Michigan heads east this weekend to take on the 5-5 Maryland Terrapins. The Terps started the year 4-0 but a disastrous outing against Iowa set them into a predictable October-November tailspin, going 1-5 in the last six games. They now sit one win from bowl eligibility, concluding the season with Michigan and then next week's Sickos Game of the Week contest against Rutgers. Injuries have bogged down the Maryland offense but there are still some intriguing pieces, most notably QB Taulia Tagovailoa. Maryland put up 447 yards of offense on Michigan State. Is there reason to worry? 

The Film: For this week we're going with Michigan State against Maryland, which was the most recent contest the Terps participated in. The recency factor is a plus, as is the fact that MSU is a good team (like Michigan is). I honestly preferred Penn State as a better option (much better defense than MSU), but the Russians failed me and I couldn't easily get my hands on the game tape from that one, whereas MSU's tape was much more readily available. And obviously, the comparison isn't poor by any means, as MSU also features a strong DL (like Michigan). It's the secondary that is different between the two defenses, so we will work to keep that in mind. The game was won by MSU 40-21, although it was considerably closer if you look under the hood, with Maryland repeatedly making high leverage mistakes (good thing my team didn't do that against MSU) that could have made it close if those plays went the other way. 

Personnel: Seth's chart, click for big. 

[NOTE: I have been told that DJ Turner II is one quiet game from getting a star and Mazi Smith is one good game from getting a star]

Maryland starts Taulia Tagovailoa at QB, member of that Tagovailoa family and brother of Tua. Taulia was a good QB recruit coming out of HS who followed his brother to 'Bama but then, like so many high-end QB recruits who commit to elite programs before him, washed out pretty quickly when Saban went with a different guy and Taulia remembered that only one QB can play at a time. So, he took his talents to College Park, and has emerged as an extremely intriguing B1G QBs over two(ish) seasons here. I use the word "intriguing" instead of "good" because he has not yet rounded into a player worthy of his recruiting status. The flashes are there, but there are flaws. We will look at him in depth later. 

The Terps have generally had a solid track record at developing running backs who morph into NFL draft picks over the past decade. This year's RB room started out crowded but has since seen the herd thinned. Tayon Fleet-Davis is back after a legal issues hiatus and is the leading rusher with 91 carries. Challen Faamatau and Isaiah Jacobs once sat behind him on the depth chart, but the former appears to be done for the season and the latter entered the portal. That leaves Peny Boone and Colby McDonald as the reserve backs. As a general rule, the Maryland running backs are asked to do a lot in the passing game as route runners, and all are horrendous pass blockers when they have to pick up the blitz (more on that later). 

The Football Gods have decided to take out their lingering anger over Mike Locksley's disastrous New Mexico tenure by decimating the Maryland WR room, to an almost comical extent. What was once a strength of the team has now seen two of the three projected starters from my The Enemy piece in August get injured and declared out for the year. That includes seemingly budding star Dontay Demus, as well as Jeshaun Jones, who has now had leg surgery in two of three seasons and I think is officially in the "avoid black cats and ladders" stage of cursed. To make matters worse, Marcus Fleming, who started to get a larger role as a freshman after the Demus and Jones injuries, was recently declared OFY too. 

The bad news is that that carnage has rendered Rakim Jarrett the only projected starter left standing. The good news is that Jarrett is a very good football player and the dangerman for this piece, a former 5* recruit who was once committed to LSU. Outside of Jarrett, they lean heavily on TE Chigoziem Okonkwo to be the short yardage option. Those two have combined for over 40% of Maryland's available catches among players who aren't currently injured. The remaining 60% are scattered across the RBs, as well as lesser known receivers like wily veterans Brian Cobbs, Darryl Jones, and the 6'5" Carlos Carriere, all of whom have spent years in the program and were once decent recruits. Finally, second TE Corey Dyches also gets ~two catches a game. 

Maryland's football team has had a central problem, which is that the injury lightning bolt has struck its skill position group repeatedly, which was set to be the strength of the team, while leaving the OL, which was projected to be the weakness of the offense, largely unaffected. Six lineman have taken nearly all of the snaps for the entire season. LT Jaylen Duncan was a good recruit once upon a time, as was RG Johari Branch. They have not lived up to their recruiting ranking, though I think Branch is the best lineman on the line. LG Mason Lunsford anchors the other guard spot opposite Branch.

The only place on the line that's seen some shuffling is between C and RT. Spencer Anderson has played the whole season, mostly at RT, until recently when he has moved inside to the center position. Aric Harris was the old center but he has been bumped to the bench because of the move, which has slotted Demar Glaze in at RT. Harris did play a bit in the game I saw and when he did, it was Anderson who moved back to RT. Overall, the offensive line has struggled, and their grades from PFF (decent) diverge heavily from mine after watching this one. I'm willing to believe that the discrepancy is simply from PFF refusing to curve based on competition and I watched them play one of the best opponents they'll see all year. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: A QB who runs, heaves, and prays!]

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Spread, pro-style, or hybrid: Maryland runs a spread offense with a true downfield passing attack and a running QB. They did not go under center for a single snap against MSU, even in situations where they really could have used a jumbo package (getting stuffed at the goal line and turning it over on 4th & short multiple times). Here's the distribution: 

Yeah, a very pass-heavy offense and one that never goes under center. Spread! As for the breakdown of plays by down: 

Holy skewed play distribution Batman! That first down skew is pretty telling of where this offense plans to go. This heavy movement towards the pass is a theme that has popped up whenever Maryland has played good opponents this season. The running game often posts decent YPC clips, but it's mostly because they are capable of ripping off a 20 or 30 yard run, while getting stuffed on the other attempts and then giving up on trying altogether, leaving a small number of rushes with a bloated YPC number that is strongly influenced by the one positive outlier. 

Basketball on Grass or MANBALL: Not surprising, but Basketball on Grass. Here's a five-wide configuration that they go to a decent bit: 

That still is actually an example of 11 personnel (3 WRs, 1 TE, 1 RB) which is their base package. Because the RB lines up as a receiver so often, they can keep that same personnel package on the field and yet move the RB and TE around a decent bit to give you different looks (3, 4, and 5 wide). Most commonly, they line the TE up as a blocker, and put the RB in the backfield with the QB, which I guess is their "base formation": 

Every so often they'll drop into two TE sets, which are in the playbook. There weren't many in this game but I did screen shot one just to have evidence of it: 

In all, the Maryland offense is a 100% spread attack. Their RBs are versatile as runners and receivers, their TEs all have to be able to catch passes too, and they line up their skill position guys all over the field, rarely sinking into bunch formations. The QB is able to run, with option plays designed for him, and there are plenty of screens to stretch the field horizontally, in addition to downfield targets to Jarrett to stretch it vertically. 

Hurry it up, or Grind it out: Maryland is the fastest-moving team Michigan will have seen this season. For them, tempo isn't a quirk to pepper in to catch the opponent off guard. Instead, it's a feature point of the offense, regularly getting up to hike the ball with between 25 and 30 seconds on the playclock. Which is what makes them different from when, say, MSU used tempo at Michigan. When other teams have tried to catch Michigan with tempo, they are sprinting up to the line with the intent to surprise the opposing defense. Maryland rarely does that, rather they just move at a brisk pace on every play, the football equivalent of a power-walker. Their ability to do this is accented by the fact that they can run so many plays out of 11 personnel, meaning there's rarely any real need to substitute guys. To see what it looks like, I made this cilp: 

Not sprinting to hike the next play, but moving very deliberately to get in formation and get the snap off with between 25 and 30 seconds on the playclock. It goes without saying that this will be another interesting test to see how Mike Macdonald's crew adjusts to a team more in the mold of the old Oregon/Chip Kelly teams. 

Quarterback Dilithium Level (Scale: 1 [Navarre] to 10 [Denard]): Taulia is a legit runner at QB. Unfortunately, sometimes the direction that he runs is backwards. I would not describe him as a burner, but his ability to scramble and keep plays alive, in addition to the designed runs that Locksley draws up for him, are a major component of the offense. For the designed runs, they dial up a couple empty set backfield runs with the receivers out wide on 3rd down, a la IU under Donaven McCulley a few weeks back. One almost went to the house against MSU: 

Other runs give him an option or a read with a running back in the backfield to start the play, like this one: 

Taulia Tagovailoa is a threat to run the ball in every situation, although it bears repeating that this is definitely much more of a passing offense than a rushing offense, so he doesn't get that many carries per game. Moreover, his YPC clip doesn't look good because of how much negative sack yardage is included in there. Ignore that though, because you will see him truly carry it 5-7 times a game between scrambles and design runs, and it's something that needs to be accounted for. So, we'll dish out a seven on the scale to him. 

Dangerman: For this week it's WR Rakim Jarrett. With injuries pelting the receiving corps, Jarrett has become the major weapon that opposing teams need to focus on, especially since the injury to Demus. As mentioned earlier Jarrett was this generation's Stefon Diggs, a five-star receiver from the DMV area who the Terps managed to keep in-state (or in Jarrett's case, in-region, since he's a DC kid). With the Taulia -> Jarrett connection, Maryland has a tandem that, talent-wise, far outstrips what they normally have on the roster. Jarrett boasts elite speed and can line up in the slot or on the outside. 

Maryland used Jarrett's athleticism and shiftiness as a screen option in this game: 

WR #5 in motion pre-snap

But they also featured him down the field, with this circus catch after an equally wild scramble and throw from his QB: 

That was called a catch upon review, as Jarrett managed to get his knee down in bounds. Jarrett's not a huge target at 6'0", but with soft hands and good body control, you can also run him on slants or comebacks routes to be a short or medium range option, especially against a team playing soft coverage like MSU: 

Jarrett's profile is that of a do-it-all, versatile receiver, which comes in handy when Maryland literally needs him to do it all because his comrades are sequestered in the infirmary. After what DJ Turner II has done to Ty Fryfogle and Jahan Dotson, both of whom were our Dangermen in previous weeks of this column, it would seem to me that Jarrett is set to be Turner's assignment this week. 

HenneChart: Taulia Tagovailoa enters this weekend as the 21st ranked QB in FBS football in PFF's grades, which is, um, a statement. Did he hold up to that mark in my grading of this game? Let's see:  

I cannot say if he is the 21st best QB in America because I have not graded 20 other QBs, let alone 100+ others. But narrowing it to the focus of solely the B1G, or even further to teams that I have marked for FFFF, I would not say that Taulia screams "elite QB". Rather I think he fits somewhere around the Payton Thorne/Sean Clifford/Adrian Martinez tier of "good, but with flaws". It just happens to be that compared to those two (especially when it comes to throwing the ball), Taulia's flaws and his moments of brilliance are far more noticeable. Put another way, his good moments are NFL starter caliber and his bad moments are "that guy can't be the starter of a B1G team" caliber. 

We'll start with the good. Tagovailoa has to handle a large amount of weight considering he doesn't have a good offensive line, and is expected to throw the ball 40-50 times a game. That's a big workload (compared to Cade McNamara) and he was able to post a respectable DSR in this game despite a high volume of passes. In doing so, he made some great throws. Two came on back-to-back plays to end a TD drive, with this clip being the capper: 

That's a downfield strike in stride to an open receiver Perhaps more impressive is his ability to dodge a rusher, improvise, and then throw a missile on the run into a tight window. We saw it to some extent in the circus Jarrett clip above, and here's another one, with Jarrett again the recipient: 

Unfortunately, that same improvisation ability leads into Tagovailoa's two major flaws I saw in this game. The first one has to do with scrambling, which leads to a tendency of Taulia to take some of the worst sacks I've ever seen (and that statement is coming from someone who has to watch Jared Goff QB his NFL team every Sunday). Here's one example: 

That wasn't *officially* a sack, but it was ruled intentional grounding because the ball didn't get back to the line of scrimmage, and thus resulted in a 15 yard loss on 1st & 10. 

There's something to be said for a QB who doesn't take sacks, and even for one who takes -6 yard sacks. Taulia has the tendency to take backbreaking -15 yard sacks that singlehandedly kill drives because he runs straight backwards for 10 yards, thinking he can outrun the defensive ends chasing him like a hungry pack of wolves, moments before they devour him alive. Building off of that, Taulia ascribes to the "heave & pray" school of quarterbacking, where he runs around frantically looking for a receiver, then finds one, and then chucks it up whether the receiver is open or not. That didn't lead to a pick in this game, but boy it could've: 

He draws a DPI there, but that's a throw into tight coverage off his back foot. Not a fan of that. It's made worse when you look at the situation of the game. Maryland was only down two scores with 28 minutes of football to play, in enemy territory on a 2nd & 3. That is not the time to try and be a hero and take a massive risk, but Tagovailoa loooooves to do that. It's obvious to me how that tendency could lead to some terrible interceptions, though it didn't happen in this game. 

What did lead to a terrible interception in this game was his other liability, which is poor reads. Here he tries to force the ball in to a receiver and totally misses the LB lurking underneath: 

Didn't help that the accuracy on the throw was poor too (ball was nowhere close to going to the open receiver in the end zone), which was an occasional problem. 

In all, Tagovailoa is a QB who is going to make a few brilliant throws, will mostly be alright while having to drop back a ton, but also tries to be a hero too often, leading to ugly sacks and bad decisions. The full "talented but poorly coached college QB" experience. 

Overall

Discussing Taulia tells a lot of the story that you need to know about Maryland's offense, but the other dimension is the offensive line. They're not very good. Michigan State was regularly able to generate pass rush against the Terps, which you could see in some of those clips where Taulia is running around like a chicken with his head cut off. I thought LG Mason Lunsford was a particularly weak spot on the line. Here he gets beaten, almost holds his man (flag was picked up), leading to a run stuff: 

LG #78

The tackles struggled as well, which deviated from the relatively rosy PFF grades that these players hold. Both Lunsford and LT Jaelyn Duncan get beaten here and it leads to a stuff on 4th down: 

LT #71 and LG #78

Maryland's total YPC clip from their RBs weren't terrible, but the good runs in this game were almost uniformly outside the tackles or on the backs of the RBs. The OL was providing little push. I liked RB Colby McDonald in a few short yardage moments and he also flashes his speed on stretch run to pick up a chunk in the red zone: 

He and Tayon Fleet-Davis are the two Maryland backs that I liked the most in this game. 

Pass protection was grim as a total unit, and though it's easy to rag on the OL for getting bodied, it was really a breakdown of two areas that hurt Maryland the most: an inability to account for all the rushers, and a complete failure of any running backs to pick up the free rusher. The number of times that Maryland had the proper number of blockers to deal with the blitz, yet had two players doubling a guy while a free rusher came right into the backfield, was staggeringly high. One example was clipped earlier: 

There are five MSU blitzers and five Maryland blockers on that play, yet Taulia has to dodge a man seconds after the snap. It happened over and over again this game. Sometimes it was the fault of the RB picking up the wrong guy in blitz pickups. Other times pressure came because the RB was identifying the right guy but straight up whiffing: 

PFF's pass blocking grades for the RBs who are currently healthy: 20.6, 42.7, 39.0. For reference, anything below 50 is considered terrible. If I'm Mike Macdonald, I'm ramping up my blitzes and trying to isolate a free rusher on an RB as much as possible, because it's the fastest way to flush Taulia out and then force him into a bad decision. 

My last note is about Chigoziem Okonkwo, who is Maryland's other target, a good receiving tight end. His blocking for me was so-so but he's been a solid piece over his career and has the ability to get open all over the field. He featured on the TD in one of the good Taulia clips: 

TE #9 to left of formation

When it comes to the passing game, it's really Okonkwo and Jarrett you need to be ready for. 

What does this mean for Michigan? 

Maryland has an interesting offense, one that isn't bad but also isn't a juggernaut. They sit 37th in SP+ in offense, which is roughly akin to Nebraska, a team that gave Michigan some trouble in Lincoln. I'm less concerned about that happening again, because so much of what bothered Michigan were very savvy playcalls from Scott Frost. I'm certainly not a member of the Scott Frost Death Cult that has entranced the brain trust of Nebraska Athletics, but he has shown substantially more accumen at dialing up those sorts of RPS wins than Locksley has. When Maryland has offensive success, it is normally less about coaching and more about individually talented players making plays (Tagovailoa, Jarrett, Fleet-Davis, etc). 

Outside of when Frost pulled out all the stops, Michigan won on a down-to-down basis. And I think that Martinez is probably better than Taulia. Jarrett could present some problems, but I feel substantially better about that after watching Turner face Dotson. Michigan will likely dominate at the line of scrimmage, and if you blitz with any regularity, that should force Taulia to scramble and try to be a hero. Half the time that will produce "DAMNIT!" moments where he runs around for 8 seconds and then converts a 3rd & 17, and the other half will result in a ball thrown into double coverage that could very well be an INT. Keep contain, be ready for the QB run, and you should be fine. Michigan won't bottle up Maryland- nobody has. But luckily it's the dreadful defense that sinks the Terps, which we'll look at on Friday.