First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes a blitzer up his undercarriage. [Bryan Fuller]

Matt & Seth Show: Sim Pressures and Coverages Sitting in a Tree, Messing With Your Pro QB Comment Count

Seth January 25th, 2024 at 4:23 PM

Matt Demorest, Realtor and Lender and I have brought back our (sometimes-)weekly video short. The purpose of these is to show you something on film that you as a fan will be able to pick up on when you see it in the future. Or to just show you what people are talking about.

This one was a special one where we get into the meat of how Michigan’s passing defense was so good. Specifically, how Minter was great at marrying his pressures and fake pressures to his coverages, playing “made you look” with NFL-bound Michael Penix until he gave up on the read and throw abilities that made them the most lethal offensive weapon of the last decade.

If you're in the housing market, Matt's the guy.

There is nothing after the jump because it's video content.

Comments

meeashagin

January 26th, 2024 at 6:04 AM ^

Moore & Minter are the main reason Michigan won the national championship. Especially Moore who coached the toughest portion of our schedule. I mean Harbaugh at best was an analyst that helped with strategy at worst he was a flat out distraction. 

Michigan needs to transfer as many of the coaching wins to Moore as possible.

Sorfy Jim but my loyalties are with Michigan & Moore who deserves credit as the HC for Michigan 2023 national championship.

outsidethebox

January 26th, 2024 at 8:18 AM ^

You may be correct but there is no way that your notion is not totally a blind-folded shot in the dark. This is a very complicated game. The Jim Harbaugh coaching story of taking four consecutive failing programs to very high levels of play strongly challenges your supposition. It is not intuitively obvious what drives Jim's success but it did not happen by flipping a coin and having it land on heads four time in a row. The man has something within himself that compels his charges to take up the tasks of the game and do their best.

Blue_in_Kansas

January 26th, 2024 at 9:07 AM ^

Most of these clips on here are not actual simulated pressures. A simulated pressure is when you actually blitz players to show a 5-man or 6-man pressure and defensive linemen will drop out into coverage. They're referred to as simulated pressure because you actually do blitz, but it will still end up as a 4-man rush with 7 in coverage. The one example on here that I recall that was an actual simulated pressure was the 4th & 13.

When linebackers/safeties either walk up to the line to show pressure and then drop out, like several of these clips, this is referred to either "mugging" or "bluffing". It's not actually a sim pressure because no one actually blitzes. They put pressure on the offensive line by showing blitz and making them have to account for 5-6-7 rushers. As you showed here, they can also drop out and run their base coverages. It's still really smart defense, especially in passing situations, but showing blitz and dropping out is not running a sim pressure. 

"Mugging" and "Bluffing" are fairly common in College Football. Most DC's worth their salt will either give their guys the freedom to show blitzes to disguise their coverage, or, like what Michigan is doing, actually have calls where they align in a specific bluff alignment. Simulated pressures are in vogue right now but are less common because you have to have defensive linemen that are capable of dropping into coverage consistently and they are more complicated to execute than the standard 5-6 man pressure. 

The overall narrative is dead on though. Michigan won because it did exactly what it wanted to do, which was put pressure on Michael Penix. It wasn't necessarily through literal QB pressure, but by consistently muddying his reads and constantly making him uncomfortable. 

 

Hensons Mobile…

January 26th, 2024 at 11:00 AM ^

Isn't it safe to assume that all of these things work because you mix coverages, break tendencies, etc.? Any time we show blitz (for example, with Sainristil) Penix has to just guess if Sainristil is going to back out, or if it's sim pressure and the DE will drop, or if everyone is actually coming on the blitz. And if we're constantly changing which of those we're doing, he's just straight up guessing, right? Unless they stole our signs.