Bag of Tricks?: Play Calling

All week the Michigan Football social media accounts were posting Peppers Heisman campaign videos... You'd think the Pepcat packages would actually do something other than two yards and a juke or two.

Playing every position doesn't win you a Heisman. Guy hasn't done a single thing Heisman-worthy in about two months. He's a great player, but good god, the hype was absurd.

Shocked at the ways (or lack thereof) Peppers was used this season. Also shocked we didn't run some plays with McDoom against Iowa or OSU. We absolutely gashed MSU in the first half with jet sweeps and misdirections. No idea why these plays were not used again.

Hey look, another one.

Killed osu with the jet sweeps. Thought we'd also see a tight end shovel pass screen at some point with one of our guys

Why not line up peppers in slot and as pure rb and motion him around/use him with speight. The distraction alone would have been effective

Barrett was short.

The two interceptions sucked but Speight had Perry on a wide open out route on the second one. That's not a play calling issue. Clearly they got more conservative after the 2nd interceptions but they were also shutting down the OSU offense and were on the 1 looking to go up by 10 early. 

They gained 310 yards with some clear mistakes, drops, and missed calls against the #4 team in terms of YPG. This is post game coulda shoulda woulda analysis.

Michigan was more creative in other games, double passes, reverses etc. It seems like things tightened up in all of our close games. Like every college football fan ever, I want my team to push it and be creative. Well, I want them to do that when the base offense wasn't working. The base offense started to struggle, and I wish Michigan had used McDoom and Peppers in the slot etc. to take some pressure off. I hope that is something that changes next year. I got bombed in the other thread, but I also think this was the year to win the game. We lose a hell fo a lot. It doesn't mean we can't win next year, but it was a damn good shot this year. 

Coach Harbaugh have to open up the offense.   He have to spread out the defense.Too many times he will trot out the three tight ends and 1 wr and then motion that 1 wr into the formation bringing the db wit  him creating a 9 man box. Top WR s will not come to Mich if only 2 is playing at a time.  He could have did so much with the speed we had on offense, like line up Mcdoom Evans Jabril Butt and Darboh. Now that's a lot of speed on the field at the same time.  Spread them out then run power .  But no imagination means we will not win the Big games.

was good enough to win. offense stalled in 2nd half, but seemed much more due to having pretty much gotten most of what we could reasonably expect from Speight given his injury.

been an issue of harbaugh ego needing to call plays that many times made no sense.

I am not going to blame the offensive scheme.  A fumbled snap on the 1 yard line, a pick six, and a bad spot cost UM the game.  The offense was fine given the tools it has to work with.  Let's be honest, the OL is average (and that is quite an improvement) and there are no elite skill position players besides Butt.    The plan was to possess the ball and let the defense win it, and that almost worked against the #2 team in the country in one of the hardest places to play.

Yes I am disappointed but anybody wanting to fire coaches or change philosophies is crazy.

The o-line isn't where we need it to be. Too many missed assignment and inability to open creases. Hard to be too creative when basics are lacking.

Disagree with much of your points. Pepcat is and was a one dimensional play. Read option. Face a spread team who practices it and you won't have much success. Play action call from Michigan end zone was a missed assignment from Smith. Sure Speight had Butt with a step on his guy but the pressure was getting in his face. One of the gripes I have with Coach H. Yes he's a tad bit conservative. Maybe he's limited with an ailing QB but after the pick by Speight earlier in the game. It's a 17-7 game in the 3rd quarter. 2 and 14. Speight throws a pick. Run the ball or take a deep shot. Punt the ball and keep playing defense. Seniors balled out there. Hill pass interference felt like Crable all over again.

I was just going to say, the oline has turned out to be average; that's its ceiling with this current group. The coaching was dreadful for 3 years for them. I think their lack of push hurt us the most in this game, hell, even the pick 6 was rushed and tipped. Poor blocking most of the day limited "trick plays."

You go all year thinking "we're saving "it" for Ohio State." The truth is, we aren't saving anything for Ohio State. We don't have any magical plays, and we didn't really need any magical plays. If we would've executed the vanilla gameplan, we would've won. Turnovers lose games. We had MONSTER turnovers. We probably could've been more vanilla, and won.

I think the game was lost with 7 minutes left.  The defense was getting gassed, get a couple of first downs, and its all but over.  Instead, two runs off guard for 3 yds each, and a predictable pass before the punt.  Only 1:30 taken off the clock, and momentum clearly given back to OSU.  The defense couldn't recover.  Harbaugh coached to not lose, rather than to win.  He tightened up the offense too much.  He relied on something that wasn't working all day rather than trying something different.

Damn it!