Manball: SI's Mandel says it works.

Look, if a college football coach wants to feature one of the top yardage-shredding and point scoring offense in the country, then he can decide to do that.  If such achievements are important to a coach, then he probably doesn't decide to apply the manball offensive philosophy.  The 2012 college football national offensive statistics bear this out pretty clearly.

LaTech, Baylor, Oregon, Marshall, Oklahoma St., Arizona (dare I even mention it?), Nevada, West Virginia and Texas Tech are NOT "manball" teams, but Oklahoma is from time to time. There are actually very few "Manball" or "traditional pro set" teams left in college football anymore: Alabama, USC, Wisconsin come to mind.

My impression is that Brady Hoke really doesn't care all that much about offense.  He downplays it every time he's asked.  I think Hoke's idea of a perfect offense would be like the 1997 team: Dominant, sexy, steal-the-show defense but with a rather homely, vanilla,  passion killer underwear-wearing offense , with a lunch-pail quarterback that directs the team to 17 or 20 points, and done.  

"What? 21 points? That's 3 touchdowns, man! Now let's not get out of hand here!"

In 2014 when Michigan features a brand new quarterback, I'm pretty sure they'll will run a multiple offense with some Manballish sets. Hopefully it will all be creative, new and explosive as hell. But given what we know thus far, I have major doubts.

It may not matter though. I mean if Michigan beats Ohio State 20-14, do we really care whether the offense is as sexy and lethal as Oregon's?

Well, then I guess that settles that question.

EDIT: but wait, what does Dennis Dodd say? WHAT DOES DODD SAY?

mental AND physical tools. That means seeing 9 or 10 in the box and changing the play, seeing a corner ready to blitz and change into another set. I think that is what they are missing and if you are going to play manball you can't turn the ball over.

ohio ran 70 plays to Michigans 47. You can't manball a team to death on 47 plays. I'm sure the Nebraska game had close to the same play count.

We'll see but I think the coaches chose to just try to get by on the OL this year in the better of the program. Playing freshmen would have compounded the problem by having inexperienced guys in there who probably wouldn't have that much more of an impact AND they would lose a year of elgibility. If that is the case I'm all for it. I hate seeing true freshmen play.

I read a Chris Brown interview somewhere, and he said if you have top talent in CFB, it probably doesn't matter which offense you run — pro style or spread. And by top talent I think he meant the top 20 or so recruiting classes nationally, in which range Michigan will always be. But for a college team with lesser talent, he suggested a spread offense gives you a chance to compete against more talented teams, and might give you a leg up against similarly talented teams.

Veering a little bit off topic, it's an old story but I always thought therein lied the problem with RR, who many said wasn't a "cultural fit". RR was always the upstart who competed with relatively less talent and a brilliant scheme. He just wasn't used to the idea of smothering the opposition with talent, UM's M.O for decades. You see this everyday in business, most notably Disney hiring and then firing Michael Ovitz. There is something to be said about being more manager than innovator as the company grows in size, and one thing that struck me from the 60 minutes segment on Michigan football was how pronounced the manager side of Hoke was.

Given that angle, Meyer is an interesting case. He's definitely more innovator than Hoke and more adept at managing than RR. To me though he seems closer to Hoke than RR. But one thing to keep an eye on is his tendencies to rely heavily on the Tebows and Harvins: the star-centric system. This is true with his offensive schemes but also reportedly with how he runs his locker rooms. Hoke on the other hand is more even handed, in my opinion more suited for the Michigans, NDs and USCs of CFB. Not right or wrong, but better suited. 

an either/or issue. 

"agonizing lack of adjustments to realigned defenses where required"



Borges qualifies for this. Much doubt as to whether he can adjust period, but I hope he proves me wrong.

Is they hate to use ZBS and also really hates to leave defender unblocked. They tried to use man blocking scheme when the OL especially the interior are better suited for ZBS.

That is one of the biggest problem in addition to the gameplan that has little cohesiveness.

Almost all schemes are effective if the talent can execute the plays better in in comparison to the defensive execution. Talent is the critical variable.

As thousands of HS now run the spread in all it's variations, the talent pool is smaller for Pro Style players. UGA and UA are effective with NFL level QBs, big & fast WRs, freakish RBs, and huge & agile OLs. Those players are hard to find - exactly the reason for so many HS adopting the spread. In addition, the NCAA limits on schollies have decreased from unlimited to 95 to 85 since 1993 making it harder to develop the size/power for Manball as it essentially negates a fifth year for an entire class (frosh/sophs are more physically prepared to execute the spread). UGA and UA have recruited well for years with very stable coaching staffs and schemes, but not always achieving great offenses.

So, can UM recruit enough talent at the key skill positions? We are excited about Shane and the OL pipeline is filling, but we need multiple freaks at RB and WR to really make Pro Style highly effective - thus the patience and persistence with Green and Treadwell. We need to finish this class and replicate every year to play Manball like the top tier.

How hard is it for people to realize both can be effective.  You want to know part of why Hoke probably doesn't like the spread? It puts a ton more pressure on your defense.  That doesn't mean he want to score 20 points like someone above posted, what it means is that he doesn't want us to be in a situation like the rich rod years where if your offense doesn't get going early it goes 3 and out so fast you give your opponent 8 possesions in the first quarter, thats just asking to get burned.  Going manball as a style is an attempt to control the game, to play it on your terms, give your defense a chance to adjust to the offense at more points than just halftime because every drive doesn't take under 5 minutes whether it scores or not. On the other hand scoring a lot of points is a good thing, and why a lot of teams use the spread.  There are pros and cons to both sides but a 'manball' team has won the national championship 3 out of the last 5 years so it clearly can work as well.  I don't think anyone would describe alabama as anything but a vanilla offense and yet they have won the national championship 2 out of the last 3 years and have a pretty good shot to make it 3 of 4, I'll take that any day.

I believe the power run game can work.  It has certain advantages and simplifies the game.  I have always viewed Manball as playing Chess and Spread be it pass or run based as playing GO.   In the game of Chess once you get an advantage the intent of the game is to simplify the game by sacrificing pieces of equal power.  If you have better talent, leverage your superior talent and win.  Put the defense on its heels such that there is little inovation that they can do other then stacking the box to win.  A great QB is always nice.   But I do not believe you can get away with a game manager whose task is not to make mistakes.  Alabama and Wisc are good examples of manball teams that have schemes that do not require great QB's.  It may even be hard to attract great QB's because they know the prefered option is run the ball 50 times a game.  There are variations as USC looks to pass more.

The limitation of manball is that is little recourse if you meet another Manball team better then you.  Since your offense is straight forward and predicated on being meaner and tougher, a bigger dog means you lose.

This leads into the popularity of the spread be it pass or run based.  A spread gives a team with inferior power the capability to compete with more powerful teams by show casing speed, agility, and deception.  The spread introduces more complexity and thus more variance in result.  A great GO player is not looking to simplify an opponent but engulf them in complexity and deception.  A classic spread team is Northwestern.   NW will never attract great talent.  So they recruit smaller more agile players who they can attempt to put in space.  In order to combat it the defense is forced to make many more decisions. If the wrong decision is made instead of an eight yard gain it is a 78 yard TD play.  This gives NW a shot to beat a power team like MSU or UM they have no buisness doing.

The down side of the spread is it is a two edge sword.  The variance introduced to keep a inferior team in contention means when you are superior you have more things that can go wrong and thus lose.  If your look at Oregon they have had games where they put up 70 points.  Then they inexplicably lay and egg and cannot get in sync.  In order for a spread to be effective it absolutely needs a QB making the right decisions.  A spread cannot work with a game manager.  If you have a Tebow, Newton, Young, the sky is the limit as that is whom you are show casing.  You can even run them since removing the cupcakes a typical college team only plays half NFL season of games and the talent is diluted among 125 teams verses 30 NFL teams.  The down side is if you do not do your homework or your QB goes down, since the offense is centered on good decisions being made by a QB, everything grinds to a halt.

In parting I think it is great we have the contrast.  If football were played one way, it would be boring.

MANBALL!!!!!

I'm a fan of the multiple offense with an identity in the running game. A lot of manball teams can't overcome mediocre deficits. I believe the multiple offense forces defenses to prepare for everything from 5 wide air raid to 2 back tight power, to the zone read.

During the 2007 Cap One Bowl, we got to see a "power-spread" hybrid offense on our side of the ball. We not only kept up with Florida, we ended up winning the game, even though Urban had Tebow calling the signals and Harvin everywhere.

One of the really interesting quotes during the game was from Rich Rod. A sideline reporter, IIRC, asked him about bringing the spread to U-M. He responded, in effect, "See what Michigan's doing out there? They're running the spread." His point was that the scheme streached the Florida defense sideline to sideline and vertically, creating space. 

I think we can do both. The question is whether Al Borges is wedded to the West Coast Offense as a superior religion, or if he has room in his scheme for alternative deities.

Notre Dame and Alabama (oh wait, "Georgia/Alabama") live off of that, and they're going to the national championship game, so this isn't exactly a revolutionary article to write. Maybe two weeks ago when it was K State and Oregon on track to get there. 

The system isn't what matters.  The execution is what matters.  My question to the board is, what do you run when your O-line can't block?

Lewan had his worst game of the season, the interior O-line was exposed (again) against a very talented front, and I'm left wondering, what play can you call when your O-line can't block very well?  Sure, I wanted to see more of Devin and Denard on the field simultaneously (I'm really not sure why that didn't happen), but I'm not sure what they could have done that would have been much different without any blocking in the 2nd half.

Spread teams have done just fine in the BCS.   Texas, Auburn, and Florida all won NC with pure spread teams.  With the exception of the 1st Florida NC all of the above had great QB play.  But who does not win a NC with an average QB?  The number of journeyman QB's with NC's is very short.  Even Harbaugh in the NFL came to the same conclusion that not having a QB who can make a play reduces the margin for winning it all to almost nil.  At Alabama it takes Saban picking the top ten defensive players every year to pull off.

A manball offense is generally going to be throttled if the QB is a manager and the defense it is up against is throttled. 

Me personally, I would hope that a coordinator would be able to adjust to the talent at hand.  If a player has unique talents, tailor the offense to what you have.  What I enjoy at the NFL level is the constantly changing face of the New England offense.  NE comes up with a twist and the league adjusts.   Then they do a complete make over and the league is off balance again.  We also saw this with the Colts and Manning.  You figure out how to stop the 4 WR step, they go 2 WR 2 TE.  You try to stop the pass, they kill you with a run.   You get burned with them going big and adjust, they go small and agile.   Helps to have a great QB.  But boy is it fun watching how the scheme morphs.

Hoke is definitely putting a MANBALL team together, so only time will tell if it's going to truly work. Man I love seeing those sread offenses, but D. Green and our big nasties we our recruiting sure does sound like a lot of fun to watch!!

Manball works if you can amass more talent than everyone else.  It has always worked great against teams with less talent.  The problem is that, in this day and age, the increments between talent levels of various teams isn't as large as it used to be.  

As for Michigan, they play it straight in recruiting, while other teams such as Ohio State, USC, Oregon, and Alabama, to name a few, cheat.  They know that the punishment for cheating never makes them lose as much as they gain by cheating, so they cheat, deny everything, take their punishment, and then find different ways to cheat.  

Consequently, Michigan seldom has as much talent on their roster as the teams I mentioned, and manball simply doesn't work against them.

Michigan is perfectly capable of tweaking the WCO to create space for their offense.  The question is whether they will be allowed to do so or not.