Sponsor Note. If you're in need of a lawyer to incorporate your business, Richard Hoeg is your guy. If you're looking to plant potatoes one day and eat potato salad the next, well, that's going to be a taller order but I think you could probably go to the store.

Sending a lawyer to the store would not be an efficient use of time and money. Sending Richard Hoeg to draw up contracts for you, though? Yeah. That would be an efficient use of time and money.

Queeg time. Mark Dantonio won't be retiring:

Mark Dantonio asked today if he plans to be Michigan State's head coach to start the 2020 season: "Yes."

"Complete the circle, that's what I'm trying to do."

— Nick Baumgardner (@nickbaumgardner) November 19, 2019

All your jokes about completing the circle have already been made in the replies to that tweet.

Potato alert. Potato? Potato.

"You can't plant potatoes one day and expect to eat potato salad the next day."

- @CoachJim4UM, on @UMichFootball's improved play since second half at Penn State pic.twitter.com/mKBdoqyBT7

— Big Ten Network (@BigTenNetwork) November 18, 2019

[After THE JUMP: Don Brown gets after it]

Also in Harbaugh. Want to see a guy's life flash before his eyes?

Jim Harbaugh walking the sidelines. Watch the red headed manager. pic.twitter.com/wljWcTX791

— Steve Finamore (@CoachFinamore) November 16, 2019

Getting after it. This is a pretty remarkable number given Michigan's lack of an every-down annihilator on the edge:

Highest pressure rate as a team, through Week 12:

1. Michigan: 65.3%
2. Miami Fl.: 61.4%
3. Virginia: 60.8%
4. Clemson: 58.6%
4. Temple: 58.6%
6. Pittsburgh: 56.7%
7. UAB: 56.4%
8. Memphis: 55.1%
8. Penn State: 55.1%
10. Duke: 54.3%

— Cam Mellor (@PFF_Cam) November 18, 2019

Uche does have a lot to do with that…

Using PFF data, we will be continuously grading the Senior Bowl invites as they come out! Here is where they stand so far. ✍️https://t.co/NW2spAaJSD pic.twitter.com/1g1bdmEK9p

— PFF College (@PFF_College) November 15, 2019

…but also Michigan is getting all three of their DEs chipping in and getting a lot of productive blitzes from Glasgow/McGrone/Hudson. Even more remarkable is that Michigan is probably sending fewer guys at the QB this year than they did the last couple years. Brown has repeatedly mentioned "simulated blitzes" in his press conferences where Michigan ends up rushing four but sends one or two guys from unexpected spots.

This grade has gone up. PFF broke down their QB grading for their top 25 teams before last week. Patterson:

9. MICHIGAN – SHEA PATTERSON

70.1 overall grade
74.3 passing grade
67.0% adjusted completion percentage

Patterson has taken a step back in 2019, with his current overall and passing grade being lower than his sophomore season at Ole Miss. One area, though, where he has not struggled is in the deep passing game. On throws over 20 yards, Patterson has a 90.6 grade, nine big-time throws and only one turnover-worthy play.

Patterson's grade was 20th amongst the 25 QBs listed and as they noted a pretty major regression from not only last year but a pretty bad situation at post-Freeze Ole Miss. Hopefully we get this most recent version of Patterson in the last two games, but it's hard to predict that the positive blip is the new trend. Fingers crossed.

Icing ball screens, and dropping on pick and rolls. Following the success Texas Tech had forcing everything baseline last year a lot of programs have gone to icing ball screens early this year—a tactic you may remember from the Aaron Craft-Trey Burke wars. Michigan is tentatively one of these teams, and is absolutely going to see a ton of it on offense, so if you've got ten minutes there's no better way to learn about the tactic than this Hoop Vision video:

Icing ball screens was fairly common in Michigan's open practice but hasn't been a frequent tactic in the actual games yet. Currently they're trying to chase over the screens as the big utilizes drop coverage. Michigan's ice coverage may not be ready for prime time, or it's possible they're just trying to get their base approach down before expanding their options.

Meanwhile Orion Sang on drop coverage:

The basics of drop coverage are this: The big guarding the screener will drop back toward the paint, putting himself in between the basket and the ball-handler, while the on-ball defender will fight over the screen and try to harass the ball-handler. There's a cushion, and that's part of the goal — the defense wants to force the ball-handler to take a tough 2-pointer, whether that's a pull-up jumper, floater or contested drive at the big man who dropped back.

“That’s definitely (the goal) when you’re in a drop coverage," said forward Isaiah Livers. "Like Wisconsin, when we play Wisconsin, they’re huge on drop coverage. So it’s a big game for guards to come off the ball screen and shoot the floater, or shoot the tough shots. Some coaches will really live with a tough 2, or some will just not live with it. It’s how Coach Howard or how any other coach goes about it. It’s based off their philosophy, really.”

Michigan's executed their drop coverage with only middling consistency so far but the overall style already pokes out on Bart Torvik dot com, which has split "close twos"—those that come within the restricted circle—from "farther twos." Michigan is 10th at forcing farther twos, which have been 42% of opponent attempts. They've gone down just 31% of the time despite those frustrating sequences where the one guy on the opposition team knocks a few down in short order.

Combine that with Michigan maintaining their three-ball denial from last year—they're third in preventing threes from going up—and you have a pretty good foundation for a top-end defense. Michigan just needs to get a little more precise with their drop coverages and either push stuff further away from the rim or contest better at it.

They're killing the in-game experience. Jack Swarbrick on Notre Dame's sellout streak ending, and how this had been coming for a long time but they were able to paper it over:

Swarbrick acknowledged the streak could have snapped at several different points over the past few years, and that the university got creative in extending it.

By creative, there were some deep, eleventh-hour discounts.

“Group sales were a big part of keeping the streak going, too,” he said. “We’d go to somebody who was ‘a friend of Notre Dame’ and say, ‘Gee, can you help us with this game? Can you buy 50 tickets and distribute them to your employees?’ That would be an example.”

It's weird that ND wanted the Michigan game in South Bend early in the year, when they can get all manner of teams to come to South Bend, and had the mid-year game in Ann Arbor.

The Rock! Slippery Rock is a one-seed in the D-II playoffs:

The #D2FB Playoff Bracket is out. Valdosta State, Ferris State, Minnesota State, and Slippery Rock are top regional seeds and earn a first round bye. pic.twitter.com/bI3xiqgXJ5

— RedditCFB (@RedditCFB) November 17, 2019

The D-II playoff bracket is heavily regionalized so Slippery Rock has already played and narrowly beaten Kutztown State and the incredibly named Indiana University (Pennsylvania). They need to win two games to get to an ESPN3-televised semifinal.

Hockey is very bad. They were just swept by Michigan State, which is pretty much it for this year. Their top scorer is freshman Johnny Beecher, with six points. They have virtually no forward skill outside of him and occasional flashes from Will Lockwood—who doesn't seem at all like the threat he was earlier in his career—and Garrett Van Whye.

This was always going to be the talent nadir before a full-on Mel-era recruiting class hit campus. I did not expect it to be nearly this bad. I'm still on board with Pearson because he's lined up a metric ton of talent over the next three years, but I have to admit some concerns that it doesn't seem like anyone on the roster got better this year except Strauss Mann.

As is the time-tested remedy for depression about the present… how about that future?

Hockey NLI time. This isn't definitive—Michigan has deferred and/or lost guys who signed LOIs before—but hockey's signing period is at least a hint about who's coming in next year. So far:

• G: Erik Portillo
• D: Jacob Truscott
• F: Thomas Bordeleau, Kent Johnson, Phillipe Lapointe

In sports other than basketball or hockey there's no deadline after the signing period opens so I wouldn't read a ton into anyone who hasn't announced they've signed yet. Often teams will announce their signings in one big batch. The USHL's Chicago Steel, currently the home of Owen Power and Brendan Brisson, hasn't done this yet. It is somewhat newsworthy that Johnson is going to spend his draft year at Michigan and Lapointe appears to be definitely coming in.

In other hockey recruiting news, the Athletic's Corey Pronman also has a very early 2021 draft ranking featuring three Wolverines. This time Luke Hughes is at #2, Kent Johnson is #7, and Owen Power is #10. This guy on twitter who writes for Dobber Prospects has Hughes #3, Johnson #15, Power #17, and 2021 recruit Dylan Duke #29. Brisson's early USHL play has him rising up draft boards as well, with Hockey Prospect Dot Com having him as a second or third rounder. Bordeleau is already regarded as a second-rounder and currently leads the U18s in scoring.

Just hold on, folks, the team is going to be way more interesting next year.

Etc.: The NBA regular season needs more stakes. The MSU game is past but if you want to see a murder, this year's "dueling" columns is more like The Rock versus Some Guy Named Barry. Brendan Quinn on Phil Martelli.