Previously: Cincinnati Offense

No YOU begged to write the Cincy FFFF just so you could watch abominable football and call it work.

I did not slow this down that’s just how fast they move.

The team Cincinnati played last week is literally the worst football team you can play. Austin Peay is on a historic losing streak that was last interrupted when Doug Nussmeier was Michigan’s offensive coordinator, and bad news for Toys R Us meant some negative publicity over their line of Breaking Bad action figures. That streak (Peay’s) continues, but only because Cincinnati went 4-1 in turnover luck when the Bearcats’ offense could only muster 248 yards.

Getting a read on the defense is a bit harder, because Peay’s quarterbacks are the kind of passers you make stand in the driveway so you’re not always chasing the ball into the neighbor’s garden. They still might miss the barn:

I’ve analyzed the Peay tape and while some of the things in it are indeed disturbing, there is nothing here that constitutes a threat to national security. That makes extrapolating applicable things from Peay’s offense to Michigan’s rather difficult. Also difficult: not cackling. I promise to do my best on the former.

Personnel: My diagram [click to embiggen]:

I tried not to be too harsh with the cyan circles because it’s all relative, even if this whole scout was literally relative to the worst team in the kindest definition of Division I football. On any other FFFF the strong safety and the HSP would have circles too; they get a reprieve for playing opposite whatever the opposite of shields are.

Given Peay’s passing I have to punt on the corners but one note: David Pierce was a surprise starter last week over incumbent senior Grant Coleman, who’d been starting since he Wally Pipp’d the job from… [everyone put on your Rich Rod defensive recruit radiation jackets]… Adrian Witty in 2014. Pierce was a safety last year and deep into fall camp. Coleman was a walk-on. Again, Peay had no way to test this, but heuristically last-minute position switches are ill omens.

[After THE JUMP: I was probably too harsh on a kid who’s doing something way more amazing than I ever will]

Base set? Their base 4-2-5 puts Gilbert, their hybrid space player, over a slot receiver and shifts the nominal WLB to SAM. On passing downs they’ll usually lift Copeland for a deep safety and bring down the FS (Clements) as a box safety to get a 3-3-5 look. The 4-3 look didn’t come out much but when it did it was an under with Gilbert the SAM and Young the WLB.

Man or zone coverage? This is a Quarters team, like Ohio State was when Fickell was actually in charge of the defense. Also like Ohio State when Fickell was in charge of the defense, not everybody’s up on all of their Quarters rules.

A refresher: the cornerbacks start up on the #1 (furthest outside) receivers, while the safeties read the #2 (next furthest inside) eligible receiver, whoever that may be. If the #2 goes deep the safeties play Cover 4 (stay on top of #2). If #2 goes outside or inside, the coverage converts to Cover 2. See the safety lined up on the 10 yard line on the bottom hash mark? He didn’t see the running back become #2. Gotta work on that.

Pressure: GERG or Greg? Leans Greg. Austin Peay is not a great team to scout this against because they run 75% of the time on normal downs and 65% of the time on passing downs. Cincy prefers bringing five in those situations, rotating between linebackers. They also downloaded something right out of Don Brown:

I’m sure I’ve drawn that play up before. Cincy beat it later by running the QB Denard-style into the backside gap that the blitzing HSP (bottom) runs himself out of:

This is not something we saw a lot of at Ohio State but I’m sure they’ll be coming for Michigan; trying to confuse the young OL is an infinitely better bet than trusting a rickety secondary still learning a tough system to cover for long. Also Cincy’s outside linebackers (about whom more later on) are both really tiny, and far more effective at blitzing a gap than trying to figure out which one they should be in.

Watch #2 peek inside to a gap #20 is filling and give up the edge—ignore the NT getting held since that was just a dude making a play and if we limit ourselves only to clips where Austin Peay didn’t punch themselves in the face somehow this will be a very short post.

Dangerman: Two players stood out sharply, and while Austin Peay caveats apply everywhere both of these guys did some opponent-non-dependent things that impressed me. The first is defensive tackle Cortez Broughton, whom AAC observers named to their 2nd team last year. Broughton is sort of a poor man’s Mo Hurst. He’s squat but just 282, and lives off an impressive first step. They play him at DT normally but he’s an able nose and disruptive when Cincy goes to their 3-3-5.

That first step versus Austin Peay guards was just unfair:

Being sub-300 matters—he can still get muscled a bit. But even when that happened his initial pop affected the play. Here they tried to block down and bring the LT around him and he stood up his guard just long enough to increase the path of the puller, giving the MLB enough room to shoot the gap:

I clipped this subtle thing because I wanted you to see why I liked the other DT, Marquise Copeland, who made the MLB’s gap the only one by refusing to let the center reach him. On this game alone Copeland would have a star too, but I don’t know how much credit to give for mostly outmuscling a bunch of Peay OL—at least with Broughton there’s a body of work to back it up.

Speaking of that middle linebacker, I thought Jaylyin Minor was Cincinnati’s best defender. A former JC transfer, Minor was their best blitzer, their best tackler, their best player in coverage, and showed off some major athleticism by running down screens and swing passes sideline-to-sideline. Peay couldn’t block him; everything they got was outside and more often than not it was Minor chasing those back to the gang. This defense asks him to do a lot, and he does it all quite well.

Late in the game when Peay was getting big chunks Minor was conspicuously absent. I haven’t heard whether that was an injury or giving his backup some playing time or what, but the difference without him was stark—not just because of his play but because Minor is the guy pointing to everybody where to go.

OVERVIEW

For the most part Cincinnati’s defensive line was more than enough to handle Austin Peay’s OL. The ends (both sides have co-starters) did fine when blocked and did their jobs the many times they were optioned. The tackles—competition caveat—were very good. Peay’s running game was almost entirely on outside runs, and options that made the DL irrelevant. I can’t begin to grade them as pass rushers because they never got to pass rush.

The cornerbacks looked shaky but it’s hard to get sufficient data on them when Peay can't throw at all (hence the tea leaves with the last-minute starter switch). Here's a receiver who isn't Donovan Peoples-Jones burning Cincy's best cornerback on a 3rd and 22 stop and go.

Note the safety trying to get over is not the safety who’s supposed to be in Cover 2 on this play. Watch the other safety, pause and think about the Quarters rules, and tell me if you think he should be here:

Malik Clements (#4) is more athletic than his counterpart, but also more combustible. He was at fault for the wheel route touchdown, takes awful angles, and tends to get his face blocked off by Peay slot receivers (see the TD below). This stat boggles: he had 18 tackles in this game…2 solo. It’s more believable the fifth time you see him getting dragged 5 yards on a guy’s leg.

As our Michigan State friends well know, playing Quarters with your corners rolled up puts a lot on your safeties—who are both heavily involved in run fits—in coverage. If Michigan indeed has a deep game from its slot receivers, this would be an effective—if probably very mean—opportunity to take it out of the garage. Again, though, with no passing game attempted the safeties are just a disaster waiting to happen.

The problem in this game was Cincy has no outside linebackers. The Bearcats graduated all three of last year’s starters on the 2nd level. Middle linebacker Eric Wilson (a Northwestern transfer) was all-conference: 129 tackles, 7.5 TFLs, 3 sacks, and made all the draft boards despite being being vastly undersized for the NFL. WLB [do you still have that radioactivity jacket?] Antonio Kinard had 93 tackles and 7.5 TFLs, and was their best coverage linebacker. Old fashioned SAM/DE Kevin Mouhon was moved down permanently to defensive end this year. HSP Mike Tyson also graduated. Last year’s backups Bryce Jenkinson and Matt Draper transferred.

Handed a depth chart with one sorta experienced guy and one RS freshman, defensive coordinator/linebackers coach Marcus Freeman (yes THAT Marcus Freeman you incredibly old person) raided the safety ranks. His SAM is a total hybrid who’ll follow the slot receiver around if there is one, and that’s pretty typical in 2017. His WLB is…well his WLB is Jonas Mouton’s head on Brandon Harrison’s body.

WLB Perry Young (#6) had 17 tackles in this game, 10 solo, and 2 of them TFLs. If you’re using pure counting stats as a measure of defensive success you might have this guy penciled in for all-AAC. On film I don’t know if I’ve seen worse. Here’s the main reason why Austin Peay was the better team in this game:

Simple jet motion gets Young to jump inside a guard who released from the hash. (Clements (#4) arrives out of control and gets spun past). This sort of thing was not unique; Young put up a lowlight film for the ages, getting buried when he was blocked, routinely putting himself in a bad position he didn’t have to be in, chasing fake option pitches like a badly programmed video game sprite. He also picked up a silly late hit out-of-bounds, was lucky to avoid another, and spent a lot of moments  in between jawing at refs already doing more than their share to avoid the worst upset in Not-The-Big-East Conference history.

You can’t really blame him for all of that since he’s a true sophomore lifetime ACTUAL SAFETY whose coaches moved him right past every shade of hybrid to ACTUAL LINEBACKER. But even safety stuff, like corralling a guy in space or at least forcing back to help eluded him like a bad FCS team’s running back:

(also backup MLB gets erased by a weak cut, FS gets defaced by a Peay slot receiver)

Like…what are you DOING? I didn’t clip his big coverage bust because I couldn’t be sure it was on him or the FS in a sort of split coverage, and because you get the point.

Peay understandably ran a ton of options and gap-switching stuff wherever #6 lined up. Occasionally that meant running right into #6; as often it meant a first down and whatever else before the free safety et al. could flag down an Austin Peay ballcarrier. That’s how you get to 17 tackles. Who remembers Cameron Brown?

When your OLB and FS are leading the team in tackles, it doesn’t necessarily mean those guys are good; more likely it means your OLB is Belgium and your free safety is the Battle of the Marne.

From what we saw of the only other linebacker-shaped object on the roster, backup MLB Joel Dublanko (#41), I don’t think a mid-week position switch will solve the awareness problems, meaning Cincinnati is rolling into Hammer Panda territory with a 5’11/208 lost puppy at WLB. My guess is they’ll blitz him like hell—better to pick a gap and have him charge into it than leave him to find one—and live with the consequences.

QUICKLY SPECIAL TEAMS

Their elder receiver Devin Gray (#21) is the kick and punt returner—he’s got good vision and acceleration for a mid-major athlete but tends to trip and fall over when he attempts a cut among bodies.

Senior kicker Andrew Gantz went 16/20 and was a Groza finalist his freshman year with a long of 51. In 2015 he went 21/27 and made 2nd team all-AAC a second time. Last year he was 2/2 before injuring his hip. In this game he missed an extra point and pulled this wide left.

#collegekickers

Freshman punter James Smith ah crap they’ve got an Aussie.

As Aussies do Smith rolled away from the coverage, booted unreturnable floaters, and on a ball snapped from his own 28 dropped one on the 30 that rolled to the 8.