spill technique

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FORMATION NOTES: Another day spent about evenly between a 3-3-5 and the more standard 4-2-5, with about 10 jetpack snaps with no DTs on the field. Note that while I listed Michigan as playing two deep frequently, there's deep and there's Michigan State "deep"; Michigan got nosy as it became clear the Maryland passing game was nonfunctional:

Safeties at six and eight yards deep is not something we've seen before.

SUBSTITUTION NOTES: The usual until garbage time. On the DL, Hutchinson, Paye, and Kemp are mainstays with Danna spotting the DEs and Dwumfour getting a couple dozen snaps when Michigan is in their 4-2-5. Uche gets 50-60% of the snaps. At LB, Hudson/McGrone/Glasgow the whole way. At DB, the usual three man rotation at CB; Hawkins and Metellus go the whole way; Dax Hill gets dime snaps.

Some notes of interest in garbage time:

• Mazi Smith got his first snaps of the year; they can play him the rest of the regular season and still get him his redshirt.
• Upshaw and Vilain are your #4 and #5 DEs, it appears.
• Backup LBs were Barrett/Jordan Anthony/Gil. Our Josh Ross Is Redshirting thunder was rather stolen by Harbaugh's press conference, but, yeah: Josh Ross is redshirting. He can still play one more game.
• Backup secondary appears to be Gemon Green/Jaylen Kelly-Powell at corner and Sammy Faustin/Hunter Reynolds at safety.

Anthony Solomon also got a few snaps. He's played consistently on special teams and is this year's least explicable burned redshirt.

[After THE JUMP: many plays, no points]

This series is a work-in-progress glossary of football concepts we tend to talk about in these pages. Previously:

Offensive concepts: RPOs, high-low, snag, mesh, covered/ineligible receivers, Duo, zone vs gap blocking, zone stretch, split zone, pin and pull, counter trey, inverted veer, reach block, kickout block, wham block, Y banana play, TRAIN, the run & shoot

Defensive concepts: The 3-3-5, Contain & lane integrity, force player, hybrid space player, no YOU’RE a 3-4!, scrape exchange, Tampa 2, Saban-style pattern-matching, match quarters, Dantonio’s quarters, Don Brown’s 4-DL packages and 3-DL packages, Bear

Special Teams: Spread punt vs NFL-style

We've been throwing around a term for how Michigan is playing defense this year a lot lately and haven't stopped to explain what it means: Playing to Spill.

Definition

Playing to spill is a defensive technique where the force player (edge defender) dives inside of a kickout block while another defender pops outside. This is done on the fly, usually against power runs, as a way to screw up blocking assignments and force the ballcarrier into this now-unblocked outside defender.

A play

So Maryland—not for the reason you might think—runs an offense extremely similar to Michigan's. Particularly this week they were heavy into arc zone read and its counter, split zone, plus pin and pull and its flipside, Counter Trey. We've discussed Counter Trey on here a bunch. It's Pin & Pull the opposite direction with some counter action in the backfield to get the defense stepping to the frontside before you swing the ballcarrier and a few escorts to the backside.

Locksley's Terps will kindly demonstrate this for us:

This is vintage Locksley: trying to get you thinking about a run one way so you're not paying attention when it goes the other way, then he thunks your edge guy outside, pins you inside, and rips somebody's heart out. On this play you see the tight end come across the formation and the running back step that way like it's going to be that edge pitch Penn State liked to run, and it's a surprise when the ball goes the other direction. Michigan's defense wasn't fooled however.

Remember, the pulling guard coming across the formation is trying to kick out Aiden Hutchinson, DE #97 on the top of the line.  I want you to pay close attention to Aiden's response to the kickout. The pulling guard wants Aiden standing outside all passively. Aiden has other plans; he sees the guard coming…

…and leaps inside of him:

Aiden has now placed himself in the intended running lane. But this is Maryland's most base play, and the guard doing the kicking knows how to respond to this: turn the end inside. If you recall Michigan was doing the same thing on their pin & pulls versus Illinois.

The difference is here Michigan's defense has an edge.

[After THE JUMP: a scrape exchange for power]