Purdue Snowflakes: The Offense

By my calculations he's only 128 yards away from a 1000 yard season.  Considering how little he's played and the games he missed, I'd say that might be one of the best seasons for a Michigan running back ever.

Also it would be cool to have 2 1000 yard running backs on the same team after narrowly missing out on that last season.

We have a Run Game post Corum!  Edwards is getting better every game as he gets more reps and can instinctively use his amazing talent. AND the Mullings Experiment looks like a success. On each run he looks more and more like a confident Bruiser. Kudos to Mike Hart for developing these guys.

Also JJ f’in McCarthy. I don’t mean to take anything from the MVP, but when the run game was bottled up for most of the first half, JJ led 2 TD drives and made some magic happen despite at times pretty iffy pass pro. 

Obviously the staff knows way more than any of us, but It seems Mullins might be a pretty good option for those tough yards. 

It was a bad throw and happened because he got a little too cocky, but I’m glad he’s coming out of the safety-first shell they placed him in. He’ll be at his best as a smart gunslinger. I think the TD passes to Loveland and Bell were throws he might not have attempted earlier in the year because they weren’t open enough.

There were better options, but it was an arm punt. I will take that along with more deep shots. He was looking deep which is good. Wilson was open on the flat, I think...but the camera didn't show it as I recall. Not hitting that, if it really was there, is regrettable.

The run game was hit or miss in this game because they did what they've been doing all season and bubble wrapped JJ against an opponent they didn't feel they needed him for.  I'm not sure there was a designed run call for him in the game unless I missed one, my memory is all 5 carries were on scrambles.  Another opponent sold out against the run and Michigan didn't care to risk getting JJ nicked up by keeping the LBs and safeties honest by having him read and pull.

I wouldn't say Michigan was super conservative but they definitely were making sure that nothing happened to jeopardize the health of key players for the rest of the season.   It's interesting that the CFP seem to have trumped the big ten championship game in terms of importance for this particular team, make me feel confident that this staff believes this team has a better shot than last year.

Edit:  maybe poorly worded at the end.  I think the Big 10 championship was very important to them, but there's a balance they've shown all season.  Illinois was important but beating OSU was more important.  That trade off meant risking a close game against Illinois to give them a better chance against OSU.  If Purdue were the last game of the season I really think the final score and offense looks a lot different.   UofM put everything into Iowa last year, that didn't look like the case yesterday. 

They were scary enough in that final drive tonight. They plowed Purdue play after play.

It was Barzini all along

...Gus just kinda made that up last week, right?

Because I've seen videos and read articles where his teammates clearly, consistently nickname him "Donno".

Like...where TF did "Chuck Sizzle" come from, for that matter? Charlie Jones deserves one HELL of a better nickname than that.

Well that's certainly a hot take.

That's a bad comment and you should feel bad for making it.

You are hating more than sparty. There is a thread for coaching and would love to hear your thoughts about our coaches who has won back to back B1G championship for the first time in this format. 

Shut the fuck up.

I think this is a step too far.

Personally, I was VERY annoyed at the whole "running into stacked boxes" thing. Which we do pretty much every game. I expect some RPS minuses on the UFR.

But you can't say that athletes overcame playcalling. Because they didn't. There were dudes running wide open which either JJ didn't hit, or they didn't bring the ball in. 

If anything, you could say that the athletes UNDERPERFORMED the play calling. 

My hot take is that the coaches called an amazing game, with many MANY plays being juuuuust short of breaking big.

I thought that touchdown pass to Loveland was the best throw JJ's had all season.  He put it where only his guy could catch it.  Perfect.  Asked his receiver to make a play and he was rewarded.

Just a liiiiiiiiiittle bit more consistency from him and I think this team has a chance to win it all.  The next month will be crucial for JJ.

JJ could have taken the mid range throw on that. But I am glad he got that bad read out of his system in this game.

Purdue didn't make the OSU mistake of playing too close to the LOS. Still Michigan was a couple of ankle tackles short of breaking some more open. 

Yeah, Edwards is still too boom or bust. He's a great player, no doubt, but more like Corum was last year. Key to a dominant run game is getting at least a few yards every run, not how many yards overall.

Haskins did that last year and Corum turned into that this year. I would have loved to see Mullings or someone else used more to establish consistency. 

He played. We went 3 tight ends a lot, and there weren’t many offensive snaps to begin with. JJ mostly looked to Ronnie and Schoonmaker. CornJohn only had 1 reception after destroying OSU.

He was definitely out there.