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FORMATION NOTES. Nothing that unusual from Michigan, which alternated between one and two high, with a focus on one-high, and played most of the game in their 3-3-5. Penn State was a 3-wide shotgun literally the whole game, with occasional forays into empty or four-wide with the same personnel.

And then of course what I called the Sa-Gun, because I am a clever boy.

This was a gimmick that didn't really work but sort of did?

SUBSTITUTION NOTES. A lot more rotation on the DL in this game as Michigan either got tired or looked for answers. Kwity Paye got a significant amount of time; Winovich got pulled after a late hit for a bit and then he got some second-half run. Mone had some early struggles and Dwumfour was tried out; that didn't work much better. Solomon got some scattered snaps; Kemp saw a number in Gary's place.

The CB rotation was the same; I don't think Thomas got in on D. Glasgow got at least one snap for reasons unknown; otherwise it was the starting safeties the whole way. Bush, Furbush, and McCray got all available LB snaps. Hudson was the only viper.

[After THE JUMP: a slightly different outcome than we are used to.]

do you ever feel like your life is a gif

uh what gif do you feel your life is like

BEES

BEES

like you're so excited because you're on Oprah and she might give you things and instead she unleashes a horde of stinging insects instead

YES

maybe it's time to accept that you are stuck in an Oprah bee gif

I accept. I grow fond of the stings, their piquancy. Anyway, this was a bad football game I disliked.

It was:

• two three and outs
• two stops after 50 yards had been acquired, one on a gift INT, the other a turnover on downs
• six touchdown drives, four of them 75+ yards, two of them about 45 yards

The only comparable defensive performance under Harbaugh was DJ Durkin's debacle against Ohio State. This was different than that, because Michigan hypothetically could have defended most of what PSU was doing, and large chunk of PSU downfield shots were just like... well, crap.

Michigan predicated their approach on a dominant defensive line that would allow them to sacrifice that guy deep, force PSU into difficult sideline shots, remove PSU's RPO game, and still keep the run game on lockdown. That took two plays to get blown up:

#3 DE to bottom

The story of that play is Gary (and Winovich, to a lesser extent). Gary's first snap was a near sack on a great edge rush:

#3 DE to top

He's fired up. He wants to get after it. He gets after it so hard that he ends up five yards upfield and locked out on a play featuring a direct snap to a tailback. That is a youthful indiscretion that PSU punished maximally because they have Saquon Barkley, who found the gap and then was gone for a TD by the time he crossed the line of scrimmage.

When this wasn't happening, Michigan held it in check. The other five Sa-Gun snaps totaled 15 yards, and generally looked like this:

No cutback there as Gary and Furbush exchange gaps and nobody is five yards upfield.

So that tweak didn't actually work, except for a true sophomore DE running himself out of the play on the first one. And you can't even chalk that up to RPS, really, since it's not like the direct snap shift fooled Gary into thinking it was a pass.

So it was just the everything else that worked?

Pretty much. PSU had some success on inverted veer with McSorley at QB. On a couple Michigan was banking that their DL would beat one on one blocks and contain; this did not happen. This chunk on second and five sees Mone blown out by a single block:

#90 DT to top

Michigan is banking on that being a drive to the backfield. Not that. That's not a scheme issue. That is a Mone issue. And a Kinnel issue, as he airballs this tackle entirely and gives up a bonus 15. PSU's third quarter TD was similar. Michigan defends the POA well but there's a cutback lane as Furbush gets blown out... and so does Hurst:

#59 OLB and #73 DT

To defend everything a spread offense throws at you your DL have to win one on one blocks. Full stop.

When Michigan won blocks they got stops. Here Furbush inserts as a DL and knocks his guy back; with no holes in the front Barkley squeezes out a couple.

#59 OLB to top

The defense is predicated on doing this. That has been an excellent bet so far this year. It was less so in this game. It still wasn't horrible. The long run does distort things. Without it M gave up 5.2 YPC, which is almost bang on the national average after sacks are removed. And a number of those things were early RPS chunks given up by a team that had been squirrelling stuff away for a month. Once Michigan was reading things right they demonstrated that the early speed option issues weren't a scheme issue, but a read issue:

You could get on the coaches for the early stuff, I guess, but it's hard to prep for something you haven't seen.

There was an early second half inverted veer to the field on which a long mesh point got Mike McCray chasing Barkley; when it went to the boundary, as it did every other time, Michigan had it covered unless there was a player error.

I think the front seven approach made sense going in. You've got a DL that has whipped up on whoever they've gone against and an opposing OL that looks for all the world like it's scuffling. You get a big mental error from a young player early and then the fourth guy—Mone or Furbush or Dwumfour—is the guy sticking out like a sore thumb on many of PSU's successful runs. Hurst would penetrate and cut off everything on the frontside and the other DT (or facsimile) would get a stalemate at best:

#73 NT and #59 OLB

There is such a thing as too much penetration, and it happens when your other guys aren't able to get any themselves.

So the run game was not a complete debacle?

I mean. A sort of debacle.

And the 42 points?

Well, the passing game was a total debacle.

The other major thing that worked was punting balls up to Gesicki and DaeSean Hamilton. "Arm punt" is often deployed a derisive descriptor, but here they are things of beauty. I'm not entirely sure what, if anything, Michigan could have done about three deep completions, other than get a holding call on the first one:

I dinged Metellus a bit because this is zone and a throw in the air this long should at least see Metellus hit on the catch and maybe dislodge it, but... I mean, that's all you're hoping for here. Nobody on the field has the vertical reach of Gesicki. A second Gesicki high-point looks pretty freakin' hard to do much about:

Hudson's best shot there is to shove Gesicki out of bounds before he can come down, and I dinged him slightly for not being in great position for the potential back shoulder. That still feels nigh-unstoppable.

A third was literally unstoppable:

I don't this Charles Woodson himself can do much with that. Sometimes you get beat, and that is inch perfect. Metellus even gets his head around and has a play on anything other than that exact ball. Life. Don't talk to Josh Metellus about life.

Two other deep shots I am less resigned about. The first was Tyree Kinnel getting hit on third and eight:

He's in a good spot. He has plenty of time to get his head around and is close enough to the WR that he should. He never does. Hill would demonstrate a much better approach on a subsequent fourth down:

The second deep shot that causes consternation is the obvious one: Saquon Barkley one on one against Mike McCray in man coverage. Why on earth you would ever let this happen I have no idea. You have five DBs on the field at all times. Not using one on PSU's leading receiver is flabbergasting. Michigan got away with it once...

...but that has been and is always playing with fire. Stop doing this, I beg you, Don Brown.

WHY WE NO ZONE

Michigan did go zone with some frequency, and it was equally ineffective. Michigan's tendency to freak out, understandably, about Saquon Barkley meant that every RPO Penn State threw off of play action was blindingly wide open. There were three; two went for 12 and 23 yards. Another would have gone for twenty but McSorley managed to overthrow Gesicki. Even on the third, when Michigan's been burned twice, you see Hudson creeping to the LOS, run-focused, and out of position to make a play on the slant:

The safety at 15 yards cannot get there in time. Michigan got a couple of stops on zone plays when trap coverage caught a run or McSorley got sped up, but it's not like it was a panacea.

Okay, but surely there must be something that can be done? If Don Brown played PSU again next week what might he do differently?

I don't know if you can live with safeties at 12-15 yards and dropping in modern college football:

That made the zone stuff unviable because of RPO slants like this. Drawing the safeties into the 8-10 yard range like you see MSU and PSU do means they're they're for the RPO stuff and you can do a better job disguising your coverages. PSU's main advantage in the passing game is that Michigan did not do a good job of disguising man or zone; McSorley consistently IDed who would be open against Michigan's coverages.

If PSU is going to hit deep shots anyway you pull those safeties up and try to force PSU off the field before they get too many opportunities to blow you up deep.

Uh, I guess players and stuff?

Here's a-

chart that is absolutely not Rick the FOX director who's name isn't actually Rick

Got that right.

SUNIL, THE CHART

So... yeah. Haven't had to issue this reminder in a while but DL is a MAKE PLAYS spot and Michigan's DL barely got off the ground. Part of that was the PSU DL, which handled them better on the ground than anyone so far this year. Part of that was PSU's game plan successfully neutralizing the DL—the thing about those punts to the sideline is they're in the air so long that you can get them out almost as fast as a slant. And part of it was Michigan's coverage being very bad so several pressure events were futile as first reads were open.

What happened to my precious dreadlocked missile?

Bush more than anyone else got worked by Moorhead. Most of this stuff had not been put on tape yet and he's a sophomore, so it's understandable. But PSU had his head spinning. Bush must have a tendency to make an instant read and go with it, because on the early speed option stuff he saw the counter step and then was gone:

#10 MLB

McCray too. Michigan has seen this before this year vs Cincinnati and it got them there too:

It is a nasty tweak since the DE let free is inclined to contain the QB. On the above play Michigan stunts on the playside, putting Hurst out there, and he doesn't know what he's doing; he may not be able to shut down Barkley even if he goes for him. And then it wouldn't matter because the LB level read IZ and erased itself.

Against Cincinnati the play was at least hypothetically defensible because McCray read it and scraped outside. PSU is probably breaking a tendency or defying a tell to get this sort of reaction from the LB level.

Okay so that happens, twice, and Moorhead is clearly in Bush's head by the time this inside zone comes around and Bush's first step is to a speed option:

#10 MLB

Bush did stop getting wildly out of position after that adjustment period, although sometimes this only set him up to get his ankles broken by Barkley. That'll happen. Later Bush did display all the closing speed you'll ever need by running down Barkley after it looked like he may have successfully reversed field:

Bush, like Gary, showed his youth in his first road test. This will be a learning experience.

Oh god, I'm having RichRod flashbacks at those secondary grades.

Well, some of them. The cornerbacks were virtually ignored. They got involved if it was zone, sometimes, and on that fade route on fourth down that Hill was in the slot on. PSU attacked the safeties, confused the LBs, avoided the CBs, and minimized the DL.

Okay and the RPS number is not a huge blowout because?

RPS is a pretty specific thing where I don't think it's reasonable for Michigan to make a play on a thing before X number of yards are gained. So a bomb at Kinnel vs a slot receiver he doesn't make a play on doesn't go in the RPS file, it goes on Kinnel. Singling up Barkley on McCray with no safety help goes on RPS. Moorhead's game plan was excellent and induced many of the individual player minuses; RPS should be taken in context. Also it's a –6, which is a pretty big spread. Brown vs DeBord was only +8.

But the safeties.

Yeah. Ugh. Last week was up and down from Kinnel. This week was not. In addition to the deep shot the rest of his day was grim, from whiffing entirely on a tackle on McSorley to a bad angle against Barkley on the first speed option to getting torched on a slant so badly that he couldn't even try to tackle:

Michigan's safeties went from a potential weak point to a weak point.

DID ANYTHING WORK

Michigan got a lot of mileage out of blitzing Khaleke Hudson. PSU seemed unprepared for this, so most of the time Hudson flew in untouched:

#7 OLB-ish to bottom

When the LT got wise later in the game the LG still didn't identify the blitz and that was Kwity Paye's sack, which was a free run up the gut.

CAN WE TALK ABOUT GROUNDING

I'm not saying this is necessarily a thing the refs got wrong by the current standards of the game. I am saying that it should be. This is in no way a bonafide attempt to get the ball to a receiver:

I don't know what to do about this but it's certainly against the spirit of the rules for a ball to hit behind the LOS and not draw a grounding flag. Any attempt to tighten up the "receiver in the area" concept is likely to fail but I'd like to see balls behind the LOS given special scrutiny. If you can't get it across the LOS you should be hit with the flag unless it's within two yards of a receiver.

Anything from the new guys?

Not much. Dwumfour was ineffective. He got stood up at the line on a couple plays when a bit of penetration from him was likely to be a TFL because of Hurst getting in the backfield. Paye had a sack that was more or less a freebie, but I did like this ability to track back:

#19 DE to top

Dodging the swat and getting back to the ball saved Michigan a chunk there. If Gary does that on the second play maybe Barkley does the same thing; maybe he gets five yards.

Heroes?

The cornerbacks were probably ignored for a reason?

Maybe not so heroic?

Kinnel and Metellus were both sore spots, as was a confused Devin Bush and a version of Mike McCray who still doesn't know he should bail on a wheel route.

What does it mean for Rutgers and the future?

Well, probably not a whole lot for Rutgers. They can try to attack Michigan the same way with their 117th ranked offense. Good luck with that.

Michigan needs an approach where their deep safeties aren't that deep against good spread offenses. You have great cornerbacks. You're going to have to risk giving up the middle of the field on play action a bit to prevent this RPO stuff from killing you when you show zone.

The safeties may be a problem. Both guys had really bad whiffs on downfield tackles, and several other bad plays besides. They've been relatively sheltered by the DL, and this was an acid test they failed.

Bush is still a true sophomore. He'll learn from this and get better.

McCray should not be put on a Heisman level RB in man coverage. I thought we cleared that up in the bowl game last year.

Maybe throw it up to Gentry a lot. It works.