Upon Further Review: Northwestern Defense

Briefly: the refereeing?

Bad nocall on a PI on Mason; likewise when Avant was held on third down. One of the holding calls in the second half was bogus-but-understandable, one was obviously holding but not necessarily called every time, the other three are always called. Overall, fine.

You eviscerated the defense last week for giving up 420 yards and 17 points in regulation and they did it again, so...

Not this time. This was a much better defensive performance. As the Monday column mentioned, in the Iowa game the defense faced 11 drives; in this one they faced 16. Grant Mason got all up in the grill of Northwestern wideouts, Basanez was forced to make a large number of heroic plays to get the yards they did, and the defensive line made Northwestern line go splat (save for the times when they were outsmarted). There's a difference between Iowa killing drives by blocking someone in the back or dropping a pass and Michigan killing drives by treating Principal Belding like he isn't there.

The chart shows this clearly:

Basanez was under duress much of the night and when he wasn't it was usually because one of the offensive linemen was busy practicing for his knots merit badge. Michigan alternated man and zone and got burned on it a couple times, but outside of that Basanez was largely forced to make great plays to move the ball. Some dropped passes helped and Northwestern shot itself in the foot some but it's hard to move the ball when the only way you can block the opponent is by holding them.

What has happened to Massey?

Probably nothing. He was getting some stats and what seemed like pretty good pass rush last year, but that seems like a mirage now. This year he has 23 tackles through 9 games but only 10 are solos. He has one sack and no TFLs outside of that. If I added up all the +/- I think he would easily finish in last. The move inside from a 3-4 DE to a 4-3 DT has hurt him. When was the last time you saw a 6'8", 285 pound defensive tackle? He just can't get leverage at his height and weight. He's fine in pursuit--witness the screen he tracked down against the Wildcats--but hasn't beat an offensive lineman all year when the play has been run directly at him.

Who was that masked man?

Charles Woodson got real tall all of a sudden, huh? Or are you talking about Jamison? It could be either. Each turned in a selection of tantalizing plays where they slapped the taste out of an offensive lineman's mouth and then chased Basanez like howling ninja banshees. Crable even made a good play downfield by blowing up a screen. I'm not exactly sure where Crable's role is on this defense--I still remember Calhoun loping downfield outside of him--but his main problem when rushing the passer is running right by the quarterback because he's too fast. This is a good problem to have.

Jamison... wow. He's maybe 250 or 260 and thus technically undersized but he explodes into offensive tackles. Either that or he teleports past them. If Michigan's defensive scheme can't find a starting spot for him next year it's the wrong scheme. No offense to Biggs or Van Alstyne but Jamison is on another level. If Woodley returns (and Mel Kiper recently said he was the "fifth or sixth" best junior defensive end, XOXOXO Mel) Michigan may have one of the best sets of defensive ends in the country plus Branch inside. That's geting ahead of ourselves, though. Hopefully he doesn't try to put on 15 pounds. He doesn't need to be any stronger from appearances and I'd hate it if he started plodding around.

Burgess played well, didn't he?

Much better than against Iowa, yes. Not great. He's a lot like Henne in that he clearly has all the athletic ability he could possibly need but is lagging mentally. He was in position to make an important stop on Tyrell Sutton on their last-ditch first half drive and overran the play. Leon Hall was in position on the outside there and there was no reason to allow Sutton a cutback lane. Later the Burgess pendulum swung too far the other way on a 20 yard Sutton run when Burgess sat and waited to get blocked instead of attacking the hole. He made a number of impressive plays when he read the play right but he's still a tick slow several times a game.

If he can understand what he's doing as well as Harris he'll play as well as Harris, and then we'll be cooking. That's a key thing to watch going into next season. It's a shame he didn't redshirt--how much better does Burgess play look if he's a redshirt sophomore with two years left? Now we have to hope he puts it together next year.

What does it mean for Indi... er, Ohio State?

I wouldn't expect to see much of Mason's super-aggressive side. He's broken that out twice this year against teams with sort of meh wideouts. Holmes and Ginn are not meh. I'd like to see it, honestly. Smith makes poor decisions when pressured, and that can come from the corners just as well as the DBs. That is playing with fire. Fire, eh, we're cool.

Assuming Woodley is back and healthy, and let's not contemplate the alternative, I would very much like to see Branch get the majority of Massey's snaps. I realize that I've said this for about six straight games, but by the time OSU rolls around we should have every DE on the roster healthy. Jamison and Woods have played very well in Woodley's absence and have made more big plays in the last two games than Massey has all season. Branch was a monster at DT early in the year. If we're concerned about giving up gashing running yards, make Woodley the strongside DE and allow Jamison and Woods to pursue. This is doubly important because Smith is mobile and as we've seen lately the difference between someone who can run down a rolling quarterback and, say, Van Alstyne or Biggs is often the difference between a punt and a first down.

My major concerns are twofold:

• The problems with our outside linebackers persist and the Ohio State running game finds just as much success as everyone else has this year. If the safeties can play two deep I'll feel much better because issue number two is...
• Getting beat deep. Michigan's been very good about cutting off the big play this year, and this game has the look of a low-scoring slugfest. Long touchdowns == bad, mmkay.

The third, lurking thing is that despite the plethora of spread offenses we've gone up against we haven't really faced a running quarterback. Stanton's morphed into more of a passer and hardly crossed the line of scrimmage against us. Robinson had a couple of QB draws and a scramble or two but mostly looked to throw. That probably has something to do with our linebacker-delay tactic, but I still consider the running-QB defense to be somewhat untested.