See also: The defense

Resources: My charting, ND game notes, ND roster with oddly specific heights, CFBstats

Welcome back to the Respect-a-Bowl, the rivalry in which the coaches respect each other, the players like each other, the fans get along quite splendidly, the recruiting reporters nod at each others' excellence in early scouting, and everyone concurs ND athletic director Jack Swarbrick is the world's biggest putz.

Notre Dame fans say this because he nicknamed himself "Savvy Jack" for finding ways to Dave Brandon them and everyone he deals with for every possible nickel, then gloats about it. Michigan fans say it because he was the guy who pulled the series in the putziest way possible and played hardball when Michigan wanted to restart it. He didn't have to put these games on the same road/home schedule as Ohio State and Michigan State, he didn't have to play last year's as the season opener nor this year's game in the middle of the Big Ten season. In fact it would have worked out best for both parties to resume the game in September when we normally do—Notre Dame had a bye week when we played Army and played New Mexico when we had our bye.

But Savvy Jack can't call himself savvy if a deal works out for everybody. So here we are in late October, between two Big Ten East rivals, playing Notre Dame, coming off a bye with nobody in shouting distance of ranked for the rest of the year. Given Michigan's progression over the season and the Irish's weird lack thereof, I know an entire press box worth of people ready to point at laugh at the unlikeable fellow if his tactic comes back to bite him in the ass. And I'm kinda thinking it can.

The film: Georgia is ranked around where Michigan is in S&P+ and has some athletes at cornerback and MLB I thought would be a fair proxy for some of Michigan's more exciting guys. Everything here is going to be graded on a curve here because I usually don't chart against a defense this solid.

Personnel: My diagram:

PDF version, full-size version (or click on the image)

I'm throwing out my charting this week for most of these guys since 12 total runs do not make for much of a sample. Stats aren't much use either because you already know what they tell you: against non-scrubs, Notre Dame's offense is getting the ball to very tall persons TE Cole Kmet (265 yards, 3 TDs, 10.6 YPT, 84% catch rate) and Boundary WR Chase Claypool (394 yards, 4 TDs, 84. YPT, 57% catch rate).

Claypool is Myles Boykin, basically a power forward who was so good at boxing out and collecting rebounds that they slapped a football jersey on him and taught him to go full soccer player when he feels contact from a defensive back. Kmet is an underrated receiver—an excellent route runner with a natural nose for the hole in zones—and an up-and-mostly-down blocker. Like Michigan's run game, ND's is very tight end heavy, and Kmet picked up 11 negatives in this game, only some of which can be explained by multiple false start penalties. Slot receiver Chris Finke (8.3 YPT, 68% catch rate) has 22 targets and probably as many good blocks. They'll have H-back TE Tommy Tremble (9 catches, 136 yards, and 2 TDs on 13 targets) on the field often as a third receiver, and use him more—from the USC game I watched he might be an underrated or just underutilized run blocker.

The #1 back in preseason, Jafar Armstrong missed another chunk of season and returned for one carry against USC (a four-yard loss). They're talking like he's 100% over the groin injury now and that's going to give them a run game, but Armstrong historically has been a quasi-receiver type. Lead/basically only RB in Armstrong's absence Tony Jones is on pace for 1,000 yards and is a fairly good receiver, but really he's just a guy who got more +s (and minuses) for blocking than anything he accomplished with the ball in his hands. He did get 176 yards on 25 carries (7 YPC) against USC, but on my viewing of that game I thought that was mostly on bad USC tackling.

Thus ends the high-usage skill position players. Nobody else has more than 13 targets, though freshman slot/field WR Lawrence Keys (6 catches, 7 YPT on 10 targets) had a Gallon-esque fade reception in this game. Nominal Field WR starter Michael Young didn't chart—he's at 2.1 YPT on 10 targets this year. Freshman Bradey Lenzy is a Calvin Bell Memorial end around track star (if you see #25 on the field yell "BASH!" please). Javon McKinley (200 yards and 3 TDs on 8 receptions on 11 targets) is the only outside guy besides Claypool who's over 6 feet, and McKinley's got exactly 1 catch for 11 receiving yards against teams not named Bowling Green or New Mexico over 3.5 seasons.

[after THE JUMP: Sad reminders of failed Michigan recruitments]

The charting really does a disservice to the offensive line, which gave up zero sacks to a very good defense (albeit not a very good pass rushing defense) on 41 non-screen non-RPO drop-back passing plays, much of them in comeback hour. That body of pass-blocking is why I gave stars to both tackles, LT Liam Eichenberg (+3/-7.5, 2 pass pro minuses) and RT Robert Hainsey (+2/-3, -1 pass). Six of Eichenberg's negatives were from two (admittedly bad) personal fouls and two false starts (an issue for Kmet and a lot of these guys), and both protection minuses were from one play when he was beat at six yards by a quick outside rusher. Meanwhile his +3 was ground out with +0.5s at the heart of ND's scanty rushing game. Hainsey is a talent—he's not that strong yet but he's very athletic and could present a very different kind of challenge for Uche than the slower, beefier types he normally sees.

If you like beefcakes, LG Aaron Banks (+0/-2.5, –6 pass) is a better example of what a pedestrian offensive lineman would look like in this environment—he's a massive lunger and earned my enmity by being the guy always turning around when he's already lost a block. Compare him to RG Tommy Kraemer, who's the same size but a year older, a lot more agile, and usually handling his business. C Jarrett Patterson  (+1.5/-4, –4 pass) is a work in progress (the pass negative are half bad snaps), as freshman lineman usually are, but I definitely see the young Mason Cole Michigan wanted badly a few years ago. I don't know if I'd put this unit tops in the nation like PFF, but for a (redshirt) freshman centered line to be called that tells you something about that freshman. Georgia doesn't often blitz but only one pickup was missed in the pressure metric.

Jahmir Smith was out for this game and is averaging under 5 YPC since. In his stead they were using cornerback Avery Davis ahead of—just because I want to say his name—C'Bo Flemister.

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Spread, Pro-Style, or Hybrid? Spread to pass.

(FIVE false starts not charted in the play-calling section)

When last we met Brian Kelly he was still trying to adjust to life as a team that's good at running with Brandon Wimbush and coming off a season with future All-Pro run-blockers on the offensive line. Right up there with Fire Jack Swarbrick is the universal sentiment that it's good to be back to pass-passity-pass-pass-pass with Ian Book. This is Brian Kelly's comfort zone, and probably the offensive line's as well. Even if Georgia was an outlier, this team was ranked in the 70s in both rushing rate and rushing S&P+ last year with Dexter Williams. Without him, they might as well air it out.

Basketball on Grass or MANBALL? What running game there is (15 plays yo!) is not too dissimilar from Michigan's most recent outings. IE it's inside zone with some split zone, Power GT, and Pin & Pull.

Hurry it up or grind it out? On the quick side, with enough tempo that they'll bother a team like Michigan that's bad at it, but not enough to put them with the real hurry-up squads. They don't huddle and they'll get off a snap quickly sometimes when coming out of a break. They also run up and snap it when they get a call they like.

Quarterback Dilithium Level (Scale: 1 [Navarre] to 10 [Denard]): The whole point of Ian Book is he's not a runner. It took most of the game before I saw him try to use his legs, and then I immediately backtracked and recorded it before I knew the result. Here's the result.

With 5 minutes left in the game he finally crossed the line of scrimmage:

He edged a Georgia linebacker, but I also have visions of his Buffalo run against Louisville earlier this year. I'll do it this way: he's a natural 4 who gets bumped to a 5 because they plan on running him a few times per game.

HenneChart:

We have finally come to the only numbers with significant weight in this exercise.

Context here matters. I tried to be fair with bad reads but Georgia has safety JR Reed, a guy who can turn what looks like a safe dump-off into an interception. It wasn't always easy to tell sometimes if Book didn't see Reed or if Reed teleported to somewhere no safety ought to have been.

The more impressive thing is the "IN" number. A day's throwing and only two balls missed. One was an attempt to #Buttzone a fade to Claypool when Book was out of ideas, the other just a back-foot miss. The story on Book has been he's ELITE ELITE ELITE when it comes to accuracy, but not the best reader of his situation, and when he abandons pocket—which is far too often—his QB rating drops precipitously. Georgia chose to rush four most of the game and hope to spook him, and this strategy was hit and miss. I expect Don Brown to solve this problem with aggression. Letting him stand and find his guys is not advised.

Book's also a cool operator, even when abandoning a nice-looking pocket. The flipside to those TAs I charted is he almost never makes a huge mistake (his interception in this one went off Lawrence Keys's chest), avoids sacks, and doesn't panic in moments that a lesser man might get gif'ed.

Zook/Frames Janklin/Him Jarbaugh Factor: Jim isn't actually interested in going back to the NFL and you can tell because he's never played Madden. Welcome to Factor, coach who wears Woody Hayes glasses, and makes 4th down decisions that were probably just as cool in 1951.

Brian Kelly on the other hand is one of the original new thinkers. Their fourth down decision-making was correct. Their clock management was a bit weirdk. ND was down to one timeout with 40 seconds left on the UGA 17 and took the runoff, which was fine. But the next play they ran a screen and let 15 seconds tick off before using that timeout. With 13 seconds on the clock they threw a TE corner fade that was basically a Hail Mary, and sent out the kick team on 3rd down with 9 seconds left. But Georgia called timeout, and Kelly sent his offense back on the field to try another doomed fade into double-coverage. Then he kicked the FG.

The other thing is they make liberal use of their timeouts when Book doesn't see what he likes, which is how they got to their final drive with 90 seconds and none of them. It's probably a small price to pay for Book's low mistake rate.

Dangerman: The tackles aren't obvious until you do long drill-down stats or marvel at their sack rate. I should mention that they're also top-100 types. Liam Eichenberg was #80 overall in 2016 and Robert Hainsey was 84th the year after (Eichenberg's classmate Tommy Kraemer was 26th on the composite).

What is obvious is they like to chuck it up to Claypool. His 57 percent catch rate doesn't make that sound very scary, but so much of that seems like stuff we would chart as a throwaway. He's…well like I said, he's the same guy they had last year when his name was Boykin.

This isn't just being a giant leaping man. Boykinpool has ridiculous body control:

He's going to get his.

When they're not going to Claypool, they're usually trying to run something for TE Cole Kmet, perhaps on an out or a screen so he can get ogre YAC:

And you saw the seam play in the HenneChart section. This guy was the #82 recruit in the country because he's Zach Gentry if Gentry was an inch shorter and wasn't a quarterback in New Mexico in high school.

OVERVIEW: As you may have noticed, the entire Notre Dame offensive line, including the tight ends and split end, have tags on this site from when Michigan recruited them. The Irish have been just as good at Michigan at identifying talent early, and while they lose them to the big money programs at the same rate we do, the fact that they don't do the things our guys do makes me think there are run abilities going unused. Even Tony Jones, the pedestrian third down back forced into a starting role, was 325th on the composite, and has some highlights on the tubes of the one-cut-and-goes-barreling variety.

But get them in a game and Kelly goes back to what he trusts, which is that the offensive line will keep Book clean long enough to get at least a good idea out. Often those good ideas are just throwing it in the direction of an Ent. I've seen worse ideas.

Kelly is one of the craftier opponents we'll face. All the little tricks to gain an edge are on display. For Georgia they had a new goal line unbalanced formation. Add tempo and UGA was wholly unprepared for this, just barely getting a timeout in to negate what was coming:

That also goes for the pick plays. They like to create room for Kelly and Kmet by having a willing slot guy bang into the DB trying to stay with them. USC fans are still bitching about it. Georgia had a much better answer:

And this year Kelly added a wrinkle to Mesh, running it just behind the line of scrimmage so that the picking crosser doesn't have to pretend to block his buddy's tail. He just sets up and blocks him.

Neck Sharpies next week is either going to be very interesting or very annoying. It's also not going to be the story. This is going to sound really old fashioned you guys, but if Michigan can shut down the Notre Dame offense it'll be because they're winning the trench battle. Or at least jumping into the other guy's trench and making things look spooky enough that Book will retreat.

The running back made a good play to turn this into a first down, but balls thrown near the line of scrimmage off the back foot should be considered a strategic victory. PFF saw the same thing last year:

However, when the pass-rush did get home, Book’s play declined significantly as he ranked in the bottom fourth in PFF grade against pressure. Though most of this pressure wasn’t let up by the offensive line, it was because Book brought it on himself.

As a first-year starter, Book bailed on the pocket far too often and had the most pressures allocated to himself among all college football quarterbacks (29 total). Out of those 29 pressures, 18 ended as a sack which was seven more than any other college quarterback. This type of instinct is as expected from a first-year college starter, and it has been proven that performance under pressure is unstable from year to year, so as a result, if Book trusts the pocket and his offensive line, good things will come.

Like Patterson, the thing that was chalked up to new starterism last year has continued into the part of Book's career where that's just who he is. The routine accuracy means he's got a future in the NFL. It also means he can succeed equally against a porous Louisville defense or the mad athletic freaks of Athens, Georgia.

So here's where I'm at: I think Michigan's a bad matchup for Notre Dame. Their freshman center will be really good one day, and has them organized as well as Ruiz had Michigan last year, but that's still a first-year guy against a lot more complicated front than he's faced so far. Chase Claypool is a freak who could dominate at a game of 500, but what's the one kind of defensive back Michigan has in overabundance? Their tackles looked really good pass protection against Georgia, but Georgia's 71st in sack rate while Michigan, despite games against run-first outliers Army and Wisconsin, is up to 9th, and would love nothing better than to play their pass rushers all at once.

If you've got an open tight end up the seam and a clean pocket, Ian Book is the guy you want in there delivering it to him, but taking those away is the one thing we're pretty good at this year. And if you get Brian Kelly in a position where he has to run the ball before he's up three scores, Swarbrick will have his coach's blessing to jack this rivalry from the fans again.