Michigan Offense vs. MSU Every Snap video

Why do I do this to myself?

We stopped ourselves. Denard looked pretty hesitant on a lot of plays, but we had success moving the ball on them.

Also, I like Vincent Smith, but I want to see more of Hopkins this week. His two carries were really nice.

OH MY GOD!!! WHY!?!? We were seriously so close to just throttling them in this game. Ugh...

Watching this as painful as it was shows the following on Offense

1. Start throwing on first down more often or at least run the run pass option
2. Get Hopkins in there more often against Iowa.  We will need him.
3. The intermediate passes were open and worked well
4. Go long down the sidelines and not the middle
5. Setup DRob runs but distributing the ball to others first

This offense works if we execute as many other wise people have said in previous posts.

Support the team, the coach, and the University.

Go Blue!

So much hesitancy from Denard...

I wonder if we will do the same thing again this wk against Iowa.  Hopefully we do use some more RB's, but ill believe it when i see it.  Hopefully we execute and score some points, and the defense gets lucky and makes some t/o's

And if anyone sees it otherwise they are only looking for an excuse to see the sky falling-

Michigan: A team on its way up

MSU: A team at its peak

Had we converted those first two Marches down the field, the momentum would have been been incredible. Instead we shot ourselves in the foot and it swung the other way. 

it is oddly reassuring.  Take away the takeaways (sorry), and we win this game, maybe by two TD's or so.  It wasn't just the points we lost, but MOMENTUM.  On the final INT down the middle, Denard had someone WIDE open in the left flat.  He throws there and we continue to roll.  The quick outs are still open, and they lead to deeper success later on, plus we have WR's who can break it to the end zone. 

Lastly, we can win with Vincent Smith, but you can see the difference in Shaw's speed.  Hopkins looks good, but Shaw can hit the home run at any time.  I think our team comes out strong and focused on Saturday.  Too bad for Iowa.  GO BLUE!

...while he's in the pocket, then run.  If he does that this past Saturday, we have at least 10 more points on the board, provided our kicking game comes through.

After watching the offensive plays, I honestly don't think we played that poorly. Yes there were brain farts in the red zone and plenty of dropped passes, but  for every one of denard's interceptions the intended receiver was open. It's an execution problem (hesitation, poor throw, etc) which can be fixed. How different this game could have been if we scored tds on our first two possessions. 

i was screaming for hopkins more, unfortunately Mr. Magee didn't hear me.  Where was the patented run/fake pass?  I never see any screens to shaw.  (who did some good things in the game) A lot of the wr bubble screens.  On the interception to roundtree pass, i think he had smith and junior to the right of the screen, let them break a tackle and try to score.  Instead of force that tight throw.  The one deep one to Grady, could of been thrown to Stonum with a pump fake, or tuck and run with it.  The other tough throw that was meant for Junior, although slightly behind him.  Im not mad at that, that is a tought throw but showed he is confident to make that throw.  It was tough to watch our team fail at times, good teams adjust.  They prepare with film and practice, saturday is 4 days away!!!

MSU's ends (mostly #91) were coached up that when they were unblocked, they would step up across the line of scrimmage a couple of yards and wait.  They never went after the RB on this play.  They were basically forcing Denard to make the hand off decision, because that is his "read" for the play.  DE stays, hand off.  If you watch the read option play at the 0:40 second mark we have RB and TE in the backfield.  Koger crosses over during the read option and blocks the QB option side DE.  If Denard would have kept the ball on this play, he could have run for a nice gain.  I think we should have made an adjustment during the game and run more 2 back sets and used this type of lead blocker read options more, to get Denard somemore "run" opportunities on our read option type plays.

cost a potential score.  From what I could see the OL had him a huge hole and it would have been for the safety to make a one on one tackle - not likely against Denard.  So many opportunities that will be corrected and as many have said, I expect a decisive win this week.

yeah, this is just a simple case of shitting the bed. every time denard double clutches, I let out a half groan, half-whimper.

as others have said, if we don't continually leave points on the field, this game is the same shootout that IU turned into.

it's incredibly frustrating, but that's what we're left with until we have a D that can compensate for a bad offensive outing.

the game how mere nanoseconds of indecision seem to spell the difference between success and failure in the spread.

Vincent Smith has had better games with his blocking. I'm assuming it's b/c the MSU defense is bigger than what we have seen so far.

If we simply tackled better, the outcome would have been different.

State's DBs got away with a crapload of ankle tackles, especially early on.  Two of them saved TDs (one on Shaw on our first possession, and one on Roundtree on our second). 

One little missed opportunity: the 3rd and 9 on our fifth possession (4:25 in the video).  Denard gets by the wave of pass rushers, but loses his footing and gets brought down at the LOS.  If he'd stayed on his feet, he had a ton of running room. 

On the second INT (5:30), Denard had Grady in the slot for a first down and probably also a TD - though in fairness, on the replay (shown from Denard's perspective), Hemingway looks more open than he really was.

On the third INT (7:55), Denard successfully used his eyes to get the DB covering Stonum on the outside to leave him entirely and double Grady in the slot - but then he threw to Grady anyway.  Arrgh.  That's a young QB's mistake.  Stonum was wide, wide open - and might have even gone for a TD.  With more experience, Denard will find the outside guy on that play.   

I liked that Michigan was able to move the ball well, even without the big plays.  This allowed the defense to stay off the field.  We had the ball for 24 minutes vs 18 minutes against Indiana. 

I'll have to check it out sometime but it still hurts to much to do it now. I watched a couple plays, seeing how we executed well, showed so much promise, but when we got to like the third play, where Denard almost does a cartwheel eluding defenders, somewhat uncharacteristically...I had to stop. Ouch, my head...holy smokes, you had to watch it while you spliced everything together, offense and defense. You are mentally tough, hombre...

295 passing, 175 rushing, 2 TDs, 2 picks, 1 fumble

by Bellanca on Oct 12, 2010 11:26 AM CDT http://cdn1.sbnation.com/images/icons/comment-sprite.v3bcdd28.png); background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; color: rgb(162, 113, 16); text-decoration: none; display: inline; font-weight: bold; background-position: 0px -29px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; " title="reply to this comment">reply

How many more 8 yard gains on 1st down can we expect in a first half of football?  Also, if Denard would have just checked down to Stonum on his 3rd pick there is no one around him.  Throw to him and we are in good shape with 11:50 to go.

FYI....Didn't look at the defense video.  Why bother?

I stopped watching the game after UM's second drive where Denard badly overthrew Stonum (5 yards wide open...arrrggghhh) as I figured that it just wasn't going to be UM's day and I did not want to drive myself crazy.

I suspect that many of the pundits/talking heads in the MSM also did not watch the game, because if they did they would see that MSU did very little to stop UM in the game. I was led to believe that this was a dominant Sparty defense that throttled UM's offense the whole game. Instead, I saw UM's offense move the ball easily most of the game (not just the two series I watched), but self-destruct with Denard making numerous bad throws or bad decisions. Throw in a few shoestring tackles by MSU defensive backs that turned UM TD's into "nice gains" and this was hardly the defensive gem that the MSM is portraying it as.

I actually have more hope for the Iowa game after watching the entire set of UM offensive plays without any media spin. If Denard can learn from the terrible mistakes he made in this game, UM should have a decent shot of beating Iowa this Saturday. I may actually take the 4.5 points UM is catching right now...