In Game Adjustments: What is possible?
I have never played organized football, so I'm wondering what is possible in terms of mid-game adjustments to what the other team is doing. (I've asked about this before in other threads, but I haven't managed to get an answer so far.)
Example 1: the other team's CBs are playing 10 yards off your receivers. Should every OC's playbook include something to punish off coverage that should be installed/practiced preseason? If nothing's been installed, can you draw up a WR screen on a whiteboard at halftime, or even on the sidelines while the other team has the ball? I would like some insight about the extent to which you can have your team do things they have never done before in a game setting. Is that just totally out of the question, or is "take one step back, turn to the QB, catch the ball, run" a simple enough instruction that you expect a receiver to do it even if it hasn't been practiced?
Example 2: the other team is running crossing routes against man coverage, rubbing your defenders off and crushing you with YAC. (I learned from Madden '16 that this is an extremely obvious way to defeat man coverage when you have a one-on-one speed advantage, in the sense that it is the default thing to do according to the game's tutorials.) So when your opponent does it, how do you have to have prepared in order to stop it? I assume you can't tell your team to run a zone defense they've never practiced in the middle of a game. But what is it reasonable to expect a DC to have up their sleeve when their scheme is attacked in this kind of predictable way?
Presumably you guys can figure out why I'm giving those particular examples, but I am really interested in the general question about what kind of adjustments can be made in the middle of a game. (I will mention that for the first one, I'm thinking it's pretty reasonable to think you can't add a bubble screen on the fly since it comes with special blocking assignments that have to be taught and practiced--here's looking at you, Al--but maybe a very simple WR screen is another question.) So, please confine your shitting on Don Brown and/or Al Borges and/or everyone else you guys hate today to one or two subthreads, and leave some room for people who have played before to enlighten me. To those who do answer helpfully, thanks in advance.
September 26th, 2019 at 9:06 AM ^
I never played either, but I know the 1995 Detroit Lions exploited Example 1. If a guy was well off the line of scrimmage, Scott Mitchell would fire a pass immediately to the WR. One slipped tackle later, they'd pick up close to 10 yards at least. Though they got blitzed in the Wild Card, they set a franchise record for points. But it was a simple "check with me" at the line of scrimmage.
September 26th, 2019 at 9:09 AM ^
This should be called the "Lloyd Carr play." Literally one of the most stubborn men in the history of the universe decided to set aside his GRRRR and would brutally punish teams on the outside with the exact type of WR we have right now when they attempted to stack the box. Michigan fans have been pining for bubble screens or quick hitches since the day he walked out the door. All we got was the extraordinarily difficult looking "tunnel screen" with small catchy-runny dudes for one year late Al Borges. Just a shame.
September 26th, 2019 at 10:50 AM ^
We had some solid outside screens in 2015 with Darboh and Chesson, which was largely attributed to Fisch.
Edit: Didn't see the post right below saying the same thing, oops.
September 26th, 2019 at 12:01 PM ^
Exactly right. Also RB screens.
September 26th, 2019 at 10:27 AM ^
We did this under Jedd in 2015 a lot. Rudock had the freedom to throw quick, based on coverage. I believe Seth even did a Neck Sharpie segment on it.
September 26th, 2019 at 10:34 AM ^
I will have to take your word for it. I don't recall that being a large part of Jedd's offense. He used more sweeps and end-arounds to get the ball to the edge on early downs. We threw some hitches, but they were of the 5-7 yard variety and were sometimes good for a nice gain but were still "contested" routes.
September 26th, 2019 at 12:03 PM ^
I am with you. Maybe it happened with Jedd (he is an offensive genius) but my main memories are Terrell and Braylon doing it.
September 26th, 2019 at 11:24 AM ^
Darboh particularly was almost a guaranteed 10yds and first down when a corner played 10 yards off. This was a great part of the Jedd-era M offense. It is asinine that has somehow disappeared again.
September 26th, 2019 at 9:08 AM ^
It appears, based on my 30ish years of MIchigan fandom that effective in-game adjustments to take away opponent advantages are possible but can occur only in years in which Halley's comet is visible from Ann Arbor.
September 26th, 2019 at 9:21 AM ^
the british, wearing redcoats and marching shoulder to shoulder into battle were appalled that the colonist would hide and shoot from behind cover. have they no honor?
it didn't work out so well for them either.
September 26th, 2019 at 9:25 AM ^
I like those colonists---obviously they also hated any and all red uniforms.
September 26th, 2019 at 9:58 AM ^
goddamn scarlet-coats.
September 26th, 2019 at 9:22 AM ^
Throw the ball downfield to your big athletic receivers with elite talent and let them make some plays. Take the ball away from fumbling Shea and stop throwing screen passes to tight ends. Feed Charbonnet if he's healthy and get him on the edge. I'm not bashing Shea, but we have better athletes with bigtime play making ability. Let's give them a chance and stop relying on him to make good decisions, handle the ball and fit it in tight windows to covered tight ends
September 26th, 2019 at 9:45 AM ^
He can't see the receivers. This is the problem.
September 26th, 2019 at 10:01 AM ^
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Who's open?
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September 26th, 2019 at 10:02 AM ^
Surprised our current staff hasn't tried to solve this problem by putting Glasgow in at LT.
September 26th, 2019 at 11:44 AM ^
Maybe the receivers should get open for once so Shea can throw to them? So far this season UM’s best WR group of all-time has been shutdown by MTSU, Army, and Wisconsin.
September 26th, 2019 at 12:03 PM ^
The receivers are open. He is late with the ball or doesn't see them completely. The idea that a receiver has to have no one around them to be open is faulty logic as well. If you are 6'4 and the corner is 5'10, no matter the space, placing the ball high is how the receiver is open. That is their separation.
September 26th, 2019 at 12:24 PM ^
Disagree, but only because folks have posted screenshots about how blindingly wide open WRs have been while Shea holds the ball or fires into coverage.
September 26th, 2019 at 12:29 PM ^
It's not always the QB. It's not always the WRs. It's a mess right now. There's a wide open "CON" in the endzone in that first one.
September 26th, 2019 at 1:16 PM ^
This had occurred to me as well but when I saw that he's supposedly 6'2" I questioned that likelihood. Of course he may only be 6' without cleats on, so it's possible.
There's also this:
A former Big Ten coordinator added of Patterson, "He's not a quick-trigger guy, he's just not. He's a run around and make plays guy. It's a problem."
September 26th, 2019 at 9:30 AM ^
I adjust my package 50 to 60 times during a game.
Harbaugh can do better
September 26th, 2019 at 9:43 AM ^
You wear pants or meshy's? Meshy's i am at about 35 adjustments.
September 26th, 2019 at 9:47 AM ^
....much easier to do that if you wear a kilt or going commando!
/I will show myself out now
September 26th, 2019 at 10:36 AM ^
When your balls are stuck to your thigh and you're being discreet.
September 26th, 2019 at 10:46 AM ^
Bat wings. Very annoying.
September 26th, 2019 at 11:03 AM ^
Maybe you need to switch to jorts...
September 26th, 2019 at 12:27 PM ^
Or Speedos
September 26th, 2019 at 3:10 PM ^
this is a no shit story. I sang in our church choir a few years ago and was asked to sing in a trio and my Dad filmed it. we took it home to watch with the whole family and while watching AND as I was singing I literally grabbed my junk and shifted it to the side while holding the microphone with the other...we all LOST it and had tears running down our faces, the first person to say Anything was my wife who screams "SEEEEE I TOLD YOU THAT YOU DO IT ALL THE TIME!!!!!" HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
September 26th, 2019 at 9:55 AM ^
if i remember correctly, i feel like we use to throw to darboh and chesson at the line of scrimmage pretty frequently when we had jedd
September 26th, 2019 at 10:00 AM ^
Word. That was some good shit.
September 26th, 2019 at 10:37 AM ^
Darboh and Chesson were solid reliable receivers. Chesson was really good late '15 and Darboh was excellent in '16. DPJ and Nico for sure are more talented than either of those two. Black very well could be as well. The fact that they are not utilized like those two were is a shame.
Jedd Fisch had this offense with an average arm and statue mobility and a grinder but very slow RB look like one of the best in the nation for most of the 2016 season. While the line play was better, supplant this years team in that system and we would not be struggling to score points.
September 26th, 2019 at 10:49 AM ^
We could be excellent right now with 2016 Speight and our current receivers. Sure, no RPO, but he would at least be able to hit DPJ without needing a clean pocket for 5 mins.
September 27th, 2019 at 10:51 AM ^
you talking about throw it high speight, nahhhhh im not too convinced on that notion
September 26th, 2019 at 11:00 AM ^
Yup, we kept the wrong guy as OC after the 2016 season, and we've been paying for it ever since. Anyone remember the train formation in short yardage? It worked; why did we dump it?
September 26th, 2019 at 12:28 PM ^
I believe the consensus was the train formation was all window dressing. No one else copied it. It was fun but it’s not a schematic advantage.
September 26th, 2019 at 10:01 AM ^
When I played in D3, bubble screens were part of our 3 step game. So, the QB had a run/pass check at the LOS based on the alignment of the defense. If the defense was giving us something easy in the passing game like that, we could take it. We would adjust formations to manipulate the defensive alignment, and any plays that we went to had been practiced many times. Implementing them in a game even if they weren't a part of the original game plan was usually not an issue with enough experience on the field. I imagine adjusting coverage to something that has been practiced but wasn't necessarily part of the original game plan would be similar for a defense.
September 26th, 2019 at 10:06 AM ^
Jorts are possible
September 26th, 2019 at 10:08 AM ^
Currently a high school coach:
- Absolutely every coach should have this installed. We literally call it a "Now" route. If corners are going to play 8 yards off we'll chuck it out and worst case scenario is 3-4 yards. Typically the WR will take a hard step or two forward to get the CB to back pedal so he can't jump the route and then come back and look for the ball
- There's a few things you can do with man coverage: change who's defending certain players, adjust safety help, re-route players/jam at the LOS to disrupt timing
September 26th, 2019 at 10:37 AM ^
Hey. I heard you coach high school football. That's great.
September 26th, 2019 at 10:31 AM ^
No. 1 Yes
No. 2 Yes
September 26th, 2019 at 11:20 AM ^
Look, these guys make a shit ton of money and have spent their lives doing this. They obviously know what adjustments can be made. Same as the rest of us novice arm chair coaches! The real question is WHY aren’t they doing it???? We get inexplicable things like trying to run mason from the gun from the 7??? Wtf ... Or leaving a gaping hole on the 1 yard line. And trying to crash said hole with Glasgow smh...
If they don’t put they players in positions to succeed they won’t. I like Brown but he can’t come up with a good D against top ten teams to save his life here. And Harbaugh has had one good offense in five years. It’s mind boggling
September 26th, 2019 at 11:31 AM ^
I'll attempt to give some insight on Example 1, but my experience playing football at a collegiate level amounted to a single season at a D3 school (Point of reference: annually, our biggest loss was always to a JUCO school, and we thought those guys were BIG and FAST. So not great competition compared to what these guys are doing on Saturdays)
On any given down, the QB would read the opposing defense and analyze the coverage at the line of scrimmage. As a WR, we had a "route tree" for a given game, so basically just a word that corresponded to a route after the quarterback yelled a predefined word to check.
For the sake of simplicity assume the route tree is as follows, though they were always a word grouping that we memorized during game week (think easy things like food groups, bands, etc):
0: Bubble
1: WR Comeback (screen)
2: Slant
3: 5yd out
4: 10yd out
5: 8yd dig route
6: Post
7: Go route
So after analyzing the coverage the quarterback (if he felt the need to check) would yell the check word and then the routes, which were to be understood from the outermost receiver, left to right inward.
"Ready...VIPER VIPER...OH TWO SIX SEVEN....SET...HUT"
When we heard "viper" (as the check word) we knew a change was coming. If I was lined up as the outside receiver in a 4-wide package running a Post from the play called in the huddle, and the quarterback checked me to a bubble route, it must have been something he saw in the coverage that necessitated a a quick pass, or that I was going to be used as a decoy to open up a different route based on the coverage being read.
Obviously the caveat here is that this is football at an extremely watered down and rudimentary level so, there weren't exactly exotic blitzes and strange coverages to read. That being said, the guy that was our QB was dumber than a doornail and could still analyze a defense pre-snap and make what ultimately ended up being productive route changes at the line of scrimmage.
What it means for Michigan? Who fuckin knows man, I'm going hiking Saturday.
September 26th, 2019 at 11:35 AM ^
Following for replies, but I really think we're seeing some of the growing pains of Gattis as a first time play caller.
There were a lot of bad takes suggesting that the problems with Michigan's offense were that Harbaugh "wasn't letting Gattis loose" or was "keeping Gattis in straight jacket" but if anything, it looks like Harbaugh gave Gattis too much free reign too soon and we're watching him learn how to ride a bike without training wheels.
In the Army game, it was clear that Gattis had no counterpunch to Army's constant blitzes. Those corner blitzes were begging to be exploited with quick throws, but we never hit back with any way to punish them to selling out to blitz.
Gattis is a bright guy and I'm sure he comes up great game plans on paper, but it feels like he doesn't yet know what to do when the gameplan doesn't go according to plan.
This isn't Alabama where you can just draw up a play and assume that its going to be executed perfectly everytime. The best coaches are able to be build an offenese to fit their players, but this is strating to feel like a Rich Rod scenario where the coach is trying to install a scheme that is brilliant on paper, but is completely divorced from the personnel.
September 26th, 2019 at 11:48 AM ^
We are getting out coached. Both in the week leading up to the game and during the game. This program needs COACHING!!!!
September 26th, 2019 at 12:30 PM ^
Our high school offense has checks built in to take advantage of some of this stuff. There's no way that Michigan doesn't have the ability to make checks at the line, adjust routes at the line, etc. It shouldn't even take halftime adjustments to get it done.
September 26th, 2019 at 12:40 PM ^
I was a DI GA and DIII position coach while in grad school some years back. From my experience, coaches would "never", in the midst of a game, draw up new plays or ask players to use techniques they have not practiced before. Opponents sometimes show unexpected stuff in a game, but coaches will almost always adjust using known and practiced techniques and combinations. Could it happen, yes. Does it happen, exceedingly rare. New plays are created or pulled out of the dusty portion of the playbook during the week, but those get practiced/readied for the coming opponent.
September 27th, 2019 at 8:12 AM ^
Thanks, BubblerBoy, to you, drexel, acarrick, TheKoolAidGuy, and Magnus for the directly responsive answers. Very helpful!
(ETA: I see I picked a good time to go out of character and behave graciously. 10000 points woo!)
September 26th, 2019 at 1:27 PM ^
In my football experience (and business too), coaching is all about preparation in advance, knowing opponents tendencies, devising specific strategies and options for specific situations....and most importantly PREPARING your team for these situations in advance. If this is done...only then are "in game adjustments" effective.
Its obvious that Gattis and Harbaugh (who is historically not a great in-game coach) failed in that regard last week, and in prior games this season.
For a great example of a great coach who prepares well.... check out this clip from Bill Bellichick - Football Life (clip will not embed):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVrIlXDZOF8&feature=youtu.be