Observations from a second view
1. Blake Countess should be starting over Woolfolk. No question.
2. The things that killed us on defense were the same things that have killed us all year, losing contain on the edge on sweeps.
3. Their O-Line didn't dominate as much as I thought the first time through. A lot of the run blocking they got was due to chop blocks (outside of the tackle box no less) that ended up triupping up players engaged and flowing to the ball. Good technique, but we should have countered with some over-load blitzes.
4. Borges out-thought himself. We had the inside zone work for the entire first drive, and then he started to shift Devin in for no good reason. I understand putting Devin in with Denard, but on the second series of the day Denard should never be off the field.
5. The Michigan State D is a solid unit, however their LBs were absolutely everywhere. I think that Denicos and Bullough might tbe the best ones Ive seen play sideline to sideline in a while. Not as much of a fall off from Jones as I was expecting.
Now some good news..
Our D played pretty well considering...
Nathan Brink should never be considered as a rotation guy.. he got pushed back every single time.
Will Campbell basically stale-mated out there.
Denard... a lot of his issues was he was getting hit often and late. Some of those went uncalled, and I think it made him extremely skittish. The refs lost control of the game in the 1st quarter and it was Borges fault for not running screens and giving Denard some check downs to quick slants to punish the blitzes.
Taylor Lewan absolutely handled Gholston. I think this whole "Gholston is a bad-ass" thought process has more to do with him gettting 1 on 1s the entire game because of Worthy.
Worthy is not as good when he cannot jump the snap count. He is a solid D lineman dont get me wrong, but when he oculdnt guess he was not smashing our guys back.
Gholston is the dirtiest player I have ever seen. I entirely forgot about the first drive where he dived on Lewans arm and tried to roll his wrist over.
Dantonio is classy... he argued every single personal foul call, and then today said that it was not a dirty game.
All in all, I think we played as bad as we have all season and somehow still had a chance to tie it with 4 minutes left (BORGES NAKEDBOOTDEATH). We fought and we fought and we clawed, even thought they were breaking every single rule in the book. And to be honest, I think if we scored right there that we would have won that game outright. Regardless, our D came out and made a stop. And a bad read later and the game is over.
The score didn't reflect the game, we could have lost by more. But, that being said, so could have MSU.
October 16th, 2011 at 2:10 PM ^
I'd love to see him get trucked during a game if he gets a little too close to the sideline. Big Charlie style.
October 16th, 2011 at 2:10 PM ^
Gholston is a TE playing on the Dline....even live at the game the few decent spartys even noted that the only type of success Gholston had was being lined up opposite of lewan.
Not being able to run behind Lewan is killing this team right now. At this point when barnum gets healthy I truly wonder if there needs to be a open competition at RG between Schofield/Pat O.
We need to find a way to get behind Lewan becase against the best Dline we have seen this year Lewan had ZERO problem controlling whoever they put across from him.
October 16th, 2011 at 2:10 PM ^
I agree, upon further review, that Gholston was hardly dominant. I expect Lewan's stats on the UFR to back that up as well. I hope that Lewan and the returning linemen remember how that game was played for next year in AA and how Gholston acted...
October 16th, 2011 at 2:17 PM ^
Two ejectable offenses should equal a two game suspension. Intent to injure is not acceptable, no matter how heated the rivalry.
October 16th, 2011 at 4:24 PM ^
I'll enjoy seeing MSU lose to Wisconsin and Nebraska. They have no character or class, and that will be thier undoing in games against superior opponents.
October 16th, 2011 at 2:10 PM ^
I really wish we had more quick sants and quick routes to help Denard get settled. When you have a defense like State's you can not have long developing plays. Quick passes and quick routes would have kept the Spartans on their heels.
October 16th, 2011 at 2:28 PM ^
we have several of these "slot ninjas" made for quick slants; roundtree, gallon, grady, odoms... borges completely failed this game for not utilizing these guys and making sparty pay for blitzing on almost every down.
October 16th, 2011 at 2:50 PM ^
No kidding. It seems we never throw underneath.
October 16th, 2011 at 2:13 PM ^
Dantonio represents "clean, hard-hitting football"
October 16th, 2011 at 3:11 PM ^
I think you misinterpreted what his point was. He was saying if Danty wants to represent clean football, he needed to handle that Gholston shit. Even right as they showed the replay, he said immediately 'He's out."
October 16th, 2011 at 2:14 PM ^
Definitely agree with borges over-thinking.
Hadn't been stopped on a 4th and short run all year. Even if denard had time on that 4th and short, I wouldn't have been too confident in him completing a pass. Also, Swapping out denard for devin for just one play was just idiotic. Leave them both on the field, or choose ONE qb to play an entire drive. Switching every play prevented both qb's from getting into a rhythm.
October 16th, 2011 at 2:20 PM ^
Countess definitely needs to start. I feel bad for Troy, but hes just to banged up t be effective.
October 16th, 2011 at 2:22 PM ^
hate to say it, but Woolfolk just looks slow. Countess hasn't done anything yet to make us believe he isn't capable of stepping up. Unusual for a young player to be solid at CB, but hey, why not?
October 16th, 2011 at 2:25 PM ^
October 16th, 2011 at 2:30 PM ^
He's ineffective at endgame strategy, resulting in a lot of stalemate chess matches.
October 16th, 2011 at 2:31 PM ^
I think a lot of our players took poor pursuit angles to the sidelines, especially on the sweep plays.
P.S. Did anyone get a video of Gholston trying to injure Lewan on the first drive of the game? I was at the game and didn't know if it got on TV.
October 16th, 2011 at 2:36 PM ^
If the bad read to which you're referring is that pick 6 at the end, that seemed like miscommunication between DR and Smith (and quite likely Smith's mistake) rather than a bad read.
Agree with all of your other observations, thanks for the summary.
October 16th, 2011 at 3:21 PM ^
QB and receiver must be on the same page or this happens. The offense works great in the NFL when you can keep players around to learn it. Bill Walsh, the originator of the West Coast, says it takes 3-4 years to master and that basically covers a players entire college career. How many times do you have a QB and set of WRs come into together and stay together all four years. I am not a fan of this offense at the college level.
October 16th, 2011 at 4:12 PM ^
Are we really starting this conversation, again?
October 16th, 2011 at 4:07 PM ^
Yes, it was a mistake on Smith's part for not recognizing the blitz and turning to catch the ball on a quick slant. I thought it was a bad read by Denard because he should have thrown the simpler pass to Kroger running a curl route. He was just turning as the ball was released and could definitely have made the catch on a ball thrown with his back turned. The guy covering him was playing poor coverage because he was 5+ yards off him even though MSU was blitzing.
That play also showed mistakes from Borges. Smith is a running back and it isn't that crazy to see a running back make a mistake like that when running a route against a blitz. Borges should have played the slot receivers more often and had them ready to adjust to blitzes with quick slants. Instead a RB was put in the slot and didn't know what to do against that double LB blitz.
October 16th, 2011 at 2:39 PM ^
More than anyone else. Countess played pretty well, the D line didn't, and MSU is a dirty team.
October 16th, 2011 at 2:53 PM ^
He has done nothing at all to make any impact on the field yesterday. I don't know why people are all up at arms when I said that Worthy is overrated.
October 16th, 2011 at 3:07 PM ^
This game may have felt close, and State did all it could through fouls to make it seem close, but if they had kept ther cool the number of first downs Michigan would have in the box score would have been approximately halved. Michigan had extraordinary luck with the two turnovers and the long touchdown. Otherwise this game could have gotten completely out of control.
The defense played their butts off, and the schemes were solid. On the offensive side...wow.
I've never seen such a display of self-inflicted RPS pain. It's hard to even say if their D-line was superior because they were blitzing so regularly that they almost always had a free player in the backfield. This game begged for zone interior runs and screen passes, but as far as I can tell we threw a total of one screen pass the whole game.
Borges made Robinson look terrible. As the OP said, he was getting hit on nearly every play, which was ruining his rhythm, and then he was getting taken out of the QB position in almost every drive.
Borges made Gardner look pretty bad, too, but Gardner added to that with his own rawness and inability to read the field.
Frankly the only conclusion I can come to is that the coaches
a) came into this game scared of State's D-line and thought they had to cute their way into a win, and
b) frankly unaware of how to use this team to win games against good defenses. It's deeply disheartening to see such a vertical passing game and pro-style sets suddenly emerge against one of the best defenses in the big ten.
Last year's version of basically the same team ran up 377 total yards and averaged 6.0 yards per play against State. This was a horrible regression. The coaches let these kids down.
October 16th, 2011 at 3:42 PM ^
Yes, it's Borges' fault that Denard couldn't hit open receivers. It's also Borges' fault that Denard can't cycle to his third or fourth option.
October 16th, 2011 at 3:47 PM ^
They blitzed on almost every play, and the calls being played were long-developing vertical deep routes. he was almost always trying to evade a sack.
Finally, he often was trying to make these passes upwind, which was a bad play call. It's hard to read your progressions when you're jumping around trying to avoid getting tackled.
October 16th, 2011 at 3:49 PM ^
So Borges should have done what exactly? Call slants? You can't call that every play. You also can only use screens if your QB can actually get the ball over the linemen and you can pick up a blitz coming. A corner blitz with a screen would have destroyed Denard.
Throwing the ball into the wind was a necessity when our line couldn't get any push for the RBs.
October 16th, 2011 at 3:54 PM ^
Umm running a screen works best against an aggressive defense that blitzes a lot. Borges should have screened them to death. It would have made MSU think twice about blitzing evey play.
October 16th, 2011 at 3:58 PM ^
The easiest way to beat a blitz is to throw where it's coming from. Since the majority of blitzes were from the corners or lbs. A screen, drags an slants wouldve helped keep the d honest.
October 16th, 2011 at 4:02 PM ^
Again, this is predicated on us being able to pick up a blitz. I didn't see a lot of that yesterday.
October 16th, 2011 at 4:42 PM ^
The point of a quick pass or screen to where the blitz is coming from is that you don't have to pick up the blitz. The defenders overrun the play on their sprint to the quarterback. Plays like that are typically supposed to be checked into when the defense shows their hand. Is Denard even allowed to audible, or do calls have to come from the sideline? The one time I really remember him reading blitz was when he tried the quick slant to Vincent Smith who was a RB playing in the slot and obviously wasn't ready for the quick pass.
October 16th, 2011 at 3:46 PM ^
I see where you are coming from, but his year to last year is apples to oranges.
Attribute the regression to the elements, a different strategy by our opponent that utilized the elements effectively, and an MSU defense that was fully engaged throughout a much closer game. Last year the game got out of hand and they were fine trading yards for time.
It's a stretch to outright blame coaching when our guys weren't handling their blocks up front. Scheme and play calling mean zilch if you can't get consistent push.
October 16th, 2011 at 3:52 PM ^
We'll see how things went in terms of actual push in the UFR. I think they were getting pretty good push, but were almost always outnumbered.
October 16th, 2011 at 4:05 PM ^
which was a home game. It seems to me that both staffs let the kids down.
October 16th, 2011 at 4:11 PM ^
THAT is an example of an execution issue, not a coaching issue.
Defense last year was admittedly terrible.
October 16th, 2011 at 3:40 PM ^
It sure seemed to me that as the game wore on, State had all 11 guys mighty close to the line and were not giving underneath stuff to our receivers. I doubt underneath passes would have worked consistently like they did on the first drive. They didn't have any respect for our tailback running game and with the wind they wisely didn't feel that we'd maintain a consistent passing game up field. Slants maybe would have worked and we did see one work very well for the touchdown. But with no running game, it wouldn't have worked for long.
We had a really good all around learning experience out there yesterday as far as blocking and defeating blitzes. It will be very valuable carrying forward. The other area is run blocking to defeat the blitz. We weren't ready (or physically talented enough) in that area at all yesterday.
October 16th, 2011 at 3:50 PM ^
Anyone find a torrent for the game yet?
October 16th, 2011 at 4:26 PM ^
played himself out of the second round of the draft yesterday. Not all that strong and real character questions. I'm still wondering if you can press charges for assault on the field like that. And I also think that's the kind of injury--sprain--that you can carry around for the rest of your life without it ever quite being a serious medical emergency.
October 16th, 2011 at 5:42 PM ^
as to whether one can press charges for an on the field incident, the answer is: it depends. The general rule (although it may vary by jurisdiction) is that one consents to the general physicality of the game, to include penalties. for instance, severe injuries sustained from an illegal chop block would not give rise to cause of action, despite being against the rules of football, as this is within reasonable bounds of general dangers to which the player consents by playing. however there are of course limitations. as an extreme example, if a baseball player wigged out and hit an opposing player with the bat. that would certainly not be within the general dangers to which the player consents.
these things are determined on a case by case basis. id think a punch to the face of a player wearing a helmet would not give rise to a cause of action, given that scuffles tend to happen a lot.
the twisting of denards head is a tougher one to call. obviously facemasking penalties happen a lot, and can result in neck injuries. therefore the injury is of the type that one might reasonably anticipate. but in this case, the act was pretty deliberate and its hard to find any intent other than to cause harm. in my opinion, a player doesn't consent to being done intentional harm in this manner. because he wasn't injured, the award would be minimal, but I do think he could potentially have a legitimate cause of action.
October 16th, 2011 at 4:26 PM ^
October 16th, 2011 at 5:16 PM ^
October 16th, 2011 at 5:20 PM ^
I'm impressed that you could watch the game again so quickly. I hit "delete" on the DVR almost immediately after the game expired. But I'm glad someone was level-headed enough to digest that game again.
I also thought Lewan did a good job on Gholston while I watched the game. I think you can pencil in 1st Team Big 10 for Lewan's Jr and Sr years.
October 16th, 2011 at 5:26 PM ^
to watch that one again. I know I won't.
October 16th, 2011 at 6:06 PM ^
I'm giving Hoke and Co. plus the players kudos for almost winning that game. M was damn close to winning that game. M makes the 4th and one, then punches it in for a TD, we have a tie game with M still playing with the wind at their back. State did not score one point going into the wind, not one, save for the INT return.
All in all, a bitter tough loss, but a game M nearly pulled off. Hats of to those kids. They played their hearts out.
October 17th, 2011 at 12:00 AM ^
In that Auburn blogger's guest post on Borges back in January, he wrote this:
Again, none of that is to say Borges can't succeed at Michigan ... but the current situation just isn't in his wheelhouse. Based on the last half of 2005 (when Cox, Irons, and the AU receivers were at the height of their powers) and what he's done at SDSU this season with the Lindley-Hillman-senior wideouts package, I'd say the prototypical Borges offense is one with an accurate (and not necessarily strong-armed) pocket passer, big NFL-type receivers on the outside to stretch the field, and a single stud running back as a home run threat out of the backfield. It seems like aside from Darryl Stonum, Michigan doesn't have any of those things. What's ironic, says Alanis, is that Michigan used to have those things in bunches. Give Borges Henne, Hart, Long, and Manningham/Arrington, and you're going to have one of the best offenses in the country, hands-down. And maybe he can work some magic with Denard (or Gardner), and Hopkins, and Stonum/Miller/Jackson/whoever. But I can't shake the feeling that Borges is the right guy in the right place at the wrong time.It seems like this is playing out now. The rest of this season might be rocky and we'll probably play like a team without an identity on offense. Let's face it: as great a kid as Denard is and as much as Hoke might praise him, he's just not the type of QB Hoke would have recruited. But when we get the right pieces in place, the Borges hire will begin to pay dividends.