Upon Further Review 2012: Defense vs Nebraska

Formation notes: Most of the game was in the under:

On certain passing downs Michigan did this weird thing with one of the DEs pulled up in a two point stance between the two NTs:

M dropped eight on this and got quick pressure when Roh beat the T around the edge one on one.

Here it is again:

May see that a little more going forward, but it's obviously a gimmicky passing down defense only.

Substitution notes: Back seven was the established starters the whole way with two exceptions: Cam Gordon got a fair number of snaps in place of Jake Ryan and Bolden came in for Demens on the last drive. I don't think Morgan came off for even a snap.

On the line, all spots got a dose of rotation. Roh got the most time; Heitzman backed him up and got a couple spots at three-tech. Washington was also heavily deployed; Pipkins backed him up. Campbell had the edge on Black at three tech but Black got more snaps than he has in the recent past. Beyer went most of the way at WDE with Ojemudia backing.

[AFTER THE JUMP: charts and stuff.]

Go go.

Down into the valley of death rode the six hundred.

Sex cannons to the left, sex cannons to the right.

Aborting this train of thought. That seemed like a noble but eventually futile effort.

Yeah pretty much. Nebraska missed a couple opportunities and busted Michigan open from time to time; a lot of those plays ended with a Michigan defender making a damn good play. This was a tough offense that tested you all over the field and Michigan held them to season lows in yardage and points, the former by over 100 yards. Bellomy's absence had little to do with it, as Nebraska did not pop a two score lead until near the end of the game and remained on the front foot for much of it.

The

CHART

is a little weird.

So… Craig Roh put up a monster number, one that Mike Martin would think is shiny. What can I say? I don't think either of Nebraska's tackles blocked him all game. There was of course the hilarious sack on which Abdullah tried his darndest to block Roh and ended up on the other side of his quarterback saying sorry, but probably more impressive than that were the time he just beat guys straight up. This is another sack for him if Michigan can just cover a corner route:

And sometimes Nebraska was just like "here free TFL okay." When Heitzman was in the difference in that SDE play was palpable. When Roh was in, M slanted and he got underneath play after play, picking off a lead blocker damn near every time Nebraska tried to run a power play of any variety, and then he added

1. Quick QB pressure no one noticed because M was leaving corner routes open.
2. Hilarious sack
3. Free TFL

That's how that happens.

Why did Black suddenly get a lot of PT?

He seemed to be better at keeping his feet than Campbell, and Michigan was slanting a lot, which gave him the opportunity to use his superior speed to make some plays. This kind of thing was the thing we were hoping we'd get from him when his DT move was announced:

It took half a year but there is some of it. He also drew a holding call against Nebraska on a similar quick upfield move, setting up the Roh donkeysack.

Slight downer: Nebraska starting running some mashing inside zones at the end of the game, doubling both DTs for extended periods, and he got put on skates a little bit. Not a huge surprise since he's undersized for the position.

We have a new best linebacker for this week?

Morgan also had a nice day. He shut down a dangerous looking QB draw by running around a blocker like he isn't there, helping force a fumble, and made the Ojemudia pick possible by leaping all real high and stuff. In between he thumped lead guys in the hole a lot.

We've talked some about how Bolden doesn't come downhill with authority yet; Morgan does.

That cuts off the outside and gets two blockers stalled in the hole, allowing Demens to tackle. That's pretty dang good.

What was with all the corner routes?

See that first video discussing Roh above for an example. Answers are hard to come by here just because you can't see all of the coverages on TV, but it looked like Michigan was running a lot of cover two and Nebraska was successfully attacking it. The clip above features three receivers running to the right edge of the field at three levels. If you remember the picture pages from last year talking about flood routes…

…that's what Nebraska is doing. Michigan has one and a half guys out there, and you're either asking Floyd to drop well past the sticks or Kovacs to get over there in time, which is tough. My guess is Michigan wants to defend this by having the corner hit the WR to slow him down, which should allow the safety to get over. They did not successfully execute that task.

That seems pretty hard to me, and it also seems like the response to that could/should be some sort of cover three thing but maybe there was something in what Nebraska had done previously that made cover two a better idea.

The defensive tackles didn't make out so well.

When they got doubled it was effective for Nebraska, and when Michigan ran away from them they frequently fell over or took an angle that was too far upfield—Washington especially—and left a gap behind whoever Roh was blowing up.

There was too little of this:

And too much of this:

Pipkins get cut, Campbell just falls over, this looks like it might break big when Ryan makes an awesome play to get a tackle in from two or three gaps away from the play.

At least, if we're judging by our revised midseason expectations in which Michigan has a B+ defensive line. I'll take an even day from the DTs against the best offense in the conference, and don't forget about Black when you consider that position group's performance.

What happened with Ryan?

He had a pretty Ryan day, what with stuff like the above play and his ridiculous ability to redirect in short spaces. His minuses mostly came when he got edged. Michigan has this play dead if Ryan just keeps Abdullah inside:

[note Roh annihilating one of the pulling guards to pick up one of his 17 points.]

That happened on three or four different plays; that particular one was a minus two because his job is easy and important and not done. He picked up another on the long Martinez run that finally cracked the Michigan defense and gave Nebraska a two score lead.

He's still a sophomore learning on the job, and Nebraska was prepared to take the good with all the bad he brings to the table for opposing offenses.

Did you get any sense of foreboding or anything during, like, half the plays?

Yeah, there were quite a few moments when I was all "oh God that's a huge gain" and then it turned into three to five yards. For a team that runs the veer a lot Michigan sure looked shaky defending it. On the free Roh TFL, a keep by Martinez is yards and yards as both of the playside LBs suck out to contain the tailback:

Nebraska would later get an easy first down when this happened again and Martinez decided not to get his tailback killed in the backfield.

I wonder how much of that was Nebraska's dedication to screwing with Michigan's heads. They would go uptempo from time to time, which got them at least one free third down conversion. They would run midline stuff that opened up huge and Michigan was fortunate to escape alive from…

why hello Thomas Gordon fill

…they looked very tough to defend despite their general struggle to move the ball. They missed some reads here and there and Martinez's accuracy remains an issue; I still think the contrast between the Nebraska offense and the Michigan offense is interesting. With Nebraska you just feel everything makes sense together, and they take whatever advantages they can by screwing with tempo and using the check-at-the-sideline gambit to get good plays on.

I loved their first touchdown:

Pick route, sure, but rubbin's racin'. Nothing Michigan can do as soon as that guy rubs Gordon off. Where'd they get that call?

all your heads in a box to the left

From the sideline after they got lined up with 25 seconds on the clock and Michigan showed man coverage with one high safety. That was not aww shucks luck. It's using the extra information the defense gives you to exploit it. Michigan, meanwhile, is usually still in the huddle with 18 seconds on the playclock and often scrambles to the line with no other option than running what's called no matter what the D shows.

It kind of sucks that Michigan doesn't seem to want to do similar things. You'd think every coach would love the opportunity to get whatever information they can before making a decision.

Heroes?

Roh and Morgan, also Jibreel Black and Brennen Beyer.

Goats?

Raymon Taylor busted a coverage pretty hard right before the rubbin's racin' play above and seemed to get lost in his zone coverage on some of those corner routes. The DTs other than Black had a hard time keeping up with the Nebraska OL. Ryan kind of belongs in both categories this game.

What does it mean for Minnesota and the future?

Not much that happened Saturday was surprising on defense. We've seen Roh mature into an All-Conference level player; the DTs have been serviceable, the LBs pretty good, etc. Michigan just ran up against a real offense for the first time and while they did get somewhat lucky to only give up 23, they got horrendously unlucky with their starting field position and such.

What we did get is further confirmation that the things we suspected before are true. This is a near-elite defense, and they won't face an offense that will be able to test that until the end of the year. Minnesota and their true freshman quarterback are highly unlikely to put up 350 yards.