Asking lawyers who are commenting on theTRO, are there jurisdictional questions for the Trial Court of Washtenaw County?
I don't think the State of Michigan has personal jurisdiction over the B10 in Illinois. Any temporary order is limited to the state of Michigan — M may be prevented from doing what they're trying to do in the Trial Court of Washtenaw County. I'd imagine the B10's lawyers are telling the judge assigned to this case the court doesn't have jurisdiction to enforce a TRO on the B10
I'm thinking a Federal Court is 100% where this case should be heard..
I have a grandson that is GT grad with a computer engineering degree (BSCE). In his specialty field of graphics, as it is with many engineering fields, it is common practice to keep interviewing even if you're securely employed. There are two primary reasons for this: (1) You want to keep current on what potential employers are offering and (2) the interview process. Hiring for an Engineering position usually involves solving an engineering problem on the fly. Problems offered in these interviews constantly change - you want to be prepared.
I agree with posters who offer JH wants to go back to the NFL at some point. I don't think its now. He's interviewing to keep abreast of what owners are looking for and what they are paying. I also agree with posters that posit Harbaugh's agents are doing their jobs .... leveraging Harbaugh's recent successes. JH may be giving some general guidance and feedback to them. He's at home enjoying his family planning on coaching at M going forward. JMO, YMMV.
I took my son to this game. He was 11. It was his first of many efforts to "groom" him for Michigan fandom. It worked. He graduated from M's Dental School in 2009 and is practicing in Ann Arbor. He was at the CCG in Indy on Saturday. He's a huge fan.
WIth M looking terrible for the first half, we left the stadium. Still close buy, we heard the roar of fans. Probably another Nebraska score. Just in case, on my son's urging, we re-entered. Nebraska had fumbled their 3rd time (they had 6 turnovers and lost 4, 3 fumbles and an INT) and given a short field scored a TD to close the gap. Bo's D shut out Nebraska in the 2nd half and scored 24 points to win 27-23.
Yeah, it's too long, should be a diary entry but encapsulates a good deal of what's going on except one key issue: I believe it was a couple days ago shortly after news broke that Harbaugh was interviewing for the Viking's HC job, that WWJ, Talk Radio 950 talked, on air, to Jack Harbaugh. Jack said, "the Harbaugh's are unhappy with Michigan....."
This has been a background issue since it became illuminated right after the Orange Bowl and involves what some understand to be a rift that developed between JH and M administration (including 2 unnamed regents) over how his current contract came to be. Apparently JH feels like he was treated badly. That's what may have given rise to his current interest in "entertaining HC offers" from NFL clubs.
Jack Harbaugh's on air comments are likely spin from the Harbaugh camp - a deep rooted family football tree that includes a lot of branches. But let's be honest. Jim has a track record of idiosyncratic behaviors that are off-putting to management at the CFB and NFL levels. If his limited dalliance with the NFL - well founded rumors that his "people" put out feelers to NFL clubs - following the 2020 season that were rebuffed, are an indication of the reluctance of NFL owners to put up with his inflated perception of his value (e.g., seeking a Gruden type contract), well, we should probably put that reality into the mix of variables that will ultimately decide where Jim ends up.
Frankly, I'm a bit tired of the drama. No one can say this soap opera, especially it's timing and length, is good for the program. Sure, events out of Harbaugh's control are determining the timing but it seems like he's gaming the football coach's hiring process. I think he is over-valuing his worth given his record - the bright and dark parts of it. At this point, I don't care where he ends up.
I too was at Hardrock Stadium for the game. This is Steven Ross's, owner of the Miami Dolphins, baby. I thought it was nice. Jerry's world is better. Tailgating was asphalt city and it was hot when we set up around 2:30. Lot was packed and plenty of great football fans - from both sides - all around us. Traffic in and out was surprisingly manageable.
Had an end zone seat snagged on Stub Hub on Tuesday for $260 plus fees, unbeknownst to me till I got there ..... in the M student section. I'm pushing 74 so between the noise, pom-poms, fights over who had which ticket for which seat and who would sit next to which girl, the experience was less than optimum - my son, an M graduate warned me. That M got curb stomped by the best defensive performance I've seen from a CFB team made it seem a lot worse than it probably was. Add to that a lone UGA fan, in his 20s, in our midst that was actually a nice guy but there were fireworks between his cheering every UGA play and frustrated M fans.
Food and bevs were the usual astronomically high priced. For a family of 4, and there was a nice one right next to me, who obviously also got hood winked into buying into the student section, were talking several grand to travel to Miami Gardens, stay in a hotel for a couple nights, eat meals and snacks in the stadium. Wow. Student tickets in the Big House when I was at M (66-70) were $7 each in a season packet. Traveled to the Rose once from Seattle, WA when the tickets were $50 and you could stay at the Marriot in Pasadena for around $60/n.
Times change. Great season for M with nothing taken away from it with the loss to, IMO, the best CFB team right in America right now. Go Dawgs crush Bama!
I like Corum's statement and potential indication that the team will show up during the 2022 season as united and prepared, ney, expectant, to win as they did in 2021. But let's be real .........
Stars matter and Alabama and UGA are in a different universe re talent. This M team was a team that played beyond it's talent level in 2021 but the stark difference between being elite and being just good was no where more evident than last night in Hardrock Stadium.
Optimistically, M can build a more talented roster by continuing to win but until it does that consistently and attracts top talent, you saw the ceiling last night. The wild card in assessing M's chances for championships beyond the BIG is NIL, the portal and the implication of play-off expansion along with the kind of realignment of NCAA football that realignment portends.
Here's the scenario that M probably faced with Dax:
He was either noted to have or reported he had COVID symptoms (runny nose, sore throat, dry cough, etc which I am sure all the players know to report any symptoms on a long list of them).
Let's say this report was received from Hill 24h prior to M's departure to Miami. He was probably tested when he reported symptoms and the result was likely negative (incubation period). Typically, a good testing protocol is days 1, 3, 5 using a PCR test on day 5. Experts are learning that Omicron, in particular, Delta to a lesser extent will produce a positive rapid AB result in 2d. That's because in vitro and in vivo viral growth is much faster than Delta, Delta faster than Alpha.
If he tests negative on day 5 and he is judged fit to play by medical staff, even mild URI symptoms would not preclude him from playing, he'll be in Miami in plenty of time to Play on Friday night.
M needs him to play for all the reasons in the posts pertaining to that above.
I'm going to double down on my take that the recent increase in new cases attributed to Omicron in Miami-Dade Co. suggests that if you become infected with SARS2 and develop COVID, the likelihood of you requiring medical management that includes hospitalizations is probably in the 1% range - or less than the risk of an injury in an MVA. Do we stop driving because of that? If you are under 65, healthy and vaxed, following your normal routines is leading a life that is about as risk free as you can get.
I'm watching Jackson Memorial Hospital - the largest in the Mami area - data closely as the local papers continue to report new case numbers characterizing them as records with the implication that S. FL residents should take care when out and about...... or you should be worried about this.
Here are yesterdays numbers: New COVID patients (one day): 125 (rate over the last three weeks is functionally constant). There are 485 Acute Care beds, 192 ICU beds. 113 out of 404 ventilators in use (all cases; 15 COVID cases). 27 COVID patients in ICU beds, 98 in non-ICU beds. COVID patients vaccinated and admitted 3. Boosted, 0. COVID patients out of 25 not vaxed 22.
Draw your won conclusions. Two things in this narrow window of reporting stand out: 88% of yesterday's COVID admissions at Miami's largest hospital were not vaxed. Miami Dade reported 6440 PCR confirmed COVID cases and 7242 probably cases by Rapid Antigen testing.
Just for fun, I counted up all the COVID admissions at the 27 hospitals reporting. There were 183 (NB: of those 125 weren't vaccinated). That's 183 COVID admissions out of a combined total of 13682 positive PCR and AG tests in the reporting period. That is a COVID admission rate of 0.07% with a negligible rate of increase in those admissions.
Less that 1% of daily positive tests in this snap shot view required hospitalization as a medical intervention. As a former ER PA and still in contact with colleagues, I can tell you that Docs seeing patients presenting to the ER with respiratory symptoms and testing positive for COVID have an extremely low threshold for admission across all age groups. That is because certain groups of these people regardless of age can go down hill really fast.
Sticking to Miami Dade Co. and not addressing national hospitalization data but in response to Clown question's post above......
Miami Dade Co. hospital systems report having 849 ICU or convertible to ICU beds. 32 ICU beds are occupied by COVID patients. There are 862 vents on inventory. There are 18 patients on ventilators.
There are 5003 Acute Care + ICU + convertible ICU/Acute care beds available. 399 Acute Care and ICU beds are occupied. Staffing is not addressed at the link below and I won't dismiss that staffing hospitals due to call outs (sick) and unfilled positions can be an issue. But the main point is that the hospital system in Miami Dade Co. is no where close to being "overwhelmed."
One additional comment ..... I have really enjoyed reading the responses to my original post yesterday. It's covered a lot more territory that COVID in FL. I like that.
The SARS2 pandemic has exposed a significant rift between Americans on the right and the left. I can sense it here. Let's get our terms straight: Conservatives, and I include within that characterization of this group, Classical Liberals, are on the right. Illiberalism is the political opposite and includes the left. I'm not here to argue the fine points of Civics 101; you'll get my point.
The right feels threatened by what they perceive as a loss of power and the order of things as diversity, equity and social justice becomes the mantra of the left. Generally, the right, as I've identified it above as Classical Liberalism, opposes the drift toward an administrative state with the levers of power in the hands of an elite left that calls for a reordering of American Society. That includes such themes as "Critical Race Theory" and "Cancel Culture" among others.
I'm a follower of Classical LIberalism, I'm not a racist because I oppose teaching "Critical Race Theory" in public schools and resent being named as such because I am associated with the right. I'm also definatley not a "Trumper" as a post here identified me as. But, the truth is that I want to push back against what I perceive as a trend toward leftist governance as I define it ..... the concentration of power and authority in an administrative state.
There are good arguments to be had on both sides of this rift exposed by the pandemic but the danger is political polarization as we work to understand both sides here. Obviously, this isn't the place for arguing this and I bring it to readers of this Diary's attention because we all need to be thinking about the rift and how to get through it without destroying what America should be in the process.
FL’s Governor Desantis’s focus is on limiting what the federal government and FL county commissioners and school boards can mandate. He is on sound constitutional grounds in doing that and I applaud it. He is opposed to government mandates wrt COVID and has successfully challenged such mandates in federal district court and has obtained enforceable injunctions against them. If you can find this summer’s opinion of FL’s 3r’d district Court on the illegality of the CDC’s actions in shutting down the cruise industry in March of 2020 it is a primer on state’s rights and the usurpation of Congressional authority by administrative agencies, in this case, the CDC.
SCOTUS ruled in favor of FL’s request for a Preliminary Injunction (PI) against the enforceability of the CDC’s “No Sail Order.”. The State’s Attorney General has also been successful in obtaining PIs in other civil cases heard by the federal courts involving local county commissioners and school boards issuance of various mandates (mask mandates in schools is one example).
Desanits has no objection to private businesses mandating COVID mitgation measures to protect employees and customers. He was unsuccessful in the courts when private businesses challenged his authority to prevent companies from requiring employees and patrons to be vaccinated to work or enter the business.
His second focus is on effective risk reduction management of both vulnerable populations and those COVID positive FL residents who require medical interventions. IMO, this is where governments at all levels should be focused and some are including, in some cases, the feds. YMMV.
In general, national and local reporting of COVID has largely focused on case numbers. While this has it’s place, virologists and epidemiologists are less concerned about this than they are with assessing and understanding the disease and it’s impact on the public’s health. To some extent, and I’m not talking about mandates, they are also providing state governments with guidance on how to go about managing the multiple aspects of the SARS2 pandemic.
I’ve stated my concerns about the negative narrative that characterizes a good deal of the current COVID journalism. To that effect, Governor Desantis has been under attack from state and local news source editors since the start of the pandemic. I don’t have a problem with the press undertaking investigations as long as reporting resulting from the investigations is fair and balanced. It hasn’t always been that way in FL and that is just an opinion.
TBF, because reporting about his management of the pandemic was often inaccurate, the Governor took steps to present his side and published responses to some of the attacks in the opinion’s section of notably the Miami Herald. He subsequently ordered the discontinuation of COVID data reported on the State’s Dashboard sometime in June when cases in FL were declining stating that reporting new case numbers wasn’t of much use when viral prevalence (measured by % positive new cases) was below 5%. His decision was not related to attacks, mounted by local papers, that he was getting although the press reported it was exactly for that reason. In response to criticism of that move, he stated he didn’t have a problem with County level reporting if the County Mayors and Commissioners wanted to continue doing that. Miami-Dade Co.’s data I used in my original post was from that Co.’s COVID reporting web site. The state never stopped reporting COVID data to the feds where it was published and open to public review. FL only stopped reporting COVID data on the state’s COVID dashboard.
Understood .....there is no intent here to minimize the human costs of the SARS-CoV2 pandemic. They are horrifically high in terms of morbidity and mortality. The social and economic costs are high and defy calculation. Evidence suggests that SARS-CoV2 will be with us permanently. Hopefully, it will become epidemic (outbreaks regionally) and manageable in terms of the stress COVID puts on health care systems. It is my view that it will do just that, my bias in that regard admitted.
My view is that the MSM presents COVID data without context which allows it to be misinterpreted wrt the disease impact at any given time or period. The best example of that is an over-emphasis on new case numbers as a gauge of disease impact. It is a poor one at that. There's a lot of available COVID data that goes unreported, requires digging to get it and that provides a more robust assessment of the current state of affairs. I tried to bring that to readers here as it pertains to Miami Dade Co.
The benign reasons for the lack of more context in the MSM's COVID reporting involve time and space limitations in covering the story in the various media outlets that are reporting it. There may also be an element of marketing in COVID stories, that is to say to attract viewers and listeners. Its akin to the draw that reporting on shootings, fires, car wrecks and the current misery of mankind that seems to predominate in today's main stream journalism.
The SARS2 Pandemic has two endpoints: The first is a medical endpoint ..... extinction of the virus v. rendering it neutered. The second is the point at which governments and the public no longer fear COVID and return to normal routines. A good example of the two is Polio that for all intent and purpose has been eradicated. Governments and the public don't fear it at all. An example of a neutered virus is Influenza A and B. It still produces morbidity and mortality but we don't worry about it much and it does not affect our daily routines.
We came close to reducing the public's fear and anxiety over COVID in the July/August time frame. Then came Omicron and various reports both from the media and from our public health officials and government raised fear levels again with what was and continues to be an overly negative narrative. YMMV on that assessment.
If you spend anytime reading about COVID, you will understand the long history of pandemics and how they end through extinction of the offending pathogen or through that pathogen becoming sufficiently neutered that it is no longer a daily concern.
I am a an advocate of reducing fear levels to hasten an endpoint to the SARS2 pandemic. I believe I can make a strong case for a rational and sensibly undertaken return to normalcy even in the current circumstance. Omicron is demonstrating the predictable rapid rise in infections follwed by steep declines that all it's predecessors have demonstrated. We can be better prepared to face the future and I say that in light of the reality that SARS2 isn't going away. Living with it while effectively dealing with its' impact while not fearing it is an obtainable goal.
This may not apply to general admission ticket sales provided by the M athletic department but season ticket holders got an email from the M athletic department at 4pm. If you wanted tickets allotted for season ticket holders, you had to respond by midnight.
I also posted this in the thread discussing Vegas odds for The Game are changing:
BTW, the latest NWS Forecast (0650 EST) is predicting snow to start falling at Detroit Metropolitan Airport at 1500 EST. The trough that will be producing this snow, edging out the impact of a High Pressure center moving to the NE and out of MI, is arriving from WSW to ENE. It would not surprise me that we'll see some flakes with no accumulation around the middle to the end of the 3rd quarter.
Be mindful that the biggest impact on this game is the cold temperatures mostly in the low 30s. That it is mostly below freezing would dictate light and dry snow flurries instead of the wet stuff.
Surfaces are still warm and light accumulation on the roads will melt and then freeze as temps drop post game. Driving could be messy.
Requesting our actual forecaster to put her 2 cents in on this.
BTW, the latest NWS Forecast (0650 EST) is predicting snow to start falling at Detroit Metropolitan Airport at 1500 EST. The trough that will be producing this snow, edging out the impact of a High Pressure center moving to the NE and out of MI, is arriving from WSW to ENE. It would not surprise me that we'll see some flakes with no accumulation around the middle to the end of the 3rd quarter.
Be mindful that the biggest impact on this game is the cold temperatures mostly in the low 30s. That it is mostly below freezing would dictate light and dry snow flurries instead of the wet stuff.
Surfaces are still warm and light accumulation on the roads will melt and then freeze as temps drop post game. Driving could be messy.
Maryland may have been down some key players but it wouldn't have made much difference with Taulia having one of his down days. He was 19/33, 178, 5.4ypa, 1 INT, 1TD and a QBR of 45.2. That the Terps run a flat out, pass first, up-tempo, spread offense and Taulia performing like that predicts a Maryland loss with a large share of the contribution to it by a confused and inaccurate QB. M's defense contributed to that as well.
I can't help but think that Taulia scrambling as much as he did (and then only putting up 30y with a long of 17 with his legs is a a sign of both good pressure and good contain of a dual threat QB by the scheme MacDonald deployed - looked like 3-3-5 and 4-2-5 Nickle predominated and worked as expected (awaiting UFR).
A defense like that is going to give up some run plays so, I'm reluctant to get on board with criticizing M's DTs. The back end (hard to see on TV) was probably Cover-2 where M tends to play one of the Ss closer to the LOS. See Taulia stats to assess how good it was or just go with ....it was very good.
Maryland ranks #50 in total offense with an average of 425ypg. M's D held them to well under that at 356 (noteworthy only 178 passing for a pass heavy offense and 3/14 on 3rd down). Objectively, I'd give M's defense a B+. There were some missed tackles at the LOS and 2nd level that turned a couple of what should have been 2y gains into 8+ but that's nit picking
Michigan absolutely found a way to lose this game in the 2nd half by shooting themselves in the the foot. Way too many self inflicted wounds - dropped balls, false starts, etc. Teams that outplay an opponent don't make those kinds of mistakes that stall promising drives, turn some of those drives that were sure TDs into FGs and turn the ball over at critical times in the game. Period.
M's D harasses Thornton and DJ Turner covers Jalen Nailor limiting MSU's big play, deep threat to 1-2of these instead of 12. Thornton tries but he either gets sacked dropping back or, assuming he has time, DJ gets several PBU's and an INT off back-footed errant throws. Hutchinson and Ojabo get sacks. Since the big play is the only offense MSU has, they'll flounder with Thornton having to dump off to his outlet receivers to mitigate M's pressure - Hawkins and Hill kill them.
Running into the A gaps turns out to be a disaster for MSU as McDonald hides who's coming on Thornton's pre-snap reads to plug those gaps and the numbers favor M most of the time. MSU doesn't break 100 yards rushing.
M wins the field position and special teams battle, Jake Moody nails two FGs.
M's offense isn't exciting but gets the job done. Corum gets 100 yards rushing, two TDs and notches 3 catches for first downs. Haskins plows the pile for important gains on early downs to make 3rd downs hard to defend for MSU. M sustains drives and burns clock, shortening the game. Haskins scores one TD and J.J. McCarthy throws a red zone TD pass to All.
Harbaugh's version of Michigan football is as I described it - manball. All you need at QB for that type offense is one that makes a pre-snap read to get the run game into the right play, can hand-off and doesn't make mistakes or turn the ball over. That's Cade McNamara and Harbaugh is perfectly satisfied with him. Give the coaching staff credit for knowing through multiple practices that McNamara understands and can execute JH's offense better than McCarthy can. No need to change QBs.
I believe Harbaugh wants to beat OSU more than M fans give him credit for but he's going to do it his way on offense and build a defense and special teams that can protect his offensive strategy. He's probably as close to that objective in this 2021 team as he was in 2016. He's not going to change that. He did make changes for the 2021 season though. He got rid of Warriner and put Sherrone Moore in to improve the blocking schemes for his style of run game. that looks like its working. He got rid of Don Brown and brought Mike McDonald in to get the defense he wanted to compliment and protect his offense. That seems to be working well too.
In today's game I'd offer that you probably need an offense that, at least in the current case, can run an RPO counter to the split zone JH favors as M's base play. McNamara may or may not be able to make the post snap reads that kind of play depends on but so far, M hasn't needed to pass to build a lead or to come from behind. Passing or running an offense that relies more heavily on RO for Harbaugh therefore is no more than icing on the cake - take it or leave and right now, he's leaving it. Through 7 games, he's undefeated, there are no major injuries to key players on offense to include the QB, the OL (caveats noted) and RBs that we know of.
Remains to be seen if he can ride his offensive strategy of grinding opponents to dust to a Big Ten East Crown, win the CCG and get a shot at the NCG. I think he's closer to that than he has been since he arrived. We'll find out starting Saturday.
Something that's missing here in this QB discussion that I've seen elsewhere is that Harbaugh's game strategy everywhere he's coached at the college level has been manball. What if his system limits M's QBs from getting the gaudy numbers of say OSU's CJ Stroud, among other QBs nationally, that have HC's (like OSU's Day) that love to run up big scores?
Look, every QB, except Jake Rudock, that has played at M during Harbaugh's tenure as HC has appeared to regress. They come in with good passing or option skill sets at the HS level then, in Harbaugh's manball game, those passing and options skills atrophy. Jake Rudock is the single QB JH has had that improved his passing game over a season. The rest, fans often complain, aren't "good."
JH is likely perfectly happy, given M's OL, run game and receiver roster with McNamara's performance in the manball offense he runs protected by good defense and special teams play.
JH is perfectly happy with a football game that looks a lot like a 12 round boxing match that his opponent suffers repeated flurries of body blows and he wins that game by a decision rather than a knockout. That MO has followed him wherever he's coached. Its not going to change.
M fans want knockouts and value those over 7-0. They want a flashy QB not a game manager. They're not going to get it and that's not the QB's fault.
The most noticeable difference in this M team between those of the last two seasons, well, maybe a few before that, is the play of both up front units - the OL and the DL/LBs. Sure the teams M has faced aren't elite but M's fronts are mauling the opponents on the DL and OL they line up against.
These are decisive 1v.1 match-ups that are absolutely critical in winning football. The scores in the first three games are impressive indicators of what's going on with this team. I like what that foretells in B10 play going forward.
One of the things happening on the OL with Ed Warinner gone and Sherone Moore taking his spot coaching the OL, is OL play that is cohesive and produces results. In the first 2 games it's night and day......and that's not opponent dependent. It's a major improvement.
This is a really good breakdown of each pass play and eye opener to fans miserable about the passing game and Gattis' play calling.
The complexity of a pass play and how all the parts of it have to be executed effectively for it to work is highlighted in your post.
Something worth mentioning is that the receiver room is loaded with 19 year olds. I think CJ is the oldest and he is, what, maybe 21?
Reps people. Receivers get good with lots of them. Certainly that mitigates toward exercising the passing game in live action. OTH, the paucity of pass plays reflects good in game adjustments to what was working - if Washington chose to repeatedly run a defense that wasn't stopping M's run game, you keep running it until they do. They never did.
Re (3) ....... I thought Seth did a good job explaining the situation in his UFR Offense. Look it up.
What I was generally uninformed about is that Gattis worked under Franklin for a long time and it was Franklin's position that the QB would make pre-snap reads - that's it.
Harbaugh's OC at SF, Greg Roman, liked his QB to do pre-snap reads instead of options even though option ball was becoming a thing in the pros. Getting the right match-up is also a Harbaugh characteristic - albeit sorely missing until, it appears, he got the right set of offensive coaches who can implement that tactic and teach players how to optimize it. Get the right match-up in the run game against Corum or Haskins and you saw what that can deliver in a punishing run game.
I remember in Harbaughs 4th and 5th seasons fans were fed up with what appeared to be this unimaginative banging your head against an all run mentality on offense. There was talk about how "complicated" his run game and blocking assignments were for his OL. They probably were and it wasn't getting through to the dudes on the OL or the RBs. New offensive staff, new page, dominant rushing offense ..... for now and yes, caveats WMU's LBs.
Finally, at Stanford, Harbaugh ran these 11, and 12 personnel formations with the TEs all the time. He ran a 13 with three TEs more than once v. WMU. He's comfortable with that. It certainly worked to the tune of 335 rushing yards and 47 points with what? ..... 17 pass attempts all game. The NFL does a lot of this running TEs out of beefy formations stuff and Harbaugh leans on his contacts there for ideas.
Were going to see a lot of this and I won't be complaining about a 70/30 run/pass split ..... for now.
I've seen and read most all of what you posted about. Still great work to see it summarized in one place. I know this is time consuming. Keep it up.
Side note: By the horrible end to the 2019 CFB season I was done with Jim Harbaugh and M football. DONE! The emergence of COVID just ripped two things I love out of my life: Travel and M football - a part of my being since 1966. One get's attached in highly emotional ways. "Feels" is a wholly appropriate term, IMO.
Not feeling much of anything regarding M football, I reluctantly planned a trip to MI from my home in FL to see my son, also an M grad, and bond over the first two M football games, WMU and Udub. I took him to his first M game when he was 14. We sat right in the corner endzone where Scott Driesbach threw to Mercury Hayes for a comeback win over VIrginia. He has a Detroit News picture of that framed in his man cave.
On Tuesday, he tells me he has tested + for COVID. He's fully vaccinated!!! We gamed a work-around that was a PITA to arrange. All visits with him and my three grand kids are off and he's not going to tailgate - another 13y tradition with friends - or attend the first two games. SUCKS.
But there are positive "feels" coming back. I'm back at my usual Sunday and early week regime, a routine of at least 40+ years, abandoned for two, of hunting down every article on M football and M's opponent next week that I can find.
Well balanced piece. Frankly, I don't miss Brian's esoteric style. There's some nuance to M's culture that the author seems attuned to. It's complex, multi-layered and has developed over my 50+ years of watching M football to what it is today. And what it is - how decisions are made by the U and the athletic department that impact the M football program - escapes concise definition. The author seems to get this (the boats in a storm analogy). We'll see and looking forward to it.
Let's get a couple of things straight. The data does not support that C-19 has the morbidity and mortality that justifies the constant stream of "dire consequences" from the press and even from otherwise reliable public health spokespersons. And that doesn't make and difference anyway.
Some facts: The relative risk of C-19 is stratified. If you are 80 and get the virus, your risk of death is relatively high (read up on the definitions of absolute and relative risk - somewhere in the neighborhood of 25%). If you are under 55 (+/- a few years given the source), your relative risk of serious illness (means you get hospitalized) is also low .... it probably runs in the neighborhood of 4-5%, again, depending on who's doing the number crunching.
I've seen data with a range of 3-10% in this age group and that is serious C-19 illness requiring hospitalization, not death. Risk of death across age groups under 55 can be described by Case Fatality Rate (CFR), better by Infection fatality rate (IFR). Right now CFR across all age groups is thought to be between 2-3%, IFR between 0.5 and 0.8%. It's even lower for healthy under 55s but I've not seen that fleshed out.....probably < 2% but that's a guess.
C-19 accounts for about 9% of total US all-cause excess deaths across all age groups again skewed to the over 80 cohort. Cancer and Cardiovascular disease accounts for 46% of all deaths in the US. That's like saying those two diseases cause 4X more deaths than the excess deaths assigned to C-19. Perspective.
The CDC reports that in the age group 15-24 years old that group accounts for 0.2% of all deaths with COVID. I used some other data to calculate what the absolute risk of a person in this age cohort of getting hospitalized is. Caveat: it is going to vary by region and degree of community spread. It's probably about 2% ..... this is the same risk of getting a serious injury requiring you to go to a hospital for treatment/admission that a person in that age group has of being seriously injured through normal activities of daily living. Perspective. Are we over-reacting?
Now, you may like the math, even some decision makers understand the math. Makes no difference to whether or not college football is going to be played, schools will re-open or under 55s can go back to work in their office spaces. Based on factual data, life and economic activity can return to as normal as is possible in the pandemic circumstance - with handwashing, masking and distancing still required. But it won't. That is because, as has been pointed out here, this thing has gotten political, people are unjustifiably scared and acting irrationally ..... much to the detriment of sound decision making on mitigation measures. Fear, the PR and political risks of a C-19 outbreak in any of the places that you can name that have become flashpoints for reopening are over-riding critical thought that involves typical risk-benefit calculations.
IOW, what is the Public Health (PH) benefit of curtailing generalizeable or specific venue mobility and economic activity given the social and economic costs that entails? I've seen some of these calculations and most of them conclude that PH benefits of stringent mitigation measures to date are small compared to the prodigious social and economic costs of these measures. Even in practical, observable terms, it appears to be pretty obvious how badly certain sectors of the economy - travel and leisure for example - small businesses, gig and low skill workers are doing as new C-19 cases, once snuffed out, return with a vengeance. Rinse, wash, repeat .... See Melbourne Australia. That's not working, folks.... unless you live in North Korea or China where long, brutally enforced government lockdowns where apartment doors in Wuhan Province were rumored to be welded shut.
The virus isn't going away and that is with or without a vaccine and there will be other viruses coming our way down the road. The lesson to be learned from the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is that you must learn to manage outcomes instead of trying to control or eradicate viruses to which there is zero human immunity. The world has already gotten a lot better at that on several different levels. The speed of vaccine development and getting it to scale is unprecedented.
Unfortunately, here in the US, piss-poor planning, muzzling of the experts within the CDC and nasty politics has destroyed rational thinking about COVID. OTH it is still present, if not getting drowned out by a hysterical press, ambiguous and often contradictory messaging and a lack of strong leadership. Vaccines will help but not excuse the malfeasance. The US economy and social fabric are recoverable because of who we are as a nation. Of that I am confident. But the costs will be high and higher still if we don't start critically thinking.
The post isn't awful ....... but, it has little bearing on the outcome of the Citrus Bowl on January 1st as the OP would have us believe.
This kind of stuff gets press because the TV productions these days spend more time with tight shots of the coaches and players on the sidelines, then sequeing to some stupid human interest story form the sideline reporter instead of concentrating on televising the game.
It's the game and how it is played and the players execute that bears watching, not some fit or apparent detachment a coach is having on the sideline. Count me among those that think Harbaugh's temperment on the sideline and during the game means shit to the outcome.
Yep. The Brown I'm worried about is the one that can't figure out how to avoid match-ups where Jerry Jeudy, Devonta Smith or Henery Ruggs, III is single covered by a Josh Metellus or Brad Hawkins ...... or, also, the one that has no answers for Najee Harris churning out yards between the tackles.
I'm 72, attended Michigan as an undergrad and was at Bo's first big Michigan win in "69. M football is in my blood but I'm much less emotionally invested in it. Experiencing the disappointments, renewed hopes as the summers pass followed by a return to disappointment by mid-season and the crushing losses to osu wasn't worth it. I also enjoy reading and writing about CFB.
My son, also an M Dental School grad lives in Saline. We share a love of M football and season tickets so, it's a nice way for us to stay connected. I find it interesting following the emotional ups and downs of posters at and owners of mgo. I understand all of it. Been there, done that.
I have some cable - just enough to allow me to sign-in and stream live. Two things: the game productions since the early days of ABC and Kieth Jackson have nearly become unwatchable if you love to watch the technical aspects of the game and I do. FBS CFB is broken WRT to competetiveness across all 130 teams. It's top heavy and has become so for a number of reasons, not the least of which is impermissible benefits being paid to student athletes by well entrenched mechanisms not necessarily overtly or admittedly known by coaches or ADs. They persist, are anti-competitive and have been like that since the early 1900s, much worse, IMO, now because of the distortion it creates in what should be a normal distribution of CFB teams.
The other thing that wears on me about CFB is conference alignment being drive not by the competitiveness of a region's teams - the conference make-up - but rather TV viewership and the revenue generated therefrom, among other things not related to enhancing regional and national competition.
So, I have a lot of different activities I enjoy outside football and have found a measure of balance as I've aged but I still have that Michigan football blood in me and for the most part it runs hot.
Thanks, Seth. I think it's great to see detailed analysis that supports the idea that M's offense was prepared to take on the osu D. osu's offense is elite. I think M's staff knew they were going to have to keep up score for score. It appears they could have barring all the stuff on both sides of the ball we all saw. American Football is a game of restricting variance and controlling circumstances to prevent randomness .....seems as if M has a hard time doing that against osu. It's also pretty clear, to me anyway, that the coaching staff knows how to coach and prepare for big games v. rivals.
Your take makes me look forward to the bowl game - it's Alabama or Auburn for me. Not wild about playing USC on the West Coast. I think the team and the coaches would be jazzed to play Alabama or Auburn in one of the FL bowls. All the talk that M would get butt-kicked again is just loser talk. Get back on the horse and ride. I think M will be fine in post season play. The pieces and the talent are there to compete with anyone. Focus. Control the things that are within your capability to do so.
The guy is a stand-up poster with a good deal of football cred on our forum. I've known him for probably 10y, maybe more. He's as solid and tolerable of an osu fan as there is and that's saying a lot. It's disturbing to see posters here dismiss him solely on the knowledge that he's an osu fan.
What this forum needs most is balance to the happy-horse-shit, unicorn's blowing rainbows out it's ass rosy hot-take views of M football... it's not all that, there's good stuff here but ...... If things were as rosy as they should be, M would have been meeting Wisconsin in the BTC but, no, they were out of that discussion after getting blown out by that same team, then fucking around in HV for half the game. If things were as rosy as observers here think they are, M wouldn't have been ass-raped by osu ..... AGAIN. 0-5 v. osu is BAD. It's bad look for Top 100 recruits considering who they want to go with to get them into the NFL and the big bucks, it's bad look for Harbaugh and the program he is solely responsible for how it performs, very bad. There are problems, folks and they need to be addressed. As for me, I think they will be. I have confidence in Harbaugh. Damn good coach and a fine person.
As for the CHumkins post I'm responding to, I think Chumkins backs up his comment that our osu fan's take on the "OL is weird." Listing the recruits and their star rankings is good. But if you go back and carefully read the follow-on post I made on his behalf and in response to Dr.Mattis' issues on the osu guy's OL take, you'll see he is forthright in noting, M could make functionally elite dudes out of the 3 and 4 star guys on the current OL roster. Here's what he said:
And look, maybe M struck the motherload with those kids, but on average what you're looking at for kids in that ballpark is what Mayfield did this year -- who was in that range and in his 2nd year. That's not bad, but it's not stellar. I expect Mayfield will continue to improve and be a damn good tackle by the time he's done, but he wasn't in 2020. He was meh. So, to be clear, I'm not saying those guys won't be good, but I am saying that I would bet against them being particularly good in 2020. What I would expect to see is 2/3 young kids + 1/2 vets fill in the 3 (or 4) spots. And they'll struggle a little in 2020 and eventually get there by 2021.
The only thing I'd take issue with in the comments is their (IMO) exceptionally rosy view of the 2019 OL recruiting class as it relates to 2020 performance. Yes, I know they signed some solid players, but none of them are elite. They're all in the 100 to 300 range. And look, maybe M struck the motherload with those kids, but on average what you're looking at for kids in that ballpark is what Mayfield did this year -- who was in that range and in his 2nd year. That's not bad, but it's not stellar. I expect Mayfield will continue to improve and be a damn good tackle by the time he's done, but he wasn't in 2020. He was meh. So, to be clear, I'm not saying those guys won't be good, but I am saying that I would bet against them being particularly good in 2020. What I would expect to see is 2/3 young kids + 1/2 vets fill in the 3 (or 4) spots. And they'll struggle a little in 2020 and eventually get there by 2021.
And look, I know what Warriner does. But Warriner's 2014 OL had 4 NFL dudes on it. Maybe he gets the M kids there and maybe he gets them there ahead of schedule. I don't know enough about them to say if they are the exception. I'm simply following what I think is the rule -- I wouldn't feel great counting on 2nd year OL unless they're legit elite kids. JMO. There's gonna be a drop off of some note (IMO).
So, yeah, I feel 100% confident with my assessment of the OL. If you want to go starry-eyed on the 2019 class that's fine, but you're probably lucky to get 1 really good year out of that.
Look, this game has nothing to do with the stats you posted. They are an end-product of a whole bunch of other stuff either going right or wrong for M. You missed that.
First do all the obvious standard shit right and force osu to make mistakes ....... you know score more points than your opponent. Heh.
More specifically .......
On Offense:
Gattis has to have a game plan that mitigates the disruptive effect chase young has on every offense that osu has played against.
Patterson and his receivers have to make plays on standard downs.
osu has to be forced to move their slot corner into the box because Harbaugh's trap run game is working and giving short yardage to move the chains and possess on 2nd or 3rd down.
On Defense:
Plenty have a different view but, IMO, you stop dobbins running inside by disallowing osu to "equate" (see urban meyer on Fox explain this) defenders v. blockers, M wins.
Execute the doubles coverage scheme Brown introduced (See Neck Sharpies) to contain day's success from 2018 on WR or H-Receiver slants and drags.
Knock receivers off their routes at the snap and make the switches to avoid fields finding kj hill or chris olave one on one with a LB.
Get lucky by correctly doubling field's primary and secondary reads. Force the third read. Sack him.
LBs and Ss stay gap disciplined/sound if fields keeps/runs a draw
Other:
Be no less than +1 in turnovers.
Punish osu after a big M stop or osu turnover by going long to Collins.
Don't try to protect a lead if M gets up by 2 or 3 scores.
Two things: there's a very good chance fields is not 100% ..... my take is that his ankle injury is a factor and I'm pissed the thread that was talking about it was deleted. To be perfectly clear, I'm not cheering his injury but you take that part of the offense away from day and his offense is very different.
Brown has to engineer his D to absolutely stop dobbins from running inside, shutdown day's short passing game and force him to require fields to go deep.... much like he did to IU/Stevie Scott/Peyton Ramsey. osu's tackles are vulnerable to Brown's jet-pkg.
Second, IMO, dobbins running inside is a bigger threat to M than the outside you attribute to him. That is because of how Brown is forcing (funneling) outside runs to the edge back to the inside where numbers equate. PSU doesn't play their DEs anything like Brown uses Uche, Hutchinson and Danna combined with LB and S play. So, dobbins looked good to PSU's edge.
I still think osu is a very complete team and I thought your overview section about how day runs the offense was a damn good take. It will be tough for M to win this one even in the Big House. In 2019, I like Don Brown v. ryan day to hold osu under 25. M can win this if Gattis/Patterson in the weather can engineer an offense that scores more than that.
Well, hate to be a spoiler but mineral king's map represents the current GFS fcst model. There are others. The NAM keeps the H in Central Canada around longer. That could push the moisture stream S of Ann Arbor and keep it there. Small chance but the NWS hasn't committed for Saturday yet because the models aren't consistent and may not be until after Thursday pm. It wont be sunny and mild like it has been here in AA for the last 72h.
It's not that hard to understand why the osu offense was able to be as efficient as it was against, by the numbers, a very good Wisconsin defense.
1st, there's a considerable talent/speed/athleticism difference between osu's offensive players and Wisconsin's defensive players, especially LBs and Ss. Think the Hamler/Hawkins match-up in the PSU game this season and the Olave/any LB or S match-up in the osu game last season.
2nd, already mentioned, justin fields is a credible threat to run. That takes a defensive player, assigned to account for fields, out of the blocking and tackling numbers game; osu gets a one man blocking advantage for dobbins all the time and that gets dobbins to the second level on the regular and he is a tough out once he gets there.
3rd, along with day's offense presenting the challenge of dealing with a run threat from fields, fields throwing quick slants and outs is just as tough to defend. These quick fields throws in day's offense makes bringing LBs and Ss on a blitz risky and, overall, mitigates the pass rush. If Wisky blitzes and fields picks this up pre-snap he can strike with a quick-hitter into an empty zone the blitzer just vacated. Big plays ensue.
Here's a link to WeatherBell Analytics. This group does detailed weather forecasting. Some of their stuff is free, like this interactive forecast precipitation amounts map.
The point is you can see how through 8pm Saturday night, The area that Ann Arbor is within has a rainfall total of 0.3 - 0.7 inches. That's a light drizzle for a 6h period from 2pm to 8pm. By 2am Sunday morning, the next 6h period, the rain total is 1.2". That's a bit less than 0.1"/h ..... light rain. At least I'm maybe wishfully thinking that.
That decision on the U golf course lots will be made by 9am Saturday morning. I was over there today and saw them preparing the golf course for game day parking. My guess is that they will close them. I don't know about Pioneer.
I've been following the wx real closely. I've got a background in aviation so, I can read weather maps and understand the lingo but I'm not a meteorologist like our diarist is. It's a good forecast, as usual.
Having said that, make sure you take a look at the first paragraph of Brian's Game Preview post. It will give you a very good idea of what kind of rain tailgaters and those committed enough to M football to watch the game in the Big House will experience.
It might be tolerable. It's still sucks and the weather for this game is another example of how football Gods seem to hate Michigan. At the same time, Ann Arbor is on the Northern edge of the rain swath not in the center of it like Metro Detroit is. Moreover, the heaviest rains will be on the Eastern most aspect of that same rain swath. Now this is, again, hair splitting, and a good meteorologist like our diarist is, won't sugar coat - they'll give you worst case. I can afford to sugar coat. So, I have.
Dress appropriately and enjoy. Anyone that's done this knows how to survive the weather challenges often present watching outdoor football games.
Some questions asked here about "fronts" and the possibility that it will shift lessening the chances of the forecast deluge during the game.
The weather features affecting the forecast are three systems none of them actually passing through SE MI on game day. The first is a High Pressure system that is passing though MI TODAY W to E. The second is a system over the plains moving from SW to NE - it is providing funneling action to the third tropical system moving from the SW (currently still over the Gulf of Mexico) to the NE (will be over the Ohio Valley region on Saturday). It is this system that is the source of the heavy rains that are forecasted for SE MI.
As usual for SE MI weather forecasting and why it is so hard to forecast this region, it is right on the edge of forecast rain amounts exceeding an inch so, yes, there could be less rain than that of the forecast deluge in Ann Arbor that all the weather Apps are talking about. When you time lapse the NWS surface analysis maps, you can watch the rain areas move from S to N and fully engulf SE MI by 8pm. However, if you overlay these maps with forecast precip amounts, Ann Arbor sits in the < 1 inch region. Move to Detroit Metro and its in the 1-2 inch band. It's hair splitting and weather forecasters won't do that. They are going to almost always go worst case. So, yeah, there's a chance it won't be a monsoon; there is no chance it won't rain.
If you are tailgating, what I recommend is that you get a good radar APP on your phone and watch rain movement on that App and act accordingly. BTW, I'm betting that the U will preemptively close golf course parking. That being the case, expect Ann Arbor traffic and the hunt for parking to be a mad house by 3pm.
I live in Atlanta but I'll be in Ann Arbor this weekend's game. I grew up in SE Michigan. This area may be one of the most difficult to forecast weather in the nation because of the low and mid-level dynamics that actually shape the weather we experience on the ground.
NWS forecasters are hedging the timing of rain. It all depends on how quickly a high pressure area - responsible for today's and probably tomorrow's nice weather - moves east far enough to pull a band of moist air into SE Michigan that will sit just south of Michigan/Ohio line for most of the day on Saturday.
The SE corner of MI (Detroit metro area) is going to see rain first; areas to the west will see it later and maybe much later Saturday night. A deluge from thunderstorms is unlikely - I'm seeing < 1/2 inch (0.38) in the NWS forecast from 7pm to 9pm, probably less the farther W you go. I think it will be wet during some portion of the game but it won't be a wash-out....... caveat forecasting wx in SE MI is hard.
Well done as usual. Thanks for the effort you put into these.
Illinois (Lovie, who is really good at this, not other coaching things) made some adjustments along the way to slow M's run game. I tried to pick them up by looking at replays but strangely, there was no major changes in Lovie's 4 man front , LB deployment behind it (he uses a hybrid backer too) and what looked like as close as I could tell, C2 Zone. Lovie blitzed a lot too but, M picked most of these up. So, ????
The truth teller though was counting the ratio of M's blockers to Illinois' defenders, ID'ing the conflict player and deciding if the play call and action at the mesh was correct. The RPO was effective and called too infrequently against blitzes (line or play call?). If the read keeper was on, Patterson missed opportunities there for yards with a keep - Illinois shuffled the DE like everyone does but Shea is reluctant, it appears, to challenge that. I actually think he is either restricting himself or the coaches are becasue it is a clear theme in Shea's repertoire. There are too many yards not taken on this play and it affects the run game efficiency overall. While it's true, M had a good day rushing overall, after the half, YPC plummeted from over 9 to something around 3. It climbed back up after the sideline (probably) realized Illinois was making a game of it when that same sideline turteled with a 28-0 lead in the late first half.
The point you make about the team (both sides of the ball) losing focus/letting up on the go pedal, was painfully obvious just before and after the half. That loss of focus caused one fumble and a bunch of yardage given up by the D to the Illini with poor tackling and what I thought were some terrible reads by Mettellus playing C2 zone who took himself out of at least two big Illinois plays that I re-watched on video - one the slant where he flowed outside, away from his zone, instead of in with the receiver who should have been his responsibility. Classic mis-step in zone coverage - a reoccurring theme when M plays zone.
There's good post game observations/takes that the coaches were responsible for this loss of focus. With 1+ minutes on the clock and 3 TOs on the board approaching the end of the 1st half, it's coaching malfeasance to not try to respond to the TD Illinois had just scored. That sends a strong message to the offense. That set the tone for the 3rd quarter when M, predictably, came out flat on their first two possessions. I disagree with you when you said this was probably the right call. It wasn't.
I just don't understand that Harbaugh seems not to recognize that in today's game, a 3 TD lead can evaporate in a hurry due to randomeness, turnovers, bad calls and bad teams suddenly getting a spark and making plays. I'm not confident that the coaches will learn from this game. That Harbaugh has remarked in the past that he wants to win with "cruelty and integrity" makes this all the more perplexing and frustrating.
Done Brown has downladed power teams like Iowa and should have put a defense on the field v. Wisconsin that had a much better performance - that team was unprepared. So, while he is a decent coach v, BT power teams, his 2019 defense has some well documented and mostly well discussed weakness in that mode. See Jonathan Taylor's stats and M's 4th and short/goal line D. today.
Where he still mystifies is v. spready teams using spready concepts, i.e., the quick, short throws to slanting or dragging receivers, the various bubble screens and the like. Rod Smith wisely kept calling them and got a couple of them to break for chunk plays. He is a very good OC and had his team prepared to play offense.
OK, fine. Those are hard to defend but none of them should get the kind of YAC they tend to get. That's from players not seeing those plays developing then being a step behind and out of position to make the tackle when the receiver makes the catch.
My sense is that Brown played a lot more C-1, man and a lot less C2-zone today than he did last week v. Iowa. Smith was exploiting that with quick throws over the middle that neutralized a decent pass rush. Where have we seen this before? M's remaining opponents will take note.
I feel confident that the applicable coaching staff have these kinds of analytics. After all, M has one of the deepest support staffs - including analysts that do this kind of work - in CFB.
The analysis is interesting, though. I would tend to go with (B) as well. I've also come to the conclusion that this really isn't the ZR/RPO offense we expected Gattis would run. It still has a lot of IZ/OZ Power concepts in it - a hybrid, I guess.
We probably should have understood this when, over the summer, Gattis in the interviews he had, was pretty clear that his offense wasn't going to abandon the things that M did well in 2018.
I would add when considering "transition costs" that if you compare how M has performed in this circumstance to how other teams going through similar transitions have performed, specifically LSU, you can argue this coaching staff hasn't excelled.
Ryan Day at osu is a bit different but, nonetheless, osu's offense has excelled in incorporating the offense he is running and it is a departure from ufm's offense - and of course, Day has had a prior year to work on this. You have to wonder though, why is M's offense so Janky?
I was skeptical of this take .... then I went down the play-by-play list at ESPN. Lot's of promising series ended with Patterson incompletions - and that's not a rap on Shea. I think Shea's problems are occurring as a result of a combo of things.
After the long throw to DPJ for 51 yards, Iowa went to an almost exclusive use of C-2 Zone and presented M with 5 defenders v. 6 blockers at the LoS, 7 if you factor in two TEs (22 personnel fronts) that got some run.
There were a few 3 yard run plays that were well defended by Iowa winning the RPS battle by jetting a S or a LB into what they thought would be the POA (usually A or B gap) and guessed right. That result on 1st down gets a particular Gattis series off-schedule probably dictating a 2nd or 3rd down pass. Shea wasn't making those enough of the time but I think pass-play calling and design contributed to his woes. Straight up though, M's run game had some nice runs as you point out.
There are some very good points here but I'm a bit more reluctant to call out the coaches at the GTFO level .... yet.
One of my takes is that Shea's shit-ball performances could be a combo of things involving play design, limiting reads to 1/2 the field, stressing ball security - all coaching stuff - that's compounded by Patterson's tendency to go yakaty-sax.
Play calling #1 (Gattis): Obviously, the lack of the deep ball with coaching reluctance to call that play for SP because he's inconsistent with it (poor ball placement). Also noteable that Iowa plays a C-2 Zone D. This is designed to limit the deep ball on the field boundaries and the deep middle. After the DPJ bomb (that was typically under-thrown, BTW) v. single coverage, Iowa went to C2-Zone the rest of the way. Accordingly, if the deep ball was on, the check-down would have been to alternate routes. Then we have SP's yips making those progressions iffy.
Play Design #2 (Gattis/Harbaugh): 4 receivers running 15y verts and then sitting on them- usually a pick play will be factored in there. This play is certainly in the Gattis play book because it fucks with C1 or C0 - man. It is a terrible call v. C2-Zone unless you add clearing routes. If you're going to call it into C-2 Zone, there has to be some kind of motion or clearing routes combined with those short verticals to develop conflict and therefor one receiver who is going to be wide open because the conflict defender in that zone took the bait and left it. That didn't happen on both counts (route design and defenders getting baited) so on these verts Iowa played it well and nobody was open. How is that Patterson's fault?
There's more, a lot more, examples, in this game like this. I could go into the run game design and execution but, who wants to read all that, TL;DR applies.
Bottom line:It can be shown it is a toxic combo of things that makes this offense so janky. Somebody used the term "systemic problems." I can agree with that and they are very difficult to sort out and remedy. However, that's why the guys that are assigned to do that are getting paid 7 figure salaries. Hold them accountable but I'm not in favor of constantly changing the principals. All that does in any organization simply perpetuates chaos and inefficiency, IMO.
Recent Comments
Asking lawyers who are commenting on theTRO, are there jurisdictional questions for the Trial Court of Washtenaw County?
I don't think the State of Michigan has personal jurisdiction over the B10 in Illinois. Any temporary order is limited to the state of Michigan — M may be prevented from doing what they're trying to do in the Trial Court of Washtenaw County. I'd imagine the B10's lawyers are telling the judge assigned to this case the court doesn't have jurisdiction to enforce a TRO on the B10
I'm thinking a Federal Court is 100% where this case should be heard..
I have a grandson that is GT grad with a computer engineering degree (BSCE). In his specialty field of graphics, as it is with many engineering fields, it is common practice to keep interviewing even if you're securely employed. There are two primary reasons for this: (1) You want to keep current on what potential employers are offering and (2) the interview process. Hiring for an Engineering position usually involves solving an engineering problem on the fly. Problems offered in these interviews constantly change - you want to be prepared.
I agree with posters who offer JH wants to go back to the NFL at some point. I don't think its now. He's interviewing to keep abreast of what owners are looking for and what they are paying. I also agree with posters that posit Harbaugh's agents are doing their jobs .... leveraging Harbaugh's recent successes. JH may be giving some general guidance and feedback to them. He's at home enjoying his family planning on coaching at M going forward. JMO, YMMV.
I took my son to this game. He was 11. It was his first of many efforts to "groom" him for Michigan fandom. It worked. He graduated from M's Dental School in 2009 and is practicing in Ann Arbor. He was at the CCG in Indy on Saturday. He's a huge fan.
WIth M looking terrible for the first half, we left the stadium. Still close buy, we heard the roar of fans. Probably another Nebraska score. Just in case, on my son's urging, we re-entered. Nebraska had fumbled their 3rd time (they had 6 turnovers and lost 4, 3 fumbles and an INT) and given a short field scored a TD to close the gap. Bo's D shut out Nebraska in the 2nd half and scored 24 points to win 27-23.
Yeah, it's too long, should be a diary entry but encapsulates a good deal of what's going on except one key issue: I believe it was a couple days ago shortly after news broke that Harbaugh was interviewing for the Viking's HC job, that WWJ, Talk Radio 950 talked, on air, to Jack Harbaugh. Jack said, "the Harbaugh's are unhappy with Michigan....."
This has been a background issue since it became illuminated right after the Orange Bowl and involves what some understand to be a rift that developed between JH and M administration (including 2 unnamed regents) over how his current contract came to be. Apparently JH feels like he was treated badly. That's what may have given rise to his current interest in "entertaining HC offers" from NFL clubs.
Jack Harbaugh's on air comments are likely spin from the Harbaugh camp - a deep rooted family football tree that includes a lot of branches. But let's be honest. Jim has a track record of idiosyncratic behaviors that are off-putting to management at the CFB and NFL levels. If his limited dalliance with the NFL - well founded rumors that his "people" put out feelers to NFL clubs - following the 2020 season that were rebuffed, are an indication of the reluctance of NFL owners to put up with his inflated perception of his value (e.g., seeking a Gruden type contract), well, we should probably put that reality into the mix of variables that will ultimately decide where Jim ends up.
Frankly, I'm a bit tired of the drama. No one can say this soap opera, especially it's timing and length, is good for the program. Sure, events out of Harbaugh's control are determining the timing but it seems like he's gaming the football coach's hiring process. I think he is over-valuing his worth given his record - the bright and dark parts of it. At this point, I don't care where he ends up.
I too was at Hardrock Stadium for the game. This is Steven Ross's, owner of the Miami Dolphins, baby. I thought it was nice. Jerry's world is better. Tailgating was asphalt city and it was hot when we set up around 2:30. Lot was packed and plenty of great football fans - from both sides - all around us. Traffic in and out was surprisingly manageable.
Had an end zone seat snagged on Stub Hub on Tuesday for $260 plus fees, unbeknownst to me till I got there ..... in the M student section. I'm pushing 74 so between the noise, pom-poms, fights over who had which ticket for which seat and who would sit next to which girl, the experience was less than optimum - my son, an M graduate warned me. That M got curb stomped by the best defensive performance I've seen from a CFB team made it seem a lot worse than it probably was. Add to that a lone UGA fan, in his 20s, in our midst that was actually a nice guy but there were fireworks between his cheering every UGA play and frustrated M fans.
Food and bevs were the usual astronomically high priced. For a family of 4, and there was a nice one right next to me, who obviously also got hood winked into buying into the student section, were talking several grand to travel to Miami Gardens, stay in a hotel for a couple nights, eat meals and snacks in the stadium. Wow. Student tickets in the Big House when I was at M (66-70) were $7 each in a season packet. Traveled to the Rose once from Seattle, WA when the tickets were $50 and you could stay at the Marriot in Pasadena for around $60/n.
Times change. Great season for M with nothing taken away from it with the loss to, IMO, the best CFB team right in America right now. Go Dawgs crush Bama!
I like Corum's statement and potential indication that the team will show up during the 2022 season as united and prepared, ney, expectant, to win as they did in 2021. But let's be real .........
Stars matter and Alabama and UGA are in a different universe re talent. This M team was a team that played beyond it's talent level in 2021 but the stark difference between being elite and being just good was no where more evident than last night in Hardrock Stadium.
Optimistically, M can build a more talented roster by continuing to win but until it does that consistently and attracts top talent, you saw the ceiling last night. The wild card in assessing M's chances for championships beyond the BIG is NIL, the portal and the implication of play-off expansion along with the kind of realignment of NCAA football that realignment portends.
Here's the scenario that M probably faced with Dax:
He was either noted to have or reported he had COVID symptoms (runny nose, sore throat, dry cough, etc which I am sure all the players know to report any symptoms on a long list of them).
Let's say this report was received from Hill 24h prior to M's departure to Miami. He was probably tested when he reported symptoms and the result was likely negative (incubation period). Typically, a good testing protocol is days 1, 3, 5 using a PCR test on day 5. Experts are learning that Omicron, in particular, Delta to a lesser extent will produce a positive rapid AB result in 2d. That's because in vitro and in vivo viral growth is much faster than Delta, Delta faster than Alpha.
If he tests negative on day 5 and he is judged fit to play by medical staff, even mild URI symptoms would not preclude him from playing, he'll be in Miami in plenty of time to Play on Friday night.
M needs him to play for all the reasons in the posts pertaining to that above.
I'm going to double down on my take that the recent increase in new cases attributed to Omicron in Miami-Dade Co. suggests that if you become infected with SARS2 and develop COVID, the likelihood of you requiring medical management that includes hospitalizations is probably in the 1% range - or less than the risk of an injury in an MVA. Do we stop driving because of that? If you are under 65, healthy and vaxed, following your normal routines is leading a life that is about as risk free as you can get.
I'm watching Jackson Memorial Hospital - the largest in the Mami area - data closely as the local papers continue to report new case numbers characterizing them as records with the implication that S. FL residents should take care when out and about...... or you should be worried about this.
Here are yesterdays numbers: New COVID patients (one day): 125 (rate over the last three weeks is functionally constant). There are 485 Acute Care beds, 192 ICU beds. 113 out of 404 ventilators in use (all cases; 15 COVID cases). 27 COVID patients in ICU beds, 98 in non-ICU beds. COVID patients vaccinated and admitted 3. Boosted, 0. COVID patients out of 25 not vaxed 22.
Draw your won conclusions. Two things in this narrow window of reporting stand out: 88% of yesterday's COVID admissions at Miami's largest hospital were not vaxed. Miami Dade reported 6440 PCR confirmed COVID cases and 7242 probably cases by Rapid Antigen testing.
Just for fun, I counted up all the COVID admissions at the 27 hospitals reporting. There were 183 (NB: of those 125 weren't vaccinated). That's 183 COVID admissions out of a combined total of 13682 positive PCR and AG tests in the reporting period. That is a COVID admission rate of 0.07% with a negligible rate of increase in those admissions.
Less that 1% of daily positive tests in this snap shot view required hospitalization as a medical intervention. As a former ER PA and still in contact with colleagues, I can tell you that Docs seeing patients presenting to the ER with respiratory symptoms and testing positive for COVID have an extremely low threshold for admission across all age groups. That is because certain groups of these people regardless of age can go down hill really fast.
Sticking to Miami Dade Co. and not addressing national hospitalization data but in response to Clown question's post above......
Miami Dade Co. hospital systems report having 849 ICU or convertible to ICU beds. 32 ICU beds are occupied by COVID patients. There are 862 vents on inventory. There are 18 patients on ventilators.
There are 5003 Acute Care + ICU + convertible ICU/Acute care beds available. 399 Acute Care and ICU beds are occupied. Staffing is not addressed at the link below and I won't dismiss that staffing hospitals due to call outs (sick) and unfilled positions can be an issue. But the main point is that the hospital system in Miami Dade Co. is no where close to being "overwhelmed."
https://www.miamidade.gov/information/library/2021-12-26-covid-dashboard.pdf
One additional comment ..... I have really enjoyed reading the responses to my original post yesterday. It's covered a lot more territory that COVID in FL. I like that.
The SARS2 pandemic has exposed a significant rift between Americans on the right and the left. I can sense it here. Let's get our terms straight: Conservatives, and I include within that characterization of this group, Classical Liberals, are on the right. Illiberalism is the political opposite and includes the left. I'm not here to argue the fine points of Civics 101; you'll get my point.
The right feels threatened by what they perceive as a loss of power and the order of things as diversity, equity and social justice becomes the mantra of the left. Generally, the right, as I've identified it above as Classical Liberalism, opposes the drift toward an administrative state with the levers of power in the hands of an elite left that calls for a reordering of American Society. That includes such themes as "Critical Race Theory" and "Cancel Culture" among others.
I'm a follower of Classical LIberalism, I'm not a racist because I oppose teaching "Critical Race Theory" in public schools and resent being named as such because I am associated with the right. I'm also definatley not a "Trumper" as a post here identified me as. But, the truth is that I want to push back against what I perceive as a trend toward leftist governance as I define it ..... the concentration of power and authority in an administrative state.
There are good arguments to be had on both sides of this rift exposed by the pandemic but the danger is political polarization as we work to understand both sides here. Obviously, this isn't the place for arguing this and I bring it to readers of this Diary's attention because we all need to be thinking about the rift and how to get through it without destroying what America should be in the process.
FL’s Governor Desantis’s focus is on limiting what the federal government and FL county commissioners and school boards can mandate. He is on sound constitutional grounds in doing that and I applaud it. He is opposed to government mandates wrt COVID and has successfully challenged such mandates in federal district court and has obtained enforceable injunctions against them. If you can find this summer’s opinion of FL’s 3r’d district Court on the illegality of the CDC’s actions in shutting down the cruise industry in March of 2020 it is a primer on state’s rights and the usurpation of Congressional authority by administrative agencies, in this case, the CDC.
SCOTUS ruled in favor of FL’s request for a Preliminary Injunction (PI) against the enforceability of the CDC’s “No Sail Order.”. The State’s Attorney General has also been successful in obtaining PIs in other civil cases heard by the federal courts involving local county commissioners and school boards issuance of various mandates (mask mandates in schools is one example).
Desanits has no objection to private businesses mandating COVID mitgation measures to protect employees and customers. He was unsuccessful in the courts when private businesses challenged his authority to prevent companies from requiring employees and patrons to be vaccinated to work or enter the business.
His second focus is on effective risk reduction management of both vulnerable populations and those COVID positive FL residents who require medical interventions. IMO, this is where governments at all levels should be focused and some are including, in some cases, the feds. YMMV.
In general, national and local reporting of COVID has largely focused on case numbers. While this has it’s place, virologists and epidemiologists are less concerned about this than they are with assessing and understanding the disease and it’s impact on the public’s health. To some extent, and I’m not talking about mandates, they are also providing state governments with guidance on how to go about managing the multiple aspects of the SARS2 pandemic.
I’ve stated my concerns about the negative narrative that characterizes a good deal of the current COVID journalism. To that effect, Governor Desantis has been under attack from state and local news source editors since the start of the pandemic. I don’t have a problem with the press undertaking investigations as long as reporting resulting from the investigations is fair and balanced. It hasn’t always been that way in FL and that is just an opinion.
TBF, because reporting about his management of the pandemic was often inaccurate, the Governor took steps to present his side and published responses to some of the attacks in the opinion’s section of notably the Miami Herald. He subsequently ordered the discontinuation of COVID data reported on the State’s Dashboard sometime in June when cases in FL were declining stating that reporting new case numbers wasn’t of much use when viral prevalence (measured by % positive new cases) was below 5%. His decision was not related to attacks, mounted by local papers, that he was getting although the press reported it was exactly for that reason. In response to criticism of that move, he stated he didn’t have a problem with County level reporting if the County Mayors and Commissioners wanted to continue doing that. Miami-Dade Co.’s data I used in my original post was from that Co.’s COVID reporting web site. The state never stopped reporting COVID data to the feds where it was published and open to public review. FL only stopped reporting COVID data on the state’s COVID dashboard.
Understood .....there is no intent here to minimize the human costs of the SARS-CoV2 pandemic. They are horrifically high in terms of morbidity and mortality. The social and economic costs are high and defy calculation. Evidence suggests that SARS-CoV2 will be with us permanently. Hopefully, it will become epidemic (outbreaks regionally) and manageable in terms of the stress COVID puts on health care systems. It is my view that it will do just that, my bias in that regard admitted.
My view is that the MSM presents COVID data without context which allows it to be misinterpreted wrt the disease impact at any given time or period. The best example of that is an over-emphasis on new case numbers as a gauge of disease impact. It is a poor one at that. There's a lot of available COVID data that goes unreported, requires digging to get it and that provides a more robust assessment of the current state of affairs. I tried to bring that to readers here as it pertains to Miami Dade Co.
The benign reasons for the lack of more context in the MSM's COVID reporting involve time and space limitations in covering the story in the various media outlets that are reporting it. There may also be an element of marketing in COVID stories, that is to say to attract viewers and listeners. Its akin to the draw that reporting on shootings, fires, car wrecks and the current misery of mankind that seems to predominate in today's main stream journalism.
The SARS2 Pandemic has two endpoints: The first is a medical endpoint ..... extinction of the virus v. rendering it neutered. The second is the point at which governments and the public no longer fear COVID and return to normal routines. A good example of the two is Polio that for all intent and purpose has been eradicated. Governments and the public don't fear it at all. An example of a neutered virus is Influenza A and B. It still produces morbidity and mortality but we don't worry about it much and it does not affect our daily routines.
We came close to reducing the public's fear and anxiety over COVID in the July/August time frame. Then came Omicron and various reports both from the media and from our public health officials and government raised fear levels again with what was and continues to be an overly negative narrative. YMMV on that assessment.
If you spend anytime reading about COVID, you will understand the long history of pandemics and how they end through extinction of the offending pathogen or through that pathogen becoming sufficiently neutered that it is no longer a daily concern.
I am a an advocate of reducing fear levels to hasten an endpoint to the SARS2 pandemic. I believe I can make a strong case for a rational and sensibly undertaken return to normalcy even in the current circumstance. Omicron is demonstrating the predictable rapid rise in infections follwed by steep declines that all it's predecessors have demonstrated. We can be better prepared to face the future and I say that in light of the reality that SARS2 isn't going away. Living with it while effectively dealing with its' impact while not fearing it is an obtainable goal.
This may not apply to general admission ticket sales provided by the M athletic department but season ticket holders got an email from the M athletic department at 4pm. If you wanted tickets allotted for season ticket holders, you had to respond by midnight.
I also posted this in the thread discussing Vegas odds for The Game are changing:
BTW, the latest NWS Forecast (0650 EST) is predicting snow to start falling at Detroit Metropolitan Airport at 1500 EST. The trough that will be producing this snow, edging out the impact of a High Pressure center moving to the NE and out of MI, is arriving from WSW to ENE. It would not surprise me that we'll see some flakes with no accumulation around the middle to the end of the 3rd quarter.
Be mindful that the biggest impact on this game is the cold temperatures mostly in the low 30s. That it is mostly below freezing would dictate light and dry snow flurries instead of the wet stuff.
Surfaces are still warm and light accumulation on the roads will melt and then freeze as temps drop post game. Driving could be messy.
Requesting our actual forecaster to put her 2 cents in on this.
https://forecast.weather.gov/product.php?site=DTX&issuedby=DTX&product=AFD&format=CI&version=1&glossary=1
BTW, the latest NWS Forecast (0650 EST) is predicting snow to start falling at Detroit Metropolitan Airport at 1500 EST. The trough that will be producing this snow, edging out the impact of a High Pressure center moving to the NE and out of MI, is arriving from WSW to ENE. It would not surprise me that we'll see some flakes with no accumulation around the middle to the end of the 3rd quarter.
Be mindful that the biggest impact on this game is the cold temperatures mostly in the low 30s. That it is mostly below freezing would dictate light and dry snow flurries instead of the wet stuff.
Surfaces are still warm and light accumulation on the roads will melt and then freeze as temps drop post game. Driving could be messy.
Maryland may have been down some key players but it wouldn't have made much difference with Taulia having one of his down days. He was 19/33, 178, 5.4ypa, 1 INT, 1TD and a QBR of 45.2. That the Terps run a flat out, pass first, up-tempo, spread offense and Taulia performing like that predicts a Maryland loss with a large share of the contribution to it by a confused and inaccurate QB. M's defense contributed to that as well.
I can't help but think that Taulia scrambling as much as he did (and then only putting up 30y with a long of 17 with his legs is a a sign of both good pressure and good contain of a dual threat QB by the scheme MacDonald deployed - looked like 3-3-5 and 4-2-5 Nickle predominated and worked as expected (awaiting UFR).
A defense like that is going to give up some run plays so, I'm reluctant to get on board with criticizing M's DTs. The back end (hard to see on TV) was probably Cover-2 where M tends to play one of the Ss closer to the LOS. See Taulia stats to assess how good it was or just go with ....it was very good.
Maryland ranks #50 in total offense with an average of 425ypg. M's D held them to well under that at 356 (noteworthy only 178 passing for a pass heavy offense and 3/14 on 3rd down). Objectively, I'd give M's defense a B+. There were some missed tackles at the LOS and 2nd level that turned a couple of what should have been 2y gains into 8+ but that's nit picking
What did I learn from this game? The best coaching staff n the Big Ten is led by Jeff Brohm.
M's approach to the MSU game in comparison to Brohm's? No comparison. Brohms' game plan was masterful.
This game? From a coaching standpoint? Uninspiring. I feel bad for the players. Should have smoked IU.
Michigan absolutely found a way to lose this game in the 2nd half by shooting themselves in the the foot. Way too many self inflicted wounds - dropped balls, false starts, etc. Teams that outplay an opponent don't make those kinds of mistakes that stall promising drives, turn some of those drives that were sure TDs into FGs and turn the ball over at critical times in the game. Period.
M's D harasses Thornton and DJ Turner covers Jalen Nailor limiting MSU's big play, deep threat to 1-2of these instead of 12. Thornton tries but he either gets sacked dropping back or, assuming he has time, DJ gets several PBU's and an INT off back-footed errant throws. Hutchinson and Ojabo get sacks. Since the big play is the only offense MSU has, they'll flounder with Thornton having to dump off to his outlet receivers to mitigate M's pressure - Hawkins and Hill kill them.
Running into the A gaps turns out to be a disaster for MSU as McDonald hides who's coming on Thornton's pre-snap reads to plug those gaps and the numbers favor M most of the time. MSU doesn't break 100 yards rushing.
M wins the field position and special teams battle, Jake Moody nails two FGs.
M's offense isn't exciting but gets the job done. Corum gets 100 yards rushing, two TDs and notches 3 catches for first downs. Haskins plows the pile for important gains on early downs to make 3rd downs hard to defend for MSU. M sustains drives and burns clock, shortening the game. Haskins scores one TD and J.J. McCarthy throws a red zone TD pass to All.
Have we seen this act this season before?
M 27, MSU 20.
Harbaugh's version of Michigan football is as I described it - manball. All you need at QB for that type offense is one that makes a pre-snap read to get the run game into the right play, can hand-off and doesn't make mistakes or turn the ball over. That's Cade McNamara and Harbaugh is perfectly satisfied with him. Give the coaching staff credit for knowing through multiple practices that McNamara understands and can execute JH's offense better than McCarthy can. No need to change QBs.
I believe Harbaugh wants to beat OSU more than M fans give him credit for but he's going to do it his way on offense and build a defense and special teams that can protect his offensive strategy. He's probably as close to that objective in this 2021 team as he was in 2016. He's not going to change that. He did make changes for the 2021 season though. He got rid of Warriner and put Sherrone Moore in to improve the blocking schemes for his style of run game. that looks like its working. He got rid of Don Brown and brought Mike McDonald in to get the defense he wanted to compliment and protect his offense. That seems to be working well too.
In today's game I'd offer that you probably need an offense that, at least in the current case, can run an RPO counter to the split zone JH favors as M's base play. McNamara may or may not be able to make the post snap reads that kind of play depends on but so far, M hasn't needed to pass to build a lead or to come from behind. Passing or running an offense that relies more heavily on RO for Harbaugh therefore is no more than icing on the cake - take it or leave and right now, he's leaving it. Through 7 games, he's undefeated, there are no major injuries to key players on offense to include the QB, the OL (caveats noted) and RBs that we know of.
Remains to be seen if he can ride his offensive strategy of grinding opponents to dust to a Big Ten East Crown, win the CCG and get a shot at the NCG. I think he's closer to that than he has been since he arrived. We'll find out starting Saturday.
Something that's missing here in this QB discussion that I've seen elsewhere is that Harbaugh's game strategy everywhere he's coached at the college level has been manball. What if his system limits M's QBs from getting the gaudy numbers of say OSU's CJ Stroud, among other QBs nationally, that have HC's (like OSU's Day) that love to run up big scores?
Look, every QB, except Jake Rudock, that has played at M during Harbaugh's tenure as HC has appeared to regress. They come in with good passing or option skill sets at the HS level then, in Harbaugh's manball game, those passing and options skills atrophy. Jake Rudock is the single QB JH has had that improved his passing game over a season. The rest, fans often complain, aren't "good."
JH is likely perfectly happy, given M's OL, run game and receiver roster with McNamara's performance in the manball offense he runs protected by good defense and special teams play.
JH is perfectly happy with a football game that looks a lot like a 12 round boxing match that his opponent suffers repeated flurries of body blows and he wins that game by a decision rather than a knockout. That MO has followed him wherever he's coached. Its not going to change.
M fans want knockouts and value those over 7-0. They want a flashy QB not a game manager. They're not going to get it and that's not the QB's fault.
The most noticeable difference in this M team between those of the last two seasons, well, maybe a few before that, is the play of both up front units - the OL and the DL/LBs. Sure the teams M has faced aren't elite but M's fronts are mauling the opponents on the DL and OL they line up against.
These are decisive 1v.1 match-ups that are absolutely critical in winning football. The scores in the first three games are impressive indicators of what's going on with this team. I like what that foretells in B10 play going forward.
One of the things…
This.
One of the things happening on the OL with Ed Warinner gone and Sherone Moore taking his spot coaching the OL, is OL play that is cohesive and produces results. In the first 2 games it's night and day......and that's not opponent dependent. It's a major improvement.
This is a really good breakdown of each pass play and eye opener to fans miserable about the passing game and Gattis' play calling.
The complexity of a pass play and how all the parts of it have to be executed effectively for it to work is highlighted in your post.
Something worth mentioning is that the receiver room is loaded with 19 year olds. I think CJ is the oldest and he is, what, maybe 21?
Reps people. Receivers get good with lots of them. Certainly that mitigates toward exercising the passing game in live action. OTH, the paucity of pass plays reflects good in game adjustments to what was working - if Washington chose to repeatedly run a defense that wasn't stopping M's run game, you keep running it until they do. They never did.
Re (3) ....... I thought Seth did a good job explaining the situation in his UFR Offense. Look it up.
What I was generally uninformed about is that Gattis worked under Franklin for a long time and it was Franklin's position that the QB would make pre-snap reads - that's it.
Harbaugh's OC at SF, Greg Roman, liked his QB to do pre-snap reads instead of options even though option ball was becoming a thing in the pros. Getting the right match-up is also a Harbaugh characteristic - albeit sorely missing until, it appears, he got the right set of offensive coaches who can implement that tactic and teach players how to optimize it. Get the right match-up in the run game against Corum or Haskins and you saw what that can deliver in a punishing run game.
I remember in Harbaughs 4th and 5th seasons fans were fed up with what appeared to be this unimaginative banging your head against an all run mentality on offense. There was talk about how "complicated" his run game and blocking assignments were for his OL. They probably were and it wasn't getting through to the dudes on the OL or the RBs. New offensive staff, new page, dominant rushing offense ..... for now and yes, caveats WMU's LBs.
Finally, at Stanford, Harbaugh ran these 11, and 12 personnel formations with the TEs all the time. He ran a 13 with three TEs more than once v. WMU. He's comfortable with that. It certainly worked to the tune of 335 rushing yards and 47 points with what? ..... 17 pass attempts all game. The NFL does a lot of this running TEs out of beefy formations stuff and Harbaugh leans on his contacts there for ideas.
Were going to see a lot of this and I won't be complaining about a 70/30 run/pass split ..... for now.
I've seen and read most all of what you posted about. Still great work to see it summarized in one place. I know this is time consuming. Keep it up.
Side note: By the horrible end to the 2019 CFB season I was done with Jim Harbaugh and M football. DONE! The emergence of COVID just ripped two things I love out of my life: Travel and M football - a part of my being since 1966. One get's attached in highly emotional ways. "Feels" is a wholly appropriate term, IMO.
Not feeling much of anything regarding M football, I reluctantly planned a trip to MI from my home in FL to see my son, also an M grad, and bond over the first two M football games, WMU and Udub. I took him to his first M game when he was 14. We sat right in the corner endzone where Scott Driesbach threw to Mercury Hayes for a comeback win over VIrginia. He has a Detroit News picture of that framed in his man cave.
https://fansided.com/2019/08/29/throwback-thursday-scott-dreisbach-comeback-michigan/
On Tuesday, he tells me he has tested + for COVID. He's fully vaccinated!!! We gamed a work-around that was a PITA to arrange. All visits with him and my three grand kids are off and he's not going to tailgate - another 13y tradition with friends - or attend the first two games. SUCKS.
But there are positive "feels" coming back. I'm back at my usual Sunday and early week regime, a routine of at least 40+ years, abandoned for two, of hunting down every article on M football and M's opponent next week that I can find.
This is a good one.
Well balanced piece. Frankly, I don't miss Brian's esoteric style. There's some nuance to M's culture that the author seems attuned to. It's complex, multi-layered and has developed over my 50+ years of watching M football to what it is today. And what it is - how decisions are made by the U and the athletic department that impact the M football program - escapes concise definition. The author seems to get this (the boats in a storm analogy). We'll see and looking forward to it.
Let's get a couple of things straight. The data does not support that C-19 has the morbidity and mortality that justifies the constant stream of "dire consequences" from the press and even from otherwise reliable public health spokespersons. And that doesn't make and difference anyway.
Some facts: The relative risk of C-19 is stratified. If you are 80 and get the virus, your risk of death is relatively high (read up on the definitions of absolute and relative risk - somewhere in the neighborhood of 25%). If you are under 55 (+/- a few years given the source), your relative risk of serious illness (means you get hospitalized) is also low .... it probably runs in the neighborhood of 4-5%, again, depending on who's doing the number crunching.
I've seen data with a range of 3-10% in this age group and that is serious C-19 illness requiring hospitalization, not death. Risk of death across age groups under 55 can be described by Case Fatality Rate (CFR), better by Infection fatality rate (IFR). Right now CFR across all age groups is thought to be between 2-3%, IFR between 0.5 and 0.8%. It's even lower for healthy under 55s but I've not seen that fleshed out.....probably < 2% but that's a guess.
C-19 accounts for about 9% of total US all-cause excess deaths across all age groups again skewed to the over 80 cohort. Cancer and Cardiovascular disease accounts for 46% of all deaths in the US. That's like saying those two diseases cause 4X more deaths than the excess deaths assigned to C-19. Perspective.
The CDC reports that in the age group 15-24 years old that group accounts for 0.2% of all deaths with COVID. I used some other data to calculate what the absolute risk of a person in this age cohort of getting hospitalized is. Caveat: it is going to vary by region and degree of community spread. It's probably about 2% ..... this is the same risk of getting a serious injury requiring you to go to a hospital for treatment/admission that a person in that age group has of being seriously injured through normal activities of daily living. Perspective. Are we over-reacting?
Now, you may like the math, even some decision makers understand the math. Makes no difference to whether or not college football is going to be played, schools will re-open or under 55s can go back to work in their office spaces. Based on factual data, life and economic activity can return to as normal as is possible in the pandemic circumstance - with handwashing, masking and distancing still required. But it won't. That is because, as has been pointed out here, this thing has gotten political, people are unjustifiably scared and acting irrationally ..... much to the detriment of sound decision making on mitigation measures. Fear, the PR and political risks of a C-19 outbreak in any of the places that you can name that have become flashpoints for reopening are over-riding critical thought that involves typical risk-benefit calculations.
IOW, what is the Public Health (PH) benefit of curtailing generalizeable or specific venue mobility and economic activity given the social and economic costs that entails? I've seen some of these calculations and most of them conclude that PH benefits of stringent mitigation measures to date are small compared to the prodigious social and economic costs of these measures. Even in practical, observable terms, it appears to be pretty obvious how badly certain sectors of the economy - travel and leisure for example - small businesses, gig and low skill workers are doing as new C-19 cases, once snuffed out, return with a vengeance. Rinse, wash, repeat .... See Melbourne Australia. That's not working, folks.... unless you live in North Korea or China where long, brutally enforced government lockdowns where apartment doors in Wuhan Province were rumored to be welded shut.
The virus isn't going away and that is with or without a vaccine and there will be other viruses coming our way down the road. The lesson to be learned from the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is that you must learn to manage outcomes instead of trying to control or eradicate viruses to which there is zero human immunity. The world has already gotten a lot better at that on several different levels. The speed of vaccine development and getting it to scale is unprecedented.
Unfortunately, here in the US, piss-poor planning, muzzling of the experts within the CDC and nasty politics has destroyed rational thinking about COVID. OTH it is still present, if not getting drowned out by a hysterical press, ambiguous and often contradictory messaging and a lack of strong leadership. Vaccines will help but not excuse the malfeasance. The US economy and social fabric are recoverable because of who we are as a nation. Of that I am confident. But the costs will be high and higher still if we don't start critically thinking.
see comments by ijohnb below ........
The post isn't awful ....... but, it has little bearing on the outcome of the Citrus Bowl on January 1st as the OP would have us believe.
This kind of stuff gets press because the TV productions these days spend more time with tight shots of the coaches and players on the sidelines, then sequeing to some stupid human interest story form the sideline reporter instead of concentrating on televising the game.
It's the game and how it is played and the players execute that bears watching, not some fit or apparent detachment a coach is having on the sideline. Count me among those that think Harbaugh's temperment on the sideline and during the game means shit to the outcome.
Yep. The Brown I'm worried about is the one that can't figure out how to avoid match-ups where Jerry Jeudy, Devonta Smith or Henery Ruggs, III is single covered by a Josh Metellus or Brad Hawkins ...... or, also, the one that has no answers for Najee Harris churning out yards between the tackles.
I'm 72, attended Michigan as an undergrad and was at Bo's first big Michigan win in "69. M football is in my blood but I'm much less emotionally invested in it. Experiencing the disappointments, renewed hopes as the summers pass followed by a return to disappointment by mid-season and the crushing losses to osu wasn't worth it. I also enjoy reading and writing about CFB.
My son, also an M Dental School grad lives in Saline. We share a love of M football and season tickets so, it's a nice way for us to stay connected. I find it interesting following the emotional ups and downs of posters at and owners of mgo. I understand all of it. Been there, done that.
I have some cable - just enough to allow me to sign-in and stream live. Two things: the game productions since the early days of ABC and Kieth Jackson have nearly become unwatchable if you love to watch the technical aspects of the game and I do. FBS CFB is broken WRT to competetiveness across all 130 teams. It's top heavy and has become so for a number of reasons, not the least of which is impermissible benefits being paid to student athletes by well entrenched mechanisms not necessarily overtly or admittedly known by coaches or ADs. They persist, are anti-competitive and have been like that since the early 1900s, much worse, IMO, now because of the distortion it creates in what should be a normal distribution of CFB teams.
The other thing that wears on me about CFB is conference alignment being drive not by the competitiveness of a region's teams - the conference make-up - but rather TV viewership and the revenue generated therefrom, among other things not related to enhancing regional and national competition.
So, I have a lot of different activities I enjoy outside football and have found a measure of balance as I've aged but I still have that Michigan football blood in me and for the most part it runs hot.
Thanks, Seth. I think it's great to see detailed analysis that supports the idea that M's offense was prepared to take on the osu D. osu's offense is elite. I think M's staff knew they were going to have to keep up score for score. It appears they could have barring all the stuff on both sides of the ball we all saw. American Football is a game of restricting variance and controlling circumstances to prevent randomness .....seems as if M has a hard time doing that against osu. It's also pretty clear, to me anyway, that the coaching staff knows how to coach and prepare for big games v. rivals.
Your take makes me look forward to the bowl game - it's Alabama or Auburn for me. Not wild about playing USC on the West Coast. I think the team and the coaches would be jazzed to play Alabama or Auburn in one of the FL bowls. All the talk that M would get butt-kicked again is just loser talk. Get back on the horse and ride. I think M will be fine in post season play. The pieces and the talent are there to compete with anyone. Focus. Control the things that are within your capability to do so.
The guy is a stand-up poster with a good deal of football cred on our forum. I've known him for probably 10y, maybe more. He's as solid and tolerable of an osu fan as there is and that's saying a lot. It's disturbing to see posters here dismiss him solely on the knowledge that he's an osu fan.
What this forum needs most is balance to the happy-horse-shit, unicorn's blowing rainbows out it's ass rosy hot-take views of M football... it's not all that, there's good stuff here but ...... If things were as rosy as they should be, M would have been meeting Wisconsin in the BTC but, no, they were out of that discussion after getting blown out by that same team, then fucking around in HV for half the game. If things were as rosy as observers here think they are, M wouldn't have been ass-raped by osu ..... AGAIN. 0-5 v. osu is BAD. It's bad look for Top 100 recruits considering who they want to go with to get them into the NFL and the big bucks, it's bad look for Harbaugh and the program he is solely responsible for how it performs, very bad. There are problems, folks and they need to be addressed. As for me, I think they will be. I have confidence in Harbaugh. Damn good coach and a fine person.
As for the CHumkins post I'm responding to, I think Chumkins backs up his comment that our osu fan's take on the "OL is weird." Listing the recruits and their star rankings is good. But if you go back and carefully read the follow-on post I made on his behalf and in response to Dr.Mattis' issues on the osu guy's OL take, you'll see he is forthright in noting, M could make functionally elite dudes out of the 3 and 4 star guys on the current OL roster. Here's what he said:
And look, maybe M struck the motherload with those kids, but on average what you're looking at for kids in that ballpark is what Mayfield did this year -- who was in that range and in his 2nd year. That's not bad, but it's not stellar. I expect Mayfield will continue to improve and be a damn good tackle by the time he's done, but he wasn't in 2020. He was meh. So, to be clear, I'm not saying those guys won't be good, but I am saying that I would bet against them being particularly good in 2020. What I would expect to see is 2/3 young kids + 1/2 vets fill in the 3 (or 4) spots. And they'll struggle a little in 2020 and eventually get there by 2021.
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The OP in my post responds:
The only thing I'd take issue with in the comments is their (IMO) exceptionally rosy view of the 2019 OL recruiting class as it relates to 2020 performance. Yes, I know they signed some solid players, but none of them are elite. They're all in the 100 to 300 range. And look, maybe M struck the motherload with those kids, but on average what you're looking at for kids in that ballpark is what Mayfield did this year -- who was in that range and in his 2nd year. That's not bad, but it's not stellar. I expect Mayfield will continue to improve and be a damn good tackle by the time he's done, but he wasn't in 2020. He was meh. So, to be clear, I'm not saying those guys won't be good, but I am saying that I would bet against them being particularly good in 2020. What I would expect to see is 2/3 young kids + 1/2 vets fill in the 3 (or 4) spots. And they'll struggle a little in 2020 and eventually get there by 2021.
And look, I know what Warriner does. But Warriner's 2014 OL had 4 NFL dudes on it. Maybe he gets the M kids there and maybe he gets them there ahead of schedule. I don't know enough about them to say if they are the exception. I'm simply following what I think is the rule -- I wouldn't feel great counting on 2nd year OL unless they're legit elite kids. JMO. There's gonna be a drop off of some note (IMO).
So, yeah, I feel 100% confident with my assessment of the OL. If you want to go starry-eyed on the 2019 class that's fine, but you're probably lucky to get 1 really good year out of that.
Look, this game has nothing to do with the stats you posted. They are an end-product of a whole bunch of other stuff either going right or wrong for M. You missed that.
First do all the obvious standard shit right and force osu to make mistakes ....... you know score more points than your opponent. Heh.
More specifically .......
On Offense:
Gattis has to have a game plan that mitigates the disruptive effect chase young has on every offense that osu has played against.
Patterson and his receivers have to make plays on standard downs.
osu has to be forced to move their slot corner into the box because Harbaugh's trap run game is working and giving short yardage to move the chains and possess on 2nd or 3rd down.
On Defense:
Plenty have a different view but, IMO, you stop dobbins running inside by disallowing osu to "equate" (see urban meyer on Fox explain this) defenders v. blockers, M wins.
Execute the doubles coverage scheme Brown introduced (See Neck Sharpies) to contain day's success from 2018 on WR or H-Receiver slants and drags.
Knock receivers off their routes at the snap and make the switches to avoid fields finding kj hill or chris olave one on one with a LB.
Get lucky by correctly doubling field's primary and secondary reads. Force the third read. Sack him.
LBs and Ss stay gap disciplined/sound if fields keeps/runs a draw
Other:
Be no less than +1 in turnovers.
Punish osu after a big M stop or osu turnover by going long to Collins.
Don't try to protect a lead if M gets up by 2 or 3 scores.
Two things: there's a very good chance fields is not 100% ..... my take is that his ankle injury is a factor and I'm pissed the thread that was talking about it was deleted. To be perfectly clear, I'm not cheering his injury but you take that part of the offense away from day and his offense is very different.
Brown has to engineer his D to absolutely stop dobbins from running inside, shutdown day's short passing game and force him to require fields to go deep.... much like he did to IU/Stevie Scott/Peyton Ramsey. osu's tackles are vulnerable to Brown's jet-pkg.
Second, IMO, dobbins running inside is a bigger threat to M than the outside you attribute to him. That is because of how Brown is forcing (funneling) outside runs to the edge back to the inside where numbers equate. PSU doesn't play their DEs anything like Brown uses Uche, Hutchinson and Danna combined with LB and S play. So, dobbins looked good to PSU's edge.
I still think osu is a very complete team and I thought your overview section about how day runs the offense was a damn good take. It will be tough for M to win this one even in the Big House. In 2019, I like Don Brown v. ryan day to hold osu under 25. M can win this if Gattis/Patterson in the weather can engineer an offense that scores more than that.
Well, hate to be a spoiler but mineral king's map represents the current GFS fcst model. There are others. The NAM keeps the H in Central Canada around longer. That could push the moisture stream S of Ann Arbor and keep it there. Small chance but the NWS hasn't committed for Saturday yet because the models aren't consistent and may not be until after Thursday pm. It wont be sunny and mild like it has been here in AA for the last 72h.
It's not that hard to understand why the osu offense was able to be as efficient as it was against, by the numbers, a very good Wisconsin defense.
1st, there's a considerable talent/speed/athleticism difference between osu's offensive players and Wisconsin's defensive players, especially LBs and Ss. Think the Hamler/Hawkins match-up in the PSU game this season and the Olave/any LB or S match-up in the osu game last season.
2nd, already mentioned, justin fields is a credible threat to run. That takes a defensive player, assigned to account for fields, out of the blocking and tackling numbers game; osu gets a one man blocking advantage for dobbins all the time and that gets dobbins to the second level on the regular and he is a tough out once he gets there.
3rd, along with day's offense presenting the challenge of dealing with a run threat from fields, fields throwing quick slants and outs is just as tough to defend. These quick fields throws in day's offense makes bringing LBs and Ss on a blitz risky and, overall, mitigates the pass rush. If Wisky blitzes and fields picks this up pre-snap he can strike with a quick-hitter into an empty zone the blitzer just vacated. Big plays ensue.
Here's a link to WeatherBell Analytics. This group does detailed weather forecasting. Some of their stuff is free, like this interactive forecast precipitation amounts map.
The point is you can see how through 8pm Saturday night, The area that Ann Arbor is within has a rainfall total of 0.3 - 0.7 inches. That's a light drizzle for a 6h period from 2pm to 8pm. By 2am Sunday morning, the next 6h period, the rain total is 1.2". That's a bit less than 0.1"/h ..... light rain. At least I'm maybe wishfully thinking that.
https://maps.weatherbell.com/view/model/ndfd-conus?d=conus&p=total_precip_inch
That decision on the U golf course lots will be made by 9am Saturday morning. I was over there today and saw them preparing the golf course for game day parking. My guess is that they will close them. I don't know about Pioneer.
I've been following the wx real closely. I've got a background in aviation so, I can read weather maps and understand the lingo but I'm not a meteorologist like our diarist is. It's a good forecast, as usual.
Having said that, make sure you take a look at the first paragraph of Brian's Game Preview post. It will give you a very good idea of what kind of rain tailgaters and those committed enough to M football to watch the game in the Big House will experience.
It might be tolerable. It's still sucks and the weather for this game is another example of how football Gods seem to hate Michigan. At the same time, Ann Arbor is on the Northern edge of the rain swath not in the center of it like Metro Detroit is. Moreover, the heaviest rains will be on the Eastern most aspect of that same rain swath. Now this is, again, hair splitting, and a good meteorologist like our diarist is, won't sugar coat - they'll give you worst case. I can afford to sugar coat. So, I have.
Dress appropriately and enjoy. Anyone that's done this knows how to survive the weather challenges often present watching outdoor football games.
Some questions asked here about "fronts" and the possibility that it will shift lessening the chances of the forecast deluge during the game.
The weather features affecting the forecast are three systems none of them actually passing through SE MI on game day. The first is a High Pressure system that is passing though MI TODAY W to E. The second is a system over the plains moving from SW to NE - it is providing funneling action to the third tropical system moving from the SW (currently still over the Gulf of Mexico) to the NE (will be over the Ohio Valley region on Saturday). It is this system that is the source of the heavy rains that are forecasted for SE MI.
As usual for SE MI weather forecasting and why it is so hard to forecast this region, it is right on the edge of forecast rain amounts exceeding an inch so, yes, there could be less rain than that of the forecast deluge in Ann Arbor that all the weather Apps are talking about. When you time lapse the NWS surface analysis maps, you can watch the rain areas move from S to N and fully engulf SE MI by 8pm. However, if you overlay these maps with forecast precip amounts, Ann Arbor sits in the < 1 inch region. Move to Detroit Metro and its in the 1-2 inch band. It's hair splitting and weather forecasters won't do that. They are going to almost always go worst case. So, yeah, there's a chance it won't be a monsoon; there is no chance it won't rain.
If you are tailgating, what I recommend is that you get a good radar APP on your phone and watch rain movement on that App and act accordingly. BTW, I'm betting that the U will preemptively close golf course parking. That being the case, expect Ann Arbor traffic and the hunt for parking to be a mad house by 3pm.
I live in Atlanta but I'll be in Ann Arbor this weekend's game. I grew up in SE Michigan. This area may be one of the most difficult to forecast weather in the nation because of the low and mid-level dynamics that actually shape the weather we experience on the ground.
NWS forecasters are hedging the timing of rain. It all depends on how quickly a high pressure area - responsible for today's and probably tomorrow's nice weather - moves east far enough to pull a band of moist air into SE Michigan that will sit just south of Michigan/Ohio line for most of the day on Saturday.
The SE corner of MI (Detroit metro area) is going to see rain first; areas to the west will see it later and maybe much later Saturday night. A deluge from thunderstorms is unlikely - I'm seeing < 1/2 inch (0.38) in the NWS forecast from 7pm to 9pm, probably less the farther W you go. I think it will be wet during some portion of the game but it won't be a wash-out....... caveat forecasting wx in SE MI is hard.
Well done as usual. Thanks for the effort you put into these.
Illinois (Lovie, who is really good at this, not other coaching things) made some adjustments along the way to slow M's run game. I tried to pick them up by looking at replays but strangely, there was no major changes in Lovie's 4 man front , LB deployment behind it (he uses a hybrid backer too) and what looked like as close as I could tell, C2 Zone. Lovie blitzed a lot too but, M picked most of these up. So, ????
The truth teller though was counting the ratio of M's blockers to Illinois' defenders, ID'ing the conflict player and deciding if the play call and action at the mesh was correct. The RPO was effective and called too infrequently against blitzes (line or play call?). If the read keeper was on, Patterson missed opportunities there for yards with a keep - Illinois shuffled the DE like everyone does but Shea is reluctant, it appears, to challenge that. I actually think he is either restricting himself or the coaches are becasue it is a clear theme in Shea's repertoire. There are too many yards not taken on this play and it affects the run game efficiency overall. While it's true, M had a good day rushing overall, after the half, YPC plummeted from over 9 to something around 3. It climbed back up after the sideline (probably) realized Illinois was making a game of it when that same sideline turteled with a 28-0 lead in the late first half.
The point you make about the team (both sides of the ball) losing focus/letting up on the go pedal, was painfully obvious just before and after the half. That loss of focus caused one fumble and a bunch of yardage given up by the D to the Illini with poor tackling and what I thought were some terrible reads by Mettellus playing C2 zone who took himself out of at least two big Illinois plays that I re-watched on video - one the slant where he flowed outside, away from his zone, instead of in with the receiver who should have been his responsibility. Classic mis-step in zone coverage - a reoccurring theme when M plays zone.
There's good post game observations/takes that the coaches were responsible for this loss of focus. With 1+ minutes on the clock and 3 TOs on the board approaching the end of the 1st half, it's coaching malfeasance to not try to respond to the TD Illinois had just scored. That sends a strong message to the offense. That set the tone for the 3rd quarter when M, predictably, came out flat on their first two possessions. I disagree with you when you said this was probably the right call. It wasn't.
I just don't understand that Harbaugh seems not to recognize that in today's game, a 3 TD lead can evaporate in a hurry due to randomeness, turnovers, bad calls and bad teams suddenly getting a spark and making plays. I'm not confident that the coaches will learn from this game. That Harbaugh has remarked in the past that he wants to win with "cruelty and integrity" makes this all the more perplexing and frustrating.
Done Brown has downladed power teams like Iowa and should have put a defense on the field v. Wisconsin that had a much better performance - that team was unprepared. So, while he is a decent coach v, BT power teams, his 2019 defense has some well documented and mostly well discussed weakness in that mode. See Jonathan Taylor's stats and M's 4th and short/goal line D. today.
Where he still mystifies is v. spready teams using spready concepts, i.e., the quick, short throws to slanting or dragging receivers, the various bubble screens and the like. Rod Smith wisely kept calling them and got a couple of them to break for chunk plays. He is a very good OC and had his team prepared to play offense.
OK, fine. Those are hard to defend but none of them should get the kind of YAC they tend to get. That's from players not seeing those plays developing then being a step behind and out of position to make the tackle when the receiver makes the catch.
My sense is that Brown played a lot more C-1, man and a lot less C2-zone today than he did last week v. Iowa. Smith was exploiting that with quick throws over the middle that neutralized a decent pass rush. Where have we seen this before? M's remaining opponents will take note.
Let's be honest here ...... the offense is hitting it's stride.
I feel confident that the applicable coaching staff have these kinds of analytics. After all, M has one of the deepest support staffs - including analysts that do this kind of work - in CFB.
The analysis is interesting, though. I would tend to go with (B) as well. I've also come to the conclusion that this really isn't the ZR/RPO offense we expected Gattis would run. It still has a lot of IZ/OZ Power concepts in it - a hybrid, I guess.
We probably should have understood this when, over the summer, Gattis in the interviews he had, was pretty clear that his offense wasn't going to abandon the things that M did well in 2018.
I would add when considering "transition costs" that if you compare how M has performed in this circumstance to how other teams going through similar transitions have performed, specifically LSU, you can argue this coaching staff hasn't excelled.
Ryan Day at osu is a bit different but, nonetheless, osu's offense has excelled in incorporating the offense he is running and it is a departure from ufm's offense - and of course, Day has had a prior year to work on this. You have to wonder though, why is M's offense so Janky?
I was skeptical of this take .... then I went down the play-by-play list at ESPN. Lot's of promising series ended with Patterson incompletions - and that's not a rap on Shea. I think Shea's problems are occurring as a result of a combo of things.
After the long throw to DPJ for 51 yards, Iowa went to an almost exclusive use of C-2 Zone and presented M with 5 defenders v. 6 blockers at the LoS, 7 if you factor in two TEs (22 personnel fronts) that got some run.
There were a few 3 yard run plays that were well defended by Iowa winning the RPS battle by jetting a S or a LB into what they thought would be the POA (usually A or B gap) and guessed right. That result on 1st down gets a particular Gattis series off-schedule probably dictating a 2nd or 3rd down pass. Shea wasn't making those enough of the time but I think pass-play calling and design contributed to his woes. Straight up though, M's run game had some nice runs as you point out.
https://www.espn.com/college-football/playbyplay?gameId=401112194
There are some very good points here but I'm a bit more reluctant to call out the coaches at the GTFO level .... yet.
One of my takes is that Shea's shit-ball performances could be a combo of things involving play design, limiting reads to 1/2 the field, stressing ball security - all coaching stuff - that's compounded by Patterson's tendency to go yakaty-sax.
Play calling #1 (Gattis): Obviously, the lack of the deep ball with coaching reluctance to call that play for SP because he's inconsistent with it (poor ball placement). Also noteable that Iowa plays a C-2 Zone D. This is designed to limit the deep ball on the field boundaries and the deep middle. After the DPJ bomb (that was typically under-thrown, BTW) v. single coverage, Iowa went to C2-Zone the rest of the way. Accordingly, if the deep ball was on, the check-down would have been to alternate routes. Then we have SP's yips making those progressions iffy.
Play Design #2 (Gattis/Harbaugh): 4 receivers running 15y verts and then sitting on them- usually a pick play will be factored in there. This play is certainly in the Gattis play book because it fucks with C1 or C0 - man. It is a terrible call v. C2-Zone unless you add clearing routes. If you're going to call it into C-2 Zone, there has to be some kind of motion or clearing routes combined with those short verticals to develop conflict and therefor one receiver who is going to be wide open because the conflict defender in that zone took the bait and left it. That didn't happen on both counts (route design and defenders getting baited) so on these verts Iowa played it well and nobody was open. How is that Patterson's fault?
There's more, a lot more, examples, in this game like this. I could go into the run game design and execution but, who wants to read all that, TL;DR applies.
Bottom line:It can be shown it is a toxic combo of things that makes this offense so janky. Somebody used the term "systemic problems." I can agree with that and they are very difficult to sort out and remedy. However, that's why the guys that are assigned to do that are getting paid 7 figure salaries. Hold them accountable but I'm not in favor of constantly changing the principals. All that does in any organization simply perpetuates chaos and inefficiency, IMO.