josiah stewart

Hey: watchalong. We're going to do a watchalong for the hockey semifinal Saturday at 9 PM. Be there.

The culture is 8-24 and Jon Sanderson works for Illinois. An Athletic article from Brendan Quinn and Katie Strang reveals that an outside consulting firm has been brought into assess the culture of the basketball program:

…a makeshift meeting room was assembled inside Michigan Stadium last week. There, officials from Rankin Climate, an external firm specializing in organizational “climate assessments,” convened to conduct a probe into the culture of the men’s basketball program. Rankin officials asked some athletic department employees about their experiences in the program, Howard’s leadership and support offered by the athletic department. Those interviewed were told that participation was voluntary, according to multiple university employees granted anonymity because they are not permitted to speak about the investigation.

There's not a whole lot else that was new except some more details of what Sanderson sent the university via his lawyer; there are some disturbing claims:

Sanderson claims Howard approached his son, Jett, visibly angry during a 2022-23 practice and threatened, “I’ll slap the sh– out of you,” adding the incident “sparked a lot of internal conversation.” Sanderson said one coach on staff said he saw Juwan Howard “manhandle” Jett on the side of the court; that coach expressed that he was upset with how Jett was being treated.

As many have said in the aftermath of this article's release: it's the athletic director's job to know what the culture of his second-most important sport is. Hiring an outside firm to do your job for you is a waste of money and time. If the consulting firm comes back and says "eh this is fine," should Juwan Howard be retained? No. So what are we doing here? It feels like Warde Manuel wants someone else to make the decision for him.

Meanwhile the season is over for most teams that will be axing coaches. There are already 34 open head coaching spots in D-1, and the most attractive candidates will start going off the board soon as Michigan tries to figure out if the culture is bad on the worst Michigan basketball team in living memory.

Decisions made. Vandy—a program with much less recent historical success—just fired Jerry Stackhouse after Stackhouse went 9-23 in year five. The buyout is supposed to be north of 15 million dollars, which is wild. Vandy hired a guy with no head coaching experience who never got to the tournament and is stuck with that buyout after five years… and even that athletic director was able to see the writing on the wall.

[After the JUMP: football stuff! You should click. I promise.]

FORMATION NOTES: The UFR Glossary is here and you may want to brush up because DeBoer made me bring out rare formations like a true under-center Single-Wing, and weird notations like Z->Y means the WR and TE have switches spots. This is the Go Go setup (aka Single-Wing RB) that UNLV was running way back in September.

I put covered players in parentheses, but Washington also managed to get away with some illegal formations where nobody was covered, in which case I just put a question mark in there, e.g. Go Go Right (?).

"Hide H" was a trick where Rome Odunze hid out at tight end and got M to align in a mismatch. That's him trying not to be noticed as the H-back on the top of the formation (where all the Michigan players are pointing).

I'm using "Flex" for a TE split out wide for a 2x2 set. "Demi" means the TE isn't tight but neither is he in the slot (see #37 on the left). Also we were treated to a skycam version of this game, so I can provide a few canonical examples of terms we're often flinging around, and some new ones. Michigan in the above is in an G front, which means the nose is head up over the guard. Sometimes he was over the tackle, which I call Wide, where the DT is lined up over a tackle.

Letters or numbers (A, AA, 0) in the defensive front that means they've added LBs on the line of scrimmage in that alignment (A gap, both A gaps, head up on the center, etc). Another nuance I can capture with greater accuracy than usual is the difference between Kirby Smart's "Mint" front and a true 404 where the DL are heads up on the tackles—I think a lot of the Tites I charted this year were actually Mint. Michigan got creative too. This is "Crable":

I'll also try to note in the text when Michigan used sim pressures, since that's going to be relevant.

[After THE JUMP: Winning a natty.]

Previously: Offense.

DEFENSIVE END

A paring of Derrick Moore and Josiah Stewart might not be particularly far off the legendary Hutchinson-Ojabo pairing from 2021. Stewart and Moore were already Michigan's top edge guys per PFF, and they were more or less indistinguishable from the departed Braiden McGregor and Jaylen Harrell in UFR grading.

Neither was exactly a star in 2023, but it's not hard to extrapolate them from very good rotation players into stars with another year of development They had pass rush win rates of 17% (Stewart) and 15% (Moore), which was good for 18th and 43rd, respectively, amongst 251 P5 edges with at least 100 snaps. Meanwhile, you may remember some grousing in this space about Stewart not holding the edge in a couple early games but once he got that figured out he was an excellent run defender.

Also: the way Michigan ran its pass rush last year probably put a cap on just how highly they could grade out. Guys like Chop Robinson and Bralen Trice are sent off the edge over and over; Michigan played a ton of games up front to take advantage of their DT's rush and a lot of snaps had DEs diving inside in ways that aren't likely to get an individual pass rush win but could, say, lead to six sacks of Jalen Milroe.

Moore in particular has a flight path that makes you expect a first round draft selection after 2024: highly touted recruit, contributes as true freshman, basically interchangeable with a draftable senior as a true sophomore, ignition time. Stewart will be entering year four and probably doesn't have the ceiling Moore does but he doesn't have to get a whole lot better to vie for All-American-level output.

The main question is depth. There is no shame in getting locked behind Michigan's elite foursome last year but it does mean we have vanishingly little data on any of the guys vying for rotation snaps been Moore and Stewart. TJ Guy did look solid in about 80 garbage time snaps a year ago.

If the main problem here is "who is the backup anchor" I think it'll be okay.

[After THE JUMP: mmmm DTs]