Not getting to the QB
When we hired Shafer we thought we would atleast generate a lot of sacks if nothing else.
Well, midway through the season not so much. Currently we are tied at 42 place with 13 teams, all who have are averaging 2 sacks per game. Personally I feel that sacks per game does not tell the whole story so I looked at sacks per 100 pass attempts.*
*I think sacks count against rushing so I divided sacks by total pass attempts + sacks.
| 11.22% | TCU |
| 8.28% | KANSAS ST. |
| 8.04% | FSU |
| 8.02% | USC |
| 7.45% | NEW MEX. ST. |
| 6.93% | OREGON ST. |
| 6.83% | IND. |
| 6.33% | UTEP |
| 6.28% | HOUS. |
| 6.17% | TENN |
| 6.11% | MIAMI FL. |
| 6.01% | E.CAR. |
| 5.74% | AUBURN |
| 5.49% | MICH. |
| 5.45% | PURD. |
| 5.26% | MARY. |
| 1.84% | WASH |
I used TCU, Florida State and USC for my examples of a good defense and Washington as my baseline.
As we can see when compared to teams we are "tied" with we come in at 11. Also interesting is that Kansas State seems to be limited by opportunities to get after the QB (crappy run D?).
Not sure how significance the numbers are but it seems to confirm my disappontment with Shafer. I thought if anything we would be getting to the qb more considering our D line.
October 20th, 2008 at 11:50 AM ^
October 20th, 2008 at 12:23 PM ^
October 20th, 2008 at 12:25 PM ^
October 20th, 2008 at 11:51 AM ^
I think what you are seeing is an effect of the 3-3-5. In obvious pass downs, we are only rushing 3 and dropping into an 8 man zone. I think that Shafer is thinking that the D-Line is so strong that he can rush 3 and get the same effect as rushing 4 at Stanford. The extra man defending against the pass, which should help minimize errors by our safeties and corners. If we were to stay in the 4-3 that we have had on other downs, this number would be much higher.
Good statistics, thanks for the post.
October 20th, 2008 at 11:52 AM ^
October 20th, 2008 at 12:53 PM ^
It has been growing more aparent every week. Teams are not taking 5-7 step drops without keeping a TE (or two) and RB (or two) in to help block. And Michigans DB's & LB's are not good enough to go straight man across the field. So you rush 3 or 4 and bring a LB then drop everyone into deep zones. In turn making the LB's and DB's having to tackle in space, which they are not good at.
October 20th, 2008 at 1:01 PM ^
October 20th, 2008 at 6:27 PM ^
We were #1 two games into the season. Then we faced ND and failed to sack Clausen once. We also had virtually no rush against the Toledo QB, whose name I don't even remember.
It's true that teams are going to a lot of max-protects and rolling the pocket, but when you do that, there's a tradeoff. When you go to max-protect, you limit the number of receivers downfield. When you roll the pocket, you make it tough to throw to half the field. There should be ways for our D to counter-adjust. I don't understand why it's proving so difficult.
October 20th, 2008 at 8:01 PM ^
I agree.
October 20th, 2008 at 9:59 PM ^
Exactly - there's a tradeoff - max protecting leaves less people to cover - we've been unable to cover them.
Rolling out halves the field - we haven't been able to cover that half a field.
Throwing screens are solved, simply, by making accurate reads and tackling. Our LB's and safeties have failed at both.
So, our problem is not, inherently, the pass rush. That was my point. Teams have been able to negate our pass rush because we're completely unable to combat the gambit they use to negate it.
As far as "why", I think Brian has detailed the mediocre LB recruiting. Our safeties, as per usual, aren't that good. Our corners haven't even been that good. Is that coaching? Maybe, but our LB's sucked last year, as well. I can only imagine that Harrison isn't a great safety, or else he would have played there last year. Brown's issues have been overly documented. I have to assume that Stewart isn't particularly good, or he would have seen the field at some point before his 5th year senior season.
October 20th, 2008 at 7:51 PM ^
Shafer advertised himself as a coach who goes after the QB. I am just saying his defense does not look like a shafer D on paper.
Last year Stanford was horrible at D, 107th against the pass. However, Shafer's D was sacking teams on about 8.3% of attempts, which is about average for a Shafer coached D (going back to 2005). Both teams, UM 08 and Stanford 07, faced similar numbers of passes/game (34) and gave up about 12 yards per completion. Stanford was worse in coverage allowing a 61% completion rate to our current 57%. You can see the superiority of our DL in the running game (UM 3.2 ypc to Stanford 4.2), however.
One possibilty could be style of play (Pac-10 vs. B10). As chitown mentioned max protects and screen passes have been employed to keep our D in check. However, this doesn't explain the Stanford numbers. Do Pac-10 teams not use screens and max protects?
Another case is this years version of Minnesota. They are also sucky in pass defense(106th). Giving up more yards per completion and attempt than UM. We are similar against the run. However, Minnesota is in the top 25 in sacks and is sacking 6.5% of attempts. Now you might mention the teams they have played but NSFMF. They got to Juice 5 times. This is still somewhat biased because illinois has been getting sacked by everyone this year (73rd in sacks allowed)...minus us and eastern illinois. Minnesota has 11 sacks against B10 teams (OSU, Ill and Indiana) we have 4 (Wisc, Ill, PSU)
The opponents scheme doesn't sit with me considering the minnesota example. Brandon Graham and VandeSteeg cancel each other out as awesome players. Both teams are about the same in every D category minus sacks. The scheme theory would assume that opponents are less concerned about getting sacked by Minnestoa than UM even though Minnesota has more sacks.
Yes, I know sacks don't mean much. My only point is that our D doesn't look like an attack the QB D. The sack numbers per attempt are lower than any other D Shafer has coached. The season is only half over so maybe the numbers will change as the season progresses; I am willing to wait and see.
October 20th, 2008 at 10:12 PM ^
Of course Pac-10 teams use screens. But your thinking is isolated on one segment of the defense, when the problem is the whole thing. You don't stop screen passes by getting more sacks - almost no screens are stopped by sacks. You stop screens by diagnosing them, and tackling. Something our LB's continually fail to do. You don't beat a max-protect by getting a sack - you do it by covering the single receiver. We've been unable to do that.
If your LB's can't cover anyone, you can't play man, which leads to soft zones, and open underneath routes - open underneath routes lead to shorter drops, and less time for a pass rush to materialize.
The problem, I'm saying, isn't that the pass rush is bad - it's still the same pass rush. The problem is that our defense isn't good enough to combat the steps offenses are taking to negate our pass rush. They can avoid it by throwing screens, rolling out, and max protecting. When that happens, the answer isn't "more sacks" it's to cover the screen, cover the single man route, or cover the half-field that rolling out causes you.