SPONSOR NOTES: Was talking with Matt at the Marlin tailgate on Saturday when he broached the idea of buying one of those tailgate trailers with TVs and whatnot for next year. I am strongly encouraging this idea in the sponsor notes of the game column because then I can watch more of the noon games. Do it for your country, Matt.

In addition to being a gentleman replete with Michigan tickets and possibly a trailer, Matt is also a good man to know if you need a mortgage. It's striking that we actually get non-astroturfed comments about positive experiences with Matt not infrequently.

If you're buying a home or refinancing, he's the right guy to call.

FORMATION NOTES: Just a couple of oddities other than the train. This was "Ace 3-wide offset." As you can see, the back is... offset.

And Michigan lined up in that formation with Chesson at TE again. Here he is running down the middle of the field.

These formations get appended with "WR hide."

PERSONNEL NOTES: OL and QB as you would expect, with Bushell-Beatty replacing Newsome when he got hurt. Michigan went much more WR-heavy in this game, with around 60 snaps for both Chesson and Darboh out of 77 possible. Perry, Crawford, and McDoom combined for another 38; with Butt near-omnipresent that meant Michigan was without a fullback for about half the snaps.

Smith got about 50% of the RB snaps with Evans and Isaac splitting the rest; Peppers got five snaps, four as a wildcat QB and one as a slot. Asiasi got 23 snaps as the #2 TE with Bunting injured; Wheatley and Michael Jocz(!) got 3 and 2 snaps, respectively.

[After THE JUMP: come on ride the train.] 

I mean... I guess this was fine?

I guess?

You're supposed to tell me.

I mean. It was fine?

Was it?

Maybe?

Do that bullet point thing with the drives.

Okay:

• 11 play, 77-yard TD drive
• 4 play, 64-yard TD drive
• Two drives of about ten plays and 40 yards ending in missed short FGs.
• Three drives of ~20 yards, two ending in punts and the third another missed FG.
• Four three-and-outs, one of them the one-minute drill to end the first half.
• One three and out that was entirely about draining UW's timeouts.

That's okay against a very good defense. I actually liked Michigan's ground game a lot.

Your opinion of the ground game is not justified by the stats.

Let's excise Wilton Speight and the six carries at the end of the game on which Michigan was running into ultra-stacked boxes with goals other than "gain yards." That's 11 of Michigan's 44 attempts that collectively went for –22 yards. The remaining 33 went for 4.6 yards an attempt. I'll take that against a fierce run defense currently 14th in S&P+, especially since Michigan didn't break any long ones that tend to puff stats up.

I'd go further and say that if you drop the two carries by Hill (both FB dives that converted short-yardage situations) and the three runs from the wideouts you're looking at 5.1 YPC from the primary tailbacks. Michigan had a shoulda-been-field goal drive that was eight straight runs bookended by passes. It felt rather good. Michigan frequently lurched Wisconsin off the ball en masse:

The OL didn't overwhelm like they did against Penn State but they mostly did their jobs, with several promising run plays cut down by aggressive safeties or goofy cuts. Let's check the--

TRAIN CHART

I do that part later.

Anyway:

No adjustments for run +/-.

So,  yeah. This was a major struggle in all phases when it came to blocking.

Yikes on that Bushell-Beatty number.

Yeah. Michigan did tend to protect him on the edge, and when they did not he looked a bit shaky in pass protection:

That's not the worst thing I've ever seen. He does get the guy to fall and gets his hands off. It is still not great. It was his only minus, though, on a tough day for the line. It was much rougher on the ground. Also to the negative: he picked up a holding call on the Morris run by straight up tackling a dude and was twice flagged for illegal formations for lining up too far off the LOS. (The second was dubious.)

I did find him getting some motion from time to time. The rest of this play is borked but JBB gets enough movement on a DL to provide Smith some yards:

Even so I wouldn't be surprised to see Cole flip back out and Kugler draw in.

Meanwhile... what? How was Michigan's ground game okay with those numbers?

I put the PFF numbers in first, thought they were crazy negative given the production, and then... came up with close to the same thing. The main differences are that I thought Hill was very good and was even higher on Kalis than I think they were.

Magnuson had a rough game at first glance. In addition to a couple of sacks partially to entirely on him, various players managed to stand him up and play both sides of him in the run game. This from Watt is impressive and TJ Watt-like but also pretty ugly from Magnuson, who loses inside and then outside:

But Magnuson pulled himself back over even by the end. He hit 60%, which isn't our 66% goal but it could have been worse.

Meanwhile the rest of the line other than Bushell-Beatty managed to get to or scrape over zero. Braden showed excellent awareness here to perceive he had nobody at the second level and stop:

The guy Braden should be getting at the second level has ripped around the outside as UW slants. If he releases to nobody that DT either tackles or forces a cutback. Instead he cuts that guy off and Evans bursts to the safeties.

Kalis meanwhile got a lot of motion and didn't do anything that I thought was erroneous. He didn't have the kind of day where I clip something and say "wow"; he just executed. He's bizzaro world Kyle Kalis, and right now he looks like the one NFL draft pick on the line.

So, I don't really have an answer. I did like the running backs again? Mostly?

You did not. This is your week to hate them.

I have a chart and everything.

RB chart (WR grades are run only):

I don't! I do wonder where Higdon went; Harbaugh says he wasn't hurt. Pass protection issues didn't prevent Evans from playing; have to imagine Higdon is at least as good as Evans at that.

Anyway, both Smith and Isaac ripped off impressive weaving runs. Smith popped off a chunk by pressing the hole and then popping outside:

(Magnuson does excellent work here as well.) Isaac did it twice in one run:

Isaac also saved a stuffed third down conversion with a quick bounce outside. Evans's best run of the day was called back on a penalty; he tended to get tackled for no YAC, as well. I was a bit disappointed with him. Other than that, another strong day from the runners. They made up for some stalemate blocking, which I don't think I've said in a long time around these parts.

That said, there were a couple of plays on which I was like "for the love of god, cut off a block." This followed directly on the heels of the Evans 22 yarder and I'm just like... dot dot dot.

Newsome is the guy in the middle of the block M whose guy has declared outside. Evans is only reading this one block. He goes... outside, getting tackled for no yards. A cutback there is something, either four if that LB Braden is fending off can get to him or a bunch if he can't.

On first and ten in the second half Michigan ran a jet fake and got a huge gap to that side of the line since the OLB spread out to contain it. Smith cuts to the other side of the line, where Jake Butt is having a much tougher time with an OLB who isn't thinking about the jet at all. Butt is to the top of the screen, and he's dealing with a guy who doesn't have to be force since he's got a CB outside of him. Asiasi is to the bottom and has the world's easiest kickout:

This was going to be a big chunk unless the LBs can recover.

That's pretty frustrating since the goal of these jet fakes is to get that gap to exist. Smith's gotta press directly upfield and then pop into the wide open spaces there. If Wisconsin has that covered they've got it covered but when you cut away from the play design you'd better have a good reason. There doesn't appear to be one here.

Speight was a bit of a WILDCARD in this one.

Yes, he—

And what I mean by that is he threatened to cut the breaks and leap out of the car.

Right. It does show up:

[Hennechart orientation: mouse over column headers for explanations of the categories. + is handed out for a good throw under duress. * is handed out for a very bad version of a bad thing. Numbers in parens are screens. DSR is an attempt to compress the numbers into one overall number. PFF is PFF's grade.]

Not great, though he was under a ton of pressure. 6.8 YPA is not going to blow anyone's doors off and he did throw a number of questionable balls. But as I mentioned in the game column, the interception was more a great play by Wisconsin than anything else:

Also, Michigan's running play action on second and fifteen. Of all the throws that Wisconsin had an opportunity to get their hands on, that one bothers me the least.

One of the other near-interceptions was indeed a bad thing, but at least Speight immediately corrected his issue. Michigan hides Chesson at TE and has him run a post. He's kind of covered but also Chesson, so he is open if you put it up high. Speight puts it right on him, which allows the tiny safety to undercut the route:

The very next play another Chesson corner route would be nominally covered; Speight put it in the #buttzone:

So at least that shows some growth. Fitting the ball into tight windows is something any pro-style QB has to master, so I'd rather he tries these throws and gets good at them than just chucks the ball out to game-manage.

Still, there were far too many close calls in this game. The near-INT in the endzone was horrendous. So was a pressured throw on third and six that was way inside and upfield of Perry. Michigan was fortunate that the DB fell down.

Speight had a couple of very nice throws. Obviously the touchdown was near-perfect, and he opened with an excellent out route that floated over a defender's hand and allowed Butt to turn upfield:

He did offset that with a slant and go to Darboh that was open but broken up. He threw it late and didn't use a huge amount of room to the outside—Darboh's running on the numbers—so the safety was able to get over. It was just... bleah. Michigan got enough from him to win the game but this was an Early Rudock kind of performance, except more turnover-prone.

There's nothing for it except to hope that he can improve a great deal by the end of the season, like his predecessor. This level of QB play will not beat OSU.

Is Darboh fast again?

Uh, maybe? This Tindal guy kept up with Malachi Dupre pretty well and after Darboh beats him to the inside it's just a matter of sprinting to the goal line. Darboh increases his lead until the throw is a hair short and he has to slow up for it.

That is not a thing that I thought would happen. Darboh in fact had a terrific day aside from the dropped third down conversion:

[0 = uncatchable, 1 = circus catch, 2 = moderate difficulty, 3 = routine]

ROUTES: Darboh ++++

Darboh's four route positives were all key, as Michigan capitalized on them. The drop was bad, and he needs to start running those tunnel screens as intended. He was still a major factor in the W.

Butt wasn't very involved after the big catch to start. What's the deal?

Opposing defenses have a tendency to overplay him. This is not by design, but there are a lot of underneath busts when some linebacker gets too enthusiastic about limiting him. Perry got 20 yards on a simple drag route largely because of Butt Derangement Syndrome:

That is a straight up zone run by everyone else while Watt is convinced he needs to check Butt the whole way. Butt's initial outside step may help that; Watt's got the flat and Butt steps to it on the snap. The other explanation for Butt's lack of involvement is Jack Cichy: he's excellent in coverage and Michigan got burned when they tested him once. They decided they'd rather go at the CBs, and that eventually paid off.

I think we've exhausted the jet sweep mine.

I think we aren't likely to have as much success on it as they've had to start the season since teams are now reacting to it heavily. Wisconsin would unbalance their entire secondary by firing down a safety and trying to rotate a corner back, and that plus various other guys widening out provides some opportunities to the interior.

Also, when WRs know what they're doing it's still productive. I negged Chesson last week for blindly running outside when he had a lane inside one of his blockers; this week Chesson read it and picked up a chunk:

Unfortunately, Kekoa Crawford was on week one of this progression. He got zero yards when a cut upfield behind an obvious kickout block gets him near a first down.

That's a point where you have to know to cut inside of Smith. Crawford did not.

Meanwhile the jet opened up gaps in Wisconsin's front and helped facilitate the ground game. The highlighted OLB here takes an unnatural step back and outside on the snap here, and that repositioning gives Michigan just enough room to shoot Smith through the line and into the secondary:

But didn't it let Wisconsin time up Michigan's snaps?

Okay yes that is a good point. It wasn't just the jet sweeps, and it wasn't always successful, but UW had a bunch of guys run at the line at almost exactly the right time. This severely hampered some plays:

That's a big gain nullified by a Braden holding call, and that hold is about 90% the LB timing the snap. You can't really do anything about that if you do have a jet on and they time it up. What you can do is run that motion without snapping the ball in the hopes that UW will declare a blitz that you can then pick up. Michigan did not seem to do this. It was very predictable that the WR motion at high speed across the formation would involve a snap at that particular moment.

In addition to the jet stuff, any sort of motion from a wide receiver appeared to be the trigger for these blitzes. Here Speight gets pressured by a perfectly-timed blitz and nearly throws an INT. The WR motion is just an outside repositioning.

There are 13 seconds on the playclock when this is snapped. Michigan has time to vary their counts and get some of these linebackers to declare early. That did not seem to happen. On the one hand, that's a worry since MSU has timed Michigan snap counts forever. On the other, that did not happen last year and Michigan can use this game as a wake-up call about their cadences.

Stanfordizations of the week?

Well I mean obviously TRAIN.

Michigan popped out of that into a tackle over formation, had Newsome—the over tackle—not do a great job on his block, and then just rugby scrummed that ball to the one. Did TRAIN have anything to do with that? Maybe? I don't know. What I do know is that it was bizarre and I liked it.

Michigan's other very obvious wrinkle were four snaps with Peppers as a spread option QB. He handed off every time to his frustration and everyone else's, but the results were positive. The only time Michigan gained fewer than five yards was a three yard gain on second and four. That could have gone better but Magnuson's block was iffy and Hill and Smith went in different gaps.

Peppers's addition to the backfield naturally draws a lot of attention. This cutback lane is super-wide because the DE is thinking about Peppers:

Meanwhile... man, I think some of these were pull reads. This DE looks like he's shuffling and disciplined but his momentum is to the interior.

I would have at least tested that guy once.

There were a couple more subtle things. Michigan ran what looked exactly like a stretch play except for one thing: Kalis blocked down on the NT and Cole pulled right around him. That didn't go anywhere because of the Watt play against Magnuson mentioned above, but I would have liked to see how that developed. It's a stretch where you have a very high probability of reaching the NT, and usually when that happens you're getting a chunk. 

Michigan also brought back the inside zone counter at a critical moment; UW slanted inside it and Chesson picked up the key block:

That's an extremely subtle alteration that should remain effective because it looks so much like the base play.

But you had a rather large negative RPS number?

A healthy portion of that is Michigan closing up shop after the interception, which allowed UW safeties to get involved without Michigan getting back over the top. I'll RPS minus a play that doesn't have a good explanation for not gaining yards otherwise even if it's probably the right decision to eat a bunch of no gains and punt the ball back.

Heroes?

Kalis was Michigan's most consistent player, which is really a thing. Smith and Isaac made a lot of yards for themselves. Darboh broke the game open. Chesson also had a strong outing that I've somehow failed to mention so far.

Maybe not so heroic?

Speight's got to get better if Michigan is going to live up to expectations. Poggi consistently comes in with meh grades. Big chunks of the line had struggles in pass protection.

What does it mean for Rutgers and the future?

The tailbacks had a second straight positive outing, this in a much tougher environment. I'm not saying they've turned a corner just yet. I will allow my hopes to get up a wee bit.

Blitz pickups and pass protection are big sore spots. Michigan didn't know what they were looking at and ate far too many blitzes on which they did not attempt to suss out where they might be coming from. Varied cadences and offensive rhythm will help. Various flat out busts are concerning at this point in the season, especially with the line in flux.

Speight must get better. Too many bad decisions and iffy throws here.

Hill seems like the better FB option by some distance. Wonder if we'll start seeing that in the playing time.

Kalis might be genuinely good. No mistakes and the same level of physical performance.