10/12/2019 – Michigan 42, Illinois 25 – 5-1, 3-1 Big Ten

It is said that when you have two quarterbacks, you don't really have any. I wonder if that might change in the near future. Survey the landscape: modern shotgun offenses virtually require the quarterback to be a viable run threat. The prospect of losing your starting quarterback, as Illinois did last week, looms.

The Illini, already starting a transfer, then had to pick between a true freshman who's banged up and a redshirt freshman ranked in two-star territory. That's because QBs Cam Thomas and MJ Rivers bailed on the program, Thomas shortly after losing the starting job to AJ Bush last year.

Michigan, meanwhile, has been struggling to get its quarterback to keep the ball all year after he took a rib shot on the first play of the season. The second-string guy has missed time with a concussion, also acquired on a QB run. Brandon Peters, a potentially viable gentleman, is the Illinois starting QB who got knocked out last week.

Michigan insiders have been asserting that next year the loser of the McCaffrey-Milton QB battle is going to bail for greener pastures. When the starter inevitably gets knocked out for some period of time, Michigan will have the same choice Illinois had in this game: redshirt or true freshman.

The no-sit-out transfers combine with the rigors of modern offenses—many of which increase the total number of plays on which to get your QB annihilated—and ever-larger and meaner defenders to create an environment where you're probably going to lose your quarterback for a while, and the guys behind him are likely to be mewling babes liable to thunk linebackers in the facemask with the ball.

The age of quarterback rotation may not be far off.

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The problem with this theory is that QB rotations are inherently unstable. Someone pulls ahead and then circumstances demand that QBs 1A and 1B resolve into QB1 and QB2. This happened at Michigan way back in the Brady/Henson days. 89 of Henson's 90 passing attempts came before Michigan's Penn State-Ohio State-Alabama closing stretch—the stray was, IIRC, a trick play in the bowl game.

Similar scenarios just played out at Clemson and Alabama, two schools that could surely endure some offensive inefficiency in exchange for an insurance policy. But Dabo Swinney named Trevor Lawrence his starter after four games and Kelly Bryant headed for the exit. That left Clemson's season hanging on Trevor Lawrence's various ligaments. Those survived, and Clemson won the national title. Ol' Dabo might have felt a little dumb if Lawrence had gotten blown up in game five. The Tigers had already needed Bryant to pull out a two-point win over A&M by the time he blew out of town.

By contrast, Nick Saban was able to keep Jalen Hurts around until this year. Hurts's loyalty paid off in the SEC championship game, when Tua Tagovailoa exited and Hurts led a comeback to win the game. No Hurts and very likely no championship, but even when faced with this equation…

• Alabama's gonna win most of their games by a zillion
• Jalen Hurts was the SEC offensive player of the year as a true freshman
• Our starter is a human made of flesh, a fragile mote of dust on the breeze, a literal non-entity in a cosmic sense, and various large persons are trying to drive their bodies through his chest cavity literally dozens of times on any given Saturday

…Alabama only gave Hurts mop-up duty until he was thrust into the spotlight once again.

At some point, though, you'd figure teams start taking quarterback competitions into the season if there's any question, especially in years when there's a guy with an itchy portal finger who thinks he deserves a shot.

Michigan might have been in that spot, even on Saturday: Harbaugh said that McCaffrey was full go and available. But the rotation didn't come. Why not? Probably because coaches are fundamentally loss-averse even when plausible QB upside going into the meat of Michigan's schedule consists of Shea Patterson getting back to most of what he was last year.

All that offseason talk about a genuine rotation turned out to be balderdash. Like a lot of things. Offseason talk often turns into vapor, but the consistency with which Michigan's does seems like a reason the program's stuck where it is right now. When your plans never materialize you're always scrambling for something that works, like Illinois trying to find a human who can throw a ball. 

[After THE JUMP: one more beard picture]

AWARDS

is this an image of Hassan Haskins not fumbling? YES YES IT IS [Barron]

Known Friends And Trusted Agents Of The Week

you're the man now, dog

#1 Jordan Glasgow. 11 tackles, one of them a beauty in space to snuff out what looked like a very long scramble from Isaiah Williams. Also a pass break-up and a blocked punt.

#2 Josh Uche. Five tackles, all of them behind the line of scrimmage, three of them sacks, in just over half of Michigan's defensive snaps. That'll do.

#3 Hassan Haskins. Is this solely because he's the only Michigan ballcarrier who did not fumble? No, he also broke a tackle to score on Michigan's first drive and showed some nice patience. Is it mostly because he's the only Michigan ballcarrier to not fumble? YES. YES IT IS.

Honorable mention: Ronnie Bell had a 71 yard catch and run on which he dodged a tackle and used Eubanks effectively; Eubanks, meanwhile, shot down the sideline on that catch and blocked two guys, yes he did have a bad drop; Cam McGrone had some issues but punched out a critical fumble; Aidan Hutchinson again displayed some excellent rush; Ambry Thomas had 3 PBUs, Khaleke Hudson had 2.

KFaTAotW Standings

NOTE: New scoring! HM: 1 point. #3: 3 points. #2: 5 points. #1: 8 points. Split winners awarded points at the sole discretion of a pygmy marmoset named Luke.

14: Josh Uche (#3 MTSU, #3 Army, T2 Rutgers, #2 Illinois), Aidan Hutchinson(#1 Army, HM Rutgers, T1 Iowa, HM Illinois)
11: Jordan Glasgow (HM MTSU, T3 Iowa, #1 Illinois)
10: Zach Charbonnet (#2 MTSU, #2 Army), Ambry Thomas (#1 MTSU, HM Rutgers, HM Illinois)
9: Shea Patterson(HM MTSU, #1 Rutgers),
7: Kwity Paye (T2 Rutgers, T1 Iowa).
6: Khaleke Hudson (#2 Iowa, HM Illinois)
4: Ronnie Bell (HM Army, T3 Rutgers, HM Illinois), Cam McGrone(HM Rutgers, T3 Iowa, HM Illinois)
3: Hassan Haskins (#3 Illinois)
2: DPJ (T3 Rutgers), Nico Collins (HM Rutgers, HM Iowa), Dax Hill(HM Rutgers, HM Iowa), Josh Metellus (HM Army, HM Iowa), Lavert Hill (HM Army, HM Iowa)
1: Will Hart (HM MTSU), Josh Ross (HM, MTSU), Sean McKeon (HM, MTSU),Brad Hawkins (HM Army), Christian Turner (HM Rutgers), Christian Turner (HM Rutgers), Nick Eubanks (HM Illinois)

Who's Got It Better Than Us(?) Of The Week

Cam McGrone and Aidan Hutchinson force near-consecutive turnovers to end any Illini threat.

 

Honorable mention: Ronnie Bell catch and run, Hassan Haskins breaks a tackle for a TD, any first-quarter run.

?MARCUS HALL EPIC DOUBLE BIRD OF THE WEEK.

Michigan's first drive of the second half goes mesh-point fumble, run into obvious zero blitz, five yard checkdown nearly intercepted. The stage is set.

Honorable mention: Charbonnet fumble, Wilson fumble, Turner not-quite fumble. Metellus overshoots a coulda-shoulda-INT. Pretty much every Illinois punt that went a million yards while tumbling like an out-of-control space ship.

OFFENSE

Recovering fumbles is random. Fumbling is… uh. Blast from the past this weekend as many people yelled at me about how I keep saying fumbles are random and I should feel bad for saying that. This was most of the RichRod era, and boy I am happy to be revisiting this. A nuanced refresher on my actual fumble beliefs:

• Recovering fumbles is totally random. Study after study demonstrates that there is no year to year correlation between fumble recovery rates.
• Certain things do cause more fumbles. This is mostly QB pressure, which causes events like the first two possessions in the Army game. Individual defensive players do cause fumbles and should strive to create them. Certain offensive players are impervious to them or susceptible to them, probably.
• …but fumble quantity is pretty random anyway. This is inherent in any low-probability event. Someone's going to get boned by random chance and it's going to seem like a doomed thing and then it's not that thing again. Michigan lost a total of three fumbles last year. Did they suddenly get horrible at preventing fumbles? Probably not.

I believe that if you replayed the season Michigan would probably have many fewer RB fumbles and about the same number of mesh point/Patterson issues. The Wilson fumble was something that seemed like it's happened way too often this year: a RB carrying the ball high and tight who gets belted with a helmet right on the ball.

Possible mitigating factor. Charbonnet suffered a targeting penalty on his fumble. He got earholed by the crown of a safety's helmet. The replay booth entirely missed this because they were busy deciding how obvious the obvious fumble was. At least we didn't get the PSU-Iowa replay official?

Before and after. Michigan's ground game here had two phases: before Illinois realized that Patterson wasn't keeping and after. Early Michigan's orbit motion was drawing a guy for the orbit and a reasonable amount of Patterson respect, so running backs got to jet to the third level with some regularity. Michigan also added in some of the down G/pin and pull stuff they used last year, which also worked pretty well as blitzball Illinois linebackers flung themselves into gaps without reading the pulls.

Michigan had multiple second-half arc reads set up for big yardage and saw Patterson hand off into unblocked DEs crashing down on the back. This was especially grating on the fourth and two late where Patterson handed off on this:

The common response to these complaints is that there's an end shuffling so you have to give, which is tantamount to saying this play doesn't work if the DE shuffles: he made the tackle on the running back.

There was another one early in the fourth quarter that was approximately as egregious. Once Illinois stopped dedicating guys to the keep their run D got a lot better. It was still constitutionally incapable of understanding concepts like "the edge" and "maybe keep one every once and a while" so Haskins got a couple of big chunk runs outside the tackles.

Also in beating this dead horse. Not a coincidence that Michigan went with a QB pin and pull on a critical fourth down. During the MSU-is-good years one of their trademarks was pulling out a QB run in critical situations because it evened up the numbers, and Charbonnet deleted a defender by going on a flare route to help open up that conversion. There's obviously a balance to strike, and obviously Michigan isn't striking it.

Patterson: more of the same. In addition to the run issues above, Patterson had a striking bifurcation between standard downs and passing downs:

This fits into our general theory of Patterson: when Illinois LBs were sucking up on play action Patterson was dealing; when they were able to plan out a pass defense Patterson struggled. The 71 yarder was about 15 in the air, keep in mind.

[Barron]

What is RPO? Apologies to the announce crew: yeah, the Schoonmaker TD was an RPO, with Eubanks arc blocking instead of showing for a route. In related news, this is the second event in which Schoonmaker has looked smooth and athletic for a tight end. If he can get his blocking assignments down he'll be a player.

The intense jealousy of things Illinois is doing on offense. Illinois picked up a holding call just after breaching the redzone down 28-17 early in the fourth quarter, and on the next play they coupled a bubble screen with a tunnel that got them to second and short. I've got this dream that Michigan will have a successful screen this year.

DEFENSE

[Barron]

Molasses team. Michigan's #1 struggle in this game: tempo. Illinois is the first team in a while to really test Michigan's ability to get lined up quickly. Michigan repeatedly failed that test, either failing to get off the line on the snap or firing straight upfield on stretch plays that were then successful.

That's frustrating after last season, when Michigan was one of the slowest teams in the country and suffered on both sides of the ball because of it. They've sped up a little on offense but tempo is a rarity, and it showed in this game. This doesn't seem like a thing that gets fixed five years deep into a coaching regime.

Finally some stats on it. A year after Josh Uche had seven sacks in approximately seven snaps, he'd been a minor box score presence in the first five games. This was not a reflection of his play, but rather the same vagaries of pass rush that saw Frank Clark do very little on box scores before being a second-round pick and long-time NFL starter. Well, now he's leading Michigan in sacks with 4.5 and second to Paye in TFLs with 6.5.

This is fine and good. Still wish we could get him on the field more often.

Please withdraw 80% of your Glasgow slander. Blackshear got him a couple times but also this:

[Barron]

That's a high-four star guy Michigan recruited as a slot who just wants to be Denard who Glasgow tracked down. Lookit that green in front of him, too.

McGrone loves to go upfield. Cam McGrone has Young Linebacker Disease where he wants to go upfield of all blockers. Because he's super fast sometimes this works. The fumble he forced: went upfield of a running back trying to block him.

Sometimes this doesn't work, like various Illinois chunk runs when he didn't funnel back to help. Those plays were going to get a solid chunk of yards no matter what, often because Dwumfour had gotten sealed away. They went from solid gains to chunk runs from time to time because McGrone was trying to be a hero on every play.

Wind doesn't move receivers. Illinois got a third and long conversion on a punt to Imhatorbhebhe that probably should have been a PBU or interception—it at least should have been contested. Josh Metellus got over the top but then turned away from the WR because he badly misjudged the ball. I get why: wind. The risk/reward there is all out of whack, though: if it's overthrown and you intercept it it's going to be the equivalent of a good punt. Going after the WR is equal upside with much less downside.

I also think Metellus may have been responsible for one of the wide open RPOs that looked a lot like Michigan against RPOs three years ago: Illinois was using MSU's patented Let's Do Crimes route concept where an interior receiver blocks a press corner and then there's an in route. Later in the game Michigan appeared to switch these routes, except Metellus didn't switch.

Dwumfour: less good this week. Illinois had a plan to exploit him and it worked in much the same way Indiana did work against Mo Hurst a few years ago: when a guy's default mode is to burst upfield in a flash, run tempo and outside zone and reach the guy. A lot of Illinois's successful runs came in this mode; Kemp was much better about extending things to the sideline.

Hurst was able to adapt to this over time. Hopefully Dwumfour starts the same process.

SPECIAL TEAMS

Mr. Weird Punts. I put no blame on Michigan's punt returners for their general inability to field anything this week's Aussie drifter was humping off his foot, or feets, or tentacles, or whatever. The trademark downstate Illinois chaos wind combined with this guy's ability to fire off crazy Phil Niekro knuckle-punts to create a punt-fielding environment more hostile than any this correspondent has ever seen before.

A blocked punt. Michigan adds to their tally. I wonder where they stand on the leaderboard since Partridge became the special teams coach. I'd imagine they're pretty high.

MISCELLANEOUS

almost saw a double punt [Barron]

Infinite punts. Infinite punt blocks. The best twitter subplot from Saturday:

It is legal to do so! You can basically keep kicking until it crosses the line of scrimmage.

— Pete Mortensen (@morepete) October 12, 2019

Not only can you keep kicking it, you can advance punts that are behind the line of scrimmage! And this has been done in a football game!

Jordan berry @JBerry_4 who now punts at the Pitt Steelers did this in college. https://t.co/Gd2ZEkmzDg

— Prokick Australia (@ProkickAus) October 14, 2019

You may ask yourself "why do this?" Why do anything? Why go to the moon? Why climb a mountain? If Alex Honnold can free solo El Captain, we can devise a fake punt that involves real punts. Yes, with an S. Achieve!

Yes, go for it. Even though Michigan got stuffed on the fourth and two referenced above there's no dispute that it was the right decision. Michigan's up 10 points with 7 minutes left. Going from a 10 point lead to a 13 point lead is close to worthless.

Illinois needs two touchdowns to win either way. The lack of a field goal only hurts you if 1) Illinois scores a TD, 2) subsequently drives into field goal range, 3) gets stopped there, 4) makes their field goal, and 5) wins in overtime. A TD ends the game.

Memorial Stadium in lovely Pyongyang, North Korea. It is truly a sight to behold:

@mgoblog say what you will about Memorial Stadiums design, but it certainly bears a striking resemblance to my feelings during the 3rd quarter. pic.twitter.com/Nrj53QYmII

— The MGoBus (@TheMGoBus) October 13, 2019

Beard Stadium. Make it happen. On the other hand, some parts of the Illinois football experience are incontrovertibly lovely:

We have a Lovie's Beard flickr album if you are not sated.

HERE

Best and Worst:

Worst: Making Mistakes & Wasting Drives

Mason picking up a personal foul, plus a series of late hits out of bounds (one on Uche that was called, another on Gray that wasn't) were the types of plays you just can't make against better teams. I don't understand the desire to integrate Mason into te offense at this point; if the DT experiment is a flop (which it seems like), either bulk him up or wait until next year for him to transition back to the offense. Throwing some a pass to him after you've been gashing the Illini on the ground is a waste of a down, even if you think it'll put it on tape some opponents will need to plan for it. But I can accept a bad play not working out; Mason's decision to just smash a corner 4-5 steps away from the play was inexplicable. That turned a whatever play into a drive-killer.

ELSEWHERE

Illinois Football Breakdown has already done our game. Illinois on D:

And Illinois on O:

Good example of McGrone going upfield of everything at 1:10.

Ethan Sears:

It’s more than valid after a win to turn the conversation to what Michigan did well. Where against the Wolverines let the fumble get into their heads against Wisconsin, they rose up against Illinois. Particularly the defense, which stepped up and forced two late turnovers to seal the game. But that doesn’t change the reality facing Michigan right now.

After six games, and with two top-10 opponents looming in the next two weeks,  this can no longer be swept aside as an issue that will inevitably be fixed. Because Penn State and Notre Dame aren’t Illinois. And if the Wolverines give either team an opportunity, they’ll pay dearly.

“Yeah a little bit (of frustration),” said senior quarterback Shea Patterson. “Anytime you got a lead like that, coming out of the second half you gotta keep the foot on the pedal and in full throttle. But sometimes in a game, it happens like that.”

Bill Connelly selects Slippery Rock, of all teams, in his list of the teams he's had the most fun watching this year. And here's why:

2. Slippery Rock. I've been following the lower levels of the sport more closely this year, experimenting with an SP+ rating for FCS and Division II in the process. The Rock is unbeaten and has one of the best offenses in D2 -- it basically consists of quarterback Roland Rivers III lobbing the ball into open spaces and having talented receivers run underneath the passes for big gains. It's simple and extremely delightful.

…

we shoulda hired slippery rock's OC?

This guy's got a point:

Squirrels! Squirrels everywhere!

Photo: Tyler Carlton

It's been a day and a half and I still don't really know how to digest this football game.

So, here's a photo of a squirrel.

Squirrel is a weird word. You never remember that there's two r's.

Maize and Brew; Sap's Decals; Hoover Street Rag.