WTKA Roundtable 9/12/2019: LloydBall
Things discussed:
- Shea's keeps: Mentioned Neck Sharpies—you still have to test that shuffled end sometimes anyway
- If you have a spread offense and the other team can shut off your keep game, you've failed.
- Borges problems again: not punishing teams that are soft on the edge.
- The CB blitzes were RPS-3's because they were crushing the Arc Read Zone
- Frustrating because McCaffrey comes in for three plays and they're all bad reads.
- Nico doesn't have one jump ball situation. Throw it to covered Nico!
- Shea's seeing ghosts.
- Michigan fumbled on three of its four possessions, Ronnie Bell gave up 100 yards of field position on punts.
- The RB rotation is irrelevant.
- One great call: the wheel route. Lost the screen game—surprised that wasn't more part of the gameplan.
- Smoke route? You cannot let teams play 10 yards off your receivers.
- Spath's source: His analysis is off but the source is good. When you have an RPO, you don't get to do decide if you're running or passing.
- The second 4th and 2: disagree whether following the blockers would work.
- Caller: Army's offense isn't applicable to the rest of the season/they're not going to run that 3-3-5 again.
- Army's defense has a lot of blitzes—Michigan got got by a blitz once, picked up that blitz later.
- Have to be worried when Rice plays better than you on offense.
- Is it fixable?
[Player after THE JUMP]
You can catch the entire episode on Michigan Insider's podcast stream on Podbean.
Segment two is here. Segment three is here.
THE USUAL LINKS
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- What's with the theme music?
Shea's pocket presence has not improved and that's worrisome
September 13th, 2019 at 9:18 AM ^
Can anyone explain why Al Borges is talking to Sam about the Michigan offense? Because now we get to hear Sam tie himself into knots to deflect criticism of both the current coaching staff and a member of a former coaching staff.
September 13th, 2019 at 9:39 AM ^
Sam was falling over himself trying to interject and diffuse the Roundtable's thoughts about the game.
I know people joke about it here and there but it came through extra clear that Sam is a company man.
September 13th, 2019 at 10:12 AM ^
I know people gripe about Sam for that but I for one want the guy talking to ‘croots to be a company man.
He gives us access we wouldn’t otherwise have and all we have to do is take some of it with a few grains of salt.
September 13th, 2019 at 10:15 AM ^
He's got to keep things from devolving, and his takes are not unreasonable. It probably has more to do with broadcast quality than anything else. I think Sam is a pro, he does it all with good humor and makes it look easier than it probably is.
September 13th, 2019 at 10:18 AM ^
I got the impression Sam was just trying to stay positive while everyone else wanted to jump off a bridge. It created contrast and kept the show from being a funeral dirge.
September 13th, 2019 at 11:42 AM ^
This drove me crazy. Sam always referencing Borges' thoughts was infuriating. Tough to have a debate about someone's opinion who isn't in the room. Could sense Brian's frustration as well.
September 13th, 2019 at 11:43 AM ^
The thing that really made me lose it with Sam this week was when Brian was talking about throwing a smoke screen on 4th and 2 and Sam questions if they would do that with McCaffrey in the game. They let Michael Barrett do it earlier in the game.
September 13th, 2019 at 3:51 PM ^
Ya...and Brians point of, if McCaffery CAN'T execute a smoke screen then why is he on the team...Sam laughed but Brian isnt wrong.
This was one of the worst MGoBlog roundtables I have listened to
September 13th, 2019 at 7:59 PM ^
I don't think Brian only said that about DCaff. But even if he did, it still applies to Shea as well.
September 13th, 2019 at 9:28 AM ^
They have a show together on Wednesdays. So now Sam is stuck trying to defend the opinions of the guy that put Denard under center. Sam is going to lose a lot of credibility over trying to back up Borges, credibility that is already thin with a lot of the fanbase because he tends to avoid negative news about the program in the first place.
Edit: Meant to be a response to SMart
September 13th, 2019 at 10:53 AM ^
It’s pathetic seeing Sam be a complete shill for a terrible coach in Borges and this coaching staff’s complete lack of common sense in the Army game.
September 13th, 2019 at 11:14 AM ^
I usually stick up for Sam because you have to put his comments in context knowing that his access comes with the inability to go full Valenti, even when maybe the staff deserves it.
However this week between Monday and Wednesday he had 3, yes THREE, extended segments where he repeated over and over that "Al Borges said Shea only missed ONE pull on the zone read" and continually acted like this was the end of discussion because THE GREAT AL BORGES HAS SPOKEN and Al had already "Watched the tape THREE TIMES, by SUNDAY!" Yes, the great OC that is out of football and was run out of town in his last few stops, put Denard under center, burned several downs to set up one 20 yard counter later in the game. Completely disregarding that Gattis, the actual OC, said in his presser that reads were missed.
He's reached full Podcast saturation where he has too many interests and people he has to support as well as being a major voice in recruiting. I think any objectivity during TMI is really becoming difficult, if not impossible at this point.
September 13th, 2019 at 11:49 AM ^
Why the fuck would anyone want to start a radio broadcast with a guy who got fired for failing at his job at Michigan?
How does that possibly make Sam NOT look like a shill when fans all know Borges is a horrible coach.
September 13th, 2019 at 3:53 PM ^
I LOL'd when Brian said something like "well i dont want to say this now.... um but we are in Al Borges mode right now" in reference to zero smoke screens
Paraphrasing but you get it.... i agree Sam is doing himself a disservice with the new segment. Feels clunky as hell. Al is saying Shae only missed one read, then we hear their were multiple.... just recipe for disaster.
September 13th, 2019 at 9:39 AM ^
If the opposing team can shutdown your QB pull, you failed
I don't agree with this. The point of zone read is to buy back a blocker for the QB who otherwise doesn't have to be accounted for in the run game. If the other team wants to burn a defender forcing the give every play, the ZR has done it's job. The only time it's a problem is if the guy can force a give and still tackle the back, but that only happened the one time you mentioned, but even then he had to fold back 5-6 yards to do it. Every other correct read had the QB's threat to pull keep a defender from being relevant to stopping the give, and overwhelmingly gave M a blocker for each defender in the box.
September 13th, 2019 at 10:02 AM ^
And the BPONE is real after this Army game.
September 13th, 2019 at 10:16 AM ^
I agree that Brain was a little hyperbolic with that statement but it is radio. I think it would be accurate to say that if the defense can force the give and still stop the running back consistently then you've failed. But that is pretty obvious. But it is also largely what happened to Michigan as the game progressed.
In the beginning Michigan had success with the ZR and the RPO but as Michigan moved to running them almost exclusively they became less effective. On many of those plays, Michigan made the "right" read, and the OL blocked it well, and the play still failed (like the 4th and 2 with McCaffrey.)
I know this isn't what you are saying but I think it is delusional to think that Army is good enough and different enough to have done that to the Michigan offense, particularly in the second half, and not have that repeated by most of the remaining teams on the schedule. When there were problems and Army tightened the screws on Michigans base plays, Gattis went into a shell and became even more predictable and conservative. They won and they had to win but that is not going to work very often. MSU and OSU and Wisconsin will eat that alive.
Michigan seemingly has no response to a scrape exchange but spent valuable practice time during the transition working on stupid 2 QB plays? That really has me worried. Perhaps Gattis' obvious confidence in himself needs tempering.
The silver lining is that whatever they were doing in the second half, they stopped doing in OT when they decided it was time "to win the game." So Gattis seemed to acknowledge that the second half offense was not optimal for scoring. Which is really good. I would have preferred to win the game in regulation but maybe the defense was exhausted.
September 13th, 2019 at 12:13 PM ^
Why didn't we respond to the scrap exchange by having Patterson or McCaffrey dump the ball off to a WR for a short pass + yards after the catch? I mean if the defense is going to dedicate two defenders to the running back and QB keep, then shouldn't that have left a WR / TE open for a quick short dump pass?
Seems like the only thing we did against Army was have Shea read the two defenders on the edge and either give for a run or keep for a run, without ever dumping off the pass... the P in RPO
September 13th, 2019 at 12:42 PM ^
But it is also largely what happened to Michigan as the game progressed.
That's not true for the most part. The basic response to scrape exchange is simply to read the scrape and option the correct person (the guy scraping over), which Michigan did for the most part. As long as you do that, you still take a defender out of the run defense, it's just a different guy. Take a look at my diary, they responded to scrape exchanges fine in the first half and (spoiler alert) my look at the second half was mostly the same.
The problem with the McCaffery 4th was Army jumped the snap count with a CB blitz and he basically got there the same time as the ball. There was no time to adjust to this and the exchanged guy also remained unblocked and tackled. Michigan's response to this with Eubanks pulling around was borked simply because the CB was there too damn fast to do anything.
Michigan's problems on the RPS -3s were mostly that they didn't know what to do when extra guys came in run blitz. The normal scrape exchanges where it's just two guys changing roles, they responded to fine. Also, especially in the 4th qtr, they started running a lot of no-read runs in non-short yardage scenarios.
September 13th, 2019 at 2:46 PM ^
Great! I'd really like to believe that those two 4th down calls were more than wishful thinking. I'm sure the offense will get lots of in-game practice dealing run blitzes if the play calling remains the same!
September 13th, 2019 at 9:56 AM ^
I understand that Dylan is making incorrect reads too but I get the feeling we know what Shea is at this point. If Dylan got more playing time he might improve his reads. Would that not be better than what we have now?
The Wisconsin game may not be the best time to make the switch but if Shea is still hurt after that game and continues to make bad reads/bad throws then the next game would be a great time to give Dylan a shot and see if he can do better.
September 13th, 2019 at 10:04 AM ^
The notion that what Army's defense was doing to us is something that none of our opponents will even attempt to do is bizarre.
September 13th, 2019 at 10:11 AM ^
Not really, no one is going to install a weird denfense just for one game with Michigan. They'll try to use some of the same concepts but who knows if it will work as well from more traditional sets.
September 13th, 2019 at 10:43 AM ^
Hard disagree. This is essentially what Ohio State does on offense to us every year, dating back to Tressel/Troy Smith.
MSU also does it on offense to us (with a bit less success now that Harbaugh is coaching).
Defense is just as simple to change up for one game - see Patriots-Rams Super Bowl - especially if you've been repping it behind the scenes.
September 13th, 2019 at 12:33 PM ^
So you think going from a 4-3 to a unique 3-4 is a reasonable install for 1 opponent for a full game? Like the other poster said a team that already uses a 3-4 like Wisconsin could possibly do it. Michigan was able to run a different defense for Army, more or less, because they had a whole off season but teams that just saw what Army did don't have that luxury.
Those teams don't change the entire stucture of their offense for Michigan. You're comparing apples and broccoli.
September 13th, 2019 at 2:12 PM ^
Stealing and adapting what other teams have done is as old as college football. I’d be willing to bet that in multiple games this season we will see defenses doing things that are very reminiscent of what Army did. Whether they’ll have the same success with it is another question.
September 13th, 2019 at 10:11 AM ^
I think it's harder for some teams to do than others if we're talking about doing the exact same thing. Wisconsin, for example, already runs a 3-4 and it would be easier for them to try and replicate it. Teams less suited can at least shuffle exchange, bring MLB/WLB blitzes frequently and put their CB's in the parking lot/bring up safeties until Michigan starts punishing these with playcalling and hot reads.
September 13th, 2019 at 10:16 AM ^
Yep, and you'd have to think they will. God I hope so anyway, if they don't what in the hell is the point of having all of these offensive analysts?
Shea's issues with zone don't seem like they'll be going away so I expect to see a lot of that in the future.
September 13th, 2019 at 10:18 AM ^
Thank Goodness Craig hammered Brian on the banner last week.
Bravo CR.
September 13th, 2019 at 10:33 AM ^
Sam trying to half-defend the playcalling and Brian having none of it.
September 13th, 2019 at 11:08 AM ^
I'm normally quite apprehensive about critiquing playcalling because there are so many factors that go into it that fans are not privy to. But this was so glaringly obvious from an Xs and Os standpoint that something was completely out of touch with reality...
September 13th, 2019 at 10:51 AM ^
Is it fixable?
Seeing the doctor and taking your meds first requires saying, "Yeah, I'm sick." Even if all you have is a sinus infection, hubris can make you take it to the grave.
September 13th, 2019 at 11:06 AM ^
My 5-years-ago self would have rationalized this game as Harbaugh wanting to save all his good plays for better teams, and wanting to emulate an old fashioned knock down dragout old style football game.
LOLOL
September 13th, 2019 at 11:20 AM ^
This was remeniscient of the Iowa game (I know, we've never played Iowa, but I think I had a dream about it). I dreamt that the offense was imploding with a lead so Harbaugh turtled and tried to run out the clock. And failed.
Back in reality, last week UM was having serious pass pro, QB decision-making, and turnover issues against a blitzing defense playing zone coverage and an offense that plays to amplify high-variance plays like fumbles. So they were scared that by playing aggressively, they would turn a slim Army lead into a big Army lead by giving them short fields. But now you're trying to out-Army with an offense that isn't designed for it. Also, by grinding out clock you're FURTHER amplifying the effects of high-variance plays. So I don't like it. . . but I do get it. It was a valid approach, in that it worked.
But if the playcalling was at least debatable, the real problem was the PREPARATION. Army's 404 Tite was on tape. Their triple option was on tape. Brown did his homework and shut down the triple option. Gattis didn't do his, and neglected to prepare anything as an answer to how Army defended the zone read. And that's a big, BIG problem for our young offensive coordinator.
September 13th, 2019 at 3:06 PM ^
Exactly on the preparation part. I would also add ADAPTATION. To respond to zone read failures you adapt by running up the gut? Huh? I hate to say it, but this also falls as much on Harbaugh as it does on Gattis. If you see the CB's 10yds off the receivers how do you not get on the headset and tell Gattis to take advantage? Where is the creative mind we all loved when Harbaugh first came here. He seems to be a shell of his former self.
September 13th, 2019 at 12:05 PM ^
Just take solace in the fact that it is entirely possible to put up a pile of crap in one game and pull it together the rest of the season.
See: literally every other team in CFB. 2017 OSU. 2018 OSU. 2016 PSU. 2019 MSU (so far)
One game is not the end of the world, and given the weirdness of Army in general and the turnovers, I really don't think it's particularly indicative of the offense going forward. Not taking free yards when they're given is worrisome, but the coaches have great football minds and will likely recognize that and correct it. Gattis is doing what he's doing for the first time ever. There will be and are growing pains that I expect to get better.
September 13th, 2019 at 12:13 PM ^
The sad thing is tho that none of those teams are Michigan.
Since Lloyd Michigan has been collapsing by the time November comes through year over year. Hence the crap records in bowls and against OSU.
September 13th, 2019 at 12:14 PM ^
Just take solace in the fact that it is entirely possible to put up a pile of crap in one game and pull it together the rest of the season.
I'm old enough to be well familiar with such variations, and you may well be right. The concern is that if you're a stubborn asshole like me, you know that the worst problems to solve are similarly stubborn assholes standing between you and simple logic.
No one here is pretending to be the second coming of Fielding Yost. But just looking at Army's alignment we can see:
- Short yardage
- Close game
- Time running out
- Nico Collins is an NFL receiver
- Army's CBs aren't Nico Collins
- Nobody within ten yards of Nico Collins
And they don't throw the fucking ball!!
That is supremely easy to fix, except for the fact that the ONLY reason they didn't fix it during the game is because some stubborn asshole chose not to. And nothing, NOTHING in the world is harder to fix.
September 13th, 2019 at 12:40 PM ^
If Harbaugh gets punked by Dantini yet again at home he needs to be shown the door immediately after the game.
September 13th, 2019 at 12:57 PM ^
Ty Butterfield don’t you think he will be out-coached by Dantonio this year? I do.
Michigan will fumble multiple times. Not be able to run on MSU’s D. MSU offense will have a unique one-off game plan for Brown based on OSU/FL games last year that they have been running since June in prep for this game.
Don Brown will forget Lewerke can run once his receivers can’t get open.
September 13th, 2019 at 1:58 PM ^
Michigan ran for nearly 200 yards against MSU last year. MSU had 94 yards of offense.
September 13th, 2019 at 12:28 PM ^
Hello BPONE, my old friend
September 13th, 2019 at 12:40 PM ^
I've been listening to Brian's analysis for a few years now; and I say this in all honesty with no snark. It would be really cool for Brian to be the OC of like a HS team. He seems to have really picked up alot of offensive knowledge. I'd like to see what an offense that he built looked like.
September 13th, 2019 at 12:55 PM ^
If we are the Leaders and the Best then ---
Lets do crowd OC - a direct game feed from where the OC sits in the booth fed here and using technology Mgoblog crowd votes for a play. Bamn. Innovation that'll leave 'Bama and OSU in dust.
But yes, I'd like to see what Brian can do as OC.
September 13th, 2019 at 2:16 PM ^
Not sure if you picked it up, but I don't mean for Michigan. I don't think he or anyone else would say he as an analyst could step into a college position.
I'm honestly thinking he might have enough to play around with a High School (HS) offense though. He obviously loves the offensive side of the ball; and has a mind that likes to pick apart things and look for advantages on the field. I also think he explains things very well. And if you like kids, coaching can be amazingly rewarding.
I think High School because Pop Warner and middle school aren't yet at the level they could absorb what he has.
September 13th, 2019 at 2:05 PM ^
What I've wondered is how often Brian compliments an offense. Did he like Jedd? I think he did. He loved RichRod, and that offense was crap. Hated Hoke with both Borges and Nuss. Don't remember if he liked Jedd - maybe he did? Hated Pep.
That's a lot of hate of OC's (to be fair, that's a lot of crappy OC's). What I wonder is if you gave a blind test without jerseys with Clemson or Alabama of a few of their low output games over the last few years, what would the analysis be? It's easy to point out flaws after a game, much harder to see things in-game. And I still think there are things that football coaches understand and now about that this blog does not.
September 13th, 2019 at 3:14 PM ^
IIRC he liked Jedd; while recognizing that offense wasn't his cup of tea. But he liked the way it was different and took advantage of defenses.
September 13th, 2019 at 3:42 PM ^
brian was nothing but complimentary and excited after the MTSU game...even though they weren't flawless, the entire MGoBlog crew were anticipating what could be run from those formations.
no one is complimentary with the Army game because it was bad and deserved criticism.
Rice having a higher yyc and a higher ypp on offense is probably pretty frustrating to Brian...and most posters
September 13th, 2019 at 5:47 PM ^
Yes, this seems right on the money.
September 13th, 2019 at 6:36 PM ^
I don’t get the far ranging takes between the first two games, going from quite optimistic to very negative in a week. Give this offense 4 games before drawing big conclusions.
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