Rank	Team	Delta
1	Oklahoma	—
2	Alabama	—
3	Penn State	1
4	Missouri	1
5	Texas	—
6	LSU	—
7	Brigham Young	1
8	Georgia	1
9	Florida	1
10	Southern Cal	1
11	Ohio State	1
12	Oklahoma State	1
13	Utah	2
14	Texas Tech	2
15	Vanderbilt	3
16	South Florida	9
17	Illinois	2
18	Virginia Tech	6
19	Kansas	2
20	Boise State	1
21	Michigan State	5
22	Florida State	1
23	Kentucky	3
24	Pittsburgh	2
25	Cincinnati	1

Games Watched (listed in the order I watched them): Middle Tennessee-FAU, Boise State-Lousiana Tech, USF-Pitt, Utah-Oregon State, Cincinnati-Marshall, Michigan State-Iowa, Penn State-Purdue, Michigan-Illinois, Bama-Kentucky, Ohio State-Wisconsin, Missouri-Nebraska, Minnesota-Indiana, Notre Dame-Stanford, UConn-UNC, Texas-Colorado, Miami of Florida-Florida State.

Anything look wrong? Anything I need to justify?

Posted under BlogPoll

If you know of an article that can help out, let me know. I’ll fill in the remaining game articles/stats as I find the articles. The 2010 commits will not be included in FNL (unless there is substantial demand for it), but I will include a junior season wrap at the end of this year.

UPDATE: Monday, 11:00 AM Article linked for Apopka-Edgewater game, added a pre-game video fluff deal on Gallon and Jones.

CA QB Tate Forcier
This Week: Scripps Ranch v. Serra. Scripps wins 42-35.

Season Totals: Pius 2-1

Posted under Recruiting

There were problems with fumbling again, but the first one was by Brandon Minor, which can be chalked up to his being Brandon Minor, one came from a freshman (Michael Shaw) coming off injury, and the rest came late in the game when players were trying too hard to make something happen. After the last few weeks, maybe this is disturbing because the fumbles are continuing to happen, but this time, they didn’t really decide the game (as they did against Notre Dame, and could have last week against the Badgers).

The defense was not very good. Unless they step up their play, Daryll Clark is going to have a field day in a couple of weeks. Fortunately, I think some of the real problems are correctable:

• Tackling. This hasn’t been an issue so far this year, so hopefully the poor physicality and tackling effort this week was more of an anomaly than anything.
• Charles Stewart. Man, if you’re going to play the ball instead of the man when you’re the only guy between him and the endzone, you’ve got to leave your feet to prevent him from making the catch. Running past a guy while waving your arms and getting almost there isn’t going to cut it.
• Disciplined play. On Juice’s long near-touchdown run, Brandon Graham, Jonas Mouton, and Brandon Harrison all took the outside (contain) assignment. At least one guy (Graham) and probably a second (Mouton) was supposed to be plugging the inside. This was, at least hopefully, a case of players getting frustrated, and trying to do too much to make a play. They will definitely get chewed out by Shafer, and hopefully not be in a position where they have to force plays late in the game again.
• Pressure and contain. The defense could usually get one, but at the expense of the other. I’d bet a small part of this is being tired from the emotional win last week.
• Stevie Brown. He didn’t do anything egregiously wrong this week, but I wouldn’t be a Michigan fan if I wasn’t bitching about him, now would I?

Steve Threet was his typical hot-and-cold self. I think when he’s in rhythm, he’s very good. However, if he isn’t in rhythm, the results can be ugly. If he gets knocked out of rhythm during the game, as we saw against the Illini, it is very hard for him to snap back into form. Part of this is his youth. Part of it is the offensive line putting him in a difficult situation or two.

Martavious Odoms continues to have some struggles running precise routes, or at the very least getting on the same page as Threet. Chalk this up to inexperience. Once he’s been in this offense a year or so, Odoms should be a super-entertaining player to watch.

Just like the past few weeks, this game showed why this team is going to be exciting to watch in the near future, but frustrating to watch right now.

Posted under Analysis

As Paul did last week, I’ll post our text message log, to capture the essence of our thoughts during the game. For the record, Paul was at the game, and I was watching on TV.

Tim to Paul 5:06 pm: be louder
Paul to Tim 6:21 pm: opposite of wisconsin game?
Tim to Paul: yeah so we kind of suck. the fans have been quiet as shit all second half, btw
Paul to Tim: theyre leaving and we need a big play to get the crowd into it
Tim to Paul: theres a td at least… maybe
Paul to Tim: eventually. fingers crossed
Paul to Tim: does gingell wear 84 now?
Tim to Paul: no kidding. kc has been bad to terrible all day. hes been bailed out by the earlier blocked pat still going in
Paul to Tim: is it just kc? snap? hold? line?
Tim to Paul: i didn’t see anything bad w/ them
Paul to Tim 6:41 pm: :(
Tim to Paul: no joke
Paul to Tim: NOW we knock out juice…
Paul to Tim 6:50 pm: i guess before wisco i said id be happy with 1 of 2
Tim to Paul: truth. beat the rockets
Tim to Paul 7:05 pm: yay, lets get threet hurt
Paul to Tim: ehh… the players didnt quit last week. i feel he had to.

More substantive postgame post coming up in a little bit.

Posted under Analysis

Action since last rankings:

Posted under Recruiting

UPDATE: Issue fixed

Coach Simmons, purveyor of the best technical football blog this side of Smart Football, Three and Out, joined us today for the podcast. In addition to being an excellent blogger, he is defensive coordinator for a large high school in North Carolina. In whatever spare time he has, he acts as the resident coach of the Michigan blogosphere posting as gsimmons85.

In the podcast we talked about his coaching philosophies, his team, how he views Michigan and his love of his car. We barely scraped the surface so we hope to have him back. Without further adieu:

 

 Coach Simmons Talks about the Illini [16:35m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

(If you can’t see the player, you can right click here and click save target as)

Visual Aid 1:

Visual Aid 2:

Posted under Blogcast, Coaching

When I previewed Illinois in the summer, I said that the Illini would take fairly significant steps back on each side of the ball. With Rashard Mendenhall not longer carrying the rock, Juice Williams’s questionable arm would be thrust into the forefront, and J Leman would no longer be the American Hero of the defense. With no Illinois representative available for a podcast interview ([STUDENT PUBLICATION REDACTED] is the only one to deny such a request so far), we haven’t been able to get much more updated information on the boys from Champaign than from watching their games ourselves, and from what can be gleaned from the internets.

Going into their game against Penn State, Black Shoe Diaries noted that the Illini were a moribund 88th in rush defense, despite facing a couple of gimme games (one of which, against Louisiana-Lafayette, turned out to be not such a gimme), and a Missouri team that does most of its damage through the air. Were they able to turn things around against PSU? Not so much. Penn State picked up 241 yards and 2 TDs keeping the ball on the ground, the best performance against Illinois to date on the year. Brit Miller may be a decent player, but American Hero he ain’t. Michigan is a team whose offensive line has been good in pass protection, but has had trouble blocking for the run. Facing a bad run defense is a pretty good cure for that (see: Michigan v. Notre Dame. Michigan gained 159 yards on the ground despite playing from a huge deficit the entire game). Expect Michigan to have some success on the ground against the Illini. In the passing game, Illinois is doing pretty well on the strength of cornerback Vontae Davis. The junior doesn’t quite shut down his side of the field, but he isn’t far off from it. However, it is also important to note that Chase Daniel and Darryl Clark, both operating spread offenses, threw for 323 and 181 yards against the Illini, respectively. If Michigan’s execution problems can be hammered out a bit, there should be plays available through the air. Overall on defense, however, expect a few changes. The Illini coaches are not pleased with the players thus far in the season, so it’s likely that an athletic linebacker like Martez Wilson may see the bench because he can’t bring himself to play disciplined ball. No matter who starts, the Wolverines will either face guys who have been backups thus far this season, or players who the coaches flatly criticized for not being in position.

Posted under Analysis

The Situation
There are 2 minutes and 28 seconds left in the third quarter, and Michigan’s offense is like, kinda sucking. And by “kinda sucking” I mean “had 31 yards in the entire game prior to this drive.” However, with 54 yards already racked up in this one drive, a touchdown would be the perfect thing to break the offensive funk. It would also put Michigan down by only 12 points, despite Wisconsin dominating most of the first three quarters. They might just be able to get back into the game…

The Personnel and Formation
Michigan is on the right hash in a basic spread set. Brandon Minor is the running back to Steven Threet’s left. Greg Mathews and Junior Hemingway are the wideouts to the left and right, respectively. In the left slot is Martavious Odoms. At slot on the right side is tight end Kevin Koger, appearing in a game for the first time this year. Wisconsin counters with a 3-2-6 dime package. The four CB/Nickel players are head up over the receivers. The linebackers are head up over Threet and Minor. The two safeties are deep.

The PlayAt the snap, Threet takes a 3-step drop. Minor sets as though he’s pass blocking, though Wisconsin only comes on a three-man rush. Free of the duty of protecting Threet, Minor runs a short circle route out of the backfield. Odoms runs a 10-yard stop route. The other three receivers all run vertical routes, with Mathews and Hemingway on fly routes down the sideline, and Koger running a seam down the middle. 

Wisconsin rushes the three linemen, runs man coverage on the receivers (and backs, including a spy on Threet), and has two safeties taking deep halves over the top. Threet goes deep to Koger, who is behind his defender. Koger makes the catch at the 6, and isn’t hit by a safety until after he’s in the endzone. 

Why it Worked
First things first, if your receivers are able to get open against man coverage, this is an effective play call against 2-man-under defense. Considering Wisconsin had a nickel corner lined up in press coverage against a TE, Koger should be able to get open, the question is whether he’ll be able to maintain that separation. With his athleticism, Koger is able to defeat the defender down the field. 

The wideouts on the outside are able to force the safeties to stay wide, so they aren’t leaving their corners on an island (which they don’t want to do in 2-man-under coverage – their duty is to defend anything over the top). That horizontal stretch allows Koger to catch the ball in the middle of the field in the seam between the deep men. Allow me to point out here that this is the point of Michigan’s “look over to the sideline” no-huddle offense. The coaches in the booth saw two safeties high, and knew that a deep seam route would likely be effective. They told the coaches down on the field, who then relayed the read to Threet. One must assume that as he gets more comfortable with the offense (probably not until future years), Steve will be able to make these reads himself.

The protection on this play was also good. Michigan’s dynamic offense forces the defense to account for every player, including the quarterback (though keep in mind that Michigan’s offense had been anything but stellar at this point in the game). Because of that, Wisconsin had to rush only three men in order to man up on everyone and keep two safeties high. Michigan’s offensive line, for all their difficulty run-blocking, has actually performed fairly well in protection so far this year, and the five blockers (which would have been four with Minor if the LB had blitzed) were easily able to corral the pass rush. Threet had enough time in the pocket to let Koger go deep, and the timing was perfect.

Now you know what it was like Inside the Play.

Posted under Analysis, Coaching

After Florida’s Ricardo Miller jumped on board, it didn’t take long for Michigan’s 2010 recruiting to get rolling. Fellow WR Jeremy Jackson, the son of Michigan running backs coach Fred Jackson, has also committed to sign with the Wolverines in February 2010. Jackson is a 6-3, 180-lb wideout from Ann Arbor Huron High School.

Posted under Recruiting

After Ricardo Miller gave his pledge to Michigan a couple days ago, fans were understandably surprised that a 2010 prospect would be giving a commitment so soon. However, Ricardo is on pace to be one of the top 2010 prospects, and the great start to a recruiting class.

Posted under Recruiting