[Bryan Fuller]

Previously: Podcast 10.0A. Podcast 10.0B. Podcast 10.0C. The Story.

There is a fairly convincing body of evidence that All Of This Is My Fault, that Michigan football will not be on top of the world again until I am locked in the trunk of a car somewhere. Last year's edition of this post is in that pile somewhere near the top. You see, I once again pointed out Jim Harbaugh's flawless record of quarterback development. Give or take a Stanford third-stringer, literally every quarterback Jim Harbaugh's ever coached has exceeded expectations:

DOES THIS THING HAVE A DIFFICULTY LEVEL HARDER THAN "INSANE"

Jim Harbaugh is a kid sitting in a basement frustrated because Dark Souls is too easy. Sure, he crafted the first draft pick of any variety in San Diego history. He beat USC with a pottery major. He got Alex Smith a 70-million dollar contract. He nearly won a Super Bowl with a guy the league is currently passing over in favor of Stoney Case. (For bad reasons, admittedly.) And he turned an Iowa castoff into an NFL draft pick and in-demand trade bait.

Quarterbacks? Quarterbacks are easy.

At some point a Michigan fan is going to set me on fire and it'll be justified. It turns out there is a QB coaching difficulty level that even Jim Harbaugh cannot conquer. Take a QB room crafted by Al Borges*, replace the offensive line with those little strips in Mario Kart that make you go faster, and it's time to rage-quit.  Amongst the many grim aspects of last year's offense was a roster-wide QB implosion:

• Wilton Speight, a returning starter who averaged almost 8 yards an attempt with an 18-7 INT:TD ratio, lost a half-yard of YPA and seven points of completion percentage despite getting two-thirds of his attempts against Cincinnati and Air Force, the #96 and #109 pass defenses in the country. (Even Florida wasn't exactly gangbusters at #28).
• John O'Korn, momentarily hailed as the savior after he bombed Purdue, averaged 5.3 YPA and had a 1:5 TD-INT as he executed the most spectacular swan dive onto concrete in program history.
• Brandon Peters clearly had the training wheels on after he emerged as the starter but looked reasonably functional until he got knocked out of the Wisconsin game; a month of bowl practices only seemed to send him backwards as he had a 20/44, 186-yard, 2 INT game against South Carolina.

The utter ineptitude of Michigan's pass protection had something to do with the above, but that was bad all season. The arrows here are all pointing the wrong way. Speight wasn't around long enough to get Devin Gardner'd but still seemed like he'd gone backwards in the offseason, converting from a quarterback who was sneaky great at buying an extra second to get a throw out to someone who looked deeply uncomfortable most of the time. After Air Force:

The guy who was a pressure maestro last year seems gone. Even when he did the very good pressure thing in this game he immediately assumes he's running the ball in from the eight and only changes his mind very late. Grant Perry is running wide open directly in front of his face as he does this:

Crawford can and should help him out later in the play, but I don't understand why the rollout to the side of the field your best WR is running a route in does not immediately trigger "look at your best WR." ...

Speight's getting sped up by his mediocre pass protection, but make no mistake: it is mediocre. It is not terrible, or even bad. Per Football Outsiders the average NFL team gives up a pressure 27% of the time, and while college is different for a lot of reasons I'd be surprised if that wasn't pretty close. Michigan's protection metrics so far: 69%, 80%, 69%. That's not much different than it was last year, when Speight was operating at a higher level. He is making more mistakes, regardless of the youth around him.

Things got infinitely worse on the OL about two seconds after that post went up, but Speight only suffered about a half of the worst case scenario in pass protection before it fractured one of his vertebra and eventually ended his Michigan career.

But it's a blip, right? Probably a blip. One bad, weird year doesn't erase the annual litany of success this post rolls out. Please do not train dogs to smell and then bite me.

*[I promise** this is the last time you'll ever have to hear this, but: with Wilton Speight's transfer to UCLA, Al Borges *never* recruited a quarterback who finished his career as the starter at his original school. Speight and IU QB-turned-TE Cam Coffman were the only guys to even start a year. Also: Borges crafted the QB room by recruiting Speight and Shane Morris and then taking a year off, necessitating Michigan's swing at a transfer they knew little about right after Harbaugh arrived.]

**[read as "do not promise"]

AND THEN HUGH FREEZE CALLED THE WRONG PEOPLE FROM HIS WORK PHONE

Ole Miss's NCAA implosion was richly deserved and very, very stupid from the beginning so it's only appropriate that its spectacular finale featured Hugh Freeze repeatedly calling escort services on a phone subject to FOIA. A local Sonic manager named Matt Luke was hurriedly promoted, the Rebels cratered their season, and the NCAA hit them with a 2018 bowl ban.

Various players took this as the sign to leave, amongst them former five-star QB Shea Patterson. Patterson transferred to Michigan and is immediately eligible due to... something or other. The NCAA changed some rule that allowed Ole Miss to say "sure, go ahead" without accepting a document full of allegations that paint Ole Miss in a bad light, and AD Ross Bjork took advantage of that about two seconds after the rule was implemented.

In the aftermath, Michigan has the college equivalent of a high profile free agent signing. Gonna be weird. But... I'll take it.

[After THE JUMP: show them what they've won!]

QUARTERBACK	Yr
Shea Patterson	Jr.
Brandon Peters	So.*
Dylan McCaffrey	Fr.*

RATING: 4.

THE TATE IN THE HIGH CASTLE

pointing was a very Forcier trait [Bryan Fuller]

Sometimes I say things and people get mad at me. Sometimes this is my fault; sometimes it's theirs. We'll call it down the middle on "Shea Patterson doesn't look like your average five star, he looks like Tate Forcier," which was my initial post-transfer take and absolutely remains so after your author reviewed the relevant parts of SHEA PATTERSON's injury-abbreviated sophomore year at Ole Miss.

When I hear "five star pro-style quarterback," I envision Ryan Mallett, more or less. Giant, immobile, trebuchet kind of person. Patterson is not that. Patterson is a scrambly gunslinger type:

100% ready for the fun Shea Patterson will bring in 2017. pic.twitter.com/07T6hRIDUO

— Gordon McGuinness (@PFF_Gordon) July 26, 2017

That's not to say that Patterson can't stand in the pocket and go through progressions and nail guys many yards downfield. It's just the vibe, man. Patterson's combination of size, escapability, and well, you know, moxie necessarily conjures forth that brief, entertaining moment in Michigan football history where Ace was splicing Forcier into Christopher Walken music videos at my request.

Some people thought that was skepticism about Patterson. It wasn't, because 1) I loved me some Tate Forcier and 2) Shea Patterson is Forcier-esque but with the NFL arm talent add-on package.

That's a highlight reel but after watching every Patterson throw from 2017 I can vouch that it does a fairly good job of reflecting reality, especially when it comes to the gorgeous deep balls Patterson uncorks with regularity. Vandy UFR:

Five DO throws? Are we grading on a hope curve?

Well, I never. While Patterson's TDs were mostly routine throws there were a selection of eye-openers. Ole Miss threw a lot of fades last season—I'm betting that that's one reason they got crushed vs LSU and Alabama—and Patterson displayed excellent, consistent touch on them. Ole Miss's crew of burly WRs is capable with the ball in the air, but they're not exactly blazers. This was a fairly typical outcome of the many fades:

There's not a lot of window there and Patterson hits it. When he missed it was usually a narrow thing. One glanced off DK Metcalf's fingertips…

…others were very good, accurate throws to blanketed receivers, like this Prothro catch:

This is a perfect throw if the WR didn't get beat up on his route. Since he did and your formation—everyone in the boundary, solo WR to field on the hash—is designed to give your WR a ton of room to the sideline on a fade route, I assume the back shoulder is option 1B and should be thrown. There were a couple of these.

FWIW, practice reports have held that Patterson's ball placement is a standout aspect of his game, "especially on throws like the back shoulder," so maybe that's been an offseason focus.

One thing I would not do is look at Patterson's counting numbers too seriously. While he was blessed with receivers who Make Plays(tm), the promotion of a Sonic manager to head coach and Freeze's dismissal left the Rebels' pass protection looking mighty familiar, except against an SEC West schedule. There was almost no point in charting a couple of Patterson's games, which were debacles from the start:

At one point in the Alabama game Patterson was sacked on five of eight dropbacks with no reasonable expectation to avoid those sacks. The nature of the Ole Miss offense also put some shackles on Patterson. From the Alabama UFR:

[Patterson] was put in a number of no-win scenarios, like this incomplete slant on Ole Miss's best drive.

That's destined for a PBU, but all options are bad here. It's a seven man protection with only three guys in the route. The slot's covered, the solo WR to the bottom of the screen is getting jammed to oblivion, and the targeted Van Jefferson has lost his route badly. At least this time Patterson wasn't running for his life.

Patterson duly threw these passes even if it was clear the WR—frequently for some reason true freshman DK Metcalf—was getting his face pressed off.

He had no other choice unless being buried under 500 pounds of Bama lineman counts. Metcalf in particular had a rough game, unable to get off the line of scrimmage with any consistency and poor when given an opportunity to catch a ball.

The clip just above was a fairly frequent Ole Miss play; it and others like it are literally high school offense predicated around the fact that you can't do a particular thing—in Ole Miss's case, pass protect against Alabama and LSU. Half that play is a screen Patterson can throw. The other half is a fade to an isolated backside receiver. You pick one pre-snap and do it. When you have AJ Brown against Vandy it works just fine. Freshman against Bama not so much.

This was not an attempt to paper over Patterson's flaws. He is perfectly capable of sitting in the pocket and going to second and third reads. He did so frequently in games where Ole Miss's pass protection was extant. He was good at moving zone defenders with his eyes and an occasional pump fake. His opening throw against Cal featured him looking off not a safety but an underneath zone defender with a glance towards his running back:

That, too, happened with some frequency in games where Patterson wasn't immediately buried under a pile of sharks.

The pedestrian numbers in big games weren't really representative, and those led to some similarly ho-hum overall numbers:

A quick glance at what Shea Patterson did a season ago at Ole Miss pic.twitter.com/La80FDDae8

— PFF College (@PFF_College) August 7, 2018

A better measure is PFF's play-by-play grading, which does take most of this into account. (FWIW, in my experience they may be less likely to diagnose an "all these options are bad" play and just go with results, which may slightly underrate the often-doomed Patterson.) In that context Patterson was a solid B+ QB as a true sophomore and the SEC's third-best starter:

Top graded SEC QBs this season:

Drew Lock, Missouri (85.1)
Jalen Hurts, Alabama (85.0)
Shea Patterson, Mississippi (82.3)
Jarrett Stidham, Auburn (80.7)
Kyle Shurmur, Vanderbilt (80.7)

— Vinnie Ronca (@PFF_Vinnie) December 2, 2017

That grade should (mostly) eliminate the effect of Ole Miss's bally-hooed but extremely inconsistent WR corps, as well. That's as close as any number can get to a true picture of Patterson's abbreviated 2017. Give or take some new-offense-for-transfer effects it should also serve as a floor for 2018. And that is one hell of a floor.

So what's a reasonable expectation for a ceiling? Seth tackled this in a post back in April. These things are necessarily fuzzy since QB performance is dependent on a lot of externalities—not that you need to be told that—and doubly fuzzy for Patterson since he's an unprecedented third year QB who switches teams and is immediately eligible. So grains of salt and all that. Still, the baseline projection for Patterson is borderline all-conference:

A ton of caveats come with this. Second-to-third year transitions with a ton of attempts are rare, Patterson transferred, Michigan might not have any pass protection at all and is one more WR injury away from seriously thinking about 50 walk-on targets, etc.

Even if we take all these caveats and use them to get as grim as reasonably possible about Patterson we are still in a very okay range, especially since Michigan returns 8 of the 12 most relevant players* from a top-15 ground game. One of the striking things about watching Ole Miss tape right after Michigan's most recent season is how utterly the Rebels depended on Patterson to do everything. They'd start a game with a bunch of throws and occasionally mix in their tailback for three straight runs and an easy first down; if things go at all right for this year's offense that pattern should be inverted, with Michigan pounding the rock repeatedly and having Patterson pop up to drop bombs on safeties who are creepin'.

That's the idea, anyway.

*[Top two RBs, four-ish starting OL, two starting TEs. Gone are two-ish starting OL and the fullbacks.]

THE UNREASONABLY MALIGNED

probably the deep shot to DPJ, because he's not being atomized [Bryan Fuller]

BRANDON PETERS [recruiting profile] returns in the #2 slot. Peters was Michigan's savior for a brief period mid-season; John O'Korn had continued being John O'Korn against Rutgers until the stadium-wide grumbles were matched by those on the Michigan sideline. Peters entered and had a three-game period in which he was sheltered as much as possible and greeted as a conquering hero whenever he completed a fullback dumpoff.

No, seriously, even your hardened correspondent was talking fullback flat routes:

Okay, yes, but: good start, demonstrating the ability to alternate touch throws and blast it in when necessary. His first two throws were soft tosses that were almost casual pickup stuff:

That latter is straight butter, perfectly placed and easy to catch for a fullback. It's not a DO because it's like a four yard throw but it's the kind of short pass that makes it cross my mind.

By the time Peters hit Chris Evans on a wheel route for one of those touchdown things, Michigan Stadium was in love. It was very much a rebound situation—Michigan Stadium would have been in love with just about anyone who could have hit a crossing route—but, hey, redshirt freshman debuting after a bunch of recruiting hype is a good vibe.

The rapturous reception was followed by a tense period, at least insofar as Peters was concerned. Michigan's ground game mauled the opposition in his first three games; Peters hardly dropped back and when he did it was frequently a quick play action pass that tested neither the quarterback or the pass protection. Whether that was because the coaching staff was afraid of a turnover or afraid that any particular snap would liquify a critical portion of Peters's anatomy, thus leading to more O'Korn, is unknown. Probably some of both, with a majority in the latter bin. Post-Minnesota:

The other stuff... tip of my tongue... throwing? Throwball? Good bad?

Brandon Peters got an incomplete, more or less. Only eight throws made it in the DSR. ... there wasn't much good but neither was there much bad. I would have liked to seen Peters taken out for more of a spin in the second half, but when consecutive Michigan drives end with sacks because of comically bad pass protection it's tough to continue doing that instead of mashing face.

Once Michigan met up with a Wisconsin defense capable of shutting off Michigan's ground game Peters did indeed get knocked out of the game, leading to a sequence of events nobody reading this post needs to be reminded of.

Peters returned for the bowl game, where an even more makeshift than usual line (down Bredeson, Bushell-Beatty, and mostly Kugler) and more makeshift than usual set of receivers (no Perry) led to a grim, miserable outing for the offense as a whole. Your author's ennui prevented him from evaluating how much was Peters and how much the even more chaotic surroundings than normal... until now! I went back and charted Peters's Outback Bowl to provide a full-season UFR chart and, honestly, for a redshirt freshman in those circumstances it wasn't bad:

BRANDON PETERS

	Good				Neutral			Bad					Ovr
Game	DO	CA	SCR		PR	MA		BA	TA	IN	BR		DSR	PFF
Rutgers		10++				1				2	1*		77%	-
Minnesota		9(3)+			3	2				2			75%	-
Maryland		11(2)+			1	1			1	2(1)	2		69%	-
Wisconsin		9++			4	4			2	2	5		50%	-
South Carolina	3	22(6)++++	1		7	4		2	2	4	3*		65%	-

Michigan was restricted because of their even-worse-than-normal pass protection so the headline stats from the box score obscure a bunch of screens and throwaways due to pressure. Things didn't really start going pear-shaped until halfway through the fourth quarter, after the series of dorfs that had put Michigan behind. A bad decision not to throw to Sean McKeon was followed by a very very bad decision to hurl a ball aimlessly into the endzone; the next drive saw two throws into the hands of his WRs hit the ground, and the final throw on fourth and one was on point but stepped in front of as Kekoa Crawford couldn't sell a deeper route and you have to throw on fourth down.

It was by no means a triumphant outing, but if we're handing out blame for the loss Peters finishes well behind most of his unit. South Carolina was just an average-ish pass D a year ago (55th); Peters still did fairly well against it despite taking 7 PR events and getting little help from anyone on the receiving end of his passes.

So why has Peters's offseason been dogged by the same kind of skepticism and transfer expectation that have followed him for his entire college career?

come on people

Getting a QB imported in front of you after you thought you had the job is probably off-putting, but Peters is still here and still looking like a viable option. So: hell if I know. Many functional or better FBS QBs have looked worse than Peters in a redshirt freshman season despite better surroundings. I mean, JFC:

PFF’s graders ranked Michigan No. 13 out of 14 Big Ten squads this fall in pass-blocking efficiency (99 pressures on 359 pass plays), ahead of just Illinois. Bonus: Wolverines receivers combined for a 15.3 percent drop rate — which ranked 12th in the league, ahead of only Iowa (15.5) and Minnesota (20.7).

Just maintaining your sanity is a win. (Should be said that I had Michigan's routine drop rate much lower than PFF; a harder than average ball to catch is probably a big factor in that number. These balls generally did not come from Peters.)

So. Peters remains a quarterback in the heart of the Harbaugh distribution, first and foremost a passer but with the athleticism to chip in a few hundred rushing yards should the OC be so inclined. His ability to vary speeds has been there since high school; what can on occasion look like a weak arm is in fact Peters throwing a catchable ball when he can. When asked to ramp it up that's in his toolbox as well:

No one will mistake his arm strength with Joe Milton's; neither does he have to defend it like Dylan McCaffrey occasionally does.

In situations where he has some faith in his protection Peters can move around the pocket and buy the extra beat or two to get a completion:

Instances of downfield look-offs and second reads were rare but extant. On-time checkdowns were a frequent occurrence, and the occasional slick timing route came off:

There is a not particularly different world where Hugh Freeze reads the Bible instead of thumps it featuring Shea Patterson in Oxford. In this world Peters has been talked up by every available insider because he's the man, man, and this is what happens. We saw blips and bloops of that even last year, when Peters was just a promising youngster. Webb:

If you're asking me if what I've seen is further confirmation that Brandon is the most talented quarterback on the roster, my answer would be yes. No one is disputing that.  I don't think the quarterbacks themselves would dispute that.

Command and playbook stuff were what was holding him back. He's no longer the guy with the slickest arm on campus; every on-field thing from spring games to last year's test drive still looks like a promising young quarterback finding his way. I'll take that over insider chatter from guys who aren't that inside anymore. If Patterson is indeed a one and done it'll be hard for the chasers to overtake Peters.

FUTURES

40 yard flick on the run across his body, sure

Michigan has two freshmen still in a holding pattern. No one thinks Shea Patterson is fielding a serious challenge from anyone and no Harbaugh quarterback has started as a true freshman even if his name is Andrew Luck, but despite all that the number one name on everyone's lips after spring practice was JOE MILTON [recruiting profile], whose combination of trebuchet-level arm strength and Pahokee coachability have people raving, both to insiders and in public. John Wangler:

"Obviously great arm… he has got good movement… he can move, and great size. What I really liked about him… (because) the physical skills are obvious… but his demeanor. He didn’t act like a freshman. ...confident and he had a presence about him that I liked.”

Isaiah Hole:

One current high school coach told me that, as a football junkie, he’s paid close attention to Milton’s career, even back when he was a junior at Orlando (FL) Olympia. According to said coach, he jumped off the page as a likely superstar.

...source said that Michigan’s staff is absolutely salivating over his potential, and views him as a likely first-round NFL Draft pick once his career is said and done. Part of that is his competitive nature — whereas Patterson and Peters are both more soft spoken (McCaffrey isn’t), Milton is fierce and vocal, all to go along with the immense physical talent.

Michigan put him in front of the media as an early-enrolled freshman, which says somethin' about somethin'.

It does not say "expect to see this person soon." Milton hype has hit a bump this fall...

-Hearing that fall camp has been tougher sledding for Joe Milton than spring ball was. That’s not surprising. We saw the same thing with Peters last year when they put more on his plate in fall camp.

...and at the recently-completed open practice he was the most erratic scholarship guy throwing. He consistently left deeper throws short. He also threw some passes that looked and dang near sounded like all the hype in one humming heater.

It's going to take a minute, is all. Milton completed less than half his passes in high school and is raw clay for Harbaugh to shape. That'll take at least a year. If and when it does come together for Milton, look out. This preview thinks that is more of a three-year project than a one-year project. Milton didn't even make the three-deep, per Harbaugh. Look out all the same.

McCaffrey (#10) usually looks less like a banana [Chris Cook]

Redshirt freshman DYLAN MCCAFFREY [recruiting profile] is third on the depth chart but last in this post because of hype reasons. This is not intended as a knock; this is not a situation where a quarterback has dropped off the face of the Earth and the only thing left is for the transfer to get announced. McCaffrey is in it. He responded to the Milton hype like so:

Dylan McCaffrey, also competing for the starting job at quarterback along with Brandon Peters and Shea Patterson, has witnessed Milton throw 85 yards.

“It looks pretty easy for him,” McCaffrey said.

How far can McCaffrey throw?

“I can throw the ball far enough,” he said, smiling. “Get the ball out on time, you’re good.”

McCaffrey has the last name and the frame but entered Michigan as a 6'5" beanpole who did not garner ding-dong bing-bongs about his arm strength. He's right about getting the ball out on time and has the pedigree to do that, and despite the general vibe around the program being an all-singing all-dancing neon MILTON, McCaffrey's first year was productive as redshirt years go. He was named the scout team player of the year and has repeatedly drawn praise of the somewhat unsolicited variety from Harbaugh:

"Very athletic, very heady," Harbaugh said. "He's got that 'it' thing.

"He's got that 6-5 frame and he's getting strong so he can really get everything coordinated with the throwing motion. He's working hard on that. He's on that path. You like everything about him."

He was always a guy to check back on in two years and halfway through that period he's tracking well. Not well enough to threaten the top of the depth chart, for the obvious reason...

"I feel like I need to one, get stronger," McCaffrey said in May. "I felt like kind of still in high school last year. So in the weight room I hit that hard."

...but if we haven't learned the lesson about McCaffreys yet I don't know what to tell you. Learn the lesson about McCaffreys maybe? That would be a good start, insofar as learning about McCaffreys goes.