One of the primary influencers for Michigan's new offensive coordinator Josh Gattis was now-Mississippi State head coach Joe Moorhead. Last year Moorhead spoke with then-SBNation's Bill Connelly, and shared his offensive philosophy. Today we're going to hit on #3/5:

3. Slap a read onto nearly every run, too. Never put yourself in a position in which your QB doesn’t have options. “I would say 85 to 90 percent of the runs we called had a second phase or a tag,” Moorhead says. The complexity varied, but “rarely do we just call a run and just hand it off without having the quarterback read somebody at the first, second, or third level.”

From the spring game and the first game, the biggest takeaway so far is that #SpeedInSpace wasn't a tear-down of last year's offense. As they did last year, Michigan is still running their Zone Read/Arc Read/Split Zone/Belly package, and their Pin & Pull/Down G/Counter Trey package as the base of the running game. What's changed is Gattis has added reads whenever the quarterback wasn't doing anything, and more reads to plays that already had them.

Since it's our first week of the season I thought we'd enjoy a trip through the core of Michigan's offense, and how it's been Gattised so far.

[After the JUMP: all the singled safeties]

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1. Split Zone

This is a play that anyone who runs a zone read as the rock play will have as a paper. Defenses today are well practiced at beating Rich Rod's 20-year-old revolution. Typically the way to do this from a rock-on-rock, "everybody executes their assignment" method is to force a handoff (nobody wants a quarterback in space), have the front seven get to the frontside (our left in the diagram below) when they see the blocking going that direction, and have the unblocked guy set up shop where he's forcing a handoff, but still in position to react to it. Once the ball's in the running back's hands, all those defenders are in position to gum up their gaps, and the backside end is prepared to spring into the carrier's side.

You punish this behavior by swinging a blocker from the frontside, crashing into the guy who thinks he's being read (it's called a trap block), and charging the back through the resulting gap, i.e. away from where the rest of the box defenders were just working to stop the zone read.

Here's what it looks like:

See Gentry come across and pick the nit. Juwann Bushell Beatty, the right tackle on the bottom of the line, couldn't seal the WLB inside but that doesn't matter because Onwenu's DT is fighting inside like whoa and the WLB can be stuck outside. Usually defensive lines are coached better than this.

What's the problem with Split Zone?

The end crashes sometimes. You can deal with that with a different playcall, but it murders this one.

How do you fix it?

It's difficult to add a read to this because you're already using the quarterback's eyes to entice the unblocked EDGE defender to form up and accept a blindside trap back like a docile little lamb. But if you're looking at him, and he crashes, what if there was somewhere to get the ball to punish that?

The orbital motion could be just for show but I'm not so sure. Michigan ran it again right after, the EDGE defender didn't step up into the trap this time, and Shea's eyes seem to be looking past that guy anyway. I believe that Patterson is reading the safety, #7, here. At least, he's conscious of the safety's reaction to the orbital (i.e. behind the QB) motion.

On a 3rd and two later the motion converts to jet, crossing in front of Patterson before the mesh point with the running back. At the very least this pulls the EDGE defender way wide, where Nick Eubanks can authoritatively end him:

Unfortunately we never got to see Michigan get the ball to Bell on a backside pitch or sweep (BASH) in this game, but you can see it's out there. Michigan did run one split zone from an unbalanced formation in the 1st Quarter that obviously has no read, since there are no eligible receivers in that direction.

Michigan later ran the TE on a wheel route from this look, pulling the safety away from Collins, who scored a touchdown with his crotch in poor CB#3's face.

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3. Arc Read

Again this is a pull from last year. Arc Read is the scissors to Zone Read's rock and Split Zone's paper. When you run Split Zone a lot, what defenses will start doing is have the unblocked EDGE defender start looking for that trap block and dive into it. That really mucks things up. Watch the defensive end at the top of the formation here. That's a young Kenny Willekes, who's going to notice the Hammerin' Panda coming sideways, turn inward, get low, and plant Khalid Hill right in the gap this is supposed to attack.

If you recall the practices from France there was a clip of Brown coaching the defensive ends, who each had to get into the backfield, set up, and "look for the fullback." This is split zone defense. And like anything else, you can punish defenses for it.

The trick is to have that "fullback" or tight end coming across go right past the unblocked EDGE defender—Whoop—and head outside. The quarterback is reading this, and follows his tight end out there. Thus induced to crash, the EDGE defender gets to hug a running back while the quarterback flees out his edge with a lead blocker. It looks like angry cheese. Watch the outside linebacker to our left on this one, and how McKeon just steps around. Whoop!

What's the problem with Arc Reads? Typically the backside alley defender—a safety or a cornerback—has a lot of time to read all of this action in the backfield, come down, and trip up your quarterback.

How do you fix that? Now, an arc read already has a read on it. So how can you add another you ask? Well, after you read, add a run-pass option.

They're new at this so I guess Collins forgot he had the option to run by his cornerback instead of block him, but Shea is clearly looking for something—maybe he wasn't supposed to put it on tape yet? Anyway, since all of the line blocking is in the backfield, and these plays often come down to a cornerback setting the edge, why not screw that guy.

This is what spread teams do to you. You think you're beating a receiver's block and sticking the quarterback and then—whoop—ball's over your head. Now, the corner probably won't leave his receiver until the quarterback cross the line of scrimmage, but even that's a big win; Gattis is taking away the defense's opportunities to play aggressively.

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4. Pin & Pull

The power side of Michigan's running game last year was built around the Pin & Pull concept and its cousins, Down G and Counter Trey.

A quick refresher for all of these. The idea is to pin down the frontside with whatever you've got out there, kick out the edge defender with a frontside pulling guard , and in the case of P&P or Counter Trey, bring an extra lead blocker from the backside to pop whoever shows up in the hole. Down G is a variant that uses zone blocking on the backside in case the backside linebacker is shooting into his guard when we sees zone. Counter Trey is the same play run to the backside with some counter action in the backfield in case the backside linebacker is reading the back to decide where to go. Here's a classic example of a pin & pull from IU last year:

What's the problem with Pin & Pull etc.? You always have this backside linebacker free to flow to the play. Watch the weakside LB I circled in the video above. He ultimately uses up the lead blocker, Ruiz, who gave him a pop and Gentry finished him off. That's great that it worked, but getting that block as a Gentry seal outside isn't the most likely outcome of a free hitter.

How do you fix that? In the spring game Michigan made the quarterback the runner and RPO'd the linebacker with a flare screen out the opposite direction of the play. In this one they did a similar thing with jet motion from the Z receiver and read the backside end. Also MTSU slanted into this and mucked up the play so it didn't end up going as planned. You may need a few watches to catch it all.

Try to follow along. Here's the plan:

The Jet Motion switches the cornerback onto the H-tight end (Eubanks) instead of the usual WR/CB matchup. Hayes, the left tackle, and McKeon, the Y-tight end, are going to block down (sorry those lines were supposed to be purple) on the frontside DT and the frontside LB. Bredeson, the frontside guard, is supposed to pull and kick out an unblocked frontside DE . Onwenu, the backside guard, is supposed to pull and meet the Mike LB in the gap . Patterson is now optioning the backside DE with the jet, Ronnie Bell. This is supposed to free Mayfield, the right tackle, to get a free release on the weakside linebacker .

That doesn't go off because MTSU is 100% attacking this play. The DE's slant means McKeon can't get to his LB. The DT's slant means Hayes can't block down his guy either. Bredeson and Onwenu both get held up behind the mess this generates and that creates two free LBs. Then one of them takes a bad angle, cuts off his buddy, and Turner can turn the corner, picking up a few more because Eubanks's CB got spun around. Thanks for sucking, guys.

Anyway the WLB (#6), never mattered because he sucked out on the jet so hard that Mayfield decided to (fruitlessly) chase the MLB instead.

They ran a pin and pull again later on with a normal backside zone read. This was meant to give the offense a third puller—the backside tackle, Hayes—but the MLB blitz undid the good from the read. The fact that they pulled Hayes here instead of having him go downfield makes me think there might be an RPO from this look down the road:

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5. Power

God's play. Kick out the edge , block down inside of that, pull a guard around as a lead blocker .

Handed down from generation to generation already in its most perfect form.

What's the problem with Power? Nothing. This play is so money that safeties often have to get involved to beat it.

How do you fix that? Teams often screw with the safeties getting too aggressive against Power by calling play-action. Let's slap an RPO on it.

That's a bad cornerback against Black on a slant with help. MTSU is luck to have a good free safety or else this gets all the yards.

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Lessons

With the pin & pull stuff, the backside reads didn't gain Michigan much, since the backside tackles this freed up weren't in position to do much against linebackers heading for the frontside. I guess they matter more if the DE gives a keep read, but the pull in the second example looked like they were having a live practice with a concept they didn't know would be useful (it was in the 1920s).

Other than that, Michigan was removing free defenders left and right from the same base plays they ran last year. This is a good way to #SpeedInSpace while retaining everything these experienced players have learned. And there are a lot of reads left to explore. This is gonna be fun.