Offensive personnel breakdown vs OSU

My conclusions:

1. The pass game was fucking working. "Pass to set up the run" is a completely valid philosophy if you have a QB (we do) and WRs (we do).

2. Whenever Michigan took a WR off the field, OSU could tee up against a run.

3. Going heavy does not work against an elite DL.

4. Whoever did most of the playcalling (my guess is Pep based on how little Harbaugh has had his nose in a play sheet) did NOT understand how the game was going.

I am convinced that Michigan's receivers were not doing enough to get open against the OSU secondary.  That has been a problem all year long.  And that's frustrating because of who the WR coach is, and given the talent level of Collins, Black and People-Jones plus the senior "TE with the untimely dropsies" and a mobile Shea Patterson scrambling around - that's all extremely difficult to defend even on a good day.

Michigan played flat from the get-go in this game. And nothing demonstrated this DeBordian approach better than last Saturday's playcalling by Pep Hamilton.

The good news is that there is no fucking way Harbaugh can look back at the last four losses to Ohio State COMBINED with this recent 23 point shellacking and believe things can continue just as they have. 

The defense gave up 62 points because the offense refused to do what it does all year - imposes its will along the line of scrimmage, sustain long drives, convert on 3rd downs, score TDs and dominate TOP.

Harbaugh's traditional manball philosophy can definitely work. But you do need superior OL talent and experience across the board.  I think next year Michigan returns everybody across the front 5, and will probably have the best and most experienced OL in the league, if not the country.  The thing Michigan missed this on year was TEs that could catch and block reliably. McKeon and Gentry were both consistently subpar in both departments.

The inside runs did not bother me as much as the unwillingness to spread the field and use our match-up advantages at WR (which likely would have opened-up the middle more for runs).

What a miserable coaching failure. OSU's defensive weaknesses coming in were secondary and edge rushing. That's why 3 WR sets and edge running worked well. We should have exploited that weakness until they stopped like they did to our defense.

Fire Pep!

Yardage is only a distorted part of the story, since the results are affected by the tendency to trot out tight ends and fullbacks in short yardage situations. It's much better to separate out explosiveness and success rate instead of looking at overall yardage or yards per play.

Success rate is defined based on the definition of a "successful" play:

On first down, a successful play gets at least 40% of necessary yards for a first down.
On second down, a successful play gets at least 60% of necessary yards for a first down.
On third and fourth downs, a successful plays 100% of necessary yards for a first down.

Ideally, you'd want to then break down success rate and explosiveness by personnel grouping as well as (bucketed) down and distance.

Then you can point out (made up trend but an example of how this would be useful) "Michigan's 12 package is less successful on 2nd down and long than Michigan's 11 package, but the coaches are using 12 more often"

While there have been a ton of posts about what is wrong with our offense, we scored 39 points in this game.  The offense was not the problem.  Sure, it would be nice to score more, but the offense was generally ok, considering that we were going up against a defense that, while not statistically great, is made up of 4* and 5* talent.

If Gentry catches 2 of the three balls that he dropped, the whole perception of the offense is different.  Admittedly, our offense is far from elite - we are not Oklahoma, nor are we going to be.  But, if you score 39 freaking points and have the #1 defense in the country, you should be able to win.  

All of that said, here are my observations / criticisms of the offense:

1.  While everyone wants to see more passes to Collins, Black and DPJ, if you watch the film, those guys are rarely open unless it is a blown assignment.  From my admittedly amateur analysis, these guys really need to improve their route running (and it is possible that the play designs need to be improved), because with their size and speed, I would expect to see more open receivers.  

2.  Higdon up the middle just WAS NOT working.  We ate a number of downs in which we gained 0-2 yards this way (usually on first down, setting us "behind the chains").

3.  Do we not have a single "trick play" up our sleeve?  No, I don't care about flashy, but sometimes those video game plays hit for good yardage.  They can also fire up a team, and when the offense is otherwise struggling, it's a 1-play shot that can move the ball and force a defense to adjust.  Philly special, pass by Gentry (who was a former QB), flea flicker - anything.  

4. Over the two games leading up to this game, our offense looked stale and vanilla.  I figured it was because we were playing Rutgers and Indiana, and that we were saving the good stuff for OSU.  Where was the good stuff?  We came out with our same Rutgers / Indiana playbook (and energy level).  This is not the first time that I have felt that our team came out flat in a big game.  Not always (see Sparty this year, PSU this year, Wisco this year), but it seems like when we face an equal or superior opponent, we turtle.  

Sorry for the length of the post:  tl; dr:  the offense was not the reason we lost, but there were a number of things that I didn't love on offense.