What was with Semaj running off on the punt return?

Submitted by EverybodyMurders on January 9th, 2024 at 12:56 PM

Even after experiencing the joys of attending the national championship I just have one question (maybe this was explained on the broadcast) - what was with Semaj running off the field on that punt? Was it just him being poorly coached/confused because Thaw was out there and he was convinced he was the 12th man? When I saw him sprinting off I counted 11 so was thinking it mightve been one of those fake directional returns, where you send all your blockers and one returner to the opposite side of the field

Then Washington fans started booing because I'm sure they also saw Semaj and were sure they had 12 men on the field - but when I saw Thaw+Semaj out there, I immediately counted 9 at the line so knew it wasn't 12 men. Still a bit baffling

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GoBlue96

January 9th, 2024 at 1:01 PM ^

I got a little nervous every time Semaj was out there.  He's going to be good but I'm not sure he's quite up to speed yet for the big time opponents.

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HTV

January 9th, 2024 at 2:10 PM ^

Agree, think these games were a bit big for him at this time of his career.  They also had to call a timeout at one point where he was lined up wrong.  JJ had to have a conversation with him going over to the sideline to explain it to him.

He'll be fine though, everyone on the team says he's electric and we've seen that up to the playoff games.

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jdemille9

January 9th, 2024 at 1:33 PM ^

Getting a better punt return unit (either a new guy or Morgan, etc. getting better) is probably gonna be a big focus in spring/fall camp. 

 

I've said it before and I will say it again, Jabril Peppers best attribute as a PR was his ability to fair catch everything. Dude saved hundreds of yards of field position. If we field those punts last night this game is not as close as it was, and it wasn't that close. 

Joined: 01/29/2011

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tf

January 9th, 2024 at 3:20 PM ^

Also, Charles Woodson.  He had the huge return against OSU which people remember, but otherwise, the stats were pretty meh.  He averaged 8.6 per return in 97 and 5.4 in 96, and that was back when punts got returned.  For the sake of comparison, the #20 punt returner nationally in 1997 averaged 13.4 per return.  Charles, however, never muffed a punt (that I recall).  He had extremely sure hands.

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Team 101

January 9th, 2024 at 1:01 PM ^

I haven't heard any commentary but I thought they put both of them back to field the punt because on the first couple of punts they were punting in front of Morgan and forcing him to let it bounce and then on a later when we appeared to move up he kicked it over his head.

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4th phase

January 9th, 2024 at 1:10 PM ^

Yeah that was what happened, but the first time they put 2 returners out there, someone on the sideline got confused, saw 2 returners and thought "oh shit we have too many men out there" and yelled at him to run off. So Michigan returned a punt with 10 men on the field. 

Just a miscommunication where the 2 returner plan wasn't communicated to everyone.

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1VaBlue1

January 9th, 2024 at 1:30 PM ^

This kind of thing tells me that Jay's head was somewhere else instead of the in the ST meeting room.  His ST units have never - never - made so many mistakes as these last two games over entire seasons!  

I think the entire coaching staff got caught up with Semaj's electrical abilities and self-confidence ("no cap, best freshman on the field").  But the lights were too bright for the starring role he was thrust into.  He'll grow into it, probably this coming year.  But his performance in the playoffs is on the coaches for putting him into that position seemingly out of nowhere.

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Needs

January 9th, 2024 at 1:41 PM ^

I don't think it's that JayBaugh's head wasn't in the game. It was actually a brilliant coaching move to put an up man on the field, since Washington's short punts that went unfielded had been killing our field position. It's what gave us the ball on the following punt for the clinching drive on the 33 rather than the 14 or something (with Thaw fielding the short punt there).

It does probably indicate communication issues that the punt formation had changed to ... whomever was yelling at Semaj to get off the field. And I don't really think you can blame him for running off if the sideline is yelling at him to do so. Maybe you want your returner to do a count and be confident the numbers are right, but if the sideline is yelling, you have to trust they know something.

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Blau

January 9th, 2024 at 1:02 PM ^

It looked designed but don’t know for sure. Maybe they were trying to confuse the gunners to who is actually receiving the ball due to neither of them actually collecting the ball.

I’m pretty sure due to last week’s carnival party, the plan was not to even entertain a muff or fumble, giving Wash a short field. Fix it for next year and they should be good.

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WorldFlyer747

January 9th, 2024 at 1:03 PM ^

I was initially thinking the same thing as it happened and was sitting on the Washington side. The fans were losing their minds but I only counted ten when he ran off. 

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UNCWolverine

January 9th, 2024 at 1:05 PM ^

weird, my buddy back home texted me that we indeed had 12 on the field so that's why he ran off. Then on the next punt they figured out that they needed to take someone off at the LOS in order to have both of them back for the return. Maybe we only ended up with 10 on the field afterall?

while on the subject, I don't recall seeing so many dogshit punts turn into great punts like Washington did last night. That was fucking absurd.

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goblu330

January 9th, 2024 at 1:08 PM ^

That wasn’t an accident.  He was kicking line drives directly at Michigan returners because they knew Michigan was scared to field them.  If Michigan would have been confident to just catch the ball on fair catches they could have had great field position all night.  Washington was intentionally doing that.

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J. Redux

January 9th, 2024 at 1:09 PM ^

Yeah, I didn't think to count the players on the line -- playing two deep safeties on punts is so rare that I never considered it was a possibility.  When they did it again on the next punt, but without anybody running off, I did count and verified that there were only 9 on the line.  Frankly, I was surprised that deBoer didn't audible to a fake with a 10-on-9 advantage.

I watched the officials carefully all break, praying that they would not go to a monitor or start moving the ball.

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J. Redux

January 9th, 2024 at 2:03 PM ^

DeBoer has a reputation as a gambler. 10 vs. 9 may not seem like much, but split out a gunner to each side and now it’s 8 vs. 7 — or even 8 vs. 6 if they double one of the gunners.  Isolate that to one side of the field, and you might have a 4 vs. 3 or 5 vs. 3 advantage at the point of attack.

There’s a reason that most of us had never seen a two-safety punt return formation before. :)

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WestQuad

January 9th, 2024 at 1:22 PM ^

In my college friends' chat we were commenting on the lack of returns.  There were only 2 returns for 27 yards while Washington punted 5 times for 239 yards.  Lost at least 40 yards of field position by not fielding 3 of those and probably closer to 80-100 as Washington got some good rolls too.

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mackbru

January 9th, 2024 at 1:31 PM ^

Semaj will be a fine player. But he was not ready for prime time in the CFP and made several big errors. Also twice got hammered after wrongly deciding to return kickoffs.

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TeslaRedVictorBlue

January 9th, 2024 at 1:33 PM ^

That seemed like a huge call at the time. The Washington fans were apoplectic. Seemed like a missed call but if it was 11, then it's just one more thing we need to clean up. A first down there on 4th and 4 would have been a problem

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Blue69

January 9th, 2024 at 1:57 PM ^

The game had the appearance of coaches removing the things that could possibly beat us, similar to the fears that led to 30 rushes in a row v PSU. So we lost 50 to 100 yards to bouncing balls (and it would have been more except for side bounces)  but eliminated fumbles from the risk pile. Perhaps Semaj's early decisions to return kick offs to the 15 yard line had an impact. Either the coaches or Semaj didn't have confidence that he would catch it. It was a relief to see Thaw's final fair catch, which was actually a pretty big deal.

 

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MaizeBlueA2

January 9th, 2024 at 2:50 PM ^

I'm pretty sure he thought he was the 12th when he was the 11th, so we played that snap with 10 men.

Washington's punter kept kicking it short of him and it would roll for 25 yards. 

So Jay made a smart call of putting Thaw short and Semaj deep. They executed it on the next punt.

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