEVER, Vanderbilt and WKU were terrible defensive teams last year. Vandy had the #115 SP+ defense in 2021, and WKU posted the #90 unit (they were known for offense, not defense). In Bill C's current projections, Vandy has the #84 defense and WKU clocks in at #103. In other words, Hawaii did alright against two horrible defenses that are not remotely comparable to Michigan. 

The other issue is, while they did alright from a yardage standpoint, they did not do alright from a scoring standpoint. The 'Bows scored 10 against Vanderbilt and just 17 against WKU in part because of the chronic turnover problems, 5 INTs and 3 lost fumbles in two games(!). Also, Hawaii has had lots of drives that stalled out, as I mentioned earlier that they've turned it over on downs seven times already. 

The big problem is there aren't enough playmakers to seriously threaten an opponent with QB play this poor. The loss of Zion Bowens very early in the Vanderbilt game hurt but I'm not convinced he's a true needlemover. Everyone else is just a guy. When charting this game I had to check the roster every time a catch was made by a WR, even late into the game because no one stood out from the eye test. They were all seemingly identical 5'9-5'10 slots or 6'0 outside guys, and most throws were on simplistic stuff underneath or to the flat. 

I will say that of all the guys at WR, the one guy who came closest to really standing out was slot James Phillips, who leads the team in targets by a significant number (19). This play is pretty classic Hawaii offense: 

Slot #3 lined up to the left side of the line

You get orbit motion behind the QB with an outside WR, attracting the attention of the LB, and that frees up space for Phillips to slide through the middle of the field and get a quick catch. They also give a lot of screens to Phillips, this one being the very next play: 

That's the core of the Hawaii offense. With Hawaii lining up with in 11 Personnel but often sending the TE on a route, either in a flex position or from a blocking stance, in addition to the RBs being receiving threats, the offense is designed to have a lot of traffic and chaos going on. You'll have a couple guys going deep, who aim to clear out space over the middle for a couple guys running slants/drags/outs/posts, which are the more likely options. And then occasionally you pepper in some screens to stretch the field laterally. In other words, it will look a lot like the Colorado State offense. 

TE James Murray was mixed as a blocker in my view, but they through him several fades from the Flex position, which is of interest to me because we'll get a bit of a look as to how Michigan looks to deal with receiving TEs this season. Here's one such play: 

TE #7 in the slot to the top of the screen

I will discuss this a little bit more in the ending section, but it's something to watch out for. TE screens are also a part of the offense, but it's not important enough for me to clip. 

Overall, what I have described is a recreation of the CSU offense and I think it's apt. After all, Chang is a Norvell disciple who was on staff with that Nevada coaching staff who were largely copy and pasted to Fort Collins. Perhaps the most important question given what we saw against Colorado State is "can the Hawaii OL do better than the Colorado State OL?". I would say the answer is yes, but probably not meaningfully. People who follow the Mountain West projected Hawaii to have a better OL than CSU, and it made sense given that the pieces were in-house, players recruited to the program who have seasoning as opposed to the Rams' hodgepodge of transfers who couldn't hack it at Tulsa and FIU. 

It's likely better than CSU! That doesn't mean it's good. I was not impressed by the TEs in pass pro and here Caleb Phillips gets burned by, meanwhile RT Austin Hopp grabs a fistful of jersey: 

And here's Hopp getting abused as a three-man pressure sacks the QB: 

I will say that they generally won their 1-on-1 matchups against Vanderbilt, but the blitz pickups were a mess. If Vandy disguised pressures even the slightest bit, the OL/TE and RB assigned to pass pro had no idea what was going on. Delayed blitzers in particular were seldom ever picked up: 

I have many more plays I could clip but you get the point. Hawaii had the occasional win in run blocking (like on the Parson TD) but it was mostly tough sledding. The Rainbow Warriors had three rushing plays that combined for 64 yards and then ran for 3.3 YPC on the other 20 carries. They ran for 3.18 YPC against WKU. And again, these are poor defenses. Stuff like this was far too common: 

They are bad. 

 

What does this mean for Michigan?  

Hawaii is very bad on offense. Somehow, they're even worse on defense, but this offense does not appear to be one that is going to test Michigan much. They have two overwhelmed QBs who are turnover prone that they can't pick between, a lead RB with fumble problems, nondescript receivers, and a middling-for-a-Group-of-5-team OL. I expect the Wolverines to dominate on the line again, probably less than against CSU, but not by that much (if it is, that's something). I will be watching to see if Michigan can handle some of the crossing routes better than they did against the Rams, which was perhaps the lone thing about the performance on defense from last Saturday that could be cleaned up, and it's something that will feature against a Hawaii team running a very similar system. 

I'm also curious to see how the DBs do on throws down the field. I assume, given what I saw in this game, that Hawaii will chuck it deep more often than CSU. As I noted in the QB section, a good number of those throws will likely end up in the stands and won't be on target, but at least by throwing them we'll get a glance to see whether the Michigan DBs are in position to make a play if the ball were accurate. It's not much of a test, but at least we'll get to see something we didn't in Week 1. Finally, I'll return to what I said about Murray. How do they decide to deal with him? He lines up in the slot often, but at 6'5", I doubt you put Sainristil on him. My first inclination says they put Barrett on Murray and Viper it up, but if Barrett is playing a true ILB spot, I'm not sure. 

Michigan likely won't be tested by Hawaii's offense whatsoever, but if you made it this far, hopefully you'll see there's a few areas where we might be able to learn a little bit more about the 2022 Jesse Minter defense.