SC players comment on our offense
When asked if there was a moment where the Gamecocks’ defense felt they had solved the Wolverines, cornerback JaMarcus King gave an affirmative answer. He felt that way after Michigan’s first two drives.
“They gave us everything,” King said. “After that, we knew we could stop everything.”
Why? King felt the Wolverines were playing to their tendencies — running a lot of the same routes over and over again.
“The choice route where the receiver runs a mesh and the tight end runs a dig,” King said. “So they ran that probably 85 percent of the time, and they ran a lot of stop routes on the back side.
Similar answers were provided by linebacker TJ Brunson and defensive tackle Javon Kinlaw, as well.
Brunson knew from certain formations whether Michigan was going to run the ball and where the Wolverines would run it. He could also tell what to expect from personnel groupings. That allowed the defense to simply read their keys and “make plays, execute.”
“We got in the right calls in the right positions,” Brunson said, “and everyone executed for the most part.”
https://www.michigandaily.com/section/football/miscues-offense-matter-e…
January 1st, 2018 at 7:40 PM ^
January 1st, 2018 at 7:49 PM ^
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January 1st, 2018 at 8:10 PM ^
January 1st, 2018 at 8:16 PM ^
January 1st, 2018 at 7:58 PM ^
Endorse
January 1st, 2018 at 7:59 PM ^
Greg Robinson won two Super Bowls with the Denver Broncos. That did not make him a good DC at the college level. His 2010 defense at Michigan was bad.
Pep Hamilton was fired from the Indianapolis Colts in 2015. He was the OC of the Cleveland Browns in 2016, which had one of the worst offenses in the NFL. (Then he came here, where we now have an offense ranked similarly to the 2010 Michigan defense.)
January 1st, 2018 at 8:05 PM ^
January 1st, 2018 at 8:12 PM ^
January 1st, 2018 at 8:40 PM ^
January 1st, 2018 at 9:02 PM ^
January 1st, 2018 at 11:02 PM ^
JH knew for two years that Chesson, Darboh, and Butt would be gone after the 2016 season. He should have had some other WRs and TEs ready for 2017, but he didn't. It's on Harbaugh.
January 1st, 2018 at 7:44 PM ^
This is one of those things where you know it but when a player from the team you just played points it out too, well, "Ooooooof" was all I could muster on Twitter...also an "ugh".
There's a lot of time for this team to reflect now, but I think we're definitely at the point where on the offense, some change - whether it be in personnel or approach or both - would be a good thing as far as I am concerned. As Harbaugh is involved in the offense, I think it might not be a bad idea for Harbaugh and whoever to look at how responsibilities are sudivided so as to avoid the muddled playcalling we've seen from time to time.
The other part of this to me is a development question - I trust that this staff might do other things if they thought they could, so then that forces a question about player development and where these players are in that respect. Is it just youth or is it that and a combination of other factors? Does it tie back to scheme at least a little bit? I have some questions here too.
January 1st, 2018 at 7:44 PM ^
January 1st, 2018 at 7:45 PM ^
Our play-calling has been predictable for years.
January 1st, 2018 at 7:46 PM ^
Thats my theory.
January 1st, 2018 at 7:52 PM ^
nor something to joke about
January 1st, 2018 at 8:25 PM ^
January 1st, 2018 at 7:48 PM ^
Our offense wasn't a juggernaut but it wasn't dull and predictable. There was a large variety of formations, plays, and routes.
The offense took many steps back when Fisch and Wheatley left. Drevno and Hamilton are major downgrades. That needs to be fixed above all. Need a whole new offensive staff including moving Jay Harbaugh out.
January 1st, 2018 at 7:50 PM ^
January 1st, 2018 at 7:55 PM ^
Post-game comments after the January 2007 Rose Bowl against USC:
"USC center Ryan Kalil knew Michigan's defensive front had been feared most of the season, but he said the Trojans were totally prepared for everything they saw.
"They were very, very comfortable with their schemes and we didn't feel they would change up too much, and they didn't," Kalil said. "There was nothing we didn't see. We were able to call it all out, whether it was from myself or John David Booty . We were able to see everything."
USC's center, Ryan Kalil, and its defensive end, Lawrence Jackson, both talked about the predictable nature of Michigan's strategy -- on both sides of the ball. Jackson called U-M's defense traditional and stale. Meanwhile, USC -- after mustering only three points in the first half Monday -- scrapped its plan and came out throwing.
Cushing praised the Wolverines afterward because that is what players are taught to do and there is no percentage in not doing so. But he also admitted that he had been well-enough prepared to know what was coming with just about every Michigan trip to the line of scrimmage.
"Yup, pretty much so," he said. "I understand what they were trying to do," Cushing said. "It is the Big Ten mentality to try and overpower you."
The Carr mentality shared many of the same tendencies of the Schembechler mentality, and the Harbaugh mentality does as well: we won't try to beat you by changing things up; we'll run the same play you've seen on film all season and we'll run it over and over again and you won't be able to stop it because we're executing it so well with talent that's simply better than yours. (Except you won't be able to stop our super-secret hand-off to a TE)
The problem is that JH is coaching in a vastly more competitive conference than Bo ever had to face, and I think more competitive than Carr had to face for most of his time as HC as well.
January 1st, 2018 at 8:24 PM ^
January 1st, 2018 at 7:54 PM ^
Easy as pie
January 1st, 2018 at 7:56 PM ^
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January 1st, 2018 at 7:59 PM ^
January 1st, 2018 at 9:42 PM ^
January 1st, 2018 at 11:57 PM ^
January 1st, 2018 at 8:01 PM ^
Wow if I could go back to last season and kick my own ass for ever complaining about the offense. Sure Speight had some off games, Oline/ running game issues a few times, but not once did I see a game plan like what we saw all year this season. It is clear to me now that Jedd Fisch was our Joe Moorhead type guy, and we need to find someone of that caliber to replace Pepp immediately. What I'm sure is a question that will never be answered for me is if this is Harbaugh's offense...how can it look so drastically worse this year than any other year under him at multiple different coaching stops, with a number of different OC's and play callers. What is the difference this year? Drevno has been on staff for just about all of Harbaugh's successful seasons so I'm not ready to say its completely his fault, the players on our team don't seem to be worse than what he had on any other team. To me this years offensive performance falls completly on Jim... Pepp's new passing schemes, and Frey trying to mix in his zone blocking schemes with the traditional Harbaugh/Drevno power schemes...we had all these ideas of what could work..but had no TRUE offensive identity.
January 1st, 2018 at 9:34 PM ^
coaching stops but he wasn't the OC. Which to makes him a plausible part of the problem now - along with Pep.
Good point about the lack of identity.
January 1st, 2018 at 8:03 PM ^
Watching Georgia with their 2nd-year, defensive-minded head coach and his true freshman Qb put points up with ease is just infuriating. The fact that we are light years away from that, with our 3rd-year, supposedly offensive-minded coach, is depressing, to say the least
January 1st, 2018 at 8:05 PM ^
Agreed.
M looks FAAAR away from being Georgia. Sucks. Forget that how about looking like even MSU? We are not even as as good as MSU at this point. Depressing.
January 1st, 2018 at 8:08 PM ^
Think the only way I'll have any excitement for next year is if Shea gets his eligibility and we swap Drevno/Pep for a COLLEGE offensive coordinator with a proven track record
January 1st, 2018 at 8:14 PM ^
January 1st, 2018 at 8:34 PM ^
And they just signed 9 out of the top 50 players in the country (to our zero), so this idea that we will beat these teams with an unimaginative pro-style 1980s NFL offense -- when they have the better athletes -- is foolishness.
January 1st, 2018 at 8:08 PM ^
January 1st, 2018 at 8:51 PM ^
There are actually some decent posts in this thread. Yours isn't one of them.
Carr wasn't going against Dantonio all those years. He had Saban (who needed a couple of years to dig out from the prior regime) and a couple of chumps. Forgive me if I'm not dazzled by Lloyd's record against MSU.
January 1st, 2018 at 8:10 PM ^
January 1st, 2018 at 8:14 PM ^
I honestly wouldn't call this Lloyd ball 2.0....Coach Carr could be frustratingly stubborn in his own right... but atleast even his worst teams had an offensive identity. Even if it was not a great identity..it was there. This team on the other hand? I could not tell you what we hang our hat on so to speak.
January 1st, 2018 at 8:28 PM ^
It looks like what it is, an offense by committee.
January 1st, 2018 at 10:56 PM ^
January 1st, 2018 at 8:27 PM ^
January 1st, 2018 at 8:28 PM ^
January 1st, 2018 at 8:44 PM ^
January 1st, 2018 at 8:45 PM ^
It just feels as if our QBs (all 3 this season) have had way too much swirling around in their heads to execute well.
Solution: limit formations and overall plays with multiple options for the QB to change based on what he sees the defense doing. This would make “tendencies” harder to predict based on formations.
Also, the comment from SC players on our routes is pretty damning evidence that Pep Hamilton has done a really poor job as a coach. Our routes under Fisch were varied, interesting, difficult to predict, and ultimately...successful.
January 1st, 2018 at 8:50 PM ^
January 1st, 2018 at 8:56 PM ^
January 1st, 2018 at 10:42 PM ^