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FORMATION NOTES: Nothing unusual from Michigan. Army had their 404 thing that Seth's discussed a few times but also shifted into 4-3 and 3-4 fronts depending on the situation; the number of things they threw at Michigan was significant.

offset LB like that is 404 indicator

more of a 3-4

The system is the system even if the alignments change; Army isn't two-gapping anyone. For the most part Michigan was able to cope with the various things; a couple players struggled.

Michigan was evenly split between 3 WR 1 TE and 2 WR 2 TE looks, FWIW.

SUBSTITUTION NOTES: OL was Hayes/Bredeson/Ruiz/Onwenu/Mayfield the whole way. McCaffrey got three snaps when Patterson went out a couple times.

With Wilson out RB started as a Turner/Charbonnet platoon; Turner got dropped after he missed important blitz pickups, leading to a Ben VanSumeren cameo that almost immediately resulted in a fumble. After that it was Charbonnet 100% until late, when Turner re-emerged for a few plays.

WR was Collins, Black, and Bell; the former two got almost all of the snaps and Bell was out there slightly over half the time. Johnson, Sainristil, and Jackson had a few snaps each.

McKeon was near omnipresent; Eubanks got about half the snaps. All got a few goal-line plays.

[After THE JUMP: well…]

I am going to boil myself.

In what?

Sadness.

well…

TALK ME OUT OF IT

oil is traditional

YOU'RE NOT TALKING ME OUT OF IT

Look, man, this was bad. It was bad in two specific ways that are potentially bad, like, continually. I'm more than willing to write off a Ben VanSumeren fumble as just one of those things, because the over/under on VanSumeren non-garbage time carries the rest of the year is 10. Other stuff makes me worry.

LIKE RUNNING FOR 100 YARDS 3.3 AT A TIME LIKE IT'S 1956?!?!

Well, yeah.

So… I had a lot of problems with what Michigan was trying to do. Also: what they were not trying to do. Things actually started well, with Michigan's RPO stuff holding Army second-level players deep. This ends up being a six man box even if you count the safety creeping down to replace the OLB:

Army OLB to top

Hooray. But then easy wins went away; at the same time Army was racking up big RPS minuses for Michigan on critical downs.

Michigan's offensive structure got them very few wins after the first couple drives, and no real shots at a chunk play aside from the Ronnie Bell wheel route Patterson missed. From time to time you're going to find yourself in a position where you lose tactically; it happens. In this game there was too much of this, a well-blocked play that ends after four yards because a safety at eight yards doesn't have a blocker…

…and not enough of this, which exploited Army's incredibly soft coverage.

Part two of the two-minute drill's dissolution was a third and one on which Michigan got stuffed thanks to a safety blitz—the kind of blitz Army almost certainly wouldn't dare if their CBs had to come to the line of scrimmage. The "what's wrong with this picture" picture will look familiar to that guy who got pepper sprayed at Penn State during 27 for 27:

Yup.

Not this Borges stuff again.

Yup! Army played a million miles off for most of the game and Michigan ran one (1) play that took advantage of this. The fourth and two on which Michigan got downloaded had the same defensive structure:

So did the field side of the formation on the –11 yard run at the end of the first half. Army runs a CB blitz on which the FS and an OLB move out to cover the boundary WR. Is there any chance Army is running this if they aren't permitted to put their corners on Bell and Black literally ten yards off the LOS?

No. That would be suicidal. So allowing Army to do this not only spurns the yards you get when you run a bubble but puts the rest of your offense in trouble because Army can run all kinds of weird crap.

There's been some talk about how this is a situation where Patterson shouldn't have pulled, which is true but in the sense that eleven yard losses are worse than zero-yard runs—the backside DE is going to clock Charbonnet right after the handoff if Patterson gives. There's no way out.

The fourth downs stood out as particularly horrible.

Yeah. I will repeat for the Nth time that it makes no sense that Michigan's default approach on third and three isn't Ben Mason dives behind Onwenu, especially this version of Onwenu. I'll believe that doesn't pick up three yards in two tries when I see it.

Instead, Michigan's most important blockers on their first failed fourth down attempt were Ronnie Bell and Ben VanSumeren.

And really, Bell's cut off by Mayfield releasing, he doesn't even have a shot at his guy. That looks like a genuine both-sidelines play on which Michigan's trying to run bash to get outside a shuffle defensive end quickly. Possibly a good idea on second and seven. On fourth and two not so much.

On fourth down #2 Army runs an arc-defeating blitz with an OLB ripping across the line to force a give. Eubanks arcs to nobody because Army knows there's not going to be a keep, and the backside DE is completely free to hammer Charbonnet:

Charbonnet is going so vertical there on the handoff that he has no alternative but to eat the LB. And Eubanks isn't doing anything. The best spin you can put on this is that this was a missed assignment from Eubanks. It looks like an RPS –3 at the worst possible time.

Why didn't the QBs pull the damn ball?

Seth went into detail about the pull or not to pull dilemma faced by Michigan QBs in this game. Live I felt like it was there every play, like it was against MTSU; on review that was not the case, with Army shading the gray area extremely well and using scrape exchanges, or at least the threat of them, to induce a bunch of gives.

The thing that rankles is that Michigan didn't even try, really. Never pulling gave Army the confidence that their shuffle would be enough and therefore it was.

And then sometimes it absolutely was there. This play features a crashing DE who turns his hips and an OLB to the hypothetical pull side who takes two steps inside by the time the mesh happens. Michigan has Bell as a crack blocker on him. If not now, when?

Army DE and OLB to bottom

Two plays later the most boggling decision of the game. End turns his shoulders; there's no scrape; Eubanks will arc out to the overhanging safety, and Bell is available for a pitch:

Michigan gets some yards because Charbonnet breaks a tackle at the LOS; OL had little chance to deal with that because everyone's slanting playside and the end crashing means there's no backside gap. A pull there has a very good chance to be a giant play. That was the first time they reversed Bell's momentum on orbit, too: if anything you should be biasing towards a pull so your new play gets run.

Not pulling on these plays not only robs you of the yards you were going to get but sets up further runs down the road where your lack of threat on the pull strips yards out of even your successful interior runs. The weird camera angle Fox used when Michigan was backed up was perfect for this on this Charbonnet run Michigan blocks to the secondary. Yeah, Army has a shuffle end nominally on the QB. He's able to react so fast after the mesh point that he makes a tackle on a play multiple gaps away from him:

Army DE to right

That end has no indecision in his mind. His weight is always poised to flow to the back. So yeah, maybe that's a by-the-book give. But if you let this be a by-the-book give every time you let Army have it both ways. The end knows it's a give as long as he gives you token resistance, and he gets to make plays on the back too.

By the fourth quarter Michigan seemed to have given up on it. There were several plays with no apparent read, and a blocking scheme in which there was no unblocked player.

So what are you supposed to do?

There's a lot of stuff designed to attack shuffle ends since they're extremely common. Michigan even uses one as a staple: split zone. The super baffling thing is they barely ran split zone in this game. It was used on two short-yardage touchdowns and one five yard run on which Collins ate a –2 for not blocking the guy who ended up tackling.

Other than that Michigan ignored the other half of the arc package. The third and three before the second disastrous fourth down is a scrape exchange, which split zone is great on because the crashing DE gets kicked and the LB runs himself out of the play. Bredeson puts a DT on his ass, but Eubanks runs past the DE on the arc:

Split zone wins here; split zone is great against exchanges; split zone is literally the play you are faking when you run arc. Split zone was a success all three times it was run in this game. Where the hell were the other 10 instances of it?

And THE TWO MINUTE DRILL SUCKED AGAIN

Well… this one was more general malaise than last year's unceasing inability to be faster than the slowest possible version of football. The two minute drill was submarined in a number of ways things started going wrong on the second play, when Ronnie Bell turned this…

…into third down. Clock runs. On third down Michigan gets stuffed for zero yards. Clock runs. Michigan gets it on fourth down, Army gets an illegal substitution penalty, and now they've gone 14 yards in 1:20. Ruiz immediately takes a penalty, so this slick completion to McKeon is two yards short of the sticks:

Clock runs. Patterson exits the pocket for no reason and gets a zero-yard run; clock runs. Charbonnet runs to pick up the first; clock runs. Ruiz false start; you take a timeout to prevent a runoff. Now you've moved 27 yards and there are 33 seconds on the clock.

The two minute drill was an artifact of having a sucky offense and not necessarily Michigan's old bad tempo things.

So this is fun.

I don't want to overstate things. This is one game, a nine-possession one in which Michigan gained 315 yards. Their QB was clearly gimpy and they fumbled three times. This wasn't at the level of some other debacles in the recent past. It was very bad.

But at least that's the only thing that is a worry going forward.

uh

oh hell no

so

FINE JUST SAY IT

I kind of think Shea Patterson might just be Shea Patterson, last year edition, and that's all the Shea there is. This is a pretty good quarterback. It's not a guy who is going to shoot off to the first round of the draft and also give us the nice feels that come from doing good important football things.

SHEA PATTERSON

Good Neutral Bad Ovr Game DO CA SCR PR MA BA TA IN BR DSR PFF MTSU 2 14(3) 3 4 3(1) 1 2 4(2)* 2* 70% - Army 1 17(2)+++ 1 1 3 - 6* 5 - 61% -

Also of note: I had Patterson +1.5 and –8 on the ground, three of which came from the first fumble. (I need to do something about reads now that RPOs are frequent.)

So here we are again: complaining about decisions. Patterson's late inaccuracy in this game can be attributed to his oblique injury pretty easily. We have a lot of data about Patterson's accuracy level, which is excellent. Even in this game, most of it was good until late.

We also have a lot of data about his decision-making, particularly his pocket presence. That was a consistent source of crabbing in this column last year. The hope was that an offseason with the program and more experience would mitigate that. Doesn't look like it so far.

Set aside the ground game stuff for now. That's a contentious gray area. Let's just focus on Patterson trying to find guys to throw the ball to. He doesn't do it quickly enough. The number of bang-bang instant throws in this game that were not RPOs was way too low. Patterson doesn't throw in rhythm much.

While the second fumble was 100% unavoidable, the first is an excellent example of how Patterson doesn't get the ball out quickly. This blitz comes from the LB level from a guy who takes his first step right and comes through delayed. Patterson has over three seconds to get this ball out and ends up staring right at the blitzer because he's reading drag routes across the middle. Bell is open. Patterson doesn't stand in and throw; he tries to get out of dodge, disastrously:

I think a lot of quarterbacks get that out.

Patterson also continued to struggle with the seven and eight man zones that gave him trouble a year ago. Four verts appears to be the exception to this. He again hit McKeon on four verts in this game; both of those throws were confident rhythm ones. He also hit Eubanks on the flood route Michigan ran a few times against MTSU…

…but the next time Michigan went to it Army had it defensed.

Not many other route concepts have consistently resulted in confident decisions.

Unfortunately Fox gave us almost no downfield replays in this game but this stuck out all the same. Army rushes three; Patterson appears to look only at the TE side, which has two and a half guys sitting on Eubanks at the sticks. Patterson… throws a dumpoff to Charbonnet to the same side?

Meanwhile the crossing route to Ronnie Bell that set up Michigan's second touchdown sure looked like a disaster waiting to happen; a linebacker literally moves out of the way as Patterson winds up.

I don't know if that was intentional or just dumb luck, but I think the latter.

And then: the pocket presence. For every understandable pocket exit, like a guy on a stunt threatening and Collins getting tackled, there were three WTF moments. Patterson bails on this before the corner blitzer even gets to Bredeson:

He got a little heat off the edge on the first drive of the first half and then immediately decides to take off instead of taking the extra moment he has once he slides up to find someone, as Collins is popping open:

And… like… what?

That's a pocket Patterson left. It's one thing when you're bolting at the first sign of… uh… hostile grass in a context where your offensive line is getting overrun. But once Turner went out of the game there were a total of four pass-pro minuses! By the the time Hayes got spun through for the first real pressure since fumble #2 Patterson had already racked 6 throws classified as TA (throwaways) for either dumping the ball to a guy with no hope because his timer went off or just straight up exiting pockets like the above.

That Hayes pressure ceded came with a silver lining. I mentioned this last year as well: Patterson has way too little DGAF in his game. This is, I believe, the first instance of a punt and pray to Nico Collins:

It's an extremely bad throw because he's getting lit up but it's third and eight so YOLO, and then even the bad throw gets a PI flag. That should be the default Bad Decision: punting it to one of your giant leapy guys.

McCaffrey was supposed to be this dude?

His one throw was whistled way upfield of Black; I don't think he could do much on his other two plays. On review Patterson's performance consistently frustrating but there was no moment where he was utterly lost.

And we rushed for three yards a carry. What happened to this offensive line hype?

Oh, it's still here. Michigan's problems were not on the offensive line. Well. Except for one issue.

Offensive Line Player + - Total Notes Hayes 2 12 -10 Did not expect to see this number even as I charted it. Bredeson 10 4 6 Sometimes hard for him to rack up the numbers because of Hayes. Ruiz 10.5 5 5.5 Two false starts pushed M back in two minute drill. Onwenu 22 3 19 Everyone he hit looked like Wile E Coyote post-anvil Mayfield 13 4.5 8.5 Nice bounce back from meh first outing. McKeon 7 1.5 5.5 Paved a couple dudes. Eubanks 2 2 Mostly spectator as arcs were not kept. All 1 1 Goal line only. Muhammad DNP Mason VIGIL CONTINUES TOTAL 67.5 30 70% Grape monster complete Backs Player + - T Notes Patterson 1.5 8 -6.5 No keeps and a fumble on him. McCaffrey DNC Charbonnet 7.5 2 5.5 Lot of subtle adjustments. Turner 2 2 Limited by pass pro but did a thing. Wilson DNP, get well soon VanSumeren 4 -4 Fumble. Haskins DNP TOTAL 11 14 -3 Charbonnet still good. Receivers Player + - T Notes DPJ DNP Collins 2 -2 Blocking dorf. Black 0.5 0.5 Bell 3 -3 Don't give up first downs in two minute drills. Johnson Sainristil - DNC Jackson 2 -2 Bounced on jet. TOTAL 0.5 7 -6.5 Secret bad thing. Metrics Player + - T Notes Protection 38 8 83% Turner –4, Mayfield –2, Hayes -2 RPS 9 19 -10 M started out +5. : /

Almost without exception Michigan blew opponents off the ball. This was most frequently Mike Onwenu, who had the best game of his career per PFF and also UFR. He was crushing guys.

RG #50

He even got a bonafide reach block on a late stretch play:

RG #50

(The targeting call is bad, FWIW. That guy is approaching Turner and then he suddenly has his legs cut out from underneath him and is in a totally different position. If he'd lowered his head, okay. Hitting a guy with a shoulder and having it hit his head because someone else put his head in the kill zone can't be a call.)

And at one point Mayfield screwed up a stunt and Onwenu had to block two guys at once. No, seriously.

RG #50

I need to change my grading system to account for that. I know it's only happened once but got damn.

But he wasn't alone. Bredeson, Ruiz, and Mayfield also turned in smashing blocks and relatively few errors. The four sacks in this game were two Turner pickup issues and two instances where Patterson ran himself into a sack. This makes the offensive output all the more frustrating because it points back to a gameplan that resulted in 3.3 yards per carry for Charbonnet despite a hamblasting up front.

I noticed Hayes didn't make the list of guys with smashing blocks and relatively few errors.

No. This was a comedown from his opener. A bigger one than I realized until I added it up. This clip is why every take on him this offseason was "he's a year away":

LT #76

Can't get driven back two yards as an OL. That blows up an otherwise well-blocked play. Hayes also got spun through on the Collins PI incident and took a holding call on a stretch play where he was unprepared for the DE to zip inside of him…

LT #76

…and he got blown by on a couple different blitzes:

LT #76

Aaand the whole reason Michigan needed to go for it on fourth down on their final drive was Hayes not pulling on a pin and pull.

LT #76

The guy he blocks down on is shaded inside Bredeson. He doesn't have anyone on his right shoulder, so he should be pulling. Those errors used to happen all the time before Warinner. They're rare now. They were not rare for Hayes in this game.

Runyan will be back for Wisconsin and Michigan will hope to keep Hayes on the sideline until he can beef a bit more. On the one hand: hooray, an easily dealt-with explanation for Michigan's subpar ground game. On the other: boo, tackle depth is sketchy.

How did the guy with 3.3 YPC get a really good grade?

Charbonnet didn't break anything long in this game and his stats are ugly as a result, but on a couple short yardage carries he flashed the combination of skills—along with stellar-so-far pass protection—that's likely to make him Michigan's best back since… well, it's been a while. Charbonnet's agility in the hole and ability to push guys give him high potential. This TD features a hop step that's again a little reminiscent of Chris Evans:

On this one he again regaps and then drags a guy into the endzone.

He's gonna be a dude.

His blocking remained absurdly good. Ace pointed this out already but I need this clip too:

He didn't bust anything for a second straight week and his block attempts are authoritative—no cuts where a guy gets up later. He gets you and you're done.

Uh… I may be coming around to your Tru Wilson hot takes.

Right? Imagine the first half of this game with Wilson in Turner's spot on the two fumbles. Slightly different situation involving far less terror. Wilson's never doing this:

RB #3

Turner justifiably got the hook for most of the rest of the game. If Patterson was sped up with Charbonnet next to him, I can't imagine what he would have been doing with Turner in there.

Turner did dust an Army linebacker in the hole on one of his few carries:

I still think he's going to be very good for Michigan. He needs some more time in the oven if the pass protection is an accurate reflection of his ability.

Any interesting cameos?

Giles Jackson had an excellent kick return on which he showed his absurd stop-start; he also got in for an early jet sweep that went poorly. This got extended to the sideline:

It seems like every Michigan player who gets an edge run needs to bounce it into nothing 1-3 times before they pay attention to the person screaming about blockers and how they are occasionally useful. Instead of something between 3 and lots of yards, depending on how Mayfield does with the inside-out block he's trying to execute, Jackson got zero.

Receivers?

Chart:

[0 = uncatchable, 1 = circus catch, 2 = moderate difficulty, 3 = routine]

THIS WEEK SEASON Player 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 DPJ Collins 3 2/2 3 1/1 4/5 Black 2 1/2 1/2 3 1/2 6/7 Bell 0/1 1/1 6/6 3 0/2 2/3 6/6 Johnson 1/1 1/1 Sainristil 1 Jackson McKeon 2/2 2 0/1 4/4 Eubanks 3 1/1 1/1 1 1/1 2/2 All Mason Charbonnet 0/1 2/2 2 0/1 4/4 Turner 1/1 Wilson VanSumeren

Routes: Bell ++, Collins ++.

Black had one routine drop on a drive where M eventually scored and then the tough out in overtime he couldn't bring in. Everything else was very boring.

Heroes?

Mike Onwenu and the rest of the non-Hayes OL. Charbonnet, despite the wonky stats.

Maybe not so heroic?

Hayes really landed with a thud. Patterson put up a 61% DSR in a low pressure situation. Turner was more or less directly responsible for 2 turnovers. The gameplan started off pretty well and then Michigan was completely out of ideas.

What does it mean for Wisconsin and beyond?

Welp. This game pointed to large transition costs and rather dented Gattis optimism. Plenty of time to turn it around but, I mean, you pick up a –10 RPS in week two and this is our concern.

If you're going to run arc you should run a bunch of split zone. Just saying.

Fix perimeter issues. Just steal the MTSU playbook and stick a dozen of their plays in. Allowing DBs to play way off has a cascade effect on everything else and cannot be tolerated. Also: hey, free yards!

OL is tracking well. Mayfield had some issues in game one but performed very well here, and replacing Hayes with Runyan should be a big help on the ground.

Either Patterson's injury is hampering him or this is just who he is. If it's the latter I don't think Michigan's going to have a great season. Just too many plays that get killed by his happy feet and lack of YOLO.

Ronnie Bell: ah, so that's why. He did look pretty good, with an athletic leaping catch behind him. Needs the DON'T GIVE YARDS BACK yelling-at. In other WR news, for the love of god can we get one punt to Collins per quarter?

Charbonnet: real deal. Did as well as he could in trying circumstances and added another half-dozen thunderous blitz pickups to his sample size. Michigan will welcome Tru Wilson back for his pass protection but I think his shot at starting has been Wally Pipped.

Bring back Ben Mason plz. If Onwenu's going to do this, just run behind him to freedom and first downs.