If we were to make a change, whose offensive system in college football would you like to see us emulate?
January 4th, 2019 at 11:02 AM ^
This is a really solid take. Shea is actually not a very accurate QB and honestly his ability to read option is not great. If D Mac is twenty pounds heavier I have no idea how you keep him off the field because he is that exceptional. This offense can be successful. There are a myriad of creative plays in the play book. There needs to be more intermediate routes in the passing design as the RPO game is hurt by the lack of slants and quick slots who can execute that effectively. The other observation for me is I think the tackle play is not what is ideal for this offense yet. Warriner will get there but regardless a new passing game coordinator is a necessity.
On defense, you nailed it. Back end speed on the edges. Fast twitch athletes who get there in a hurry. Lethally accurate guy like Haskins needs pressure up the middle to be disrupted. If you are playing man, that is even more so a necessity.
January 3rd, 2019 at 11:45 AM ^
Look at what Baylor was doing to State's elite defense in the Cotton Bowl before Kendall Briles got too cute. They did get jobbed on the alleged offensive pass interference that would have more than likely put them up for good.
January 3rd, 2019 at 8:58 AM ^
I used to get enraged when I watched defensive coaches run primarily soft zones and have the 'bend but don't break' philosophy on defense.
Now, with the offensive emphasis on tempo and big plays, it seems like against some offenses if you make them take a few minutes to get down the field and get the offense to attempt a field goal, you've more or less 'won' that drive.
Frankly, I feel like we have our scheme philosophy backwards of what it should be; Michigan is hyper-aggressive on the wrong side of the ball for 2019 college football.
January 3rd, 2019 at 9:14 AM ^
But, you do have to put pressure on these quarterbacks or you'll get picked apart. The unfortunate thing for Michigan is that we HAVE to blitz to get pressure more often than not. If we could get pressure with the d-line on a somewhat consistent basis, we wouldn't have to blitz as much. Even with the great cornerbacks Hill and Lavert, we had other weak links in the secondary, I'm looking at you Brandon Watson. With Don Brown so blitz happy and his love for man to man defense, that often left Watson on an island and he was exposed against good WR's.
January 3rd, 2019 at 12:24 PM ^
I thought we were supposed to have a great DL this year, what the hell happened to them???
January 3rd, 2019 at 12:37 PM ^
Playing more bump & run would certainly help. Giving wr's a free release off line is asking for trouble. Disrupting routes before they can develop also allows more pressure on the quarterback. Mich does need to play more zone but it will help if they could play one like they know what their doing.
January 3rd, 2019 at 9:16 AM ^
Modern football has become like men's tennis: You are going to have just a handful of "break-serve" opportunities. You need to be able to cash in on them.
No matter how good your defense, you are only going to be able to count on a handful of defensive stops, or holding to field goals, in a game. Your offense needs to be able to keep pace and score TDs when that happens.
January 3rd, 2019 at 9:26 AM ^
That is why I thought that the OSU game was more on the offense than the defense. It is easy to remember the OSU game as this complete landslide from the opening kick because of what happened late in the game but the defense opened with TD-stop-stop-stop, with the third of the stops giving us the ball at the 50 yard line(!) On the five offensive possessions that we had during that period the offense managed a GRAND TOTAL OF...... 6 points. Ballgame.
The 62 points has become kind of a bit, but the reality is that our offense had the ball twice in the second half with a chance to take the lead with a touchdown and a third time with a chance to tie with a TD. The fourth quarter was certainly a "levees breaking" situation, but had our offense been prepared to play that game there would have likely been a very different outcome.
January 3rd, 2019 at 9:41 AM ^
Yeah look at the offensive drives that Michigan had when the score was a 1 score game.
Opening drive 0-0 3 and out
second drive 0-7 field goal
third drive 3-7 field goal
fourth drive 6-7 punt
fifth drive 6-14 punt
seventh drive 13-21 touchdown
eight drive 19-24 3 and out
ninth drive 6 and out punt block td for osu
After that the next drive was the interception followed by a td and game over.
The offense had 9 different drives where we could tie or take the lead. They scored two field goals and td on those 9 drives. The offense failed early and the defense collapsed, but the offense is as much to blame for that loss.
January 3rd, 2019 at 9:51 AM ^
Really good stuff! This really backs up the feels we have that the offense was probably more to blame than the defense in the OSU game.
January 3rd, 2019 at 12:56 PM ^
You can't be serious about the offense getting more blame than the defense in the osu game. 62 POINTS. 500 YARDS OF OFFENSE. For fuck sake people it's ok to blame the defense even when the offense isn't that good.
January 3rd, 2019 at 9:35 PM ^
Ummm...no. You are using data to support your opinion. This was truly a team effort. The coaches, the defense the offense and special teams all get blame.
January 3rd, 2019 at 11:10 AM ^
But that’s Harbaugh’s NFL mentality against better teams - try and keep the game close, manage the clock, take whatever points you can get, and hope the defense can make a stop.
January 3rd, 2019 at 11:34 AM ^
This is true. However, why were a couple of the drives stopped in the 3rd quarter?
Zach Gentry drops an easy ball that would have had Michigan at the Ohio State 40 down 27-19. So is that stop on the offense or is that on Zach Gentry?
On the following drive, Zach Gentry has a ball hit him in the hands and deflect away that would have also been a first down. Yeah he took a hit afterward and went out, so maybe he drops it anyway after the hit, but he let it go before that.
Both of these plays were there to be made and created by the staff, but Gentry - NFL caliber TE - failed to make the plays.
January 3rd, 2019 at 12:27 PM ^
....easy to blame Gentry, but even if he made those plays, absolutely no guarantee that we score a td on those drives.
January 3rd, 2019 at 12:58 PM ^
Sure, but we're saying "the offense failed!", when the offense got a guy open but he dropped the ball.
That guy is leaving early for the NFL, so its not like they threw it to a scrub OSU left open because they weren't worried about him.
January 3rd, 2019 at 11:42 AM ^
This X100.
I also noticed something watching some bowl games with high powered offense and crappy D teams - it seemed to me the better way to beat them was to actually out shoot them to start. If you can get their offense to play from behind and adjust your D to keep everything in front of you, their offense slows down just enough without big plays. Normal intuition says play slow to keep your D off the field - but this doesn't work because they will sell out for a big 3 and out and then your D is right back out there. Best thing is to be aggressive against weak D and keep scoring. One downside to the high tempo offenses is if you can get a quick stop, its a REALLY quick turn around for their D. Thats when you really wear them out. But if you try to slow down the game and next thing you know you only have a 3 point lead, you're screwed. You gotta jump out and get 2 score lead against their crappy D then control the game and hold serve from their.
January 3rd, 2019 at 10:27 AM ^
Exactly this.
For as poorly as we played, we entered the third quarter down only 5 points - 24-19 - thanks to an OSU turnover inside the 10.
We had a chance, but it was clear that defensive stops were going to be precious. We had to keep pace on offense and be prepared to win a shootout.
Final "shootout" results: Zero third quarter points.
We entered the third quarter down 24-19. We exited it 41-19.
Game over. The 4th quarter was irrelevant. Our 20 points in extended garbage time to get to 39 points for the game came while Ohio State players were dancing around in celebration.
Our defense played poorly, but contrary to what some people are saying because they are only looking at "39 points!", our offense did not play well enough to win. Nowhere close.
January 3rd, 2019 at 10:49 AM ^
Couldn't agree more. If Michigan wants to beat OSU, they need to accept the following:
- Ron English/Lloyd, 2006 and 2007, OSU averaged 28 points against Michigan
- Scott Shafer/Rich Rod, 2008, OSU scored 42 points on Michigan
- GERG/Rich Rod, 2009 and 2010, OSU averaged 29 points against Michigan
- Greg Mattison/Hoke, 2011 to 2014, OSU averaged 36 points against Michigan
- Durkin/Harbaugh, 2015, OSU scored 42 points against Michigan
- Don Brown/Harbaugh, 2016 to present (includes one OT game), OSU has averaged 41 points per game against Michigan. Without include the OT period, it is 36.7
In summation:
- Total Average in the last two years of Lloyd: 28
- Total Average under Rich Rod: 33.3
- Total Average Under Hoke: 36
- Total Average under Harbaugh: Including OT: 41.3 Without OT: 38
Now, I get the fact the D is not responsible for 100% of the points scored but the chart does support OSU has basically increased the amount they are scoring against Michigan by a TD and a FG in the last decade. That is huge. Multiple head coaches, D coordinators and offense philosophies during this time and it has done nothing to keep the amount OSU is scoring against Michigan from going anywhere but up.
What should this tell you? Michigan needs to concern themselves a whole lot more trying to figure out how to score 39 per game against OSU instead of trying to keep them to a 20 something number.
January 3rd, 2019 at 12:30 PM ^
Wait, so we were better off with GERG and stuffed beavers?
January 3rd, 2019 at 3:47 PM ^
I got a good laugh out of this comment. The reality is it was Tressel ball. Once Tressel got up a few scores he would generally start milking the clock and making sure his offense didn't do anything stupid to let the other team back in the game.
January 3rd, 2019 at 12:43 PM ^
TING!
Bo and Woody are gone.
You are not going to win games against Ohio State 17-10 any more.
You better have a plan to score 40 if you want to win, or don't even bother showing up.
And scoring 40 does not mean sitting on the ball for three quarters with 10 points in the hope of a big 30 point 4th quarter. You'll be down five TDs if you do that.
January 3rd, 2019 at 11:30 AM ^
Why was any of the Alabama-Oklahoma game relevant after it was 28-0?
January 3rd, 2019 at 10:39 AM ^
OSU got TD and 3 stops too but it wasnt BALLGAME for them. Your entire premise loses its credibility right there. Emotions and hot takes are not logic and facts.
January 3rd, 2019 at 10:39 AM ^
OSU got TD and 3 stops too but it wasnt BALLGAME for them. Your entire premise loses its credibility right there. Emotions and hot takes are not logic and facts.
January 3rd, 2019 at 10:54 AM ^
Ohio State was going to score some points in that game. If you would have told me we would have held them to 7 points midway through the second quarter I would have ecstatic because surely I thought we have game planned an offense that could score more than 6 points in five possessions against a team who had 50 hung on them by Maryland the week before.
We were on the road against a very good offense with playmakers all over the field and possibly the best quarterback in the country. We were not going to shut them down all day. The point is that we did shut them down for a good portion of the first half and had basically nothing offensively to show for it. You either cannot see it for what it is or just want to argue, not sure which. Don't really care either.
January 3rd, 2019 at 1:21 PM ^
Or maybe our defense could have adjusted after OSU scored 28 points like Washington’s did and held OSU to stop-stop-stop-stop-stop-stop-stop*. 39 points would have been plenty to win the game if our defense could have matched an average Washington defense. No one is going to convince me that the defensive performance wasn’t the primary reason we lost that game. You are asking the offense to score 63 points in the horseshoe, to exceed the opponent’s point total that had never been reached before in the rivalry.
And about this other meme that our offense was gifted 7 points. Of course they were. This is college football. Players make mistakes. The real story is that the defense forced ZERO turnovers.
January 3rd, 2019 at 2:19 PM ^
I think it was less about their defensive adjustments and more about tOSU playcalling. In the first have they used lots of motion that either gave them a numbers advantage in the box, created isolation for receivers or softened the zone. In the rash of 3 n outs later in the game, none of that happened. Also, there were back to back plays where the line didn’t identify the blitz and Haskins was rushed, creating another 3n out. I loved the playcalling in the first half. There were lots of twists to their base plays that they added that created favorable situations. I’m not sure why they got away from that and brought Tresselball back for much of the second half.
January 3rd, 2019 at 3:20 PM ^
This is what makes the Patriots, who have mediocre players on defense, look better. They play exactly this way, because in the NFL and college ball now it’s all about offense.
January 3rd, 2019 at 8:37 AM ^
Why didn't you just put your post that I replied to in the OP?
I'm not sure what that means, but I can't edit the OP.
January 3rd, 2019 at 9:05 AM ^
never mind
January 3rd, 2019 at 8:39 AM ^
Didn't Michigan try that recently (2008-2010)?
January 3rd, 2019 at 9:10 AM ^
Yep. Back then, RR had the right idea, but that is when football was more about having a strong defense, so his timing was wrong. His problems were 1) he recruited players who mostly didn't fit the Big Ten mold at the time and 2) he tried running that offense in the Big Ten when it simply didn't work. While I by no means want RR back, I feel that he would have been more effective NOW (assuming he would have adjusted his recruiting to getting bigger players - no disrespect to the smaller guys he recruited, but they mostly didn't work in this conference), when offense is the focus for most of the highly rated teams and the teams that constantly make the playoff.
January 3rd, 2019 at 9:58 AM ^
I was as big a RR supporter as any and still think he got shafted at UM.
That being said, it is clear that RR is, today, no better than average P5 coach, and maybe, maybe, just a top 25 OC. I don't think he is even a top 10 OC anymore, let alone elite.
And even when he was at UM, I think it is clear he got us a top 25 offense, not really even a top 10 offense. S&P+ in 2010 our offense was 11th, which IS pretty impressive given our defense was 88th.
January 3rd, 2019 at 11:39 AM ^
This is soooooo dumb.
The players were fine, they were just young. In 2011 and 2012, they went 14-4 in Big Ten play and were most successful when Borges tailored his playcalling to the style that fit them. Had they not lost Denard against Nebraska, they likely play for the Big Ten title in 2012 (remember, OSU was disqualified). Shit, its possible they do it both years if Hoke had just embraced the spread 100%.
This take is honestly one of the most idiotic on the board and it amazes me that people just ignore what happened AFTER the QB was no longer a first year starter and they weren't backed by the worst defense in the country.
FFS, the last 1000 yard RB came in 2011 with those "small" players before this year.
January 3rd, 2019 at 11:44 AM ^
I think there’s two noticeable differences between what Rich Rod tries to run and what teams like Oklahoma, Ohio State, Clemson, Bama, etc. are running today.
- Rich Rod recruited all really small speedy players on both sides of the ball. He ran the spread, but it was with tiny guys. Teams today seem to be running what I like to call a “power spread” where they use really big and strong, but also fast players. This allows them to line up against more traditional “power” teams but also out-athlete them as well.
- Rich Rod never out any emphasis on defense at all. A power spread offense is top dog right now but the successful teams still have strong defenses to accompany their high power offenses. This doesn’t mean they’re holding teams to 10 points per game, but they’re big and fast and strong and can stop the run, pressure the QB, AND cover fast receivers in space.
January 3rd, 2019 at 9:06 AM ^
Kevin Wilson's Indiana teams were probably the first Big 12 offensive philosophy adoptees. Credit to OSU for shifting their offensive philosophy to match Haskins' skillset.
January 3rd, 2019 at 10:53 AM ^
Ohio State just Hired Mike Yurcich too. (Formerly Ok. State O Cord)
January 3rd, 2019 at 8:24 AM ^
The one we ran in 2016, before Iowa.
January 3rd, 2019 at 8:48 AM ^
Jedd Fisch Pro-Style?
January 3rd, 2019 at 9:07 AM ^
Yep. We're not getting an air raid or power spread offense from Jim Harbaugh, so I think that's the best we can reasonably hope for. We scored a lot of points that season (save for Iowa), and I remember hearing comments from opposing coaches and players that they never knew what was coming because we'd run so many different plays from so many different formations, while shifting like mad before the snap.
Seems like we were more creative and a bit faster back then. If we had a slightly better QB in 2016 we would have been unstoppable.
January 3rd, 2019 at 11:17 AM ^
There is a reason we're not seeing the same offense as we did in 2016. For whatever reason, Harbaugh doesn't think we can run it effectively. Remember all off-season last year negged out posters kept begging for the offense to be "simplified"?
I think Harbaugh & Co. were really trying to get the basics down cold because they weren't yet confident in the ability of the entire offense to run a more complex offense like in 2016. This is what is so frustrating about fan hot takes. People call for something, they get it, then they complain about the result. "I wanted simplified, not THAT ... " Be careful what you wish for!
I don't think we'll have to worry about this issue any longer. Going forward the OL will be solid, QB play will be very good to elite, and we know we've got talent on the outside. Believe me, if anyone of us amateurs see something, Harbaugh & Co. are all over it.
January 3rd, 2019 at 8:25 AM ^
I want air raid. Also, there is a difference between "who's" and "whose."
January 3rd, 2019 at 8:29 AM ^
I'd edit it if I could.
January 3rd, 2019 at 8:31 AM ^
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January 3rd, 2019 at 8:37 AM ^
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January 3rd, 2019 at 9:03 AM ^
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January 3rd, 2019 at 9:32 AM ^
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January 3rd, 2019 at 10:09 AM ^
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January 3rd, 2019 at 10:16 AM ^
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