META: Football X's and O's questions for Seth?

Number of safeties/players deep is the biggest clue, and then man vs zone (probably easiest seen by how a TE/slot or motion pre-snap is dealt with)

TV angles make it very difficult (and most often impossible) to tell what the coverage is when the play is going on.

Since you can't see deep safeties, the best way is to watch the depth and eyes of the corner. Press alignment almost always means man, and especially if the eyes are laser locked on the WR. Off alignment almost always means zone. Perhaps the best way to tell man is to see if inside LBs run with receivers. If they're in zone they never run with a receiver immediately off the snap. To tell who busted, figure out who isn't doing what everyone else is (man or zone) and then who's assignment was missed.

To really know would require much more detail, so this might be a good Q for Seth to tackle.

I had kind of been wondering about why we don't call more good plays. Maybe Seth can have a part titled 'Bad Plays: what are they and why do we call them?'

FIRE BORGES!  

I'm no expert, but I think some of the comments from other teams' players over the years about how predictable UM's play calling has been and how easy it was to diagnose has been a huge part of the fan OUTRAGE!  

'Why are we running on a third and long!?!? Fire Harbau-!! Oh, nice. Whoohoo! First down!'

I highly recommend fans watch film breakdown videos.  Not just Michigan but others.  If you love football, played through high school and want to learn a lot more go to a coaches clinic.  

Listen to head coaches, coordinators, position coaches speak and break down the game or play, strategies opens your eyes so much more.  You start seeing what the play calls are, why execution from all 11 positions means and how one missed assignment can kill a play or one great play can beat a play that would have been won by the other side.  

Different coaches obviously have different philosophies and schemes with what they want to do so it's really cool to see them.  

Next, you start seeing why calls are great, good, bad or execution was good great or bad from both sides of the ball.  How one missed chip block on a blitz pick up is the difference in a major loss vs a td.  How one lber destroyed an OG but the DT next to him was driven out of the hole by a center and why a RB got 8yds instead of dropped for a loss.  You also see some coaches film from the stadium, not the TV film which completely changes perspective as well.  

One would expect luck to even out at the end of the day, usually. A considerable RPS advantage usually means that one team was either better, or one team was worse.

A good example might be the 2017 Minnesota game, where Minnesota simply declined to block Khaleke Hudson when he blitzed, leading to him breaking the school sack record. That was an example of "bad" RPS scores.

"Good" RPS scores can include things like the opening Michigan State drive in 2016, when MSU used formations and player movement to exploit what they knew to be Michigan's alignment and assignment rules to get free blockers on Jabrill Peppers, marching down the field on us. 

A "good guy" version of this is how Michigan schemed the TE leak plays against Nebraska last week, using the knowledge they had of how Nebraska plays defense to get a free receiver open. 

There are some play calls that are bad because it's a bad guess. But good film study gives a good staff an excellent idea of what their opponent is likely to call, which makes bad guesses less frequent. They still happen, though, so there will always be RPS minuses. But when there are a lot of them, you have an imbalance in quality of playcalling. That's the working theory, anyway. 

Quick addendum: I know the Wilson and Sainristil plays vs Rutgers weren’t actually Mesh, I guess this is a broader question about scheming athletes (WRs specifically) into positions to make plays and exploring the intermediate passing game in a way we’ve rarely seen thus far

Oh yes, all this!   Death by crossing routes and mesh points… my lord that was painful.

I would also love an answer to this.

Mesh isn't a new concept so it hasn't been "found out." OSU ran mesh and shallow concepts against Michigan in 2018 because Michigan's slot corners were not fast or athletic enough to run with them based on alignment. If I recall correctly, earlier in the year, Michigan's slot corners were playing head up to inside technique and were murdered by slot fades because, again, they were not athletic or fast enough to cover an out breaking route from inside technique. They "fixed" that by aligning more head up to outside shade. That took away that slot fade, but left them vulnerable to shallow crossers which Indiana first exploited. We all know Don Brown's scheme was heavy man and pressure. Zone could have helped, but that's not what Brown did. 

Teams still run mesh and shallow. Mesh is typically considered a man beater because it's a rub concept )though you can run it against zone....your mesh routes cross and then sit in windows before they run into the next zone defender). Shallow is more of a zone beater as you high-low the LB's with the shallow/dig and high-low the safety with the dig/post. RPO's are different. That is a 2nd level read that determines if you give the ball or pull and throw. You can read front or backside and inside or outside depending on the run play and pass route called. You can certainly do it with quick, shallow crossing routes or you can do it with slants, bubbles, sticks, pops, hitches ect. For example, the high school I coach at has a play called 83 Big 9 Hole. The line, back and QB are running inside zone. The QB reads the backside inside LB (Big). The TE is running a 9 which is technically a fade, but because he hits him quickly if the read is there, it's basically a pop pass, the #2 receiver runs a bubble and the outside receiver runs a stick. If the LB plays downhill on the inside zone, you pull. The next read is the safety. If he is deep still, throw the pop. If he if playing over the pop and coming down, you move to the bubble/stick and read the flat defender. Whichever he plays, you throw the opposite.

About another 6 weeks.

I'd love to see an RPO tunnel screen to one of our tight ends.  Always felt this would be a sweet play, especially in a scenario where the defense plays man against 2 WRs spread out wide and LBs and safeties are cheating up to stuff the run game.

The throwback screens Shoelace threw to Vincent Smith were so lethal! Recall the UTL game TD...can we bring back that call?

Seth has written full articles about the common run plays, some of them even have summaries of all the other run play articles.

I think there is something to consistency.  If you take 99% of your snaps from the gun, lining up under center for a handful of short yardage plays might lead to an unexpected error.  College teams have limited practice time.  If you never line up under center, you never have to practice it.