Was lack of pass rush the cause of this historic aberration?

I find myself already thinking of next year's game in Ann Arbor against Ohio State.

That entire 2018 Buckeye defense returns intact, plus add in any very high talent redshirts and true frosh into the rotation.

On offense they lose big play H-receive Campbell, X-receiver McLaurin, G Knox and OT Prince.  Everyone else is back, including receivers KJ Hill and Benjamin Victor replacing McLaurin I think.   So no downgrades. Just reload. Prince was a liability for them all year anyway, except in THE GAME of course.  His replacement will probably be an upgrade.

Michigan's offense is pretty much returning intact.  Higdon is gone, but they have Evans returning and stable of RB talent already plus new kid freshmen.   JBB needs to be replaced at RT, but Steuber is the heir apparent already. So pretty much returning intact offensively, which is great.

Defensively, Michigan has to replace Mone, Gary, Winovich, Kinnel and and Devin Bush. Don Brown has done a good job of creating a monster defense from a hodge-podge of players.

Comparatively, Michigan has a lot more chambers to re-load than Ohio State does.  There is a significant talent deficit still, but this year's Michigan recruiting class looks very good compared to Ohio State's (thus far)

So one can surmise that Ohio State is going to be even better next year. Michigan should be very good also, but with a lot of new folks on defense.

Mo Hurst.

We really missed a Mo Hurst pass rush presence up the middle.  There's nothing like an interior DL in the QB's gill on a regular basis to disrupt a passing offense.    Edge pressure is great (which we also didn't get), but interior pass rush creating havoc is needed.   

No pass rush allowed the crossing routes time to open up. Crossing routes aren't that difficult to throw and thus high percentage options. With Michigan's inability to get  pressure on Haskins and make him move off his spot, he picked us apart. 

Don didn't have a good back up plan for this. Being good at Zone defense would have mitigated this, but that would have been impossible to  excel at in a week's time. 

Ohio State's "struggles" over the course of the season, likely led the coaching staff to believe they could manage this game without changes. 

The offense looked okay, and also appeared to have the ability to ramp up scoring a bit if need be. 42 points (assuming you make the extra point attempts) should have been enough to win this game. 

Going forward, Michigan must find a way to either play better defense (get talented, interior pass rushers) or play keep up with offenses like this. I can GUARANTEE you that Ohio State could have gone tempo in this game and scored even more. 

Talented interior pass rushers come at a premium. So, for this game (and times when Penn State has Barkley and McSorley level talent) Michigan better get ready to score in bunches if they don't have a Mo Hurst level guy ready to wreck havoc at DT. 

Against Rutgers and Indiana the pass rush was barely there.  Something happened to that unit after Penn State and for the life of me I have no idea what that was.

It became clear to me in the 3rd quarter that simply scoring more points wasn't going to help. OSU was scoring at will, often with 2-3 minute drives. We were a defensive sieve.

Would have liked to see us send the house on a blitz once in awhile. Fuck it - they were going to score anyway, might as well send it ...

Not sure why I clicked on this but reading - "Haskins is arguably the best passing QB in Big Ten history" - gave me the best laugh I've had in a while and I needed it.  Thanks.

Good defense usually starts there so I'd say yes.

We missed Mo Hurst something fierce in this game.  He would have been biting Haskins ankles on all those crossing patterns.  Havoc from the interior would have helped disrupt their short-pass strategy.

Before next season we need to fully develop Michael Dwumfour into Mo Hurst.

I really thought OSU would have to go max protect to keep us off Haskins. When this wasn't the case and they still didn't get pressure, I knew we were doomed.

Something was not right with Winovich or Gary. Both looked tentative, leery of contact. When they are healthy, they are borderline reckless, forcing QBs to step up (hopefully into pressure) or bail out, where the QB (especially Haskins) is less effective.

Winovich- shoulder? bruised ribs?
Gary- still shoulder? Saving it for the NFL?
 

And where were Paye and Uche?

1. Brown's defense is unduly reliant on pass rush, without which it has glaring weaknesses

Which successful defenses exist that don't generate much of a pass rush?

The long answer is no, there are a lot more factors that others have delved into at length already. The short answer, yes. Our pass rush was shit which affected everything on defense. 

We had the equivalent done to our defense as to what Don Shula and Dan Marino did to the vaunted 1985 Bears D. A perfect game plan, executed perfectly.

A quick passing attack, moving pocket, mixed in a few runs perfectly designed for blitzes, etc. 

The Bears were somewhat fortunate to not have to replay the Dolphins in SBXX and got an easy game vs. NE, whose offense was no match for Da Bears.

Our loss just happened to be one and done for our B10 chances.

If you think DB won't have a plan for the same offense next year, then you haven't watched this D long enough. Even if McSorley had been healthy, PSU wasn't going to score more than 17 this year after last year. Barkley alone wasn't the reason they went from 42 to 7 in one year vs. our D.

Don Brown's defense is predicated on pressuring college-level QBs into making mistakes.  It has a high risk/reward tradeoff.

Brown knows he will give up some chunk yards here and there, but he is betting that college-level QBs can't consistently make those plays under duress.

However . . . if he can't create that pressure, or if the opposing QB is not just a run of the mill college-level schmo, his whole scheme can implode.

Haskins and Ohio State's offense is built around a very quick accurate release 10 yards down the field and then let the 5-star receivers do the rest.

It's very hard to pressure that kind of offense.  It's kryptonite to a Don Brown defense.  Recall that Haskins did the exact same thing to us last year when he came in.

Newsflash:  We would have the same problem with Tua and Kyler Murray and other elite QBs that are not easy to pressure.

It's a paradox, but we may have been better off playing an "Iowa-style" defense against Ohio State . . . play zone, keep everything in front of you, make them work their way down the field, and try for red zone stops where the compressed field limits the open space to be defended.

Don Brown's base defensive style needs a well-rep'd Plan B for when pressure alone is not viable.

We are about to find out if Don Brown is actually a great DC, or if he is just a DC with a great scheme that works until it doesn't, much like Rich Rod was on offense 10 years ago. 

TBD.

Guys making this kind of money shouldn't be retroactive in their approach. But is what it is now...

No pass rush allowed Haskin to pick us apart. We needed constant pressure and I don't think OSU OL is that great. My guess is the DLINE was too banged up and we did not get the pressure on the QB like we did against PSU. I was just hoping the DLINE was not playing hard against Rutgers and IU but I think it just showed our DLINE was too banged up. Against OSU our interior DT got beat up and our DE were too injured to get pressure. Oh well, may some of our young DT can become good pass rushers and run stoppers.

We had zero sacks against butgers, 2 against Indiana, and zero against osu. 2 total in our last 3 games combined.

It wasn't just osu we struggled to get to the QB but it was the worst.

On his podcast, Harbaugh said it could have been different if played a week earlier or a week later.  Beyond the 'any given Sunday' cliche, I read that as regarding Chase's injury.

What worries me about Harbaugh is how stubborn he is. At least publicly, he seems to have taken the approach that this was an off game. As others have mentioned, we had 0 sacks against 0-9 Rutgers. 0. For some reason, we went from tormenting Penn State's offensive line to impotence. Only difference I can see is Gary coming back to the team, but I can't understand why that would make us worse. 

Also, did Uche play against OSU?