I’d like to take a minute to weigh in on some of the comments and concerns that I’ve seen routinely posted throughout the season. These are just my observations so feel free to disagree. This could take a minute so either settle in or turn back now!
Specifically I’d like to discuss:
I’ll back up a little bit first. Remember back to the ND game? We looked really disjointed between pro style, smash mouth, and spread concepts to the point where it looked like we had a bunch of different packages but no real base philosophy. It varied from one drive to the next and we never really settled in. Things improved in the coming weeks as we settled on more of a zone rushing attack complimented by a lot of WR screens, out routes to the TE’s, and stop routes to the WR’s (with an occasional fly route mixed in). It looked as though we were refining the scheme while adding some components on the fly. But looking back on the season as a whole, I think the staff learned more from that ND game than I realized.
Beyond the lack of offensive cohesion, our pass protection was a major problem against the Irish. Patterson had issues getting his feet set on deep, 7 step drops and on play action from under center. The OL looked like a huge problem…again. But then for 10 solid weeks it wasn’t a problem anymore. Most didn’t love all the TE’s in the game at the expense of our WR talent but we still wanted Ed Warinner elected the next president of the United States because of how far our OL came along; at least I did!
Well…OSU and Florida made it painfully obvious that maybe our OL hadn’t come quite as far as we thought. All those TE’s that we hated seeing on the field? They were used to mask pass protection rather than to fulfill some awkward Harbaugh fantasy of throwing the game back to the 60’s. When you run a zone-heavy scheme your pass protection can get pretty vanilla; when you run a zone-heavy scheme with 3 or 4 WR sets pass protection becomes as basic as possible. That makes it really, really easy for the defense to scheme numbers advantages and pressure your QB. When you have a couple TE’s in the game and they’re always moving around presnap it gets pretty damn difficult to figure out how to blitz a team. So, at least in my opinion, there was a pretty good reason for all the TE groupings.
Don’t get me wrong, I think Warinner did a great job and I sure as hell don’t want him going anywhere. BUT, whether it was Jim or Pep or McElwain or a collective effort, credit is due to the offensive staff for recognizing the limitations of the OL and then engineering an offense that could still function at an elite level.
Our conservative attack relied heavily on down & distance; staying ahead of the chains and controlling possession, though seemingly outdated metrics, were paramount to our success. Our OL desperately needed the threat of the run in order to protect our QB. Short, high percentage completions to the sideline were favorable to chasing chunk plays in the middle of the field. We’d take a near-guaranteed 4 yards on a WR screen rather than the chance at a 17 yard post pattern because 2nd & 6 or 3rd & 2 were rather attainable while 2nd & 10 or 3rd & 8 left us more vulnerable than I realized.
This wasn’t about Harbaugh being old school or too conservative. It was about protecting an OL that was able to function at an above-average level when put in optimal situations, but once we couldn’t control down & distance with our running game our warts started to show in a big and ugly way. Simply put, we couldn’t protect our QB well enough to consistently pick up third & long situations. Our philosophy wasn’t born of dyed-in-the-wool stubbornness but rather an adaptation to keep this thing rolling. And, to Jim’s credit, he almost pulled it off.
Back in the Lloyd’s days sometimes the worst thing an opponent could do was get out to a two-score lead on us because we would then unleash hell with our NFL OT’s, QB’s and WR’s. That’s not the knock on Lloyd that it may seem to be as the guy had a system that won a hell of a lot of games. However, the 2018 team was not that type of team. A double digit deficit was the absolute worst case scenario because, once again, we desperately needed the threat of the run game to protect our OL. We saw how quickly things snowballed against OSU and Florida once the defense couldn’t get stops; the OL just couldn’t be relied on to protect the QB on their own.
Jim’s ability to reverse engineer the offense to hide a not-ready-for-primetime OL is a credit to him as a coach, but also a demerit to him as a recruiter. 4 years is enough time to fix the OL but we’re still not quite there yet. Hopefully Warinner’s a better evaluator than Drevno. I can say that Ed has been a more effective position coach than the last guy and that he did a better job of implementing a cohesive run scheme that kept the footwork and progressions of the OL consistent and that allowed them to play faster. However, we need better athletes if we’re going to elevate our ceiling. Runyon probably needs to move to the right side. I’ve been a big supporter of Onwenu in the past, but he’s heading into his Sr year and his lack of mobility makes it almost impossible for us to trap with him, and he can barely make it work in a pin & pull zone scheme. I like Ruiz, I think Bredeson is fine, and Runyon would be among the best RT in the country next year. But we need NFL potential at LT and either an in-shape Onwenu at RG or the next man up.
A more athletic combination will unlock the deep drops and play action passes that presented too great of an opportunity cost this season. Protect the QB and the entire offense can operate more freely and allow our skill talent to kick it into another gear if the defense is having a bad day.
Next topic:
Point taken. It was difficult for us to attack the edges for two reasons though: 1 – Onwenu really struggled to get out and trap or pull and Ruiz isn’t a rare super-athlete at C either, and 2 – Our TE’s struggled to help us in the run game.
I touched on this already but Mike’s inability to get out on the perimeter made it difficult for us to run to the right. I don’t even know how good of an athlete he is because he may look completely different at 320 lbs as opposed to 350. But we’ve got to find out. We couldn’t trap with him because those type of quick hitters didn’t allow him enough time to set up his block on the DT, and forget about him having to lead up on a trap because that just wasn't going to happen. We started to run some pin & pull zone plays where the OT blocked down and either the playside G or the C would pull around. It’s slower developing and a shorter distance for the lineman to travel but Mike struggled there too. Ruiz was okay, but he’s not the type of athlete (at least not yet) that was really effective at it either. (Bredeson for the most part was okay when asked to move. He wasn’t as physical at the point of attack as I expected him to be but movement wasn’t a problem.)
Further complicating this, our TE’s were of little help to us. Gentry was the worst offender. He was a poor blocker when engaged but his mental errors were somehow even more frustrating. He didn’t show much philosophical understanding of what we were trying to do. Sometimes he’d let his man go, other times he’d take someone else’s. It made no sense and you could see how his terrible decisions would submarine plays before they ever had a chance. He looked like he had no idea of what we were trying to do.
McKeon and Eubanks weren’t very good blockers either but they at least didn’t have the mystifying mental breakdowns. But when you combine the relative ineffectiveness of our TE’s with the lack of mobility of our OL and it becomes fairly apparent whey we tended to focus our run game between the tackles. Frankly we just didn’t have a lot of options.
Next topic:
Even in 11 your TE is still going to be run blocking so a different personnel grouping doesn’t eliminate the potential of your TE locking up on someone that’s actually in pass coverage, but our timing with it just never seemed to fit. You see NFL teams do it where its completely in sync but it looked to me like we were building toward it but it just never completely came together; a lineman was always dangerously close to being downfield or our TE was blocking a LB that didn’t know what the hell was going on. I’m sure more reps would’ve helped but I think we probably felt good about everything else so we put it on hold. The good news is that the infrastructure is well established at this point so it could become a staple next season.
Our personnel also featured a lot of talent better utilized outside the hash marks; big, physical, imposing pass catchers that didn’t operate as well as catch & run receivers. DPJ was probably the best at it and although I do think he’ll be an NFL WR someday he’s more of a downfield threat rather than the type that’s going to take a slant 65 yards for a TD. The departure (and lack of development) of smaller and quicker WR’s (Crawford & McDoom) prior to the season kind of left us with a single mold that lacked the quickness to create separation in tight windows. The current recruiting class can fix that problem. I don’t know who’s enrolling early but there’s an opportunity for one of the freshman to play a huge role in this offense next season.
Overall that’s how I would summarize the season. The teams that we could bully with our OL we would beat into submission. The teams that stopped our run got us in unfavorable down & distance and stagnated our offense. That wasn’t a huge deal when our defense was playing well because there was no sense of urgency. We could continue to plow ahead and wait for them to break. But when the defense wasn’t playing well the whole thing fell apart.
To finish up I’ll say this about our defense; as someone that has some level of experience in game planning and play calling, the most difficult aspect of both is anticipating what the defense is going to do. I’m hopeful that what Dan Mullen and Urban Meyer did to Don Brown to end the season will serve as a wake up call to implement some diversity into his coverage schemes. When you know with almost certainty that you’re going to see straight man coverage regardless of the personnel grouping it is so easy to game plan and get the right calls in the game in the right situation. The QB runs, the tunnel screens, the jet sweep, all instances where Florida knew exactly what they were going to get. Same with OSU’s crossing patterns and wheel routes. It’s time for Don Brown to introduce some deception and variety into his scheme. Being the DC at Michigan is different than being the DC at BC. Nobody spends all offseason breaking down BC’s defense in order to beat them, but that’s not the case at UM. In some sense I hope the back to back butt whippings that Don Brown took will ultimately be viewed as a positive as soon as next season.
I haven’t studied the defense enough to say that I’m confident that changes will be made. PSU gashed us in ’17 by relentlessly attacking our S’s downfield. It didn’t look like we changed anything this year other than Metellus developing into a better player. Unfortunately I don’ think that Brandon Watson transforming into David Long would fix all that ills the defense though. I remember a statement from @Cal Varnsen last season after the PSU game…(loosely quoted) Don Brown’s got a hell of a fastball, but if that’s all he’s got the good hitters will eventually learn how to turn on one. I think it’s well time that Brown develop that curve ball.
Specifically I’d like to discuss:
- Too many TE’s, not enough WR’s
- Passing game is too conservative
- Route combinations are too predictable
- We don’t attack the middle of the field
- Harbaugh won’t adapt to a modern offense
- Run game is focused too much between the tackles
- What about the RPO’s?
- Too many TE’s, not enough WR’s
- Harbaugh’s lack of creativity/won’t adapt to modern offense
- Conservative passing game
- Routes too predictable
I’ll back up a little bit first. Remember back to the ND game? We looked really disjointed between pro style, smash mouth, and spread concepts to the point where it looked like we had a bunch of different packages but no real base philosophy. It varied from one drive to the next and we never really settled in. Things improved in the coming weeks as we settled on more of a zone rushing attack complimented by a lot of WR screens, out routes to the TE’s, and stop routes to the WR’s (with an occasional fly route mixed in). It looked as though we were refining the scheme while adding some components on the fly. But looking back on the season as a whole, I think the staff learned more from that ND game than I realized.
Beyond the lack of offensive cohesion, our pass protection was a major problem against the Irish. Patterson had issues getting his feet set on deep, 7 step drops and on play action from under center. The OL looked like a huge problem…again. But then for 10 solid weeks it wasn’t a problem anymore. Most didn’t love all the TE’s in the game at the expense of our WR talent but we still wanted Ed Warinner elected the next president of the United States because of how far our OL came along; at least I did!
Well…OSU and Florida made it painfully obvious that maybe our OL hadn’t come quite as far as we thought. All those TE’s that we hated seeing on the field? They were used to mask pass protection rather than to fulfill some awkward Harbaugh fantasy of throwing the game back to the 60’s. When you run a zone-heavy scheme your pass protection can get pretty vanilla; when you run a zone-heavy scheme with 3 or 4 WR sets pass protection becomes as basic as possible. That makes it really, really easy for the defense to scheme numbers advantages and pressure your QB. When you have a couple TE’s in the game and they’re always moving around presnap it gets pretty damn difficult to figure out how to blitz a team. So, at least in my opinion, there was a pretty good reason for all the TE groupings.
Don’t get me wrong, I think Warinner did a great job and I sure as hell don’t want him going anywhere. BUT, whether it was Jim or Pep or McElwain or a collective effort, credit is due to the offensive staff for recognizing the limitations of the OL and then engineering an offense that could still function at an elite level.
Our conservative attack relied heavily on down & distance; staying ahead of the chains and controlling possession, though seemingly outdated metrics, were paramount to our success. Our OL desperately needed the threat of the run in order to protect our QB. Short, high percentage completions to the sideline were favorable to chasing chunk plays in the middle of the field. We’d take a near-guaranteed 4 yards on a WR screen rather than the chance at a 17 yard post pattern because 2nd & 6 or 3rd & 2 were rather attainable while 2nd & 10 or 3rd & 8 left us more vulnerable than I realized.
This wasn’t about Harbaugh being old school or too conservative. It was about protecting an OL that was able to function at an above-average level when put in optimal situations, but once we couldn’t control down & distance with our running game our warts started to show in a big and ugly way. Simply put, we couldn’t protect our QB well enough to consistently pick up third & long situations. Our philosophy wasn’t born of dyed-in-the-wool stubbornness but rather an adaptation to keep this thing rolling. And, to Jim’s credit, he almost pulled it off.
Back in the Lloyd’s days sometimes the worst thing an opponent could do was get out to a two-score lead on us because we would then unleash hell with our NFL OT’s, QB’s and WR’s. That’s not the knock on Lloyd that it may seem to be as the guy had a system that won a hell of a lot of games. However, the 2018 team was not that type of team. A double digit deficit was the absolute worst case scenario because, once again, we desperately needed the threat of the run game to protect our OL. We saw how quickly things snowballed against OSU and Florida once the defense couldn’t get stops; the OL just couldn’t be relied on to protect the QB on their own.
Jim’s ability to reverse engineer the offense to hide a not-ready-for-primetime OL is a credit to him as a coach, but also a demerit to him as a recruiter. 4 years is enough time to fix the OL but we’re still not quite there yet. Hopefully Warinner’s a better evaluator than Drevno. I can say that Ed has been a more effective position coach than the last guy and that he did a better job of implementing a cohesive run scheme that kept the footwork and progressions of the OL consistent and that allowed them to play faster. However, we need better athletes if we’re going to elevate our ceiling. Runyon probably needs to move to the right side. I’ve been a big supporter of Onwenu in the past, but he’s heading into his Sr year and his lack of mobility makes it almost impossible for us to trap with him, and he can barely make it work in a pin & pull zone scheme. I like Ruiz, I think Bredeson is fine, and Runyon would be among the best RT in the country next year. But we need NFL potential at LT and either an in-shape Onwenu at RG or the next man up.
A more athletic combination will unlock the deep drops and play action passes that presented too great of an opportunity cost this season. Protect the QB and the entire offense can operate more freely and allow our skill talent to kick it into another gear if the defense is having a bad day.
Next topic:
- Run game is focused between the tackles
Point taken. It was difficult for us to attack the edges for two reasons though: 1 – Onwenu really struggled to get out and trap or pull and Ruiz isn’t a rare super-athlete at C either, and 2 – Our TE’s struggled to help us in the run game.
I touched on this already but Mike’s inability to get out on the perimeter made it difficult for us to run to the right. I don’t even know how good of an athlete he is because he may look completely different at 320 lbs as opposed to 350. But we’ve got to find out. We couldn’t trap with him because those type of quick hitters didn’t allow him enough time to set up his block on the DT, and forget about him having to lead up on a trap because that just wasn't going to happen. We started to run some pin & pull zone plays where the OT blocked down and either the playside G or the C would pull around. It’s slower developing and a shorter distance for the lineman to travel but Mike struggled there too. Ruiz was okay, but he’s not the type of athlete (at least not yet) that was really effective at it either. (Bredeson for the most part was okay when asked to move. He wasn’t as physical at the point of attack as I expected him to be but movement wasn’t a problem.)
Further complicating this, our TE’s were of little help to us. Gentry was the worst offender. He was a poor blocker when engaged but his mental errors were somehow even more frustrating. He didn’t show much philosophical understanding of what we were trying to do. Sometimes he’d let his man go, other times he’d take someone else’s. It made no sense and you could see how his terrible decisions would submarine plays before they ever had a chance. He looked like he had no idea of what we were trying to do.
McKeon and Eubanks weren’t very good blockers either but they at least didn’t have the mystifying mental breakdowns. But when you combine the relative ineffectiveness of our TE’s with the lack of mobility of our OL and it becomes fairly apparent whey we tended to focus our run game between the tackles. Frankly we just didn’t have a lot of options.
Next topic:
- What happened to our RPO’s
- Why don’t we attack the middle
Even in 11 your TE is still going to be run blocking so a different personnel grouping doesn’t eliminate the potential of your TE locking up on someone that’s actually in pass coverage, but our timing with it just never seemed to fit. You see NFL teams do it where its completely in sync but it looked to me like we were building toward it but it just never completely came together; a lineman was always dangerously close to being downfield or our TE was blocking a LB that didn’t know what the hell was going on. I’m sure more reps would’ve helped but I think we probably felt good about everything else so we put it on hold. The good news is that the infrastructure is well established at this point so it could become a staple next season.
Our personnel also featured a lot of talent better utilized outside the hash marks; big, physical, imposing pass catchers that didn’t operate as well as catch & run receivers. DPJ was probably the best at it and although I do think he’ll be an NFL WR someday he’s more of a downfield threat rather than the type that’s going to take a slant 65 yards for a TD. The departure (and lack of development) of smaller and quicker WR’s (Crawford & McDoom) prior to the season kind of left us with a single mold that lacked the quickness to create separation in tight windows. The current recruiting class can fix that problem. I don’t know who’s enrolling early but there’s an opportunity for one of the freshman to play a huge role in this offense next season.
Overall that’s how I would summarize the season. The teams that we could bully with our OL we would beat into submission. The teams that stopped our run got us in unfavorable down & distance and stagnated our offense. That wasn’t a huge deal when our defense was playing well because there was no sense of urgency. We could continue to plow ahead and wait for them to break. But when the defense wasn’t playing well the whole thing fell apart.
To finish up I’ll say this about our defense; as someone that has some level of experience in game planning and play calling, the most difficult aspect of both is anticipating what the defense is going to do. I’m hopeful that what Dan Mullen and Urban Meyer did to Don Brown to end the season will serve as a wake up call to implement some diversity into his coverage schemes. When you know with almost certainty that you’re going to see straight man coverage regardless of the personnel grouping it is so easy to game plan and get the right calls in the game in the right situation. The QB runs, the tunnel screens, the jet sweep, all instances where Florida knew exactly what they were going to get. Same with OSU’s crossing patterns and wheel routes. It’s time for Don Brown to introduce some deception and variety into his scheme. Being the DC at Michigan is different than being the DC at BC. Nobody spends all offseason breaking down BC’s defense in order to beat them, but that’s not the case at UM. In some sense I hope the back to back butt whippings that Don Brown took will ultimately be viewed as a positive as soon as next season.
I haven’t studied the defense enough to say that I’m confident that changes will be made. PSU gashed us in ’17 by relentlessly attacking our S’s downfield. It didn’t look like we changed anything this year other than Metellus developing into a better player. Unfortunately I don’ think that Brandon Watson transforming into David Long would fix all that ills the defense though. I remember a statement from @Cal Varnsen last season after the PSU game…(loosely quoted) Don Brown’s got a hell of a fastball, but if that’s all he’s got the good hitters will eventually learn how to turn on one. I think it’s well time that Brown develop that curve ball.
