Eleven Warriors analyzes why RR & Spread failed at Michigan

Submitted by StephenRKass on

(Note:  I struggled with whether or not to title this OT in the subject line. However, it is about Michigan, and Ohio, so I didn't go "OT," even though it is yet another RR rehash.)

Over at Eleven Warriors, their current headline article is (link:) The Spread in the Big Ten:  Why Did Rich Rod Fail at Michigan? This is a followup to an earlier 11W column on Meyer's Spread Failures. I am posting this NOT so there can be another discussion / flamewar about RR & "what went wrong" with lots of hand wringing and readers lining up for or against RR & the Spread. As mentioned here many times, "No Moar RR!!" Rather, I find it interesting that Ohio is looking at this, and wondering what Meyer will bring with the spread. They clearly are curious, and trying to ascertain what to expect in Ohio's future.

FTR, the writer (Fulton) suggests that RR's failure was due to not adapting the spread beyond it's origins. I disagree, and so do many of the 11W readers. RR's offense was doing well by 2010, and would likely have improved in 2011. The major problems, as every mgoblog reader already knows, were:

  • The defense (Schafer, Gerg, RR meddling, lack of bringing Casteel with him from WVa.)
  • The special teams.
  • Lack of institutional support. (Carr et al, not paying enough to bring in Casteel.)
  • RR's failure to fully understand and embrace Michigan culture (including Ohio rivalry.)
  • RR's failure at diplomacy (Josh Groban, anyone?)

They also give Hoke and Borges credit for a number of things, including "getting" Michigan, and adapting to current personnel.

BigBlue02

February 24th, 2012 at 12:06 AM ^

Our offense was the 9th best offense in the country last year and we played the same (probably tougher) schecdule as every other year. How is saying they were pretty good giving them too much credit?

Looking at the defense this year, it was really overrated.  Against ND, MSU, OSU, and Nebraska, we gave up 27 points per game.  Our defense got too much credit....they actually weren't that good because they played poorly in those 4 games I pointed out.

BigBlue02

February 24th, 2012 at 12:07 AM ^

Our offense was the 9th best offense in the country last year and we played the same (probably tougher) schecdule as every other year. How is saying they were pretty good giving them too much credit?

Looking at the defense this year, it was really overrated.  Against ND, MSU, OSU, and Nebraska, we gave up 27 points per game.  Our defense got too much credit....they actually weren't that good because they played poorly in those 4 games I pointed out.

coastal blue

February 24th, 2012 at 8:03 AM ^

except for the fact we lit them up for 45 in regulation and 67 after overtime. They beat Penn State and had the same record as Penn State and were 1 game behind Iowa. 

The only reason people try to include them in the good/decent teams is because we beat them and that would give credit to the 2010 offense. 

Butterfield

February 23rd, 2012 at 6:14 PM ^

Even without taking pre-snap tempo into account, spread offenses are designed to score faster than pro-style teams.  They create big plays and score in 3, 4, and 5 play drives.  They are also more susceptible to having short, ineffective drives because, with some exceptions, there aren't many 3 or 4 yard plays to make 3rd downs easier to convert. 

Even a no-huddle pro-style is generally going to run the ball conservatively, looking for 4 and 5 yard gains, eating clock, with the purpose of the no-huddle approach primarily to limit defensive substitutions. Payton Manning's Colts ran no-huddle and snapped the ball with 2 seconds on the play clock pretty much every down. 

BigBlue02

February 23rd, 2012 at 6:15 PM ^

Are you suggesting that pro style teams don't like to score quickly so they run an offense that is designed to score slower? That sounds ridiculous.

The offense's job is to score. The defense's job is to stop the other team from scoring. A no huddle offense, whether pro style or spread, is designed to keep the defense from huddling up. An offense that scores quickly does so because they are outplaying and out-scheming the defense, not because they took their time in the huddle or put 5 WRs on the field.

If you honestly think a spread offense doesn't have many plays to pick up a 3rd and 4 or 5, I don't know what to tell you. You obviously don't know much about football.

Butterfield

February 23rd, 2012 at 6:22 PM ^

Yes, I am suggesting exactly that.  It may sound ridiculous to you, but there are a whole bunch of believers that scoring too quickly puts too much of a burden on your defense.  You may want to read up on the history of the Run n' Shoot offense and why teams like the Lions and Falcons dropped it in the early 1990s - it was because they couldn't rely on the offense to be able to run clock in the 2nd halves of games to seal victories.  If two offenses both score 75 percent of the time but one takes 8 minutes to do so while the other takes 2 minutes, you have effectively improved the chance your defense is rested for the opponent's next drive. 

By the way, a no huddle offense is designed to keep a defense from substituting, not huddling.  Defensive huddles are pretty much unimportant but getting the right personnel packages in is hugely important. 

Butterfield

February 23rd, 2012 at 10:12 PM ^

Teams that can attract the top talent generally (not always, but in most cases) run traditional pro-style offenses.  The spread is an often effective attempt at evening the playing field for teams that aren't able to attract the best players because, schematically, it relies less on physically outclassing your opponent and more on outscheming them.  So if you're Northwestern and you have no shot at playing with the big boys using an I-Formation, the spread is a wonderful thing.  When you're a Michigan (or Alabama, or Ohio, or USC) and have your pick of the country's top talent, you generally see those teams run low-risk, less turnover prone pro-style offenses because they can rely on the talent to use its superior strength, skill, and speed to beat inferior talent.  Simply put, there is no need to outscheme someone if you are flat out better than they are.  The exception is Oklahoma, who continues to run a fairly conservative version of the spread with a ton of talent. 

As to your ridiculous assertion that nearly every team in the top 25 runs the spread in some form, I call bullshit.  Here is the final AP poll from this past season: 14 teams could be considered primarily spread teams while 11 would be considered by most to be primarily pro-style teams.  Eight of the top 11 ran pro style, including both participants in the MNC. 

                                                         Spread (Yes/No)

1 Alabama (55) 12-1 No
2 LSU (1) 13-1 No
3 Oklahoma State (4) 12-1 Yes
4 Oregon 12-2 Yes
5 Arkansas 11-2 No
6 USC 10-2 No
7 Stanford 11-2 No
8 Boise State 12-1 Yes
9 South Carolina 11-2 No
10 Wisconsin 11-3 No
11 Michigan State 11-3 No
12 Michigan 11-2 Yes
13 Baylor 10-3 Yes
14 TCU 11-2 Yes
15 Kansas State 10-3 Yes
16 Oklahoma 10-3 Yes
17 West Virginia 10-3 Yes
18 Houston 13-1 Yes
19 Georgia 10-4 No
20 Southern Miss 12-2 Yes
21 Virginia Tech 11-3 No
22 Clemson 10-4 Yes
23 Florida State 9-4 No
24 Nebraska 9-4 Yes
25 Cincinnati 10-3 Yes

 

Butterfield

February 24th, 2012 at 12:44 AM ^

Show me where I said both styles couldn't be effective. I was simply pointing out that there are very valid reasons why some teams choose not to run a spread, reasons that you don't seem to grasp very well. To conclude with my original point, a ball control oriented pro style offense scoring 29 ppg in fewer possessions is not equivalent to a spread team scoring 29 ppg in more possessions. That is all.

coastal blue

February 23rd, 2012 at 6:29 PM ^

we moved the ball well in the first half against MSU, Iowa, Penn State, Ohio State and Mississippi State. In those games, our drives usually stalled out due to turnovers, penalties and poor special teams play. Also, our offense rarely got the benefit of a short field due to the defense's inability to create turnovers.

You then couple this with first year starters at QB and LT as well as no reliable RB. What you get is an offense that flashes brilliance, but sputters close to the goal line. These are the type of things that are ironed out over an offseason. Remember, at the key position, especially in a RR offense, we had another first year starter who didn't have the benefit of being in many of the situations he found himself in, especially against the good teams.

Once again, you're arguing against the wrong idea. The real argument is: Could the spread have gotten better under RR in 2011? The answer is yes. But people like you seem to act like it had all the optimal conditions possible last year and just failed miserably. Its baffling. 

J. Lichty

February 23rd, 2012 at 10:29 AM ^

Spread was actually quite successful.  Offensive production was great in RR's year 3, and only an extremely high turnover rate, including a mind-boggling rate in the redzone kept the offense from being one of the highest scoring offenses.

Spread works in big ten or anywhere when the personnel is there to execute.  Not only did M have success with it, but other B1G  teams e.g., PSU, OSU, Illinois, NW and Purdue,  have all had success with various spread elements in this league.

As discussed ad nauseum , ,     RR's failures had nothing to do with the offense he ran.

mejunglechop

February 23rd, 2012 at 10:31 AM ^

I think you're misrepresenting the argument. 

Rodriguez's Michigan defenses and special teams worsened every year and were frankly horrible by the end of his tenure. This deficiency, more than anything else, sunk Rodriguez's tenure. Yet it is too much to give Rodriguez's offenses a free pass.

The author isn't arguing the offense was the primary culprit. He's arguing that by not incorporating some of the things teams like Oregon do, Rodriguez schemes weren't completely optimal. I don't know enough to say whether this quibble has merit, and there are some other problems in the post (ie the base play in at least 2010 was the iso, not the zone read), but I think the column is generally fair.

Erik_in_Dayton

February 23rd, 2012 at 10:36 AM ^

Is that RR was dealing with a new QB every year.  His WVU offense was more diverse than his Michigan offense, presumably for this reason.

I think the column is factually correct but not fair to RR.  For OSU fans' purposes, though, factually correct is probably good enough, so...there's that.

scooterf

February 23rd, 2012 at 10:37 AM ^

I think a lot of commenters here are missing the point. The author is conceding that D/ST was horrific and the main problem. That said, if the offense was more efficient it might have been able to better overcome the defense, and it didn't. It's overall a pretty fair article, though I also think it's a bit short-sighted given I think it's safe to assume the offense would diversify a bit in year 2 of Denard (kinda like it did this year adding the veer and such). 

StephenRKass

February 23rd, 2012 at 10:38 AM ^

But Fulton ends his column saying:

Chris Brown prophetically predicated at the beginning of Rodriguez's Michigan tenure that Rodriguez's passing game lacked the conceptual nature necessary to succeed as teams adapted to the spread's basic tenets. Nor did Rodriguez (for the most part) diversiify his offense in the way an Oregon has to counteract things such as scrape exchanges. Michigan never embraced plays such as the midline option, inverted veer, power or counter trey like others. The upshot is that, while Michigan's offense was largely succesful once Denard Robinson was in place, it never hummed in the way Oregon's offense did (particularly against better teams) to overcome Michigan's defense or special team liabilities.

Do you agree with this? I don't. Personally, I think, as stated by others, had Michigan had a decent (not great) defense, the offense was more than good enough to succeed. And RR would have been able to tweak it to make it better. He couldn't do this because he was fighting for his coaching life and wondering what to do about the D.

 

michgoblue

February 23rd, 2012 at 10:42 AM ^

The fofense did struggle against even decent defenses.  The best defense in the world would not have changed that.

Oregon's offense is WAY more diverse than our 2010 offense ever was.  One of my frustrations was that just about every big game, I thought "can't wait to see whar RR has in his bag of tricks - I am sure that he will have something awesome to counteract [insert MSU, Iowa, Wisco, Ohio, MSU Gator)."  He rarely did, and it made our offense predictable.

Also:  "He couldn't do this because he was fighting for his coaching life and wondering what to do about the D."

That's something of an excuse.  It's not like RR said, "man, I need a good two hours to focus on the offense, but I am instead going to spend them 'fighting for my life' or coaching the D."  RR focussed on the offense, so at a minimum, the tweaks that you talk about were something that I would have expected him to do.

MI Expat NY

February 23rd, 2012 at 10:58 AM ^

The far bigger difference between our offenses under RR and Oregon (and RR's offenses at WVU) was simply that Oregon had better complimentary players.  We never had a complimentary running back, or at least one that could stay healthy.  We never had a slot running threat that was a true game breaker.  Frankly, we just didn't have a skill player that was a legitimate NFL talent in RR's three years.  

michgoblue

February 23rd, 2012 at 11:17 AM ^

I don't disagree with this point.  My only point was that our offense was not as diverse as it should have been. 

Don't get me wrong, we were at a major talent deficiency (some of which was on Lloyd's last 2 recruiting classes and a lot of which is on RR's insanely high attrition rate), and we were young to boot.  No doubt about that.  And, yes, scheme is one thing, but it is about "the jimmys and joes, not the x's and o's" and all of that.  But, the selling point for the spread is that it should allow a team with less talent to do well against superior talent.  See Appy State and RR's own WVU teams. 

So, I do agree that it is easier to do what Oregon does when you have Oregon's talent.  And we really didn;t (and to some extent, still don't) have the talent that we needed at the skill position.

 

mejunglechop

February 23rd, 2012 at 10:57 AM ^

I agree that Rodriguez didn't use a lot of wrinkles employed by Oregon and Florida under Meyer. I don't know if Rodriguez wanted to use these wrinkles and he didn't because of inexperience at quarterback or some other reason. I don't know if they would have made the offense better. It's all up for debate and I'm content to learn what I can on the matter from people who know more than me.

I do think it's a stretch to speculate that Rodriguez would have implemented these changes but for the defense and various external pressures. 

wile_e8

February 23rd, 2012 at 11:23 AM ^

Michigan never embraced plays such as the midline option, inverted veer, power or counter trey like others.

Except by the end of his time here, he *was* running the inverted veer and power (at least out of that list) as compliments to the zone read. Any lack of diversification was due to lack of time while still needing to teach underclassmen quarterbacks the basics. And it was still statistically one of the best offenses in Michigan history. I'm pretty sure we'd have seen a very diverse offense if RR ever had an upperclassmen quarterback that wasn't still learning the basics. And the reason he never had that brings us back to defense and special teams.

umchicago

February 23rd, 2012 at 12:42 PM ^

i am dumbfounded how people don't realize that denard was a first-year starter and the offense, as a whole, was full of frosh and sophs.  it's obvious that would hinder offensive diversity.  yet, the O still churned-up huge chunks of yards.

and of course the O struggled against good defenses, you know, like every other offense in the country does.

MI Expat NY

February 23rd, 2012 at 10:41 AM ^

You make a good point, but I disagree with the author on what he claims RR wasn't doing.  I will grant that his passing offense wasn't that complicated, but that could easily be explained by (Sheridan/Threet, Freshman Tate, Sophomore Denard).  The other elements he claims weren't there, in fact were to varying degrees.  By 2010 the zone-read option became a relatively small part of the offense.  Largely because we struggled to find a complimentary RB and Denard's struggles with making the appropriate read.  

Farnn

February 23rd, 2012 at 10:32 AM ^

I wish people would stop using the failure to adapt to his personell in 2008.  People seem to think that in a prostyle offense Threet would have played like Chad Henne.  He was essentially a redshirt freshman with no game experience, who wasn't very good anyway.  No offense would have been good with the personel they had.

StephenRKass

February 23rd, 2012 at 10:51 AM ^

Some 11W reader/commenters bring up that meme, but not Fulton.

I do think that Hoke/Borges came into a much better situation, and had more to work with. A parallel would have been if RR came in with say, Henne as a Junior. If RR chased Henne and refused to adapt to Henne's skill set, yeah, the criticism of RR would be valid. Sheridan & Threet? Not so much. And I don't think RR ever really had the chance to keep Mallett.

Speaking of adapting, however, I think Mattison did the best job of all. However, that isn't the focus of the 11W article. But Mattison's teaching of who he had, and adapting schemes to who he had, is mind-boggling. I can only imagine what he will do as he has guys here with a higher skill set, speed, and athletic ability.

Tuebor

February 23rd, 2012 at 10:34 AM ^

I always liked the spread.  I think that having a mobile QB who can extend plays is essential in college football now (think andrew luck, rg3, and so on).  It pains me to admit this but I think Tressel was ahead of his time when it came to marrying manball concepts with spread type QBs.  While I love the current coaching staff I will be disappointed if we return to 6'6" 240 lbs QBs who have a 5.5 second 40 time. 

 

Let me be clear, Denard is the QB for next year.  That being said I am really excited about Gardner in 2013 and 2014.  I think he will closer to Russell Wilson in his playing style, meaning not many designed QB runs but a great scrambler when things break down.

Starko

February 23rd, 2012 at 4:20 PM ^

If Denard learns how to scramble, we will be the greatest offense of all time.  In two years as a starter, he has virtually never scrambled, despite being the most dangerous athlete on the field at all times.  I think RR drilled into his head to run the play that was called.  Hopefully the new staff will teach him when to take advantage of the defenses' failure to contain him when nothing is open.

Mr. Rager

February 23rd, 2012 at 10:34 AM ^

I think you can break this down by year:

2008: Lloyd's fault

2009: Rich Rod's fault (failure to understand / embrace)

2010: Rich Rod's fault (failure to remember that defense is indeed an important part of the game)

Even if Lloyd gave him the big finger up the ass as he exited stage left, Rich Rod sealed his own fate.  

markusr2007

February 23rd, 2012 at 10:37 AM ^

Herman was at Texas for several years and then OC under David Bailiff at Rice and Paul Roads at Iowa State. His offenses were more pass-centric. It's true that Iowa State had some signature wins over Nebraska, Texas Tech, Texas and Oklahoma State during his tenure (2009-2011), which ISU followers will probably remember forever.

Of course, for Ohio fans Tom Herman > Rodriguez/Magee.

 

 

 

 

 

Space Coyote

February 23rd, 2012 at 10:52 AM ^

Defense and ST were the main problems, but I still think there were problems on offense.

First is youth.  The decision making by QBs and RBs wasn't the best yet.  Whether it was due to coaching, youth, lack of reps, etc is uncertain, but there were many costly mistakes.

Second is the ability to execute in the redzone.  This is in part due to youth, but I think it also goes beyond that.  The spread becomes increasingly difficult once you get inside the 20 and the idea of the spread (to spread the defense out) begins to go away.  I think RR knew this, which is why he wanted to implement an I-form.  However, Michigan was never able to develop a power run game, even with more power formations (ie, 2 TEs or a fullback) out of the shotgun.  In fact, RR was forced to resort to essentially running Denard out of a single wing, which still wasn't extremely effective.  Whether it was coaching, players ability, whatever, this fact remains one of the biggest things that held back RR's offense.

Obviously, again, defense and ST didn't help in these matters.

michgoblue

February 23rd, 2012 at 10:46 AM ^

I agree with this 100%.  But, sadly, OSU has the perfect QB in Braxton Miller, and he has 3 years left.  Miller is exactly the type of QB that will succeed in Meyer's offense.  He is fast, but also a strong runner (like Tebow, but not as big, obviously).  He also had a decent arm that should get better over time, as proven in OSU's game against us this past year. 

 

scottiemmm

February 23rd, 2012 at 10:56 AM ^

use more of a passing spread?  I think Miller could be a disaster against the good teams personally and I don't think they're going to replace him for the next 3 years.  Miller passing reminded me a lot of Sheridan and Threet passing in 2008....

michgoblue

February 23rd, 2012 at 11:19 AM ^

Meyer did really well with Tebow as QB.  I don't think that Miller's arm (for a freshman) is that far offf of Tebow, and he arguably is a mroe dynamic runner.  Miller's speed and running ability will force teams to play up on the line, leaving open receivers downfield (or it least over the middle).  As Mad Scientist above said, Miller will not miss those open receiver like Threetadin did, and he will therefore likely be very effective in this offense.