Film Analysis Ep 10.1 - Rutgers - Defensive Shortcomings

Submitted by FanNamedOzzy on November 15th, 2018 at 10:31 PM

Hi all! Rutgers gained the most yards of any Michigan opponent in the 2018 season. Rutgers! To put that in context, Rutgers gained 82% of the total yards MSU gained against Michigan in a single play. That single play was the longest play from scrimmage (80 yards) for Rutgers since they joined the Big Ten in 2014.

So, what happened? It was a combination of a couple rough plays from Devin Gil & Brad Hawkins and clever play-design from the Scarlet Knights. In other words, the play-design lined up well with the plays that Michigan performed poorly on. Luckily, this is Rutgers and things like that don't really matter.

Hopefully, Don Brown will be ready for in the coming games with these wrinkles added to the film. Check out the 6 plays below to look at these shortcomings.

10.1.1 - Q1 14:19 - 2nd & 7 - RU28 - 19 yard run

  • Two crack blocks from #83 and #15 seal the edge for this big gain. Hawkins needs to do a better job to recognize the crack block and set the edge. Instead, 4 defenders are taken out by these 2 blocks.

10.1.2 - Q1 0:39 - 1st & 10 - RU20 - 80 yard TD run

  • 3 players spring this.
  1. Gil loses his gap assignment, overruns to the same gap Mone is covering.
  2. Winovich plays the end-around action wayyyy too hard. Gives up huge lane inside.
  3. Hawkins is late to rotate to center of field to replace Kinnel, takes bad angle.

          Boom. TD.

10.1.3 - Q2 4:25 - 2nd & 8 - RU22 - 19 yard run

  • Gil commits hard inside - a bit too far for my liking. I think Winovich crashes a bit too hard inside here. Leaves the edge for H-back to pick up Kinnel and not enough room to react to the wildcat QB on the edge.

10.1.4 - Q3 10:23 - 2nd & 8 - RU20 - 17 yard pass

  • Would like to see Watson get a bit more depth in his drop, here. Both DEs are ready for a screen pass, as Rutgers ran those all game and rarely actually dropped back. Nice throw.

10.1.5 - Q3 4:24 - 3rd & 11 - RU11 - 17 yard run

  • Motion of the h-back seems to take both Hudson and Kinnel to the wrong side of the play. WRs go downfield to clear DBs, which works well. Uche gets sealed off on the edge, which opens up this run.

10.1.6 - Q4 13:45 - 3rd & 4 - RU25 - 14 yard pass

  • Late blitz from Michigan, but the quick throw doesn’t allow time for the pressure to get to the QB. Mesh route across the middle, pick route on the outside, which trips up Watson a bit. Missed tackle for the first down, as well.

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Comments

GarMoe

November 16th, 2018 at 3:21 AM ^

Way too convoluted with the onscreen scribbling and constant fast rewind forward back and forth.   Difficult to keep it all together.   Also analysis of “needs to do a better job recognizing...” is pretty generic.  How?  What is he doing instead, specifically?

FanNamedOzzy

November 16th, 2018 at 9:21 AM ^

Appreciate the feedback! I have to go quick since Twitter is the primary format for which I release each play and the limit for each video is 2:20. So apologies if things move quick -- try to cover as much as possible without being too generic.

Do you have an example of a play where I say someone needs to do a better job without pointing out the how? I usually don't have time to go back and realize I need to do a re-do in those scenarios.

ChiBlueBoy

November 16th, 2018 at 11:14 AM ^

I tend to disagree. I think the lines are helpful and back and forth is good so that I can focus on different parts of the play, e.g., watch the line then go back and watch the routes. If anything, a bit too much time spent on what players are doing who are not actually impacting the play.

As far as "better job recognizing," I'm not sure what more you can say on most plays. As I understand it, this means that the play is happening and the player is slow seeing what's going on. Gill is a good example, where he doesn't see the tackle walling him off until too late. Generally, it's getting too locked in on one part of the play (usually what the other team is trying to get you to focus on) and not seeing where the ball actually is or where it will be going.

I think these are great and really appreciate them. One small note--the sound volume on the actual play call seems much louder than the analysis--if they could be more even, it would make it easier to watch at work. :)

FanNamedOzzy

November 16th, 2018 at 11:37 AM ^

Balancing the audio is always a bit of a challenge. I usually set the max peak for the play volume at -5 db and my commentary at -3. Think I do need to boost my audio, since it's not as consistent as the game volume. This is since I have the audio set-up to get the game audio from the video player itself and my audio is picked up from a microphone. You're right, though, that it's often not balanced as well as it could be.

I'll bump my audio up a bit more moving forward :)