Round 2.

The Situation
Illinois leads Michigan, 31-20 with about 9 minutes left in the game. After starting strong, the Michigan offense has sputtered, but finally got back on the board on its last drive. In spite of a questionable pass interference call on John Thompson, Michigan has Illinois in a 3rd-and-2 situation on their own 49 yard line. A stop here could help continue Wolverine momentum, and give the Wolverines a chance to get back into the game.

The Personnel and Formation

Illinois comes out in a 3-wide spread set, with a tight end on the right side of the line. Two wideouts are to the left. Isiah Williams is in the shotgun, with Daniel Dufrene lined up as the running back to his left. Michigan’s base 3-4 has a linebacker (John Thompson) on the line to the slot receiver side. Obi Ezeh and Jonas Mouton are centered over the line, which consists of the standard starters (Graham, Taylor, Johnson, and Jamison). The secondary is composed of Brandon Harrison, Stevie Brown, Donovan Warren, and Morgan Trent.

The Play

Juice Williams runs a quarterback draw, running right into the heart of Michigan’s strong defensive line. This should be a stop by Michigan, but Williams manages to scamper 50 yards down the field, before he is run down from behind by Stevie Brown at the 1 yard line. Michigan’s defensive play is a blitz of the weakside of the formation by Thompson, with the line clogging things up and the other two linebackers playing the run. The secondary mans up on the receivers.

Why it Worked
Brandon Graham and Jonas Mouton seem to both be to blame for Juice getting loose (damnit, I was going to avoid saying that). Michigan’s defensive play seems to be for the defensive line to plug up the middle, with the linebackers freed up to make plays near the line of scrimmage. Graham gets greedy, however, and gives up his inside position when it appears that Juice will try to go around the edge. This frees up a gap for Williams to head through. Mouton should be there, but he was also fooled by Juice, and has rushed to the outside to play contain. However, it appears as though his responsibility was not contain, as Brandon Harrison has filled the same gap. Mouton and Graham were both supposed to be in position to stop Juice here, and considering that neither was, it’s easy to see why he got free.

Now you know what it was like Inside the Play.

Posted under Analysis, Video

The Situation
Michigan leads Illinois 14-10 with about 11 minutes remaining in the second quarter. The Illini have the ball in a 2nd-and-10 situation on their own 43 yard line. Michigan’s offense has been clicking early in the game, and a big stop on Illinois’s potential go-ahead drive would sustain the Wolverine momentum, and possibly springboard another Michigan scoring drive.

The Personnel and Formation

Illinois comes out in a 3-wide spread set, with a tight end on the right side of the line. Two wideouts are to the left. Isiah Williams is in the shotgun, with Daniel Dufrene lined up as the running back to his left. Michigan is running out of its 3-4 Okie nickel package. The corners are playing off, and Charles Stewart is the high safety along with Brandon Harrison. Stevie Brown, Jonas Mouton, Obi Ezeh, and John Thompson are the linebackers. Mike Martin is the pass-rushing DT.

The Play

Michigan is in a cover-3, with both OLBs blitzing. At the snap, John Thompson blitzes, allowing Daniel Dufrene to run right by him. This is unfortunate for Thompson and the Michigan defense at large, as this play is a designed screen (not quite a swing pass, as The Davids – ESPN’s shittiest new announce team – state). Williams lofts the ball over Thompson’s head, and Dufrene makes the catch. He follows his screen blockers, breaks a couple early tackle attempts, and outruns the Wolverines to the endzone.

Why it Worked
John Thompson is the major culpable party in Illinois’s success on this play. In Shafer’s scheme, he is designated to blitz on this play, but has the responsibility to “hug up” on Dufrene if he leaks out of the backfield. It is plain to see Thompson realizes his mistake, as he has an “oh shit” moment, and turns around when he realizes Dufrene has passed him.

This was an effective play call against a blitz, and of course the responsibilities of the blitzers are supposed to compensate for this. Thompson’s fuckup amplified the effectiveness of the playcall.

It’s hard to fault him too much, since he was making sure there weren’t huge cutback lanes in the secondary, but Donovan Warren starts off this play taking a terrible angle. He almost manages to still catch up with Dufrene, and had he taken a better angle, might have stopped this 5-10 yards short of the endzone.

Now you know what it was like Inside the Play.

Posted under Analysis, Video

Massey of Buckeye Commentary drops by to give his weekly look at Michigan’s game.

Illinois v. Michigan Review

Let me be honest, it is getting very difficult to parse the seldom-traveled road of Michigan this season. I do not know what to say. One moment reveals a nice scramble on third and eight; the next is an inconceivable fumble. I cannot tell if they want to pass or run (I know coaches would say “balanced”), and I don’t know at which they are more proficient. The problems occur on both sides of the ball and they can border on comedy. I am not trying to be incendiary, but I know that at least half of you have chuckled in frustration whenever Michigan fumbles in the most unexpected situations. You are fans. You watch every play with same emotion I do Ohio State and you do not need me to recite their successes and follies. We can all agree that they are inconsistent and leave it at that.

I will continue to mention that actual play on the field, of course, but I may shift my focus to watching the intangibles of the team.

What I saw: I think for the first time this season, I saw a result that would have been similar even if Carr was still coaching the Wolverines and the previous systems and schemes were in place. Michigan just could not stop Juice and co. I could nitpick and mention the bad calls that hurt Michigan, but this was simply the case of the better team winning.

The Wolverines played well initially and the first quarter felt like they had picked up right where they left off against Wisconsin. Odoms was great on returns (despite the late fumble) and his first-half receiving stats were impressive with big gains on the two early scoring drives.

For all intents and purposes, the game ended after Illinois scored on the screen to Dufrene. A perfectly lofted dagger, it seemed to pierce the offense’s hearts as much, or more, than the defense’s. The offensive line seemed to play well early on and the announcers were all over them, but that edge slowly dissipated during the second quarter and the offense eventually became impotent.

The defense generally played well but the tackling would be poor from time to time and Illinois always seemed to capitalize on those missed tackles. The Wolverines best defender was Mesko. His punting consistently pinned the Illini deep. He was Michigan’s player of the game. Seriously.

What I didn’t see: The fourth quarter. I apologize. I know I am supposed to watch the entire game for this weekly exchange but FSU/Miami was really heating up and my football-laden DNA required me to change the channel as watching it via Gamecast was wholly insufficient.

In some ways, what I saw was what I did not see. I did not often see good tackling, pass coverages living up to realistic expectations, or an ability to hold onto the ball. It that thing covered in lard?

What I expect to see next week: Ball State blanked Toledo last weekend and the Rockets appear to have no offense, gaining 157 yards against the Cardinals (somehow they managed 600 yards and 54 points against Fresno State, but that was in overtime). I expect a Michigan win along the lines of the victory over Miami (OH).

I do not expect to be able to draw many conclusions from that game, however, as I am totally incapable of predicting Michigan’s performance game-to-game, half-to-half, or even play-to-play with any degree of accuracy.

What this can tell us about The Game: Most likely, Ohio State will be running a very similar offense to the one Illinois dominated with on Saturday. Will Pryor, Wells, and [insert Ohio State WR] be able to replicate those results? Illinois scored on big plays caused by blown assignments and missed tackles with a sprinkling of bad officiating. If those things magically disappear, the Wolverine defense is formidable.

If Michigan’s offense can perform as they did in the first quarter versus Illinois for the entire game against Ohio State, there is no reason to believe they will not be able to move the ball. We have talked about it before, but the Buckeyes have struggled against running quarterbacks. Threet may be shaky but his best moments are good enough.

I still maintain that this is a dangerous game for Ohio State, especially if the Buckeyes are lucky enough to be playing for a Big Ten Championship. Michigan will have the opportunity to ruin the Buckeyes season and set the tone for Rodriguez’s tenure. They will have to play their best game to win. Would any of you be surprised if Michigan put together their best effort on November 22?

Posted under Analysis

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

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