Offensive changes starting to leak out

Feel like i heard the same things last year. I remember Nico Collins commitment was a big deal because his comments made it sound like we would spread it out more. I will believe it when i see it. 

In the BTN episode, I believe every simulated snap was from shotgun. I don't believe it's been discussed but it seemed worthy of attention to me.

FYI, you can be in spread offense with pro style concepts. There has been numerous offenses in NFL and college that has both. Louisville is a good example of it with Bobby Petrino blends some of the WCO concept with spread offense principle.

Michigan is a pro style offense right? Well last I checked, everyone in the pros is RPO'ing the shit out of everyone, and the most dominant pro style offense in college down there in Alabama is like 80% pistol. 

Harbaugh ran a ton of pistol at San Fran with Kaepernick as his QB, it's way past time for us to see that offense with RPO mixed in up in Ann Arbor. He's finally got a QB with some mobility who is good enough to start, so there's no reason to be under center all the time. They can run all their STANFORD 87 TIGHT ENDS formations from the pistol or spread the field. 

All fine and good. Just commit to something that makes sense.

I could understand the inconsistency in play from freshman and sophomores last year. DPJ blows by a guy 1 play and the the next he can't get away on a dig (of he does and JOK misses him by 5 yards). That's ok. Onwenu blasts open a hole leading to a huge chunk for Higdon 1 play. Misses the guy in front of his face the next. Not great, but I can understand it.

This odd, "let's try this" approach from last year (that we can put some of on Drevno) was infuriating. Fades to McDoom and McKeon. Short field pitches (that Higdon saved on his own breaking 3 tackles in the backfield). Doing some BS blocking scheme that didn't block Wisconsin's OLB on a 4 man rush. Not even trying to use Evans as a receiver out of the backfield except that 1 time against Rutgers and once against OSU. Those things were just nonsensical.

If they're going to go 4 wide with DPJ, Black, Perry, and Gentry, fucking go for it. Get mismatches on LBs with Perry and SSs with Gentry and make teams pay for it. Run out another OT as the 3rd TE to blast Ben Mason through LBs till the cows come home. That's fine too. Just commit to it instead of flipping back and forth mid-drive to see if this one time this one play will work.

I have confidence in this year being much better than last year, I just want it to be a resounding step in the right direction.

Don't expect them to just steal a lot of stuff from Philly though. The RPOs we're seeing a lot at the NFL level are mostly based off outside zone because of the difference in the rules about how far down field lineman can be on a pass play. In college, those rules are more liberal, so you can get away with inside zone/pass combos. We saw how bad Michigan was at running outside zone stuff and they fired the OZ Line coach, so if they go RPO, I imagine it'll look a lot more like what Bama does.

Just having some spread offense sets in the playbook will make the O harder to defend and game plan for.....  even if they only use it 5% of the time.  

I love this. The best way to go is a hybrid offense. 

Good story. I'm more interested in the way they've described play installation, honestly--instead of 10 plays on day one, they're installing two or three and repping them before adding new stuff. That sounds like a significant change, and I wonder whose philosophies are being altered.

I join others with mild skepticism about how "radical" this will appear. For one, Michigan used both gun and under-center looks last year, too, and like last year they have the personnel to vary their formations quite a bit. I would anticipate that a lot of that continues.

Writers and fans of teams are always enchanted with the shiny new offensive idea that's actually somewhat old when it looks like it's coming in. This summer's obsession with RPO certainly fits that bill, but it remains to be seen just how often we're going to see that. My guess is that it's a tool in the toolbox, but that it won't be a dominant factor in the offense.

Do I expect the QBs to be away from center more? Sure. Gun and pistol looks? Sure. We've seen this stuff before, and an incremental increase in those looks makes sense. Some new concepts? It seems clear there are. But it's not like this is a completely new offense; it's Harbaugh's offense, with some different tools available. 

I will say that it seems that Runyan's chatter seems a step above generic boilerplate media stuff and there's probably something to it. 

I hope when we roll out the offense against Notre Dame it'll be like that scene in Happy Gilmore when Happy displays his newfound putting chops and Shooter McGavin looks scared

Michigan has athletes. They should use them.

The defense even knows we’re coming, what’s coming sometimes in plays, and sometimes they’re still not able to stop us- Jon Runyan

That's OUR defense he is talking about, to boot.

I don’t care if Harbaugh runs the frickin wishbone so long as it works.

Be multiple, have layers and keep the defense off balance ......and do it with a simple but highly efficient blocking scheme!

just that EZ!

once you turn 50..... stuff starting to leak out isn't something you look forward to.

jus sayin'

Maybe they can get Urban to come by for a few days and school them on the finer points of running a power spread offense... Better yet, maybe they can get Tom Herman - he seems to be on a mission to fu*k Meyer over by any means necessary.

I remember reading Pep was going to install a spread offense last off season. It looked to me like we attempted to start the season with more spread looks. It did not go well. So are we working on the same stuff as last year then?