9/7/2019 – Michigan 24, Army 21 (2OT) – 2-0

Welcome, BPONE sufferers! A double-overtime game against Army has everyone back in the pit, and even in the cold light of day 48 hours later it's hard to argue. A week after it felt like Michigan had added a bunch to the arc read package that saved their running game last year, Michigan QBs kept once and Zach Charbonnet trundled towards a very 1982 line: 33 carries, 100 yards.

Back in 1995 the shotgun was understood as an offensive gambit limited to passing downs because attempting to run out of it sucked. It would continue to suck until Rich Rodriguez accidentally invented the zone read when his QB at Glenville State screwed up. Once the option made spreading the field a run-game advantage instead of a disadvantage… [gestures at college football].

Michigan took the portal back to 1995 this weekend, and now we're back to crabbing about Michigan's offensive system while Lloyd Carr's on the field. RIP Speed In Space, 8/31/2019-9/7/2019. Cue the spittle, and the condescending media columns about how spittle is unbecoming.

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In the aftermath Harbaugh was asked about the lack of reads from his quarterback and made some assertions that I hope are not true:

On Shea Patterson potentially being dinged up and not running on option plays

He ran a couple. He was better. He was able to work through what he had and felt 100 percent for the game.

The read was not there for the quarterback to pull it.

If this is a 100% Shea Patterson, Michigan isn't doing anything this year. And it probably isn't. Patterson's lone called run of the game went four yards; Patterson was not hit but dove forward onto the ground. There he stayed. Dylan McCaffrey came in for the next two plays. Patterson returned for OT, hitting a couple of short throws across the middle in Michigan's first drive before three consecutive bad misses in OT2.

That certainly feels like a QB who Michigan is attempting to protect, because as soon as they stop doing that he goes out of the game briefly and then airmails all his passes of any length. (The OT1 throws were inside the hashes; the OT2 throws were on the sideline.)

The frustrating thing is that Army's approach never got tested. Michigan's rock paper scissors wins in this game were close to nonexistent. Army swallowed a fourth and two play with two guys in the backfield. Patterson's lone zone read keep ate a corner blitz. Michigan ran out of ideas late and kept returning to a no-read power play. This wasn't a return to the sometimes clunky early Harbaugh days—those had tons of different run plays and regularly popped guys through big holes by misdirecting linebackers. This was a near-total abdication of the idea of coordinating a run game.

So, like, what the hell? Why did game two of Josh Gattis become a debacle on par with Let's Put Denard Under Center? If Patterson is hurt why isn't Dylan McCaffrey playing? If Army is messing with Michigan's reads in basic scrape exchange ways, why don't you have a plan for that?

Like the title says: no good answers.

There's a lot of people extrapolating from not enough data and deciding to jump out of a plane; it's too early for that, but getting approximately zero coordinator wins in a tight game against Army while both quarterbacks get their offseason hype blown up is cause for concern.

Football's weird and Michigan has a bye week to get healthy and figure some things out. They'll have to.

[After THE JUMP: slomka, slomka, slomka, egg, and slomka]

AWARDS

Hutchinson is in there somewhere [Campredon]

Known Friends And Trusted Agents Of The Week

you're the man now, dog

#1 Aidan Hutchinson. TFL that put Army in third and eleven was all him, and he finished the sack on the next play. Also credited with the forced fumble that Metellus coulda shoulda scored on.

#2 Zach Charbonnet. Lack of yardage on ground even more disturbing because Charbonnet was seemingly maximizing his carries. He was able to regap in the backfield a few times like a much lighter guy. Also did not get Patterson killed.

#3 Josh Uche. A source of 1 and 0 yard plays either by getting off blocks and tackling himself or forcing things back inside on option plays.

Honorable mention: Ronnie Bell was half of the Michigan passing offense but gets knocked down into this section because his punt returns were an adventure. Lavert Hill made interception this week.  Josh Metellus and Brad Hawkins didn't screw anything up, which is hard to do as a safety against this offense.

KFaTAotW Standings

NOTE: New scoring! HM: 1 point. #3: 3 points. #2: 5 points. #1: 8 points. Split winners awarded points at the sole discretion of a pygmy marmoset named Luke.

10: Zach Charbonnet (#2 MTSU, #2 Army)
8: Ambry Thomas (#1 MTSU), Aidan Hutchinson(#1 Army)
6: Josh Uche (#3 MTSU, #3 Army)
1: Will Hart (HM MTSU), Jordan Glasgow (HM MTSU), Josh Ross (HM, MTSU), Sean McKeon (HM, MTSU), Shea Patterson (HM, MTSU), Ronnie Bell (HM Army), Josh Metellus (HM Army), Brad Hawkins (HM Army), Lavert Hill (HM Army).

Who's Got It Better Than Us(?) Of The Week

Kwity Paye, Aidan Hutchinson, Carlo Kemp, and Josh Uche combine to sack Army's QB and recover it on the final play of the game.

 

Honorable mention: Lavert Hill's INT prevents a 21-7 Army lead. Metellus grabs a fumble. Hutchinson sets up the final play with Michigan's first TFL in OT2.

​MARCUS HALL EPIC DOUBLE BIRD OF THE WEEK.

Ben VanSumeren puts Michigan's third fumble of the game on the deck, condemning Michigan to a halftime deficit.

Honorable mention: Patterson's first fumble. Patterson's second fumble, which was Christian Turner busting a blitz pickup and not Patterson's fault. Josh Metellus's fumble recovery TD getting called back erroneously. That not being reviewable. Most offensive plays?

OFFENSE

more targets [Campredon]

Throw the ball to Collins. Or Black. Anybody! The most frustrating part of Patterson's game right now is his refusal to punt the ball up to his giant leapy guys in jump ball situations. He did it once in this game, got nowhere near Collins, and still got a PI call. That should be the default response to pressure, or going through a read or two and not seeing anything particularly amazing.

Instead he's been moving up in the pocket and taking sacks, or scrambling for not much. Collins came down with two fade TDs against OSU last year. Are any of these Lilliputians seriously going to check him? Why does Collins come out of the game in critical situations and why doesn't he have a butt-ton of targets?

Two games in and Collins has one more catch than Charbonnet. He's on pace for a 33-catch year. That's without DPJ playing. What are we doing?

Speed of thought. The first fumble was a missed pickup but also a guy that Patterson saw coming while he had an open hot route drag in front of his face. Decisions were an issue for Patterson last year, and sometimes in the opener, and I feel like there are a number of quarterbacks who get that ball out instead of taking a sack. There's been a whole lot of "throw the ball!" going through my mind in the early going. It's rare that Patterson gets out a quick rhythm throw.

Charbonnet, though. The silver lining in the suck that was Michigan's ground game: Charbonnet did maximize his yards, and successfully picked through a lot of trash to do so. He demonstrated vision and an ability to re-gap that backs his size do not often have. Two games into his career and he's the safety blanket Michigan turned to after Turner got Patterson strip-sacked, and a 33-carry bell-cow after VanSumeren put the ball on the ground.

He's going to be outstanding if Michigan puts together offensive gameplans that aren't comprehensively crushed.

Hayes: stock down a bit. He got spun through easily on the Collins PI, forcing the quick throw that was way off. Michigan was mostly right-handed on the ground; with Runyan on the field they were mostly left-handed a year ago. Hayes isn't going to Wally Pipp Runyan.

On Jon Runyan Jr.’s injury

Jon was just really on the verge of being ready to play. He could have played, but there was … he looked good in practice, but we just felt like we would give him another week to make sure this isn’t something that’s a season ongoing problem.

On if he’ll start at Wisconsin over Ryan Hayes

Can I say that now? Most likely.

His two starts have been encouraging overall, but not enough to displace a returning All Big Ten tackle even if that tackle has a hard cap on his pass protection.

A foot away from a monster day. Ronnie Bell had a ton of catches in this game and one diving attempt at a wheel route that would have been a touchdown if he was able to catch it in stride. Bell was headed for a Poor Damn Ronnie Bell designation, and then he caught eight balls.

Bell's route on that wheel was very nice; he dusted the DB with an out move that the DB bit on and then was gone.

Short yardage problems. I preferred Michigan giving the ball to Ben Mason on dives, which IIRC worked every time last year except for one missed assignment by Runyan, to whatever Michigan's doing right now. It's impossible to get hammered in the backfield like Michigan did when you're running the simplest play in football behind Ruiz and Onwenu. TTB:

When any 5-man run scheme is involved, you’re outnumbered in the run game up front. Michigan can block 5 with the line and read another with the QB, but bringing a 7th guy into the box makes Michigan vulnerable to the SAM linebacker here bending off the edge unblocked. Unless Shea Patterson throws the ball quickly to the X receiver or gets it out to the trips side with a bubble or key screen, Michigan is going to struggle mightily to run the ball in this type of set against an aggressive defense.

The one area where I wanted Michigan to continue manballing without apology is also a tactical issue now. Cumong.

DEFENSE

a third of Marc-Gregor's pictures are some variant of this [Campredon]

In a fundamental sense, who cares? Nothing about this defensive performance matters at all going forward. Michigan faced Army, a team that does Army things against everyone from Colgate to the Pittsburgh Steelers. The A-back got 29 carries. The game was watching an endless procession of thumps up the middle leavened by exactly five passes.

A couple of guys did pop out, at least. Anyway.

Approach. Michigan was in a 3-3-5 almost the whole game; the box was usually six players with a three-man safety level. This was close-ish to what they did against Air Force under Brown a couple of years ago. Michigan did blitz frequently, and in the second half they slid Hutchinson inside and had Uche on the LOS quite a bit.

This may have invited the frequent Slomka-ing but Michigan was successful in preventing outside runs. Army had the one chunk run on their first touchdown drive and nothing else that went over ten yards. Was that a good strategy? A bad strategy? I don't know. I don't know what the alternatives were.

Army never went on one of their trademark 19-play marches, but that was in part because Michigan's issues with holding on to the ball set them up with short fields. It's possible Michigan's strategy feels a lot better if Army's TD drives don't start on the Michigan 40 and Army 40 and they end before the endzone.

[Campredon]

Uche: all the time. Uche did get the vast majority of snaps for the first time in his career—and against a team that does almost nothing but run. He popped out on a few different plays where he was able to stack and shed OL to get thwacks in at the line of scrimmage. Final judgement is withheld until I can get through the UFR, and Army blockers aren't Wisconsin blockers. But, yeah, man, he's gotta play.

Also: Hutchinson. Michigan's DL all spent turns getting shoved downfield on dive plays in ways I don't know if I'm going to be able to judge. I caught one particular fourth-down dive on which Hutchinson folded inside of Uche and got shoved back because Michigan's three-man line allowed Army a double. But Army's double was bizarre, consisting of one guy engaging Hutchinson while a second Bush pushed the first guy from behind. How does one grade that? I guess I'll find out.

Hutchinson suffered his share of cut blocks and deposits downfield but also came up with the play of the game when he got a bonafide tackle for loss—excuse me, that doesn't do it justice. Hutchinson came up with a

･ ｡ ☆∴｡　* bonafide　･ﾟ*｡★･

   ･ *ﾟ｡　　 *  tackle for loss　 ･ ﾟ*｡･ﾟ★｡

　　　　☆ﾟ･｡°*. ﾟ *　against　ﾟ｡·*･｡ ﾟ*

            ﾟ *.｡☆｡★　･　Army　* ☆ ｡･ﾟ*.｡　　　

In the second overtime. He did this by (deliberately?) taking a false step on the snap, convincing a guard that he was not a threat, and then redirecting fast enough through the gap left by a pulling OL that he was able to turn second and eight into third and eleven.

Paye, Hutchinson, and Kemp then combined to force the fumble on the ensuing play. Their kicker had zero track record other than a miss from 50 at the end of regulation but I might have tried to get 6-8 yards and rolled those dice instead of throwing in an obvious situation to, but I haven't seen practice.

Holding. It wasn't until Sunday that I found out the holding call on Army's second TD drive was on Hill and not Hudson. Hill grabbed a guy in the way that DBs often do and got unlucky when he stumbled. Hudson flat out got beat and had to grab his guy around the waist to deal with it, and then his dude was the target. Hill's issue falls under the rubbin's racin' rubric to me, but I can't complain because a holding call was justice on that play.

Up and down day for Hudson [Campredon]

Other Hudson issues. The single long Army run saw Hudson lose leverage and get locked inside by a blocker after he hesitated. Michigan safeties in general had a tough time getting off blocks when Army did venture outside. Offsetting the problems: it was Hudson's thunderous edge blitz that forced Hill's game-saving interception. He had a blocker, even.

SPECIAL TEAMS

Where art thou, Peppers? I have some sympathy for Ronnie Bell's punt return follies in this game because Army's first punt went 30 yards in the air, and then the second one went 45 yards to a sideline. Still: failing to field three punts and fumbling the one you do field is less than ideal. Hopefully Peoples-Jones is back for Wisconsin and we can forget the first two games of punt returns ever happened.

[Campredon]

Man alone. Michigan's fake punt was a check after Army left Dax Hill by himself. Useful to have a linebacker-sized upback who was a high school QB. Makes you wonder if that was a specific thing Michigan saw about Army or a general policy.

Meanwhile, I was momentarily terrified because Hill had to dodge a guy to pick up the first down. Michigan had just gotten a false start penalty, and someone actually asked him whether that was intentional to set up the fake. Harbaugh said no, if you were wondering.

Kickoffs: interesting? Giles Jackson busted a kick return out to Army territory before a penalty brought it back. He almost had another long jaunt before being chopped down at the 30. He looks like he might be the rare difference-maker as a kick returner.

One negative on his day: he got a jet sweep that was blocked for a chunk of yards. Like Michigan always seems to, he ran outside of a kickout block and set most of those yards on fire. If you see your teammate's back please do not bounce to the sideline. It is bizarre how frequent this is. Ben VanSumeren did it in the opener. When your 240-pound not-a-fullback guy is bouncing I start to suspect brain worms.

Blindside block: I thought we fixed this. Last year Michigan special teams did a good job of doing the hands-up I'm-not-touching-you-you're-touching-me thing on blindside blocks. They were legal last year but a frequent source of targeting calls and blocking-in-the-back penalties. Michael Barrett didn't execute this on the long Jackson return

MISCELLANEOUS

bored [Campredon]

Commercials. We got two instances of the commercial-kickoff-commercial sequence once reserved for NFL games, and every single timeout that wasn't right at the end of a half went to a full media timeout. The athletic department has gone to a full-on distraction blitz for the great piles of commercial time, and even though they have an excellent idea of how many breaks are in a game they ran out of stuff to use at the beginning of the fourth quarter. In a game against Army.

Attendance is flagging because going to games is a worse experience. It's not hard.

The approach down the stretch. I liked what Michigan was doing on their final drive, which was poised on a knife edge because of Army's general Army-ness. Michigan has the advantage when there are two minutes on the clock, so a leisurely approach until you've reached the stage where you can move the ball quickly while Army cannot was good. And it paid off: even after the failed fourth down attempt all Army could manage with the time they had was a 50-yard FGA.

Going for it. Yeah, go for it. The second decision is unimpeachable, IMO, for the reasons I mentioned in the above bullet point. If you punt, definite overtime. If you get it you've got the ball on the Army 40 with two minutes left. If you fail, Army doesn't have much time to do anything with it.

It is easier to complain about going for it from the Army 19 with ten minutes left, but I didn't like the prospect of Michigan going up three and then seeing 19 consecutive Slomka dives with the last in the endzone.

To be clear, I also advocate getting it when you go for it. In favor there.

HERE

All about obliques:

The Function of the Oblique

Because of the way the obliques run, they are able to aid in a lot of motions, such as trunk flexion and sidebending.  However, the primary role here is rotation.   When the trunk rotates, you will find that your two sets of obliques work together.  An example would be when you rotate to the left, your right side external oblique and left side internal oblique work together to create this motion.

Why is this important in athletes?  Well for throwers, such as baseball pitchers and football quarterbacks, rotation is critical.  Try and throw the ball without rotating your body at all, and you will find that not only does it not go far, but you look like an idiot.

Best and Worst:

Worst: Scoreboard Gazing

What drove me crazy this weekend, maybe more than even this game, was how often people would look at, say, Maryland destroying Syracuse or MSU suddenly discovering an offense against Western and perilously over-read into early-season results. Yes, Ohio State beat up on Cincinnati and, because the world isn't fair, Fields will likely be yet another superstar for them. Wisconsin looks to be back to their usual ways, smashing USF and CMU by an aggregate score of 110-0. A week after MSU could barely crack 300 yards against a probably-bad Tulsa team (while giving up only 80 total yards), MSU scored 51 points with 582 yards of total offense, including 251 yards on the ground. My guess is MSU's offense is somewhere in between those two marks, and they'll get a big test next week when Arizona State shows up. Penn State struggled with Buffalo for a half and then turned a couple of breaks into a blowout, and more generally have outscored their two opponents 124-20. As a conference, there are 6 teams averaging 40+ points per game thus far, which ties the Big 12 for the lead in that completely arbitrary category. Do I think that holds true for the rest of the year? Probably not, but a lot of teams are eating their Wheaties thus far into the season.

Looking at playcalls:

Michigan got noticeably more conservative in the second half. I would suggest that things may go further: There appears to be a significant change after the strip-sack in drive three, Michigan's second turnover. On the subsequent drive (drive four) Michigan runs 5 out of its 6 plays, including every first down. The following drive was a "2 minute" drive that included a surprising amount of running. Michigan then produced the startling second half play selection that is recorded above.

Prior to the second lost fumble, Michigan's offense was actually quite diverse. There was a very close balance between running and passing, including on first down, there was lots of yardage gained, and the second drive produced a touchdown. The 2-minute drill balances the numbers somewhat, but even then, Michigan ran an unusual number of times for a 2-minute offense.

ELSEWHERE

Highlights:

Don't schedule service academies, the stat:

Since 1995, the three FBS military academies — Air Force, Army, and Navy — are a combined 41-11-1 against the spread* as underdogs of more than three touchdowns (21.5 points or more), according to Odds Shark’s database.

Most recently, Army took 29-point favorite Oklahoma and 22-point favorite Michigan to overtime in consecutive years, while 2018 Navy covered against Notre Dame and UCF. The popular advanced analytics agreed with the big spreads before kickoff ... and yet the trend held steady.

If you took the military underdog to cover all 53 of those spreads, you’d have beaten Vegas a hilarious 78.8% of the time. It’s hard to imagine there’s a much stronger trend with historical backing like this one. Just for reference, beating the sports book a mere 55 percent of the time would be considered really, really excellent.

Hoover Street Rag:

I am not saying any of us is a prophet, but someone in the Michigan fan base saw the Army/Oklahoma game as it played out last year on that one guy's Periscope stream and immediately asked the question "Wait, why did we schedule in 2019 Army again?"  Especially since Army was supposed to be playing Northwestern today.  Keeping in mind that Army had won 12 games in four years prior to 2015 when this game was announced, it wasn't an overly terrible idea, it's just that Jeff Monken hadn't had time to go full wizard on his team.  But never schedule a service academy.  We're done with this.  Or at least, we should be.

Lorenz:

Two wide open receivers missed (Bell deep, Collins in OT) and a dropped ball; Michigan gave away three easy touchdowns in the passing game. What concerned me most about Patterson is that he was only able to pick Army apart when he had a ton of time to throw the ball. He made a couple of improv plays out of the pocket, but there was very little as far as quick, crisp throws to get the ball in the hands of their playmakers. He didn't look decisive throughout the game and was totally careless with the ball on his first fumble. Call it what it was: a disappointing performance.

Sap's Decals:

OFFENSIVE CHAMPION – For the second straight week I’m going with Zach Charbonnet. Great running backs typically see three things when they run: the hole, the 1st down sticks and the end zone. It’s becoming obvious that 24 has the vision to see all three. Last week it was great pass-pro, this week it is the durability to carry the ball 33 times for 100 yards and three touchdowns. Dude’s just getting started and he already looks so comfortable in this offense.

MGoFish. Maize and Go Blue. Maize and Blue Nation. Adam Rittenberg.