Something went wrong with my post yesterday so I'm putting it back up, sans the 200 or so comments that were all telling me what a jolly good fellow I am while remaining measured and positive about Michigan's coaches and players.

[Bryan Fuller]

I thought Runyan had a very bad game. He had a bad game because he didn't seem athletically or physically capable of winning blocks at this level of football.

What we don't need to do is bag on a guy who did all he could for Michigan. He seems to have taken this gig with full knowledge that he'd be drawing the disgust of Michigan fans away from whatever freshman who might have been in there instead. All kinds of people could have practiced harder, coached better, recruited more, cheated a bad and mostly ignored system, or waved magic wands while Runyan was doing the most he could with what he has, and saved him the embarrassment of a not-even-shaded standup DE who did this to him:

One little juke and Runyan doesn't have the arms or feet to do anything about it.

Bagging on the coaches is fair. They got us to the point where a 6'4" legacy recruit from the Brady Hoke is Falling Era has to be exposed against the toughest slate of edge players any team has faced in decades. It's hardly useful except to the kind of person who feels better by making other people feel worse, but if that's your bag, bag. A more useful question was "Why didn't the coaches gameplan around this weakness?" And the answer is they tried. In fact they did about as good of a job of it as they could.

What I did want to show this week is that Harbaugh almost certainly saw this same problem in practice because Michigan went into this game with a plan to mitigate the tackles. This is a thing you can only do so much of when it's both tackles and the defense has three All-Americans inside. Once the opponent has figured out what you're about, you go to counters that avoid the tackles, and then counters off that which avoid the tackles, until you're down two scores in the 4th quarter. Here's how Michigan tried to do it.

[After THE JUMP: The plan for avoiding LT]

The Tunnel Package

So the play above was the death of an entire opening drive designed to give Runyan the easiest possible jobs. It was part of a package that I called and RPO in the podcast and Brian calls just an option and which might have been just a pre-snap read. The distinction comes down to whether you define a pass as the throwing motion or an attempt to send the ball downfield. It doesn't matter what you call it, because the read is the same thing Rich Rodriguez quarterbacks would make pre-snap all the time.

Here's Michigan's first play from scrimmage:

The tunnel screen action to Nico Collins is a "Sight Read." If the defense doesn't have numbers before the snap, Patterson knows he can throw it out there. If the defense plays it straight Michigan runs a normal zone read play, reading the unblocked End Man on the Line of Scrimmage (in the green highlight):

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So before the snap Patterson sees if the red highlighted guy is over the slot receiver like he should be or pinching inside. If the guy's pinching, Collins gets the tunnel screen pass. If he's not, Patterson reads the EMLOS and decides to give to Higdon if that guy sets up outside, or keeps if that guy steps too far inside.

All of those options and reads are meant to make the tackle's job easier—he gets a free release or has to seal a guy inside of him, two easy jobs, instead of having to win a block at the point of attack. Notre Dame tried to make that read hard by blitzing off that edge and slanting a DE inside that Runyan has to block. Runyan did so, in fact getting under and driving that DE down the line to create a nice hole for Higdon. The blitzing MLB had to reroute and get an ankle tackle in to prevent this from getting to the secondary.

This smoke route was around for the entire first sequence as the offense showed all the constraints to zone read. Notably all of these gave the left tackle the easiest job.

SPLIT ZONE:

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DUO:

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PIN 'N PULL:

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PIN AND PULL AGAIN:

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Unfortunately on this one the WLB (#23 Drue Tranquill, who's very good by the way) recognized they were doing the thing they just did and sliced his way into Ruiz's pull, freed himself without losing balance, and wrangled down Higdon by himself. It's a tip o' the hat play to the defender. That brings up 3rd and 3, and brings us all the way to the play I started with:

INSIDE ZONE:

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By this point Notre Dame is sick of this but they're getting tempo'd and seem to be staying in their base cover 1 with a strong safety blitz where they slant the DL away from the blitzing side. If the slot (McKeon) goes to block the cornerback the nickel switches to the ball.

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This should work for Michigan. Runyan is positioned directly in his DE's path to the ball, and any blitz from outside does the offense a favor: the safety is coming from too far out to stop a quick-hitting inside zone run, and has to form up uselessly in case Michigan has to cut all the way back. The slant from the DL provides some down blocks for Onwenu, Bredeson, and Runyan as soon as they recognize it, and that means Ruiz and JBB can each release rather quickly into the two linebackers. ND's one-high set have kept every other defender occupied—the Nickel threatened but Patterson watched him past the snap and saw the tunnel check was covered. More importantly the MLB is peeking inside instead of worrying about JBB getting between him and his gap.

In a world where Michigan's left tackle can make the block the play design made easy on him…

..,Higdon has that MLB set up, the tunnel action has the slot defender running the wrong way, and Michigan has a nice frontside gap to get the first down and more.

This was a theme all night: except when they had no choice, Michigan's offense was designed to give the tackles things to do that any halfway competent guy could accomplish 99% of the time. When they couldn't even get the kindergarten stuff right Michigan's drives stalled out.

Extreme Tackle Avoidance

Here's an extreme example from Michigan's first drive of the 2nd half. Michigan is setting up that spread look again. This time they've seen Notre Dame's reaction and now they're going to screw with it.  

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This is a play-action off the split zone look. They used it against Ohio State last year. If that DE at the top of ND's line crashes and the uncovered nickel blitzes Michigan thinks they can whoop Gentry into the flat uncontested and get a nice, easy flood read for Patterson on the wide side. All the left tackle has to do is step like he's blocking down or about to combo to the MLB.

Unfortunately ND's not slanting or bringing the slot defender. They're in their regular Cover 2. The DE has eyes on the quarterback and is ready to shoot upfield if a blocker comes, and the nickel's zone means he can pick up Gentry with no fuss. But it's a bad roll, a 33% shot at winning a basic play from the West Coast tree:

If you just pass block here you should have a better chance of getting the read you want—or at least Gentry matched one-on-one with a guy half his size—than rolling for one in three shot that ND is doing their slant blitz. Why would Michigan run a thing that gets beat by Notre Dame's most basic coverage? All you're winning if it goes off is a free blindside block. A free…

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Next play they again try to run something that's designed to make a lot of other offensive players' jobs harder in order to make so Runyan's job is easy. Five-wide, get the ball out fast: a strategy used by underdogs since the first dink and dunk team realized the fewer defenders near our quarterback the fewer can sack him. But this play doubles down. It's a screen, and all Runyan has to do is get a little chip on his end, pretend to lose the block like he's lost so many before and…

Well, I guess if you don't have arms you can't exactly put them on a defender. If you do…I mean…he's a redshirt junior. Presumably he played football in high school before that, and watched his dad play some. He's…like…aware that you have to at least pretend to block a guy on a screen if you want to make sure your quarterback can throw the screen. And this is otherwise so set up:

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Like if that DE is delayed just a little bit…

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The offense used a ton of quick WR screens, read Runyan's end,

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and even tried using Gentry as the quasi-left tackle so Bredeson could double-team Runyan's guy.

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That experiment ended with what should have been a strip-sack that Patterson magically escaped. They also ran power away from him, and rolled out the other side while still leaving Runyan a running back to help:

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As much as possible, Michigan's offense was predicated on the idea that left tackle was an issue. It's not Runyan's fault he was that left tackle, and I don't want people bagging on him for being put in this position. It was a clear sign that the coaches know this is a spot that needs to be protected, and game-planned to mitigate it as much as possible.

Do We Feel Better Now?

Not really. This doesn't feel like a GERG situation. It's not an Al Borges offense where Michigan's going with simple tricks and nonsense that fold as soon as the defense figures out what they're doing. It's not a throw-things-at-wall situation either. It's more what someone clever would come up with if they've got one hand and a leg tied behind his back. It was an underdog strategy that used some of the things Michigan's good at to try to make up for something they're very very bad at.

So yay, we're not run by idiots. Also: boo, our offense has a hole so vast right now we need to use an underdog strategy to move the ball. Also the guy they're mitigating is still getting plays messed up when the play design gives him an advantage. It's not every down, but it's enough that I don't think it's fair for him, the team, or anyone emotionally or financially attached to it for Runyan to be in that position anymore. They have some games now where a freshman with more upside can get his legs under him. I really hope they use it.