Who on this team will win the Pitbull Mr. Worldwide Trophy?

— Jawn Legend (@iamstefanzonia) August 20, 2019

Important! First we must define the parameters of the Pitbull Mr. Worldwide Trophy:

• Mr. Worldwide must be versatile. Mr. Worldwide must impact as many facets as the game as possible. This means different things for different positions—a Peppers type is always going to have an advantage, but if an OL catches a pass? Forget about it. Advantage: Mike Sainristil, Ben Mason, Josh Uche.
• Mr. Worldwide must make his teammates better. Pretty much every Pitbull song is featuring someone else, and he is the greatest emcee in history. This favors unsung heroes who pave the way for their compatriots, whether that's a fullback blocking for his teammates, a center telling folks what to do, a safety doing the same, or a defensive tackle allowing his linebackers to grab the glory. Advantage: Mike Onwenu, Josh Metellus, Cesar Ruiz.
• Mr. Worldwide must be cool against stiff odds. Pitbull is essentially a cave salamander who is a famous rapper. I don't want to see his high school yearbook photo. Do you have Kenny G hair? A hyphenated name? Tourette's syndrome? This is your award. Advantage: Ben Mason, Jordan Glasgow, Donovan Peoples-Jones.
• Mr. Worldwide must enjoy spending time under highway overpasses. Advantage: Julius Welschof.

My favorites for the award—which is now very, very real and will be tracked in game columns—are Sainristil, Ruiz, Uche, and Peoples-Jones.

[After THE JUMP: Gattis timelines, I have not played XCom 2]

not one and done [Bryan Fuller]

How long does Josh Gattis remain in Ann Arbor provided that things go well?

-GS

After Maryland hired DJ Durkin based on not a whole hell of a lot I'm leery to project a long-term anything. Gattis is probably going to be around for a little bit, though. Gattis has the Locksley thing hanging over him; Locksley got hired on the assumption his offense was, you know, his. Gattis will have to spend some time disproving that if he's going to get a head job, and that'll take some time.

The main way Gattis exits early is if a school with connections to him 1) needs a coach and 2) can convince him to take the job. The teams Gattis coached or played for:

• Alabama: nope!
• Penn State: Frames Janklin jokes aside, PSU is unlikely to be in the market for a coach in the near future.
• Vanderbilt: probably the biggest threat since they can throw SEC money around and cycle through coaches in a flash. If Gattis is really successful he might be inclined to let it ride and take the Tom Herrman route instead.
• WMU: Michigan can pay him more to be OC, probably.
• Wake Forest: a deathtrap job that can't bring the dollars Vandy can.

It seems likely that Gattis will be leaving Michigan at the point where he can get a mid-level or better P5 job that he has no connections to. That's in the 3-5 year range.

What would you expect out of the run game in a optimistic, but reasonable scenario for this offense (particularly against the non-meatballs of the schedule)?

Something like 15 RB carries, 5 QB carries, and 10 screens which are technically passes but functionally runs?

-Andrew

Assuming "screens" don't include touch passes which are functionally end-arounds that number of bonafide runs is unrealistically low. A quick sanity check against Texas Tech—121st in run rate last year—shows that the Red Raiders ran just under half the time and averaged 29 QB/RB carries per game. (They did not run a single WR carry all year.) And Michigan is not going to be anywhere near the Texas Tech extreme.

Further complicating things is the fact that almost all of Michigan's QB carries last year were dictated by the defense and weren't QB draws or power. The QB/RB ratio is often more dependent on what the defense does unless you really force it; Michigan won't do that with Patterson. Instead they will prefer to give the ball and take what yards the defense gives the QB.

So. A reasonably up-tempo passing-oriented, Harbaugh-exists offense will have something more like 30-40 carries from the QB and RB, with 5-8 of those being pulls from Patterson. Screens may not be that prevalent since RPOs are rarely screens.

Brian,

How do you set expectations for the program now and going forward now that we live in a world where Ohio State is no longer coached by their most successful head coach in program history? I have a hard time imagining they'll drop-off quickly unless Justin Fields doesn't work out, and their recruiting appears to have already bounced back to elite levels after one eh year. They're going to continue being ridiculously talented - slightly moreso than Michigan - until further notice.

That said, it's hard not to notice a few creaks in the death star already. Mattison was an okay hire for them, and their defense will surely improve because of it, but it feels like a high floor low ceiling hire. Failing to retain any other viable QB once you brought in Fields feels like a mistake Meyer never would have made, but Day managed to run everyone else off over the offseason (while failing to recruit one in this past class) to clear the way for a guy who's never started a college football game in his life. I'm getting flashbacks to some of Brady Hoke's worst roster decisions.

Is that a very faint light I see at the end of this tunnel, or is it yet another train?

Thanks,
Caleb

Any new hire brings with it the chance of implosion, unless it's Urban Meyer after a siesta. Ohio State hiring Day is the best case scenario. Jim Tressel had been a very successful Youngstown State coach for 15 years before OSU hired him. Meyer had two national titles. Day… has been an offensive coordinator for a few years. There is no realistic head coaching hire OSU could make who would be less proven. And when that guy brings in a 70-year old and an NFL position coach to be co-DCs, well, that's a crack in the foundation.

Day still has the Urban Meyer machine to pilot and may get through it, but the chance that OSU does not take a step back after losing Meyer is very small. And this year it's Michigan who can confidently put in their backup should the need arise. All of OSU's eggs are in the Fields basket, so if he doesn't work out or gets hurt there's a cliff out there.

I vote light.

bigger concern DT or CB on defense? Also XCom 2 strategies

— Cliff Legend (@CliffLegend) August 20, 2019

If Ambry Thomas is able to come back by the Wisconsin game and start the back half of the season, defensive tackle. If he's done for the year, cornerback. If Michigan can defend the run in the 3-3-5, cornerback either way.

I have not played XCom 2 but most tactical squad games are all about line of sight control: applying multiple troopers worth of shooting while exposing yourself to one hopefully-about-to-be-dead opponent. Smoke grenades are underrated.

Post OSU it was said UofMs DB depth was exposed for being too slow, not athletic. Given Don Browns D that relies on man coverage, it makes sense that WRs better than DBs are the way you beat it, but wasn’t this a constant issue when Brown was at BC? How did he make it work then?

— CHoff (@CraigHoffy) August 20, 2019

The focus on Brandon Watson getting torched, which this site is as guilty of as any other, is only part of the story. The other part—possibly the main part—is the fact that Michigan's ~national best pass rush almost literally did not touch Dwayne Haskins all game. Don Brown has made it clear that he is maniacal about pressure. So what happens when the maniacal pressure guy gets no pressure? That.

Also sometimes, I mean… you know:

Sometimes Brown ran into an NFL quarterback at BC and it didn't go that well. That was 2015, when Brown had the best defense in the country. It's 2019, sometimes a quarterback and some 6'5" impalas set you on fire and you have to keep pace.

Michigan has not been set up to win shootouts, so they lose shootouts. Hopefully that changes, and the offense does some of the heavy lifting in big games.

Do you remember your Twitter meltdown when Troy Woolfolk got hurt prior to the 2010 season, and is there a player today that would cause similar?

— Paul Wezner (@TigsTown) August 20, 2019

I do remember that. It is unfair to refer to this as a "Twitter" "meltdown." I was laying on the floor of my apartment with American cheese on my elbow, drinking both tea and some unholy gin concoction as I hallucinated horrible things, all of which turned out to be accurate. This was IRL, baby.

I prefer to think of it as a Prescient Awareness Of Football Future. I saw the threads of time, and they sucked. My acts were entirely rational. The elbow cheese was perfect. I experienced all the things I feared I would experience. They were as awful as I expected. That moment in 2010 is the closest I will ever be to the Kwisatz Haderach.

Anyway, no.

There is no Michigan player whose exit will cause James Rogers—a wide receiver who couldn't change direction if you gave him a map to Zendaya's house and a swift kick in the ass—to be a starting cornerback. There is no Michigan player who will cause Denard Robinson to be wasted like so many dreads in the breeze. There is no Michigan player who will cause Dave Brandon to hire Brady Hoke in the near future.

Michigan's footballing is secured for a decade or more. It's going to be very good. Michigan's going to have to beat Ohio State, sure. But at no point do I feel like this program is a meticulously planned domino run exposed to some dumbass Godzilla. Named Dave.

This question is over!

Black did give someone the business this spring [Patrick Barron]

What's going on with Tarik Black? Supposedly he was the #1 receiver last season, but he barely got any targets after the returned to the lineup, and I haven't heard anything about him in fall camp.

— Jonathan Chait (@jonathanchait) August 20, 2019

Black was probably pretty rusty at the tail end of last year so it was hard to break through when Peoples-Jones and Collins are the top of the depth chart. Doubly so when Michigan's tempo and offensive approach meant that almost nobody got a proper number of targets. Nico Collins got ten more targets that MSU's Connor Heyward. I mean.

Camp talk seems mostly focused on Ronnie Bell and Cornelius Johnson, two guys who are going to get maybe 50 targets between them. I'm not sure how to interpret the relatively light talk about Black. Neither of his injuries were the variety that should impact him going forward, and even last year he was supposedly a hair ahead of Peoples-Jones.

I still think he'll be the clear #3 outside guy and get almost as many catches as DPJ and Collins, but I'm less confident in that prediction as camp moves along.