SPONSOR NOTE: This article was written while wearing pants, despite being sponsored by HomeSure Lending and Matt Demorest. While it's true that, like applying for a loan through HomeSure Lending, pants weren't precisely necessary, since I work in a hardwood-floored office inside the home Matt helped me refinance, I tend to wear socks for the floors, which I figure if you're going to go through the effort for socks you might as well do the pants. Perhaps if I hadn't saved so much money by refinancing through Matt I would still have the old carpet in here and wouldn't need the socks or pants.

There are a lot of answers to what happened to Michigan's defense against Ohio State. Most of it was Michigan putting Ohio State in a position where they had to execute something difficult, and Ohio State doing it anyway. Whatever they're paying JK Dobbins, KJ Hill, and Justin Fields, it's probably not half of what they deserved.

But the real killer is sometimes, especially in the second half, Michigan made some dumbass mistakes. Sometimes it was freshmen. Sometimes it was senior three-year starters. Often it was stuff they only screwed up one or two other times all season. Just for my own sanity I wanted to look again at some of these breakdowns in fundamentals, and see if they were occurring because Michigan was trying to do too much, or maybe it was just the players leaving their assignments as a calculated risk in order to make a play. And sometimes it was yes.

Take the first play of the second half. Mistakes and Ohio State's devil's luck have conspired to put Michigan in a 12-point hole. But maybe they've been able to adjust. Maybe the luck will swing the other way. Michigan just needs a stop on the first drive to make this a game again. And then…

Live, like you, I saw Khaleke Hudson and Lavert Hill run by on the edge and thought this was on them. Turns out it was McGrone. Let me explain:

The play is what Ohio State calls "Tight Zone" because that institution is incapable of crediting ideas it got from Michigan. Its real name—almost throughout football because of its spread vector—is "Duo," a Bo base play that Harbaugh appropriated in 2015 and 2016.

[After THE JUMP: Who's to blame? Not entirely sure.]

Duo looks like inside zone except the double-teams just keep extending, and extending, and extending, until the middle linebacker is like "What up, thanks for keeping me clean" and decides he's free to pursue the ball. The tailback's job is to lock eyes with that linebacker and make him wrong, pressing one gap and waiting until the linebacker commits, then cutting to another gap that's left open.

And the doubles create one hell of an enticing gap for that linebacker to want to fill. They don't even have to last forever; eventually the OL can release and try to cut off the linebackers. The key though is the doubles are extended until the running back can hold an unblocked LB in the wrong gap and cut away from him.

It's a strong strategy against teams that choose to play to spill because it creates a lot of space outside to run once a linebacker commits to the gap. How do you stop it? Well, your linebackers have to be responsible, is all. That huge gap isn't the MLB's problem; it's the WLB's.

The trouble here is the MLB doesn't trust that. In the modern spread age there are a million ways to screw with backside linebackers to ensure they're not going to get to interior run gaps before there's a ballcarrier with a head of steam and five yards are inevitable. We've detailed quite a few in these pages. Well when that happens to you enough you start to get sick of all that responsible play. There's a wide lane in front of you, a back you haven't stopped near the line of scrimmage in an hour, and for a critical moment, human that you are, you entertain the idea of "making a play."

Back to the Present

Ohio State has extended doubles on Kemp and Dwumfour, two relative weak points on Michigan's defense. All day they've been running a version of inside zone they like where they kick out a DE with their offensive tackle and let JK Dobbins pick between three inside zone gaps. Michigan's adjustment to that was basic and within the confines of their regular defense: shoot the inside gaps and spill to the outside, trusting the linebackers can get to the edge in time.

This is Ryan Day's counter move—one of them anyways. He's got an extra tight end out there, which adds Khaleke to the train of spilling defenders, and gives McGrone another gap he has to get over from his start position. Then they bring Olave in motion, which will erase Lavert Hill, and roll the safeties so the secondary won't be bothering them. Again, this should be fine: count Michigan's players to the right of the football and Ohio State's: it's even. Cam McGrone has better than safety speed, Khaleke's tough enough to stand up to tight ends, and gumming up a C gap is what guys like Aidan Hutchinson live for.

So you might think the problem here is McGrone wasn't ready for Duo, that he got caught peeking like that Penn State MLB in 2016 and was too late getting outside. But that's not really what happened either:

We're looking now at Khaleke Hudson and how he's setting up versus the "F" tight end (#13 Rashod Berry). At the money frame it certainly looks like Khaleke is playing to spill. He came up on Berry hard, potting the TE a yard in the backfield and staying with him. However he's also outside of Berry. And then McGrone hits that D gap between Berry and the "Y" tight end (#89 Luke Farrell).

So here's where we get into a gray area, and also where we go from me telling you what happened to me guessing what I think happened. Khaleke is hedging. His technique is right if he's spilling—it would take one hell of a play to two-gap this tight end and still cover the outside. But he's also not 100% committed to that inside lane, because why should he be when he's put Berry a yard in the backfield and there's no room inside of him to do more than run into the other TE's back. I think Hudson is trying to make a play here: subtly giving Dobbins the D gap when it's not there, or tempting the bounce to McGrone.

Well if so it backfires, because Dobbins sees the outside lane this gives up, and it's McGrone who goes wrong. I mean, we know Michigan is a spill team, but spilling is an in-play adjustment, not The Play. McGrone's job here is to watch Khaleke and "make him right." And when Khaleke makes this read less than obvious for a freshman, it's pretty clear in McGrone's mind that he's responsible for that lane between the tight ends. It doesn't occur to him that Hudson's baiting. It also doesn't occur to him that Glasgow is also unblocked, that Dwumfour has kept his double at the line of scrimmage, and that this means Glasgow is free to clean up if McGrone goes outside. That's all Linebacking 400-level stuff, not exactly the kind of thing you would expect student taking his Linebacking 100 final exam to have down.

So yeah, after diagnosing this play I'm a little mad at Khaleke, a little frustrated with McGrone, and devastated that a problem we had way back at the Wisconsin game should pop up now, against this damn team, with that damn back. If you want to blame the coaching, fine. If you want to say they didn't play as a team, Bo would agree. You can use all the complaints and blame and personal levels of acceptability you want, because what is Ohio State football good for if not justifying the most toxic possible takes on the internet.

But I hope you can see that this wasn't really players put in a position to do something they couldn't do, or that Ryan Day "got" Don Brown in RPS. That happened some, but mostly when I dissect the latest unholy atrocity of football visited upon us, what I'm seeing is sound principles falling apart for subtle, sometimes dumb reasons like this.