Yep, that's me.

There I was, a true freshman linebacker trying to cover Roman Wilson. As you can see, that didn't go so hot. The story of how I came to associate myself, a bona fide four-star, top-200, IMG-trained prospect with a 4.8 forty, with the dourest college football program in America is not important.

But how I came to be matched on Roman Wilson, now, that's a tale worth telling. It tells you how Michigan uses their hybrid tight ends to create matchup problems even a defensive whiz coaching the most important game of his career couldn't anticipate. It tells you what part of Michigan's offense that whiz was focused on shutting down. It tells you how Michigan anticipates the ways its opponents unbalance themselves to shut their favorite stuff down. And it shows you how future opponents—those with top-200 players who aren't true freshmen all over the place—are probably going to try to create better matchups than my teammates and I can muster.

[After THE JUMP: We'll let the tape tell it.]

So to show you what I think happened on the Roman Wilson touchdown above we have to go forward to some plays that demonstrate what MSU thought they were doing.

This is a simple power run—I used to call it double-split and Brian calls it Counter TE. It's just a basic counter run with the tight end and fullback as the kickout and lead blocker. Michigan State is playing it to spill, which means every defender's job is come inside his block until the offense runs out of blockers or the running back chooses to go in a gap with a defender in it.

The key to playing to spill is getting one more defender to the point of attack than the offense has blockers for. It's a common tactic for using speed on the back end to make up for size up front. The more spills that occur, the more time you give your speedy back defenders time to get there. And there's the rub: the longer it takes to get those collectors to their spots, the more room the offense has to run. If you bring your collectors to their spill points quickly, there isn't anywhere to go. On this play MSU got their boundary safety down in there right away—he is on the 40 at the snap and set up on the line of scrimmage by the time the play is unfolding.

Now, I want you to pay attention to the top, and how the field safety and cornerback are playing Roman Wilson. The coverage here looks like Cover 1, and it may have just been plain Cover 1 indeed. But the way the field safety is reacting to Wilson coming in makes me think they had a "Banjo" switch planned if he went inside. That means if the #1 receiver (counting from the outside-in) stems his route inside, the safety is supposed to come down to pick him up while the cornerback can drop into a zone.

Banjos can work a lot like Spill, in that you can continue dealing with receiving threats by passing them off as they go inside and staying on top of them if they go outside. Say for argument that the play above was a pass. The #1 receiver, Wilson, stems inside, so the safety over him would come down to chase from better leverage than the cornerback. The CB would then drop until the #2 receiver, Barner, in this case, came out of the backfield. Since his route goes outside, the CB who came off hypothetical Wilson would stay atop Barnett. If Bredeson leaks out as a #3 receiver you get the SAM to stay atop him, and so on. Saban's defense works this way.

The nice thing about adding banjo calls to your coverages is they give your defenders better leverage without having to keep two guys high, e.g. MSU used the extra man to roll a safety down and stuff up the run (or pick up a receiver out of the backfield to his side).

They have a big weakness, though: by using a safety to cover a route through the linebacker level they're removing deep coverage in the middle of the field. Because it's really just a take on man defense, that means somebody's going to be left in man-to-man without deep help on the #3 receiver. Since the #3 in most offensive looks is a tight end or running back, this isn't a big deal. If you're the offense then, an RPS win against this strategy is getting a mismatch between your #3 receiver and their #3 cover without them checking out of it. For example, a trips formation (three receiving threats on one side) formation where the inside receiver is your fastest guy, and he gets matched on a slow middle linebacker.

I think the last time I talked about banjos on here was 2017, because Don Brown's rush-five/play man defense was struggling with crossing routes. Brown started banjoing against Penn State to shut this down, and Joe Moorhead responded by matching Saquon Barkley against Mike McCray. I trust you don't need a video.

Back to the present. Note that Michigan's alignment here starts with three passing threats (Wilson, Barner, Bredeson) all to one side, and just one receiver on the backside. This is a weakness of playing defense with these switch coverages against a 3x1 setup like Michigan's above. If you're Nick Saban, and you're not too worried about that #1 receiver on the backside, you often wind up with that cornerback in man coverage. Once the high safety uses himself up on Wilson there's nobody deep to help with the receiver. There are ways to steal back help, but you have to steal it back from the run coverage. MSU's plan here is to shut down the run first, figuring Michigan wants to come in and grind them down, not leave JJ McCarthy in the pocket forever.

We can see these Banjo coverages in action all over the 1st quarter. Here's an example of them playing it well, or at least well enough. You're watching FS #1 Jaden Mangham (who went to Groves) and CB #21 Dillon Tatum (West Bloomfield) as they adjust to Wilson at the bottom. Manham leaves the frame for a second, but you can see him giving chase at the end.

The play is still there if JJ puts it further out in front of his receiver, but the LBs had time to drop and make the window smaller, and the DL had a good three seconds to get pressure. The coverage did its job.

Not so much on Wilson's long drag that set up Michigan's first touchdown:

This play is a good demonstration of how Michigan planned to attack MSU's banjoing ways by using motion, alignment, and Wilson's speed. Let's start by looking at the pre-snap frippery from the perspective of a defense that's trying to count receiving threats.

Then Wilson motions inside.

And stops and comes back outside.

And starts the play sort of stacked behind his tight end.

And because the safety is still widening to the strongside Wilson releases he's late to the party when Wilson suddenly becomes an inside threat. Also the linebacker who was supposed to give him some cut help didn't.

Again:

So now let's apply what we've learned to the Wilson touchdown. Once again this thing starts with a lot of motion to screw up the defense's assignments. Except this time we've got an extra special layer of matchup issues, because Michigan came out in 12 personnel (one RB, two TEs), which State matched with four linemen and three linebackers.

MSU's initial setup makes sense given what we've seen of Michigan's 12 personnel on 1st downs this year. They're in a twins formation with Barner flexed out a little bit, though the way the tackles are off the line suggests they're going to pass. Their favorite play out of a look like this is having the off TE (Loveland) stay in to block and the Y-Tight End (Barner) run a drag route underneath a "Dagger" combo with Johnson and Wilson.

MSU knows this and they're in a good defense for it, with both safeties ready to stay atop vertical routes of their respective #2 receivers. But watch what happens as Michigan moves Loveland across the formation:

By the time Michigan snaps this, Loveland and Barner are the two #1 receivers, and both have drawn cornerbacks. The #2 receiver to the trips side is Johnson, who's got a linebacker underneath but a safety on top of that. The #3 receiver to that side is Roman Wilson, and he's got…the middle linebacker.

Clearly this is a mistake by the MSU defense. When they get that 3x1 look the CB and Safety at the top communicate that they're going to banjo if the guy goes inside, and the safety comes down to be there for that eventuality, removing him from being able to play zone coverage to that side. The cornerback probably should be dropping to fill that role, but instead of worrying about Wilson as the #2 to his side, he's focusing on Edwards in the flat. The free safety can't be of any help because he's playing Cover 2 over vertical releases by Loveland and Johnson.

Four-star, IMG product Jordan Hall is talented as linebackers go, but he's no match for Roman Wilson. His one hope is that his defensive line can get pressure with just four rushers. Lucky for him, they run a stunt that gets the DE looping inside without a blocker. Unluckily for him, JJ makes that guy miss and scrambles to the right, which means MORE time for Wilson to jet past this linebacker. When JJ is recovered he's off-platform, but that doesn't seem to matter either.

See? It's not magic.* MSU wasn't prepared for both TEs to be the #1 receivers—that should have initiated a check to get the boundary safety to call off the banjo, or at least let the cornerback know he's got a dangerous threat to the other side if they swap jobs.

Later on the Spartans would run a check for this, but only if they saw Wilson in the slot. If they got the same exact look with Wilson as the backside drag threat and Loveland the #3 to the trips side, for example, they were okay leaving a linebacker on him, if not the one with 4.8 speed. Watch as Barner motions across, turning Loveland into the #3 receiver to the trips side, and locking in a matchup with a helpless linebacker.

Once again, because of the banjo on the bottom there's no safety help over the top. The cornerback even left Edwards wide open to get back on it, but because he started so low he wasn't able to get back.

* [As for how McCarthy escaped that unblocked looping defensive end, well, that's just magic.]

LESSONS

So I'm not saying this play is Money, but it's a very good way to use Michigan's matchup problems all together. Having both TEs line up outside was brilliant because they don't want to cover those guys with linebackers, and corners aren't really great for them either (remember Barner's fade over an Indiana CB?). The threat of this more or less broke MSU's banjo coverages, which was their key to having safeties involved in the run game. The next time Michigan motioned across the formation, State had to go with a typical roll, which meant #15 on the bottom was moving away from the run when it came down his hash.

This was our first peek into the more advanced ways this coaching staff has been planning to use their matchup weapons in the offense, though they may not work so well against Penn State's safety-speed linebackers, or Ohio State's hybrid defenders who can cover all shapes and sizes of receivers. Since Purdue is a pretty dedicated Cover 1 team, I expect we'll see more of this kind of stuff soon.