The Ominous Counter Gap

The game occurred on Saturday.

Over and over for 6 - 8 yards a pop at the end of last year's game.... but it won't happen again.

SWAG Mattison will find the solution. 

 

UFR-defense will be verah interesting, in that from my hazy, martini & beer-soaked memories of the game, the D-line was generating little to no pressure and there was a surprising amount of yardage for ND rbs.

Howeva, while trolling for schadenfreude, a couple of Domer bloggers mention how the Michigan LBs were sitting a couple yards deeper off the LOS to try to keep crossing routes in front of them and to force Rees to squeeze balls in a 2-deep zone, thus sacrificing some run support.

Would guess, with JMFR back, our ability to generate a rush with 4 will be better, and hopefully, the DT in our nickle will be able to clog up the middle more. Don't think you will see our LBs as deep, either, or have someone like Ross 'spy' Miller.

I bet this never ever occurred to Mattison.

If I see exactly what I saw Saturday with Michigan beating Ohio State by 11 then I will be okay with it.

Mattison's scheme looked underwhelming against Notre Dame because our blitzes were picked up well and on most plays we failed to get pressure sending four.

Personally, I would have liked to see us start to cheat up and try for an interception on those short routes when we had a two TD lead since Notre Dame didn't seem all that able or willing to beat us by throwing over the top.

Hopefully, our D-Line matures over the season where they start to be able to get pressure sending four or Ohio State's O-Line isn't as good as Notre Dame's.

I'm not sure if we can stop the run, but I haven't seen Miller pick apart a defense passing the ball the way that Rees did to us Saturday night.  His accuracy isn't as good.  I'm also not as convinced that Braxton will be as proficient as Rees when it comes to seeing the blitzes. 

Other than that, we just have to hope that the defense will undergo some drastic improvements between now and November.  It's going to be scary.  We are justifiably the underdog for the game. 

Not worried about November in September.

I'm guessing ND's line is much better than Ohio's. Either way, I expect a shootout against Ohio. They'll have just as many problems stopping #98.

I think you're remembering last years game wrong.  The problem was most definitely not our defense stopping their offense.  It was our offense staying in the lockerroom after halftime.  Take the way MSU stopped Denard as the perfect example of how to stop Braxton.  Our DBs are better this year, and will be much more refined by November, and if they do play with the cushion we saw on Sat. and that bend don't break mentality, while our LBs key on corralling Braxton, we should be ok.  We won't need to play so much nickel because Braxton is not nearly the thrower Rees is.

mattison was also pulling pipkins and washington for the nickel package and going with 2 3-techs in the middle to try and get some pass rush, i saw black, glasgow, wormley in the middle often together. so we were sacrificing some major bulk and run defense to try and get the pass rush. none of those guys is really gonna stand up against a double team. i imagine given notre dames pass heavy attack and seeing the reciever daniels get deep against temple, mattison was more worried about the deep ball and the recievers than rushing yards. if ryan is back by then maybe mattison will be able to get some more creative pressure.

We defended the pass and gave them run because we gambled that Kelly would still pass the ball.  We were right.  A lot of other coaches would have ran the counter again and again and again until we stopped it.  (Imagine Tressell facing that defense.)  However, not Kelly.  I don't have stats, but it seemed that he would get a 7 or 8 yard run through a gapping hole and then follow it with two passes.  If they were incomplete or short, we got the ball.  Mattison had to give them something.  I think he gave ND the run up the middle and bet that Kelly wouldn't call it enough to beat us with it.  Mattison was right on.  (I also assume that Mattison had a plan B if Kelly went all Tressel on us on handed the ball off again and again.)

Meyer may be different story.  I think he would just run the the ball up the gut with Miller or a RB until he hit the endzone.  I expect our defensive scheme to be very different for that game.

Basically, I think that your underlying assumption - that the defense will be the same in November as it is now - is incorrect.  Also, we should hopefully have Jake MF'n Ryan who will just simply destroy all in his path.

A lot is going to change from now until OSU. 

Notre Dame had the luxury of having a senior quarterback with the ability to audible at the line of scrimmage, I really don't think that Braxton Miller or many other teams Michigan will play will have quite that ability that Tommy Rees showed.

Sure, it's a long time from now, but it is nice to get these sort of things up on the blog early to make sure Mattison will see it and start game planning early. Unfortunately I don't think he's quite as much the devoted reader that most of us are, so these posts need to get put up early and often to make sure he reads them and knows what to do.

First of all OSU and ND are two completely different offenses with different skill sets especially at the QB position. Why would you expect us to run the same defense against them? ND is primarily a passing team whereas OSU is an inside read - QB run team.  Even though OSU is trying to throw it more you stop them by stopping the run. OSU had 40 rushing attempts against SDSU and 45 attempts agains Buffalo.

 

Secondly, ND beat Temple with big plays (Rees 15 yards per completion) and when they didn’t get the big play they struggled. It was a sound strategy therefore to take away the big play (which we did) and think that we could stop them from making long drives. Obviously ND performed better then they did against Temple as many teams do in week 2.

One: I'm not worried about Ohio yet.

Two: Jake Ryan will hopefully be back which gives the defense a lot more options. 

Not sure why, other than Kelly arrogance, that they didn't run it more, but they seemed determined not to.  We'll see how it goes with other teams.

I'm worried, but not as worried as the OP.  Mattison played 6 in the box most of the game.  I think he plays 1 high and makes Miller beat us consistently over the top before he lets them just run over us.  Just my personal opinion.

Collapse the pocket and force a decision and hope he is not up to the task.