I think I might make a habit out of breaking out things I notice in UFR. That was the origin, after all, of the old MGoBlog feature Picture Pages, which in turn was the inspiration for Neck Sharpies. This one got broken out when I realized I was taking way too long to explain why Georgia’s talent was too much for Michigan’s, at least on this side of the ball.

It’s the first appearance by JJ McCarthy in this game, the first play of their second offensive drive, and a second early sign that Georgia’s incredible collection of talent was creating issues that Michigan hadn’t faced this year—not even against Ohio State:

THE ALIGNMENT

Michigan’s got their two-TE personnel in, which isn’t odd for them. Also not odd for them is covering a tight end to unbalance the line. Refresher of the rules: The offense needs at minimum seven men on the line of scrimmage. The end to each side can be an eligible receiver if he’s wearing an eligible number (0-49 or 80-99), with the interior five ineligible. In this example Joel Honigford (#84) is “covered” and thus must be subject to the rules for linemen. Hayes is also subject to those rules, since he’s wearing #76.

Also McCarthy is in, which is a signifier that the Wolverines are looking to do some old fashioned college crappe, which usually means some kind of read that removes a defender with the quarterback’s eyes. In these situations Michigan expects their opponents to stack the box, bringing at least one safety down because the offense is down a potential receiver. It’s an invitation that few would pass up, since it’s supposed to be an advantage for the defense. If the safety gets optioned by the QB, at least the numbers advantage from the option has been nullified.

It’s also part of how Michigan likes to play offense. The gamble here is the defense can’t do enough with the extra man to significantly alter an outcome: what are they gonna do, have the safety run into Hassan Haskins? On the other hand, a safety down is a chance for a big play, and these Wolverines led the nation in generating such.

That Georgia’s leaving *both* safeties high here is a thing we haven’t seen much of. Knowing that Michigan is likely to run, that McCarthy is likely to option someone, and that Michigan likes to bring material from the backside to overwhelm their numbers at the point of attack, the Bulldogs are saying “bring it.” Their one conceit to the threat of a run to Honigford’s side is they’ve lined up their DE/DT and their SAM (a 235-pound DE/OLB) outside the TE.

That’s saying a thing too. The big gap between the tackles is an invitation to put the linebackers in conflict between a hard-charging Haskins and a quick pass behind them.

In short, the alignment of the two teams here is a threat from Michigan to run 9 guys vs 7, and Georgia is saying “Bring it.” Of course neither team is being honest about their intentions.

[After THE JUMP: This goes down]

THE DEFENSE'S PLAY

Georgia actually intends to blitz those A gaps, twisting their two ILBs. Kirby Smart runs these twist blitzes as often as anyone since Dantonio, because it punishes offensive linemen who pay too much attention to the tackles. When you’re the center and Jordan Davis is lined up in your vicinity, your mind is probably on doubling him, not what to do about linebackers coming in hot to either side of you.

The interior gaps are actually strong; it’s the edges that are weak. And that’s actually the key to the way Georgia was playing Michigan: they trusted those OLBs to win matchups with their athleticism, leaving a pair of safeties back so if anything got past them the cleanup would happen long before things could get out of hand.

In this case, it might have, because Michigan was attacking the edge, and schemed up an extra guy to do so.

THE OFFENSE’S PLAY

Michigan is trying their 2018 staple, the Arc Read, which you may remember from such glorious moments as Shea Patterson running for a back-breaking first down on MSU, or busting an 80-yarder on Wisconsin. As drawn up, the tight end and QB are both supposed to be reading the playside edge, in this case the SAM (S):

If that guy looks like he’s going to hang low or come inside All’s block, All whoops him, the QB keeps, and it’s a free run outside. If he stays outside the QB hands off, the TE kicks his edge man, and it’s a free split zone.

Georgia’s pinch here should help that—both LBs are trapped inside by their blitzes and Honigford’s DE gave up the D gap outside of the TE, where the SAM should be in a conflict between chasing the RB inside and worrying about the QB outside. The Corum TD to kick off the Big Ten Championship rout was the same play.

HOW IT WENT DOWN

Our first snapshot here reveals there’s an issue with Michigan’s plan. Running off the backside works because the edge gets stuck in no-win situation between the RB and the QB, but when there’s an extra player out there the read is a little more difficult to make. Here’s the mesh point as McCarthy reads the edge defender, #4 Nolan Smith:

It’s relevant here that Nolan Smith was the #1 overall recruit, nationally, of the 2019 class to the 247 Composite. That’s a bit different situation than an Iowa linebacker; later on in this game McCarthy would try a keep on a similar read and get stuffed in the backfield. Smith’s talent is a game-changer here because he can shuffle closer to the running back’s path without sacrificing the safety of the edge. Smith is the reason Georgia doesn’t need to bring down a safety to even up the numbers on the edge. And here the threat of him exploding upfield is means McCarthy has to lean towards giving the ball to Haskins despite that being the low-upside option of an otherwise even read.

What that means however is the the quarterback run threat, and by extension the lead block of Andrel Anthony, have both been dealt with by forcing the keep. Georgia has evened up the numbers again, because Smith effectively covered both options of the option.

If that guy’s setting up camp over by the hash mark he’s more of a threat to the running back, but he’s also much easier for the TE to whoop around. The way many defenses defend a mesh is to delay that handoff as long as possible, allowing the rest of the defense time to beat blocks and the secondary an opportunity to get down to help. By reading a guy off a TE’s side Michigan is giving Georgia that extra time—a good couple of beats in fact—because they can’t get the TE over there any faster. Offenses that run options off the frontside know this and often move the mesh point towards the option player to speed that along. Others plan to block that guy 100% of the time.

Georgia has extended that line by how the DE, #44 Travon Walker, is playing Honigford. You can see in the screengrab above that Walker’s arms are extended into both shoulderpads. That’s a defender in position to threaten the gap outside while also being able to get back to the C gap. Winning that block is key for the Bulldogs, just as it was for Iowa:

But things are different with the Bulldogs. With this Iowa screengrab above you can see there’s one more defender involved. The Iowa guy who got read was the LB who flung himself upfield and is now trying to come back to Corum. The player in shuffle position—the job that Georgia has Smith doing—is a safety. And crucially for the result of this play, that safety is therefore not hanging deep.

Back to Georgia, as McCarthy makes the handoff, Smith has shuffled all the way to the end of the line where kicking him won’t really create much of a gap. Walker has begun fighting to take away the C gap. All has barely crossed the centerpoint, so Smith now has time, knowing the RB has the ball, to decide how he wants to take on the kickout block. With Walker inside, Smith knows he can’t let the play bounce around him, but he also can’t allow a gap between him and the TEs to form.

So he crashes. That flash of white is his back.

At this point we need to turn our attention to Haskins. One way Georgia can fix their weakness on the edge that’s now under threat is to have their linebacker cover both his interior gap and track down anything outside. This is the 6-1 gamble that Michigan tried with Michigan State. The advantage to the defense is they have almost every gap jammed up. The disadvantage is they are betting the ‘1’ linebacker won’t get beat by the running back.

That has a real chance of happening here. Haskins pressed the gap that Nakobe Dean is exploring, meaning the LB will have a hard time getting outside if Haskins bounces.

He does, Dean gets stuck inside, and this could still be a big play if Haskins can read how Nolan Smith charged inside of All. That’s a bounce we saw him make against Washington. But here Haskins is focused on the dive inside of All…

And though he breaks the tackle and leaps forward for four yards, it could have been much more.

LESSONS?

1. Georgia used their talent to cancel number advantages. All season Michigan invited safeties into the box to create opportunities for big plays. Georgia was the first to say “Nah, my seven can handle your eight.” They could do that because they could trust most of those seven to do very hard things consistently. Travon Walker got great extension on Honigford to play both sides of the TE. Nakobe Dean threatened a TFL in the backside A gap and was there to tackle when Haskins squeezed through the frontside C gap. Nolan Smith took away McCarthy’s read while still setting

Later on McCarthy would try Smith on the same read and get taken down in the backfield. The ability of an edge defender to play both sides of a zone read like that changes the approach of the rest of the defense. They don’t have to worry about the quarterback after all, because it takes a Denard-caliber runner to get around that dude. Also on this play they had their all-world NT leave the gap he was threatening to create a weird 6-1 front, because they knew the offense would be paying extra attention to Jordan Davis, and because they trusted Nakobe Dean to make them right if the offense found the open gap. Ultimately he did.

2. Michigan was pressing. You see it with Haskins, who was not going to try the bounce here:

Haskins has put his put his foot in the ground and run through tackles all year so this is not surprising. When they were really cooking this year, however, they were letting the game come to them. I think the offense got sped up by the moment, and the opponent. It wasn’t their sharpest game, and needed to be.

3. Or else they needed to get clever. I pointed out after the Rutgers game that there’s an opportunity on this play to make McCarthy relevant again: Have the RB pitch it out to him. It’s not a new play—teams have run that for two point conversions for as long as zone reads have been a thing. With all of those weeks to prepare, I wanted to see something along those lines. The only trick play they ran was the flea flicker, IIRC. I’ll get into this in UFR—which is delayed because the ESPN main broadcast was so zoomed in I couldn’t learn anything until All-22 became available—but in general I was disappointed with Michigan’s gameplan. Georgia was ready for everything the Wolverines had put on film, and I didn’t see much that hadn’t been already.

4. There was a chance. What Georgia did with their talent was even odds against a Michigan offense that could do its own unfair things, like move Devonte Wyatt with Andrew Stueber, and threaten a big run outside with JJ McCarthy while still making you want to keep your safeties in a two-deep shell, and blow out a guy like Smith with Erick All even with the extra setup time, and get a few extra yards after contact with Hassan Haskins. Georgia made the better calls, the better plays, and had the better players. But I wouldn’t say Michigan was incapable of playing with the Bulldogs. Hopefully they learned a few things about dealing with talent on this level, and about themselves. It’s right there for the taking, and should be again next fall.