four verts

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FORMATION NOTES: All gun.

Michigan was about 50% 2TE and 50% 3-wide, with a couple 3TE plays in short yardage and a couple 4 WR plays on passing downs. Note above that Eubanks is split wide, which he was on about half his snaps.

There was a fair bit of this, which goes in the chart as "Shotgun trips H":

H = tight end off the line of scrimmage. Combined with trips this necessarily means a covered slot receiver. MTSU seemed to have no idea what to do with this and continually dedicated a bunch of DBs out over the receivers, leaving wide open spaces. Your author is continually surprised this gambit keeps working both for and against Michigan.

SUBSTITUTION NOTES: QB was Patterson with a couple of goofy cameos from McCaffrey until the third quarter, when McCaffrey got three drives. Patterson actually got the last TD drive; Milton then got the last two. RB did indeed see all five guys get first-half snaps. Wilson, Haskins, and VanSumeren got a few snaps here and there. Charbonnet and Turner probably had 70-80% of the snaps between them.

WR was more rotation, with the default approach being Collins, Black, and Bell. With Black in the locker room temporarily and Collins on the sideline for no apparent reason, the two-minute drill was Bell, Cornelius Johnson, and Sainristil. Sainristil did not get much meaningful time outside of that.

Lots of two TE sets—about 50%—that were always McKeon and Eubanks. McKeon got almost all of the 1 TE snaps. FWIW, the first guy off the bench in backup time was Schoonmaker. All got a few snaps late as well. No Muhammad.

OL was Hayes/Bredeson/Ruiz/Onwenu/Mayfield. Second team was Barnhart/Filiaga/Vastardis/Korican/Honigford.

[After THE JUMP: arcs defended: 0.]

In the Kindle Edition of HTTV for this year (oh by the way that exists) I added a sidebar/article on Michigan State's defense and different ways to attack it. With Quarters coming back into vogue to combat the spread, and Quarters teams getting super-aggressive against the run, offenses have been pulling the old Spurrier trips-and-triangle stuff to attack it. But Quarters is not new, and there are some other good answers out there for an overzealous defense from the two-back offenses that dominated the '80s and '90s.

Here's an oldie but a goodie, the Tunnel (or Jailbreak) Screen to a running back:

A-Train motioned out to the flat, essentially becoming a receiver. Chris Floyd stayed in as an Ace back, then he drifted out the other way to draw people away from where Thomas is going. DeBord caught the Buckeyes in one of TENUTA!!!!'s crazy blitzes that overloaded the backside. The running backs flying out horizontally pulled the linebackers out of the middle. Then Thomas cut back in, and by the time the outside guys can react to that there's an A-Train a-comin' with a lead blocker. It's a race between him and the flat defender for ALL the yards. Flat guy won.

(And Tuman got away with a hold).

This play never went away; they run tunnel screens out of spreads all the time with receivers coming in. Whereas bubble screens attack the defense in the space outside, tunnel screens get the defense moving hard one way to defend the edge, then pass it to a good athlete coming the opposite direction. Like a cutback run, if the screen target can accelerate downfield before the defenders can reverse momentum and converge, it could be a huge gain.

DeBord brought that out in '97 because OSU was blitzing guys off the edge. In 2011 vs MSU Borges (unsuccessfully since he didn't have the personnel) tried to make it a hot read to Vincent Smith. It's particularly good to run against a defense that's getting upfield too aggressively and dropping other guys back, since it attacks the space between them. As you might have guessed, if you catch the linebackers blitzing too that space could be huge, which is why this is fun to run on passing downs.

* [Moore was technically a free safety in '97 but the way OSU played twins this game was to have the CBs follow their receivers and leave Moore the strong side overhang DB.]

[After the jump: Harbaugh's version]