ED(Seth) NOTE: Since it appears we are going to have a John O’Korn era after all, we decided to make Ian Boyd’s article from last summer available to everyone. The following was published in Hail to the Victors 2016. You can download the original PDF to whatever device from this link.

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The Cowboy’s Next Rodeo

by Ian Boyd

Coaches and teams in college football live and die by what happens at the quarterback position. You can trace the rise and fall of various programs and coaches across the country by how they handled the position and whether they got good, great, or poor play.

Despite being famous for making the under-center power running game cool again, Jim Harbaugh really reached his current level of notoriety by grooming Andrew Luck into a Heisman/no. 1 pick and getting the most from guys like Alex Smith and Colin Kaepernick at San Francisco. As soon as he came to Ann Arbor, Harbaugh secured the services of grad transfer Jake Rudock from Iowa and regular transfer John O’Korn from Houston, stole high school senior Zach Gentry from Texas, and went to work on 2017 and 2018 QB recruits. Coach Jim knows he can’t allow his rebuild to be done in by a lack of options at the most important position.

Rudock was a one-and-done for the Wolverines while O’Korn has a chance to be an additional bridge to the future as Harbaugh develops younger players like efficient sniper Alex Malzone, MGoBlog fave-rave Brandon Peters, and top 2018 pro-style prospect Dylan McCaffrey. As it happens—provided he can wrest the job from 2015 backup Wilton Speight—O’Korn could be filling the gap in a year when Michigan is positioned to win the Big 10 and reach the playoffs.

[After THE JUMP: some Harbaugh plays that O’Korn should excel at]

MICHIGAN’S 2016 CONTEXT

Bill Connelly of SB Nation has done some fascinating work in recent years that suggests where returning starts and experience is most valuable in college football is at QB, WR, and in the secondary. Michigan is looking very, very strong here with their top three receivers from 2015 all returning, but needs good QB play to make the most of the returning experience across the offense and the tremendous talent at the skill positions. And while we have to wait for fall camp before anointing one or the other, the presumptive favorite young man to assume that crucial role in 2016 will be John O’Korn.

SO WHO IS JOHN O’KORN?

A Pennsylvanian by birth, John O’Korn moved down and played at football factory St. Thomas Aquinas in Fort Lauderdale for his upperclassman years. O’Korn didn’t start there until he was a senior, which usually limits a QB recruit’s options, and he accepted a scholarship from Houston as a 3-star rated player.

In high school O’Korn ran more of a pro-style offense. He excelled at leading receivers on deep routes off play-action, and when throwing on the move, either on a scramble or designed rollouts.

However, once at Houston O’Korn took over an Air Raid offense that was quite different from what he ran in Florida. The Cougars based out of a four-wide concept and augmented their zone running game by giving O’Korn RPO (run/pass option) reads so they could punish defenses that didn’t under-man the box with quick passes. Every run had either quick routes or screens attached for O’Korn to throw if defenses kept defenders in the box.

Amongst the passing concepts they ran were some west coast staples of the sort that also appear in the Michigan playbook, like the stick route or curl/flat which Houston combined into one play, which I called Stick- Curl Flats:

The Cougars would have the Y receiver sit as soon as he encountered coverage or found a soft spot, so this often played out as a quick throw for a three- to five-yard gain. If the nickel or strongside linebacker came in to stop the stick route, O’Korn would throw the curl-flat combo outside. On the backside he had another curl-flat combo to throw in case the defense dropped a safety down to play man coverage over the stick route.

The Cougars would use wide splits for their WRs to maximize the spacing; this system was all about giving the QB a variety of options across the field for him to utilize from the pocket. That meant O’Korn was usually standing back there behind five-man protections (sometimes six) with a lot to process and often very little time to do so in.

O’Korn would often take off running when he saw openings or things didn’t look right, but overall the system wasn’t designed to maximize his mobility. He rarely had opportunities to throw on the run (save for under duress) nor did he get many chances to lead receivers down the field on play-action bombs. The Cougars weren’t setting the stage for him to punish defense by running the ball but instead asking him to make quick decisions and throws to set up the running game.

After he lost his job to the even more nimble Greg Ward, O’Korn determined to transfer and Harbaugh won the sweepstakes. In his time at Houston, O’Korn demonstrated that he knows how to make quick reads and progressions, and he usually sent the ball where it was supposed to go. He’s fairly accurate, though not elite in this regard, and arm strength is also neither a problem nor a particular strength.

Where he tends to sink or swim is the way he uses his legs. Sometimes you’d see him making plays with tough runs or by scrambling to buy time before burning opponents down the field.

At other times he’d try to do too much behind shaky protection and take sacks or force throws.

O’Korn is not always a careful caretaker of a plodding offense like what Michigan ran in 2015; he’ll look to make plays and add something extra.

HOW DOES THIS FIT TOGETHER?

The 2016 Michigan running game will very likely be improved at setting up De’Veon Smith to pound opponents with steady gains, but there’s still a need for the passing game to produce explosive plays and tons of skill to help achieve that goal. Fortunately for Wolverine fans, this offense does suit O’Korn fairly well, and he should be able to unlock at least some of the potential of their passing game.

The first step will be in making the most of the Amara Darboh, Jehu Chesson, and Jake Butt triumvirate at receiver, and their complementary talents. Darboh is excellent working in isolation against a corner and is hard to keep covered without help, Chesson brings pure speed to the equation, and Butt excels at getting open and bringing in the ball amidst the violent crowd in the middle of the field.

Here’s a play that burned Michigan State some a year ago and could be a dangerous feature in the offense for the way it sets up the Wolverine talent to do what they do best. It’s the Harbaugh-version of the Shallow Cross:

Much like how Houston would use a quick stick route to set up curl-flat combinations to either side of the field, Harbaugh will do the same with a dig/sit route in the seam and a shallow cross underneath. Either the TE can run the dig and the slot the shallow, or vice versa, but the best combination would feature Butt running the dig and Chesson or one of the slots running the shallow.

The safeties and outside linebackers will tend to get sucked in by the threat of Butt running up the seam, which then opens the curl to flat read to either side of the formation. If Darboh is that X receiver then O’Korn’s eyes start on Butt and if the safety has him covered he can go to the curl route by Darboh. If Darboh is isolated on the corner, it should be open; if the Sam linebacker is sitting in the window then Chesson should be coming open underneath on the shallow cross and be hit in stride.

While at Houston O’Korn utilized the shallow cross underneath vertical routes as a check-down/hot-read so these are all throws he’s used to executing. If he can make these reads and get the ball out on time, opposing defenses aren’t going to be able to keep these guys covered up; the receivers are simply too good.

We’ve already seen that the Y-stick route is a familiar throw for O’Korn and it’s also a big part of the Michigan offense, although they use it in a more traditional fashion. As an example I’ve drawn up “Y Stick Solo.”

The goal with this play is to get the tight end matched up in space against the middle linebacker and then punish the defense if they start to overplay that route in order to help that defender.

The favored adjustment from both Ohio State and Michigan State against a trips formation like this one is to roll their free safety over to help cover the trips side, leaving their boundary corner in man coverage. In the spring game O’Korn showed the ability to quickly recognize press-man coverage of that sort and punish it with a fade.

With Chesson, Darboh, or Drake Harris running a fade (or other deeper route) on the weakside the Wolverines can try to force these teams out of their preferred coverages.

By the end of 2015 Michigan was getting reliable distribution in these concepts from Jake Rudock. After multiple starts at Houston and two off-seasons with Harbaugh, Michigan fans can reasonably expect O’Korn to have a similarly good handle on the passing game and likely earlier in the year. And considering his good deep ball and accuracy on the run on play-action, opposite an improved running game it could really hum.

One great fit is in the rollout game with John Gruden’s personal favorite, “Y Banana.”

Illustrated here against Ohio State’s cover 4 defense, this concept gets O’Korn on the move after a play-fake to the RB and puts the Buckeyes’ Sam linebacker (no longer Darron Lee!) in a tough spot. Does he chase the fullback? Then he’s giving up an easy passing window to the nation’s best TE coming behind him on the crossing route. However, if he stays back to defend Butt then Ohio has no chance of defending either the easy toss out to the fullback or an O’Korn scramble.

The ceiling for 2016 Michigan will come from how well O’Korn’s legs and gun slinging mentality translate in the Harbaugh offense. Because this style of offense provides him an outlet for his love of moving around and flinging the ball out against broken down defenses, the prognosis here is generally positive.

The last concern is how well O’Korn can mitigate broken plays and times when the offense is just beat. Will these become disaster? Can he help the offense survive and live to fight another day? Or will he bring some off-schedule play-making that takes the offense to another level? There was a chance to see what this might look like in the spring game. Harbaugh utilized a scrimmage format in which the teams were drafted and thus consisted of units that don’t normally work together executing vanilla schemes. The predictable result was messy execution of chemistry, and regular breakdowns on communication-dependent schemes like pass protections. O’Korn’s default response to these moments of crisis was to scramble. This was both correct and regularly positive for the offense, as O’Korn’s legs registered as weapons.

That’s a useful skill and one that’s likely to come in handy given that Michigan’s prospective starting left tackle might be true sophomore Grant Newsome. A best guess would say that O’Korn will probably have some moments where he takes sacks or forces throws, but he’ll probably also mix in some scrambles and throws on the run that could balance out the bad.

Winning defensive slugfests against division rivals will depend on O’Korn learning to minimize disasters, even at the expense of leaving some plays on the field, and learning to trust the system and these skill players to do the heavy lifting. He has that potential and all of the needed skills and experience to make Harbaugh’s offense hum with this supporting cast.

If so, this could be a special year in Ann Arbor.

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About the author: Ian Boyd (@Ian_A_Boyd) is a Texas grad living in Ann Arbor and chronicling the game’s stories and trends for SBNation’s Football Study Hall, and InsideTexas.com.