OT: Football Outsiders scouts Dwayne Haskins
https://www.footballoutsiders.com/futures/2019/futures-dwayne-haskins
There are two things in the article relevant to us:
1. Haskins is good, in a way that is likely not the produce of OSU coaching.
a. The ability to read the defense pre-snap and get the ball out quickly is not particularly likely to be replicated in the next OSU QB; Haskins is an outlier here.
b. Just replacing Haskins with Fields is likely a downgrade, before throwing in the costs of a offensive style transition.
2. The gameplan to jam the mesh/crossing routes, use trap coverage and get pressure on Haskins had a chance.
a. Like most inexperienced QBs, Haskins loses mechanics and processing ability when dealing with a turbulent pocket. When Haskins is under pressure at the top of his drop, he devotes his focus to that and not the receivers and the mechanics of the throw.
b. Haskins' pre-snap reads are exceptional for his experience level. You have to be able to shift coverage and give him a look he's not expecting in a very tight window before the snap, or at least before the top of his drop.
TL,DR: Haskins' success against us might be more about him, and our DL-OL matchups, than about our gameplan or coaching.
February 13th, 2019 at 4:52 PM ^
Is this a moral victory stance?
February 13th, 2019 at 4:56 PM ^
No. But it is interesting content. To me, anyway.
February 13th, 2019 at 5:09 PM ^
So we were Defeated with Dignity... Got it.
/s
February 13th, 2019 at 6:18 PM ^
Uh... no. There was no dignity won for Michigan that day.
And then it got worse when Winovich felt it was a good idea to claim that Michigan is elite, even after getting their doors blown off.
February 13th, 2019 at 10:12 PM ^
Yea enough with the mirage and revenge tour bs. What was the bball team saying- talk less do more?
February 14th, 2019 at 9:11 AM ^
Do More. Say Less.
The basketball team has lived that. They show up, handle their business, win a lot of games, and move on. The only talking they do is through their results on the court.
February 13th, 2019 at 5:07 PM ^
When you play nothing but cover 1 like Michigan does there is nothing for the QB to read. He can determine where to go with the ball pre-snap and they can call man beating plays over and over and over. We can get away with it vs teams we have better athletes than but when we don't we get exposed badly. Unless Don Brown starts mixing in more trap coverages and cover 2 and 3 Ryan Day is going to continue to pick us apart. Don't kid yourself because Justin Fields will be every bit as good as Haskins, and they already have a 2020 QB commit rated in the 40. That talent well isn't drying up anytime soon.
We should be more worried about what our DL is going to look like next year and why our linebacker recruiting has fallen off a cliff. I think we have landed one top 247 (McGrone) LB in the last three classes (18, 19, 20).
February 13th, 2019 at 5:26 PM ^
FWIW, I just looked at the most recent UFR (Indiana), but in that game, Michigan ran Cover 1 69% of the time, Cover 2 27% of the time, and Cover 0 4% of the time. I'm not going to go through the game film for OSU to check that, but I am willing to assume that it was a similar mixture. If you think that Haskins wouldn't be able to move the ball down the field against Cover 3, then I'm just going to disagree with you.
February 13th, 2019 at 5:27 PM ^
If you think that Haskins wouldn't be able to move the ball down the field against Cover 3, then I'm just going to disagree with you.
Congrats on winning your straw man argument.
February 13th, 2019 at 5:50 PM ^
HeiZen isn't exactly correct--Michigan varied its coverages quite a bit, and OSU had counters for it--but he's not exactly wrong, either.
Brown emphasizes man. A lot. He's really good at it. He uses it, at least in theory, to dial up blitzes and some exotic coverages (I have zero interest in rewatching the OSU game for any reason, much less to discern what defensive calls were getting torched on any particular play, so I can't say how often Michigan blitzed in that game). It can be effective, even against teams like OSU.
But Michigan was not a good zone team. They would run it, but not particularly well. It's pretty clear that the bread-and-butter is man, and that zone is just kind of a thing that is thrown out there as a counter.
But if you don't run it a lot, your players don't master it, and they can't excel at it. Maybe they ran it 20 or 30% of the time (at least one OSU TD was against zone, remember). But they didn't run it well. Additionally, offenses can't get good at picking zones apart if they're not accustomed to playing against quality zone defenses. Shea struggled against zone defenses last year.
Brown's man emphasis, in my opinion, has affected the way the team plays on both sides of the ball. All philosophies do that to some extent, but it got exposed in a big way in the biggest game.
February 13th, 2019 at 5:59 PM ^
I totally get it, but if you are one of the top DC's and your scheme is predicated upon man coverage and getting pressure to the quarterback before the offensive skill players can get open you better have some effective contingency plans. Eventually one of two outcomes are gonna happen.
1. Your D Line cannot get pressure thus the man coverage will eventually break down.
2. You will play a team where their skill position players are greater athletes than what your DB's can handle.
I would say that both of these happened in Columbus this year. Brown needs to do a better job of knowing what to do when this happens, because it's going to when you play a team of equal or better talent.
February 13th, 2019 at 6:18 PM ^
He generally does. It’s usually blitz pressure. There is nothing unusual about a defense that relies on pressure—all defenses break down if the QB had all day (nobody ever drops 11 guys), and all offenses are vulnerable if the QB doesn’t have time.
I think some zone improvements are necessary. But the catastrophe that was the D Line remains inexplicable and would torpedo any defensive scheme behind it.
February 13th, 2019 at 9:52 PM ^
I don't disagree that a team's general approach on both sides of the ball can exert influence on the team's overall performance, but it also feels a bit too simplistic to say that because Michigan isn't great at zone coverage that the offense struggled as well. Patterson was in the first year of a different offense than the one he'd basically run for most of his life, and even the parts he was sorta used to were deployed sparingly. It felt like all year he held back throwing the ball regardless of the defense that was shown him, and that's why I'm excited that (it appears) Harbaugh has moved toward a more coherent passing offense with the changes in the staff. Because a lot of the zone busting plays Michigan could have deployed aren't particularly difficult to execute if you call them; it's not like a curl/flat throw is that much different than a mesh route.
My guess is that the offense will struggle early on next year as they break in yet another different set of wrinkles from a new OC but, hopefully, it'll be more dynamic as the season progresses.
February 13th, 2019 at 6:29 PM ^
We should be more worried about what our DL is going to look like next year
There is no doubt that we a need a combination of things to happen to be successful such as:
- Hutchinson & Paye to take the next step
- Jeter, Dwumfor, and Kemp to take the next step
- Villain to get healthy
- Uche's last year was not an aberration
- Smith & Hinton are ready to contribute on the 2-deep immediately
I think there is reason to believe a lot of those things should happen. Hutchinson has the pedigree and recruiting profile to break out next season. Villain is reported to be healthy finally. Paye has also shown promise and improved incrementally each year. Hinton ended up a 5-star at DT and Smith appears physically ready and enrolled early. I think Jeter is one of the big question marks and we probably need him. If some of those things happen we should be just fine. We have all the talent and numbers we need. There's plenty of guys at LB too (Hudson, McGrone, Ross, Anthony, Gill). I still don't get the Singleton, Solomon, & Irving-Bey departures and it's unfortunate as well Malone-Hatcher taking the medical retirement, but we should be able to deal with it.
February 13th, 2019 at 9:56 PM ^
Most QBs can determine the coverage pre-snap pretty easily. Or at the very least, make some pretty useful assumptions. What has killed Michigan for some time is (a) they aren't great at audibling into different coverage with some consistency so as to mess with anyone, and (b) they can't consistently get a pass rush against OSU. The first part is probably hard to do with limited practice time; messing with keys and changing calls at the line takes experience and you can't always expect younger players to be ready. The latter is absolutely something Michigan can address with recruiting and scheming, and it's where Brown will need to address.
It also felt like literally everything OSU did in that game went right for them; sometimes that just happens. Things can snowball and that game got out of hand to a degree that probably isn't reproducible.
February 13th, 2019 at 5:09 PM ^
The gameplan to jam the mesh/crossing routes, use trap coverage and get pressure on Haskins had a chance.
Uhhh... this didn't happen. Irregardless of that pass rush, trap coverages on crossing/mesh routes weren't a thing. They got Watson chasing a guy clear across the field what, 3 times? The other TD he gave up was an underthrown ball he just didn't see, but had played well up to that point. Long was caught chasing too but broke up the 1 pass thrown his way. Hill got turned around on a zig route too IIRC, though not for a TD. They didn't throw zone in there until Kinnel busted for a TD and then Bush got hurt on a later one.
Haskins' success against us might be more about him, and our DL-OL matchups, than about our gameplan or coaching.
Specific to this game or in general? Because specific to that game, it was all about gameplan and coaching. The 3rd CB wasn't the same level athlete as OSU's 3rd WR so the "coaching" was to... not do anything about it? The motion and sets used to get guys off the LOS without a jam to then run a crossing route was countered with... a zone they clearly had not prepared because it busted both times it was ran. They defaulted back to "solve your problems with aggression" by throwing guys at the OL hoping to get pressure and left their DBs on land mines until it was so bad they had to throw out a shoddy zone.
Watson was put in a terrible situation. He was Ryan Gosling in Remember the Titans and the coaches didn't even try Petey (Thomas) at all. You could blame him a bit, but in the end the defensive game plan was terrible. Giving up 50 points wasn't due to the DL not showing up, it was due to the coaching staff laying an egg (and the DL no showing up/having its 2 stars hurt).
February 13th, 2019 at 5:21 PM ^
My take on reading the article was mostly that Haskins is exceptional in his pre-snap reads but loses form and focus if pressured. Most QBs have the latter issue, particularly if inexperienced, and aren't anywhere near as good as Haskins at the former.
Couple that with our injuries on DL, and OSUs OL, and we were unable to take advantage of the flaw in Haskins' game while being unable to mitigate his strengths. Yes, that's about coaching and gameplan in that game, but it also points up the fact that Haskins matched up well against us, in a way that most QBs won't. Yeah, Day's already got a good recruit. That recruit still likely won't match up against us the way Haskins did.
No moral victory, but a silver lining, is what I took away from the article.
February 13th, 2019 at 5:32 PM ^
it also points up the fact that Haskins matched up well against us, in a way that most QBs won't.
Great, so we can beat the teams we recruit better than but have no chance against programs in our weight class. This team couldn't even slow down Brandon Wimbush and Felipe Franks. Guys like Haskins, Lawrence, Tua, etc would embarrass this defense. That's the problem.
February 13th, 2019 at 10:01 PM ^
Franks and Wimbush did most of their damage on the ground; Michigan's inability to handle running QBs has been an issue for as long as I've followed them.
As for the rest, the issue is that those teams are better than Michigan, not just the QBs. I don't know if Michigan can beat the current incarnations of Alabama and Clemson; honestly, nobody in college football seems particularly up to that task. Hell, OSU would have gotten run off the field by either of those teams, Haskins be damned.
February 13th, 2019 at 8:13 PM ^
It's repeatable (not to the 50 point extent) and doesn't require Haskins to do damage. Indiana did it last year. 2017 PSU didn't run crossers but any defense that runs cover 1 and blitzes like Michigan does opens themselves up to better athletes in space out running guys.
Not many teams have the 3rd or 4th better athletes to make Michigan pay for running their defense, but that's when coaching and game plan come into play. If your defense won't work, you have to have a plan B that isn't send more guys and hope havoc wins out.
February 14th, 2019 at 12:54 PM ^
What is the silver lining? Serious question.
February 13th, 2019 at 5:27 PM ^
Despite all that, I still think that Dwayne Haskins is "more of a runner than a thrower.”
/ Screamin' a
February 13th, 2019 at 5:29 PM ^
Classy Extreme Midget Wrestling ad in the middle of this post.
February 13th, 2019 at 5:39 PM ^
Says more about your search history than anything else...
February 13th, 2019 at 7:31 PM ^
When I was a kid my dad took me to a very low budget circus. I think it was Bob‘s circus in the mall parking lot. One of their attractions was HUGE MIDGETS. 5’10” 180 lbs.
February 13th, 2019 at 5:42 PM ^
So it begins. As I stand, pitched on the frailest of ledges in BPONE, little seeds of hope begin sprinkling from the sky far above. They will grow. At first I will say these saplings are too weak to trust, too small to reach the sky. But they will grow. And I will say hmmm, it wouldn’t hurt to climb a few branches. Then a few more. And as it grows through football season I will get closer and closer to escaping BPONE. Then the game will happen and the little ledge will give out under the weight of all that hope and it will all come crashing down harder and farther.
February 14th, 2019 at 7:56 AM ^
Very well done!!! Really-this is a most factual descriptor for at least 95% of this board. Thanks for the belly laugh!!!
February 13th, 2019 at 5:45 PM ^
They will go more zone read with Fields. He's a very good runner. They'll call the play for him at the line.
February 14th, 2019 at 2:17 PM ^
ldevon1, that is a very plausible scenario but I’m not sold on it yet. They are going to be too thin at QB to risk getting him hurt in a full zone read offense. However, by the time The Game rolls around they will run him as much as needed since it’s the last game of the year. The caveat would be if his arm doesn’t turn out to be “Haskins like”, they will have to run him.
February 13th, 2019 at 5:47 PM ^
I would not being able to lay a finger on Haskins had more to do with it than him just being good
February 13th, 2019 at 5:55 PM ^
can we just beat these fuckers please?
February 13th, 2019 at 5:57 PM ^
So our DLine getting stoned was the reason we lost the game?
Thought we all already knew this and are already panicking about this for next year?
February 13th, 2019 at 6:04 PM ^
I feel like I said this before. But, we ran into an unlucky matchup problem and a really good QB that other teams (or future games against OSU) aren't likely to be able to replicate...aka it was an aberration. If we had a pass rush force in the middle like Hurst and/or if Gary and Winovich were healthy it may have been different, but it was the perfect storm for Haskins to pick us apart and he did. Tip your hat, but take it easy on the good guys and the coaches. Haskins is an excellent player.
February 13th, 2019 at 6:13 PM ^
This might be the funniest thing I've read all week. 16 out of 18 isn't an aberration. They own us.
February 13th, 2019 at 6:25 PM ^
Clearly those are 16 individual aberrations...
/s
February 13th, 2019 at 6:32 PM ^
This is a sweeping generalization. I am speaking of this one game only. The bottom line as to why they beat us is they are more talented every year. They just have better players.
February 13th, 2019 at 7:51 PM ^
Michigan State says hi.
February 13th, 2019 at 9:30 PM ^
To counter that I'd cite OSU's record where they win 11-13 games every year. They are favored in every game they play and they win 95% of them. Every once in a while they get upset by a less talented team, but not very often. MSU was (is not any longer) the exception and not the norm. There are lots of reasons why it's harder for UM to upset OSU, but mainly because it's the last game of the year and it's a rivalry game that it makes it more likely UM gets OSU's best performance and the more talented team wins.
February 14th, 2019 at 9:32 AM ^
We are never going to be able to sneak up on them like Purdue and Iowa and Michigan State have been able to do. (Although keeping quiet and humble might be a good start.)
February 14th, 2019 at 6:26 PM ^
Now its the pass rush and a obvious a coaching conspiracy. How else do you explain the #1 Defense giving up 55 points to an average team? All we been hearing is UM needed a QB the last 2 years. Just a QB with a pulse they said.
February 13th, 2019 at 6:08 PM ^
This is hilarious. Honestly, first it was "wait, troy smith won't be around forever". then, the next guy. then the next guy. then this guy. soon we'll be saying it about fields.
I'll wait until we win a damn game or three before finally talking any shit about this.
February 16th, 2019 at 2:39 PM ^
Yep, wish I would have taken this approach. I live 30 miles north of Columbus and really felt confident this year and said some things I am now paying for. What, we were a 6 or 7 point favorite ?? Never again.
February 13th, 2019 at 6:16 PM ^
Waiting for OSU to not have a stellar quarterback seems like a fool's game. We've seen them bring in guy after guy and still produce one of the best offenses in the country year after year. We saw them win a national championship with their 3rd-string QB. We know they have an extremely talented QB that is likely to be their next guy.
They've been doing this for 15 years. I'm not holding my breath.
February 13th, 2019 at 6:37 PM ^
Change the defensive scheme and personnel to beat OSU. Fuck rest of the games. I just want to beat them a couple of times before we worry about B1G championship. Don't care if we lose to MSU and PSU. We know we can beat them. Just get better at beating OSU. Start with fall camp. Sounds bad but I am sick of not beating them.
February 13th, 2019 at 6:44 PM ^
Jeebus.
The BPONE here is off the f'n charts.
Back to the walkabout until spring game arrives.
February 13th, 2019 at 11:40 PM ^
I'm not so sure BPONE is the correct acronym.
LRONI (Luxury Resort of Negativity Indulgence) seems more apt.
February 13th, 2019 at 7:17 PM ^
OSU was average all year and got breaks against Maryland and Nebraska... We can count PSU as well. They just used us as a jumping board as they always do. Does that end this year? We will see.
Let's just move on please.
February 13th, 2019 at 7:21 PM ^
Couldn’t disagree more with the TL/DR. The line play was poor, as was the O line, Dbacks, coaching etc. Haskins played a great game but he had 1 TD from throwing a receiver open. He is elite but he didn’t need to play elite in that game to win. The problem doesn’t go away with his draft day.
February 13th, 2019 at 7:37 PM ^