Interesting "Michigan Monday" O-Zone read this week

Did they breakout how many of those under center runs were in 2nd and short or 3rd and short situations? Or how many came in late game/late half situations? 

I found this interesting too, but I wouldn't read too much into it. With our running game, one small adjustment or juke can turn a bad play into a touchdown.

It also could be that they're willing to burn some plays in order to set up big-play counters. I think we may do a bit more shotgun as we get into B1G play, but don't be surprised if we keep a solid rotation of under center, knowing that some runs are going for short or no gains, but that they are constraints or could turn into major gains.

A simplistic explanation is shotgun tends to be spread out as opposed to under the center where Harbaugh likes to bring in TEs inline thus bunching defensive players in the box. The more you have defenders in the box, the harder it is to run the ball. By spreading the out, you'll have less people in the box to deal with. This is why you see a lot of RBs from spread offense that averaged at least 6 ypc for that reason. Coaches count the defenders in the box and make adjustment pre-snap with offensive players looking to the sideline. If it's 6 or less, it's a run. 8 or more, it's a pass.

Michigan football hasn't rushed for more than 2.4 yards per carry from under center ignoring the top two rushes for 312 days.

The 79 yards on 12 carries under center stat did not feel right to me, so using Brian's UFR I looked at it myself.  It's important to note though that these stats from the OZone were only through 3 quarters, so he didn't count the 3 under center runs in the 4th quarter that went for 39 yards. 

Under center through 3 quarters I had a slightly different number, 12 carries for 82 yards (not counting sacks).  Of those 12, 3 were short down and distance situations.  There was a 3rd and 1 where Michigan got zero yards, a 4th and 1 where they barely got a yard and got the first down, and a 2nd and 2 from the goal line where they scored.  So that was 3 runs for 3 yards, but two of those were successful plays.  Of the remaining 9 carries 5 were successful (in that they picked up 4 or more yards on 1st down, more than half way to the first down yardage on 2nd down, and picked up the 1st down on 3rd or 4th down).  The successful plays were a 4 yarder on 2nd and 6, a 43 yarder on 3rd and 2, a 5 yarder on 2nd and 9, an 18 yarder on 2nd and 5, and a 5 yarder on 1st and 10.  The unsuccessful plays were 0 yards on 1st and 10 (going to the well again right after the 43 yarder, WMU adjusted), another 0 yards on 1st and 10, 2 yards on 2nd and goal from the 6, and 2 yards on 1st and 10.  

So, through 3 quarters they ran 12 times for 82 yards, 7 of those 12 carries being successful.  This didn't count the 4th quarter which was 3 more successful runs of 39 yards, bringing the full game under center running to 15 carries for 121 yards, 10 of which were successful.  Looking at this more closely and with our problems with pass protection, our under center run game is not high on my list of worries.  We never got stopped for negative yardage and a couple zero yard runs on 1st and 10 a game don't exactly lose the game for you.  

He's not as funny when we don't look like a cute, lovable, harmless baby seal.  He has to work extra to find things to discredit, and it seems to take the fun out of it for him.

It's not a good thing for us when Michigan Monday's are entertaining.

I hope the one after Ohio State is boring as hell, if he even does one. 

I'll wait for the grades, but I heard most comments imply that Kemp played well enough for a guy getting his first significant playing time. 

Kemp did his job very well from what I could tell. I'll defer to Brian once the UFR is published. 

I hope we see this. We used to have guys that could just plain beat their defenders, and other teams still do this regularly... and we haven't really tried yet. Protection is, of course, a problem, but I want to see what Nico, DPJ, and Gentry can do. 4 verts with them would be hard to defend if we can protect the QB at all. 

Because you need to pass protect long enough for them to get downfield. All of our long passes have been off of play action with max protect sets, which only leaves 1 or 2 WR. With 2 WR, you usually run one underneath to suck up the safeties or something to screw with the pass coverage responsibilities so the deep guy gets lost. 

Not sure why you're getting downvoted, but I agree. This board doesn't exist as just a link-dump to other places. I certainly appreciate content from other places, but it's a lazy op to just drop a link to somewhere else with literally no commentary.

What stood out to you from the article? Why did you link it? Why should I click it? A little bit of effort is all it takes to create a quality post.

I don't think anybody is trembling after watching us beat WMU. WMU is predicted to finish 4th in their division of the MAC and Notre Dame looked VERY suspect against Ball State last weekend @ home.

Roll through Northwestern and beat Wisconsin and then the heads will begin to turn.