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| Devin Funchess (image via Toledo Blade) |
The offensive line switch kinda worked. Redshirt sophomore Chris Bryant was inserted at left guard, redshirt sophomore Graham Glasgow moved from left guard to center, and redshirt sophomore center Jack Miller was benched. That resulted in a decent rushing day for running back Fitzgerald Toussaint (13 carries, 78 yards, 2 touchdowns), although freshman backup Derrick Green (10 carries, 23 yards, 1 touchdown) couldn't get much going. Michigan eschewed the zone stretch - presumably due to Bryant's lack of lateral mobility - in favor of more of a gap blocking scheme. The biggest positive for Michigan was the elimination of so many negative yardage plays in the running game. Upon first viewing, I thought Bryant did a good job of pulling. He did struggle with pass protection occasionally (allowing a sack to defensive tackle Cameron Botticelli) and allowed penetration at least once that knocked off a pulling Michael Schofield. But overall, the pass protection and run blocking were better with these switches than they were against UConn and Akron.
Michigan had a somewhat lackluster defensive performance. Michigan didn't play poorly on defense, but they couldn't tee off on the Gophers, either. The only sack came from Cameron Gordon late in the game when he scared quarterback Mitch Leidner into running out of bounds, and similarly, the only interception came late in the game when Minnesota needed to pass the ball; Blake Countess promptly returned the pick 72 yards for a touchdown. Minnesota totaled 41 carries for 136 yards, a 3.3 yards/carry average. Leidner finished 14/21 for 145 yards and 1 touchdown. It was a little frustrating watching Michigan be unable to make big plays until late, but it's tough to complain about a 3.3 yard average and 13 points. Michigan just doesn't have that dominant defense quite yet.
Devin Gardner played pretty well. The broadcasters were complaining about Gardner's poor accuracy, but I thought Gardner did a good job of protecting the football and making good decisions in the passing game. He did have a couple throws that were a little inaccurate, but what college quarterback doesn't have a couple of those throughout a game? He finished 13-for-17 for 235 yards and 1 touchdown, and he took just one sack on which Bryant was beaten pretty cleanly. I understand the idea of an inaccurate completion (such as that post to Jeremy Gallon that caused the receiver to stop and come back), but the bottom line is that it was a completed downfield throw.
Michigan neutralized Minnesota's best defenders. I expected Minnesota defensive tackle Ra'Shede Hageman (3 tackles, 1 tackle for loss) and safety Brock Vereen (2 tackles) to have bigger days, but both were relatively quiet.
I hate that Michigan flips its defensive line. This has been going on since Greg Mattison arrived at Michigan, but on some calls, the defensive line will flip if the offense changes strength with tight end trades, motions, etc. It always amazes me that other teams are too inept to capitalize. Minnesota had a great opportunity to capitalize on such a play in short yardage, but they failed to snap the ball in time and eventually called a timeout.
What does this mean for Penn State? I'm interested to see Michigan play Penn State for the first time in a couple years. The Nittany Lions just suffered a big loss to Indiana, but Indiana is an improving team. Perhaps Penn State was just looking ahead to the Wolverines. Either way, Bryant and Michigan's new-look running game eased in against the Gophers, but now they'll have a stiffer test in Happy Valley. I also want to see how the Wolverines do against Bill O'Brien's offense and quarterback Christian Hackenberg. I like O'Brien and respect his coaching abilities, but I would be glad to see a decisive win for the Wolverines.
Our defense's biggest problem all year has been its inability to make big plays. We've done far more letting teams OUT of difficult D and D situations than putting them IN them. If and when Ryan comes back, that may change a little, but the question will still remain of who you sit to make room for him? Beyer?
ReplyDeleteAnd yes...I was hoping before the start of the season that we could split Funchess out and use him as a big WR sometimes, and leave the blocking to Williams and Butt. Would be nice to see those two guys be able to snag some catches too, but I'll take the trade if it frees up Funchess, especially given the lack of production from guys like Reynolds, Jacksonand Chesson
Yeah, Beyer sits for Ryan for sure. Beyer is a solid back up nothing more.
DeleteMorgan made a big play INT to win a game. Gordon made a big play to goal-line stand on the last play of a game to do the same. How many picks does Countess have?
DeleteI disagree this D isn't making big plays.
Lank - Gordon didn't make a big last play on that goal line stand. He was beaten. The quarterback missed the receiver.
DeleteAnon 7:56
DeleteWrong. Gordon chipped the receiver knowing that the all-out blitz would force a quick throw. It worked.
Anonymous - you are wrong. Gordon jumped the option route and threw off the timing of the play. That pass was not going to be completed because of the play Gordan made.
DeleteGordon jumped the route, taking away the quick throw and forcing the QB to eat the free blitzer. That's a play to me...
DeleteLet's not tout that Thomas Gordon play at the end of the Akron game too much. The bottom line is that he was beaten, and even a decent throw would have resulted in a touchdown and a Michigan loss. There's no way anyone should be arguing - or will convince me - that it should go down as a "big play" on his part. He and the team got VERY lucky.
DeleteThe defensive line allowed too many 3rd and short coversions up the middle. the used to be a staple for our defense to stop those plays. I think we need more size in the middle of our dl line against power run teams. Pipkins getting hurt is a blow. Get well soon
ReplyDeleteDo we have any idea of Pipkins is out for they year, reconstruction repair, or just a sprain, few games out?
DeleteI don't think any official information has come out yet, but the news will probably not be good, from what I've heard.
Delete5 for 5 red zone touchdowns and stellar punting on only three attempts were two real positive features in this game.
ReplyDeleteI freely admit that I've little clue about blocking schemes and such, but the unbalanced line with offensive tackles moving around all over the place was an interesting idea.
Gardner says that center is Glasgow's natural position, I'm withholding judgement on that one for a while. Bryant looked like he could grow up to be a drive blocking pain in the tushy if his knees can hold up.
I'm concluding that our not very athletic defense does a pretty nice job of maintaining position and assignment responsibilities. It's a lot more fun and far less stressful when you have beasts running around kicking butt and taking names, but we don't, so this is probably gonna have to do.
I really hope we play less vanilla defense against the better teams coming up on our schedule. We are not talented enough to beat everyone straight up....not yet at least.
ReplyDeleteI also hope Borges mixes things up a little more next week.
Considering the caliber of competition, the defense was absolutely pathetic. Minnesota is a team with MAC caliber athletes and a freshman QB in his first start and they carved up our defense all day long like a Thanksgiving turkey. Our run defense is a great big pile of shit. Outside of Black's forced fumble our 3-techs did nothing and our WDEs continue to be as worthless as a used condom. Our four man rush got nothing remotely resembling pressure against the QB and the one time that Minny threw deep the guy was wide open. We were lucky that it wasn't a TD. Pass catchers were wide open for Minny except for the slow white tight end who simply outjumped everybody for the ball. We made yet another crappy QB look like a fucking Heisman candidate for 55 minutes. Funny how being a freshman is never a problem for our opposition, isn't it? The only reason why Minny scored only 13 points was because they only had the ball something like 8 times and they had horrible field position almost every time. We ended up with only 3 TFLs and at least one of those was due to an unforced fumble. Another was a "sack" in which Minnesota's QB stupidly ran out of bounds when he could have easily thrown away the ball for an incompletion.
ReplyDeleteYes, Minnesota only had 8 drives if you discount their possessions at the end of each half. But Michigan only had 8 possessions too, and came away with touchdowns on five of them. Sure, not everything went perfectly, but after the last two games I was happy to watch an almost 30 point victory in which I never felt like the outcome was really in jeopardy.
DeleteMaxx Williams is pretty good. He's not just some big slow white dude.
DeleteOur 2013 defensive philosophy is to sit back and play coverage for the most part. This looks ugly and will give up some yards, but the box score usually ends up pretty good and we don't give up that many points.
I love the constant self-loathing bitching Michigan fans engage in after every big win. Nothing's ever good enough. Nothing. What other fan base would rage this hard after a 42-13 blowout?
3.3 ypc. 1 TD. 1.3 point per possession. Our D nearly outscored them on their own.
Delete3 good drive, 5 bad ones.. 2 of the 3 good ones ended in FG attempts.
Minn sucks, sure, but the D did just fine.
This is a pretty funny post. Sounds a lot like my id during the game. I disagree that our D was pathetic, but I agree with a lot your more specific points.
DeleteAwesome. Not often you see a Scott Tenorman candidate emerge from the fanbase of a team that wins by 4 TDs.
DeleteI wasn't enthralled with Borges play calling. at times, I noticed 8 men in the box yet he continued to be predictable on running downs, calling running plays. Seemed very vanilla, except of course splitting Funchness out which was a huge success.
ReplyDeletePositive news.... ZERO turnovers!! Yay!!
There's no need to empty your playbook against a team like Minnesota in a 29-point win. He didn't try to light the world on fire, but he didn't have to.
DeleteI said a few weeks back, I'd like to see Funchess spilt out some more. It worked nicely but I don't think his production level is going to stay Edwards-like. The positive is, it should open things up for Gallon a lot more since he likely won't be bracketed nearly as much as he has the past few weeks. I'd like to see a wrinkle with the trips where a screen is thrown to Gallon with Funchess and Chesson blocking.
ReplyDeleteI thought Devin looked very good as a game manager qb. In all reality that's all that is needed of him until November most likely.
Defense is still playing extremely passive. I don't really have a problem with that for the next few weeks, since outside of really Northwestern and OSU all the teams Michigan plays from here on out can't pretty much beat themselves if they are forced to sustain long drives.
3rd and short playing calling is pretty bad to me. I much rather see Gardner on a boot leg/roll out than a designed run. It gives him more options and also allows a pumpfake to freeze the defender for a second which is all he really needs on a third and short. I don't really trust the line to get a push up the middle on obvious run situations either so letting Gardner get in space with a couple options seems like the best scenario to me.
Agree that the defense playing vanilla isn't a bad idea.
DeleteTOLD YA SO: Miller sucks. I've been critical of Miller for a while (check the comments of the TTB rankings of OLmen the last couple years) and I think my concerns have proven correct despite a lot of Anonymous criticisms. QUALIFIER: Not sure Bryant is much better as Minnesota has a pretty stinky run D. This was a pedestrian effort by our team, but better than the garbage we saw through the first 4 games, clearly.
ReplyDeleteTOLD YA SO 2: Countess is making my prediction for him putting up fancy INT stats look good. Good luck comes to good players.
TOLD YA ...DOH: Maybe Funchess IS fast enough to play WR. I've argued Devin is too slow to be a WR, but this week's results speak for themselves. I'd like to see him prove it against a bowl-caliber team before I fully admit to being wrong - he should get his chance against PSU.
IN DEFENSE OF THE DEFENSE: what do people realistically expect? The defense has played well every game yet there's still nitpicking about the pass rush or 3rd down conversions or....whatever. The results speak for themselves. We're not '97 caliber, but this is a good defense that could push to excellent if things keep tracking positively.
FRET-METER: I said before this week I was more worried about Indiana than PSU even though we're at home vs IU. I am skeptical of our coaches preparedness for Indiana's offense. PSU plays the kind of football Michigan coaches want to play (and play against.)
Indiana is worrisome because our corners get beat deep. I agree with that assessment.
DeleteI'm not sure you can toot your horn about Miller by being right in hindsight. I could make a crazy-ass prediction based on nothing about every player in every recruiting class, then when I happen to get a few right, circle them and go LOOK HOW COOL I AM. What we DID learn was that Miller just can't knock anyone off the ball (yet) and Bryant can (and REALLY can). Also, Glasgow's snaps weren't all that worrisome...just one miscue, IIRC.
I'm glad YOU at least are reasonable about this defense. There's an awful lot of negativity on MGoBlog, and not just from the typical naysayers.
Not really understanding the recent Indiana hype. Their defense is bad, very bad. 35 points to Indiana State, 41 points and over 500 yards allowed to a very one dimensional Navy offense, over 400 yards to Bowling Green, over 600 allowed to Missouri.
DeleteSudfeld is relatively turnover prone himself, 6 picks.
The only way I see Michigan losing is if they beat themselves, like the almost have a couple times this season.
I have to give you credit for predicting Countess to snag a lot of INTs. I was expecting Countess to have more of a quiet year while teams picked on Taylor. But teams have been throwing Countess's way and he's really been making them pay.
DeleteWasn't a crazy-ass prediction on Miller as a recruit, it was a read on the OL circumstances since Molk left (i.e., post-red-shirt). I said what we were seeing was a bad sign, but the many Miller defenders were vehement that he was too small to evaluate (yet) and a freshman and so on after last year and through the offseason.
DeleteMiller could be a fine player, but it's been looking like he wasn't starter material as a 3rd year player for longer than a few weeks.
This was the first Michigan game I attended this year, and I was not very happy with Borges going into this game, as I thought he was not living up to the expectations, and was being overpaid for the product he was putting on the field, and the play calls he was making. Nevertheless, I thought that Borges called a good game yesterday. It wasn't perfect, but it wasn't close to bad, in my opinion. I liked the way that Borges called running plays heavily early, I think that's the way to go against every team this year except Michigan State and Ohio State (their front 7's are too good.)
ReplyDeleteGardner did good, but not great in my opinion. I think that Gardner made a few questionable passes, to which Gallon and Funchess bailed him out (the one where Gallon had to turn around and do a behind the back catch, and when Funchess had to dive to catch the pass from the end zone.) I think Gardner was more of an "AJ Mccarron" type QB, what I mean is he was a good game manager. I think Borges helped him out, by doing the entire first quarter with run calls. Also, I think Al Borges helped Gardner out by calling a lot of short yardage pass calls, as it seems almost all of Gardner's INT's were forced deep passes.
Going back to the coaching staff/Borges. I like the way they changed the O-line. I thought all along that Glasgow was a better run and pass blocker than Miller, but I was surprised at how well Glasgow did, he seemed to of improved from the bye week, and looked natural at center. I think that Bryant did OK at LG, and did seem to be the weakest link, but I expected that. I think for a first game, Bryant did quite well at LG, and here's to hoping he improves each week. Devin Funchess looked good if not great out there at receiver. He's a HUGE mismatch, and he should be a key player, if not THE key player for Michigan against MSU, when trying to get the passing game going against MSU. Funchess made a few damn good catches, and the one that really stands out is his catch from the beginning of the end zone. I think it's good to use AJ and Jake more for blocking, and Funchess more as a receiver, Funchess was no help to a struggling offensive line in weeks 1-4, so good decision by the coaching staff. Lastly for the coaching staff, I liked the idea of getting Green going, and getting him going early. His first run looked good, and he was a little bit slow after that, but his TD run did look really good. I feel it was important get him going especially with MSU in 27 days, I think it's good to have a power runner like Green, and a speed back like Toussaint against MSU.
Lastly, I can see why Mattison is getting some criticism, and I think some of it is due, but I also can't say I disagree with the way he called this game. What he did was pretty much avoid any big plays to be executed by Minnesota, even though many short yardage plays did occur, I think a lot of that is on the players, not Mattison. If the players were better, then I think Mattison would've looked like a genius. I don't think the D-line played poor, but I think they missed too many opportunities with sacks. I really like this group of corners; Countess, Taylor, and Avery all looked good out there yesterday.
What do you guys think?
Thanks for you thoughts. I think that we were ultra-conservative on both sides, which was fine, but I was kind of hoping for a decisive, crushing victory just for spiritual healing after the previous two games.
DeleteOne thing about the running game: it wasn't great, but it was doing enough to avoid third-and-long situations every set of downs. We were getting little two- and three-yard runs on first and second downs, which set up third and five instead of third and 11. Those long third downs were the source of a lot of DG's problems the previous two games. It makes a world of difference to get two yards on early down runs instead of negative one.
Thanks for you thoughts. I think that we were ultra-conservative on both sides, which was fine, but I was kind of hoping for a decisive, crushing victory just for spiritual healing after the previous two games.
DeleteOne thing about the running game: it wasn't great, but it was doing enough to avoid third-and-long situations every set of downs. We were getting little two- and three-yard runs on first and second downs, which set up third and five instead of third and 11. Those long third downs were the source of a lot of DG's problems the previous two games. It makes a world of difference to get two yards on early down runs instead of negative one.
Hi Thunder, thanks for the write up. Any comment on Green's running style? It seems that he doesn't lower his shoulder, and runs without rage (i am thinking of Brandon Miner). Given your experience, do you think that's coachable? I believe the first time I saw Minor ran, he ran with rage already.....So I hope that Green will improve but not sure how often will that be.
ReplyDeleteOne of my criticisms of Green from his junior season was his lack of "rage" and the inability to run through tackles. Right now you can see that he's not letting his running instincts take over. I think he's scared to bounce plays, take risks with the football, etc. He's running straight to the hole and anytime a defender comes within two yards, Green covers up the ball with two hands. It seems to me that he's just being really tentative right now, and I think a lot of that comes from coaching. The coaches are probably telling him to trust his blocks and take care of the football. If/when he takes over the full-time job, the coaches will have to take off the leash and see what he can do. But right now as a backup, I think what he's doing is fine (for the most part). Green is not a guy who's going to turn nothing into a 40-yard run. He's a guy who will get what the offensive line blocks (in these cases, a couple yards a pop) and then run over a linebacker or safety if the line can get him that far. With a mediocre interior line, I'm not expecting a great deal from him at this point.
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