first 3 quarters

Thanks for the analysis, Gsimmons. The game moves so fast that's just about impossible for me to break down a play and analyze what happened. All we fans see is the end result and thus unfairly place blame on the wrong players, who may have done their job but others didn't do their job and caused a breakdown in the defense.

what im hearing is just plain wrong, and im trying to show people that. If they want to listen fine, if they dont whatever....

Michigan played mostly man in this game and 90% 4-3... they gave up some inside slants and some flair routes.. second half same thing. There is mostly man, some zone blitzes, lots of presure, and michigan is inches away form making big plays, the defense is getting better. The defensive coaches are putting the kids in places to succedd. some times when you bring a lot of presure, you get burned in man to man, sometimes when you bring presure you give up seams against zones.. you will see those things happening in the second half. But for the most part msu had to earn everything they got, and the defense played well, but not perfect. and got worn down a bit... simple as that..

Thanks for the analysis gsimms.

I'm pretty sure you meant to type 'nads' but my gsimms decoder ring kept turning that into 'and.'

Otherwise, it was very interesting. However, I would still like to take you up on your offer to 'bite' you. I don't live in North Carolina. How can this be accomplished?

Great analysis - gives me some hope for the future, although I understand about 5% of the breakdown.

Thanks Gsimmons for the effort. Can't be easy to do that and do the thing needed for your team.

Thanks Gsimmons for putting in the detailed review of the defense. I expected many of the formations and terminology to be over my head and at times it was.

I don't want this to come off as harsh criticism since I have no interest in biting you, but I thought I'd try to offer some constructive feedback.  Take it or leave it, that's all.

When you use so many specific terms for formations and play calls it is naturally going to be a complicated piece. But I think some of your analysis is lost due to some simple things:

-- Could you try to reference player jersey numbers more consistently? I think readers of your page will know the players by number and having that really makes things more clear. But too often you just refer to them by position, which is less clear.

-- Be careful with your abbreviations. Within the same sentence you used the same abbreviation to refer to two things: DT = Defensive Tackle or Double Team. That's just an example. They aren't really a problem, but keeping them to a minimum makes it a much easier summary to digest.

-- I know we're spoiled by Brian's UFR, but punctuation and capitalization would make this a really cool summary. It is pretty hard to read as written. Maybe you could keep the freeform style if you put it into more of a bulleted list.

Again, it was a GREAT summary that I think we all needed to read to learn what is and isn't working on the defense. And I understand and respect the amount of effort you put into it. I just wanted to offer some ideas to make this a really cool piece that everyone will anxiously await like they do with the UFR. Thanks for the insight!

gold

Gsimmons.....please don't take my comments personally. I have kids the same age as yours and I'm amazed that you have time to post anything at all - let alone something to the level of detail that you did here. It is flat out amazing.

I was just saying that if you want to hold off on posting a few days to make it even more powerful, those were things I think you could do. Please don't think I was telling you what you did was bad.

Hell, I wouldn't recommend that ANYONE take time away from their family to watch, review, study, or pay attention to the 2008 Michigan Football Team. Go Red Wings!

Thanks for the insight, gsimms.