Offensive "wrinkles"

The way I see it, the offense has been producing all year long and there is no need to show trick plays or go away from what is working. Even in the MSU game, we moved the ball fairly well, it was the turnovers that made it look worse than what it was. I understand what you are saying, but unless we run into problems where the defense is consistently stopping us on offense, there is no reason to change much up.

Let me get this straight...

1) You want more aggressive offensive sets

2) We have a true soph QB who has less than 10 starts under his belt

3) We've only played half our season

Yeah, I guess it does make sense to blow your load on all your "aggressive" or "trick" plays in the first half of the season with a true soph QB. 

Coach Rod's philosophy in a nutshell.

1. Establish the zone read where you have them outnumbered. The defense is forced to adjust unless they can beat their men physically.

2. Make them pay for being unsound in trying to adjust.

Light up the scoreboard.

The seam passes to Roundtree were a wrinkle to agressive backers.

Throwing the out to Roundtree was a wrinkle to the adjustment of the safeties creeping up to the seam to help the lb's who were creeping up and so on

...I have been pleased by what our offense has done this year.  I think we were handicapped two years ago for obvious reasons and we had a banged up true freshman QB last year. 

I think part of the conservatism you're seeing is that Denard is still learning on the fly.  He's doing a great job, but I don't think he has 90-100% of the offense under his belt.  For instance, after the TD pass to Webb, Matt Millen mentioned how they practiced that play over and over at the practice he attended and they couldn't get it right.  So they are adding those "wrinkles" but it takes time. 

Since we don't have six wins yet, I will play the superstition card and say IF we make it to a bowl game, you will see a more dynamic offense with all that extra practice time.

While it was not play action I think play action inside the 10 is a must as is getting our tight ends involved. I think we have two TE touchdowns and they were both fairly easy and well executed because everyone else on our offense is so dangerous.

You mention of Carr's "hand-off, hand-off, fade" series reminded me of something.  I was watching some game recently (probably an NFL game), and the offense ran two goal line fades in a row (first was incomplete, second was a TD). This got me thinking, do you think Michigan can execute an effective fade?

Robinson, for as awesome as he has been, seems to have trouble throwing lofted balls with touch (i.e. he tends to kind of rocket the ball), plus I'm not sure that the WRs have the size to be an effective fade target. Granted, Robinson is young and will get better with his already effective passing, but I'm not sure that Michigan could run a fade right now.  Thoughts?

The offense is still young. Give Denard some time to adjust to better defenses, and you'll see more dynamic plays. Next year should be crazy awesome.

Uhhhhhhh up until last Saturday we had the #2 overall offense in college football?

Your viewpoint will not be popular, but it is one that I fully concur with.  I have been surprised and somewhat disappointed in the lack of creativty of our offense.  Just to head off criticism, I understand that coming into MSU, we had the #2 offense in the country.  No disagreement, and I would not have expected RR to preview his playbook against UMass, Indiana or BG (and UConn and ND were so early in the year that Denard needed some time in the base offense).  But, MSU was our first really big test, and with the exception of 1-2 plays, we saw nothing new.

Also, yes our receivers dropped passes.  Yes, Denard was off in his throwing game, but to me, that does not mean that we should stick with a vanilla offense. 

Also ,also, I understand that Denard is a sophmore QB.  Has anyone watched Nebraska this season.  Martinez is a freshman, and while he can't throw the ball half as well as Denard (the two are probably about on par in terms of rushing, with Denard having a slight edge), they run a far more complex offense.  There is more diversity in the play-calling, and they come out with different packages when opposing defenses make half-time adjustments.  Just not sure why we can't seem to do the same when we need to against good defenses.

This is not an anti-RR rant - I am a big supporter - but frankly, if he does not open up more of his playbook and work on some innovative plays, we will have trouble against Iowa, Wisco and OSU.

you realize how good this offense is? the other team knows what's coming, but they can't stop it. 

i'm pretty satisfied. i'd say let it ride.

It may look like we are running the same play often, but we're not.  The simple zone-read play has so many wrinkles to it.  We run it out of so many formations (3 WRs-1RB-1TE, 3 WRs-2RBs, 2WRs-2RBs-1TE, 2WRs-1RB-2TEs); all these different formations require different alignments and adjustments by the defense for which we can attack.

The same play/formation will also have different blocking schemes.  Watch the H-Back in the zone plays; sometimes he leads to the playside, other times he comes across the line to block the backside end.  These are adjustments the coaches make in response to the defense.  The same goes for the QB draw; sometimes the RB is a lead blocker, sometimes the RB blocks somebody on the backside.

Running pre-snap motion is helpful in identifying whether a defense is in zone or man; it also helps create some mismatches as it can flip the strong side of the offense.  You have a point that maybe that would be helpful at times.

I think handing the ball off to WRs in motion will be coming soon.  RR did hint this when he said Grady and T Robinson were playing both WR and RB.  Obviously this depends on one of these guys proving to be a true running threat.

Not sure what else we can do in the redzone.  Most teams have a limited playbook and since the vertical threat is gone, it allows teams to play a little tighter.  I think that heavy formation against ND where we brought in Campbell and Washington as H-backs was a pretty creative wrinkle.

The offense is fine.  It is not about trickery or surprise.  As has been said many times, it is about execution and decision-making, which has been, for the large part, excellent.  My only complaint is in short yardage-the quarterback iso and the straight dive were predictable and thus stuffed by MSU.  Expect to see some different-ok more aggressvie-calls on third and short.

every good option team changes their option.  Option off the tackle.

So, offenses are supposed to be systems, not just a collection of plays.  Within the system, it is great if play A starts off looking just like play B, but is different enough to catch the D out of position (or guessing).  Motion and formation trickeration are great against middle school and high school teams, or once a season.  Once other teams study your film and see what you run out of a given package, you lose any advantage you might've gained in confusing a defense.  Essentially, a change-up is most effective when it looks just like a fastball from the beginning of the deliverty through the way it leaves the pitcher's hand.

The Webb touchdown is an excellent counterpoint to your argument.  M lines up with twins right, RB right, and begins to roll Denard to that side.  This looks just like the many times M has done exactly this to give him two throw options and the run option.  They even have the front-side guard pull, and the backside TE (who hasn't been targeted all year) set up in pass protection.  MSU has seen this on film 100 times, and it always is a throw to one of the receivers or a sprint to the corner.  The one time M did something different, against UMASS (?), the throwback bomb to the backside was 30 yards downfield.  That can't happen in the red zone. 

Not only was Webb wide open, the whole play worked because it is based on something completely different that starts out looking exactly the same.  This may cause the front-side action to open up a little, and should at a minimum slow down the backside pass rush now that defenses have to worry about a throwback to the tight end.  The beauty of this system is that each formation and play design is easily permutated to exploit the adjustments of each week's defense will make to what they've seen on film. 

The offense is ranked third in the country. It was supposedly held down last week and had 377 yards, or, almost 300 yards more than Henne, Hart, Mallettosaurus, etc. had against OSU in 1997.

Yep, not goodt Enough.

I would advise you to take another look at the offensive UFR.  We did a number of new things. 

Did anyone catch the hook and lateral to Noel Devine last night during the WVU game?  Not saying that this is the type of thing that you would ever use regularly, but I think that when we hired RR, and now that he has his players on offense, many of us expected that he would have a creative bag of tricks when we needed a big play that would leave the otther teams wondering what the hell just happened.  To day, his offense has been very vanilla.  Not saying it has not been effective against the soft part of our schedule, but I think that the OP was just commenting on the level of Vanilla. 

Sorry, crass joke about "wrinkles" removed...