Let's Not And Say We Did
Michigan's ground game stopped being effective in 1995.
I'm not sure if Jon Chait was reacting to the latest MANBALL quote from Brady Hoke or not, but when an article titled "You Can't Go Home Again" pops up the day after Michigan's new head coach says this:
"Once we get the power play down, then we'll go to the next phase. You know, because we're gonna run the power play."…
"We don't have a lot of fullbacks." Hopkins works out well at FB "for a lot of the old 49ers stuff" with split backs. Hoke wants fullbacks to block so hard they "come in at about 6-3, and leave the program at 6-1." …
It's hard to think otherwise. Of course, even ESPN folk have picked up on Hoke's love affair with the word "toughness"—the article could have been spurred by anything Hoke's said over the last three months. There are consistent reports that Hoke makes condescending comments about the spread at alumni events. Manball? Manball.
Some people love this. In my mind they all look like this…
yes, that's the Beckmann aficionado
…and could be coaching Purdue. I would not want to get in a conversation with any of these people because they would have very strong opinions about things they know nothing about. They would repeat inane aphorisms as if those were the final word on any subject, and they would regard any dispute as evidence of a diseased mind. I have talked to these people on the radio some. It's not fun. I close my eyes and imagine the exact dimensions and color of their mustaches. They are boringly consistent.
My hope is Hoke is a brilliant, innocent-as-snow delegator or a con man. He's got a quarterback who was an All-American as a true sophomore last year because of his legs. He's got an offensive coordinator whose track record suggests he prefers to air it out and that things get desperately bad when MANBALL advocates push him away from his mad bombing ways. He's got a set of running backs best described as underwhelming, a center who can teleport his way into tough reach blocks, and a guard who can block Manti Te'o twenty yards downfield. If the offseason could be spent fixing whatever it is that causes Robinson to turn the ball over willy-nilly, Michigan's offense would be insane. According to statistical things it already is.
Switching to an actual pro-style offense would be doing exactly what Michigan did last year when it installed the 3-3-5 despite the total unsuitability of its personnel for the scheme. It would be exactly as stupid. It can't be as bad statistically because instead of true freshman two star Ray Vinopal backed up by a duck, next to a walk on, and vaguely in front of more freshmen you have ten returning starters and Denard Robinson, but it would be just as dumb. If Hoke's bravado about being a bunch of tough bastards who love grinding out four yards on a power play is true I'm worried for the immediate and long term future of the program in the same way I was when hiring Greg Robinson caused me to dig out a picture of Tweek.
On the other hand, Beckmann aficionados love that stuff, and so do the newspapers that are no longer read by anyone other than Beckmann aficionados. English has developed lingo to distinguish words meant to be true from words meant to produce inoffensive newspaper blather: the latter is coachspeak. Rich Rodriguez was beyond awful at coachspeak. Hoke is a grand master. When IBM develops "Jim" and challenges Hoke to a duel, Watson-style, Hoke will destroy his opponent so badly smoke will come out of its nonexistent ears like that robot asked to rhyme something with "orange" in a story I read when I was eight. Hoke will lament Jim's lack of toughness.
This is a real skill the last three years have shown is way more important than you'd think. It's a relief when every press conference is Hoke being gently tickled on the belly and fed peeled grapes, and telling everyone you're establishing a mindset of toughness is fine. It's something that will help the program in the long run.
As long as you don't believe yourself. It won't help as much as winning a crapton of games, and even if the defense gets vastly better the best way to do that next year is to have an offense that puts up points, and the best way to do that is to very gently shift the offense towards your long term vision while still keeping Denard in the Heisman race.
This isn't 2008, when Michigan was screwed no matter what offense they put in. Getting Michigan's offense to go from explosive but inconsistent to world-destroying is a matter of getting a kicker, finding a good running back, working on Denard's reads and accuracy, and leaving everything else the hell alone. Michigan can't reasonably do that because they've got new coaches, but how hard is it to run a QB lead draw and follow that with QB Lead Oh Noes? The secret of Michigan's 2010 offense is that the zone read was hardly used. The other secret is it was a power running offense, one more effective than anything Michigan's run in at least the last decade and probably a lot longer.
Michigan YPC Career Leaders Since 1949 (min: 100 carries)
| # | Name | Att | Yds | Yd/Att | TD | Lng | From | To |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1t | D. Robinson | 325 | 2053 | 6.3 | 19 | 87 | 2009 | 2010 |
| 1t | Jon Vaughn | 226 | 1421 | 6.3 | 9 | 63 | 1989 | 1990 |
| 2 | Kerry Smith | 154 | 950 | 6.2 | 5 | 29 | 1980 | 1983 |
| 3 | Tyrone Wheatley | 688 | 4178 | 6.1 | 47 | 88 | 1991 | 1994 |
| 4 | Tshimanga Biakabutuka | 472 | 2810 | 6 | 24 | 60 | 1993 | 1995 |
| 5 | Rob Lytle | 557 | 3307 | 5.9 | 26 | 75 | 1973 | 1976 |
| 6 | Allen Jefferson | 175 | 1002 | 5.7 | 14 | 70 | 1987 | 1990 |
Michigan YPC, Team, Since 2001
| # | Year | YPC |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2010 | 5.58 |
| 2 | 2009 | 4.52 |
| 3 | 2006 | 4.27 |
| 4 | 2003 | 4.25 |
| 5 | 2007 | 3.97 |
| 6 | 2008 | 3.91 |
| 7 | 2005 | 3.89 |
| 8 | 2004 | 3.83 |
| 9 | 2002 | 3.82 |
| 10 | 2001 | 3.59 |
Borges should install his passing game immediately and Michigan should start running power schemes more frequently—power did feature occasionally last year—if they want to, but lining up under center to hand it off to Vincent Smith isn't going to be any better of an idea in 2011 than it was in 2010.
You can run a "pro-style" offense, but run it from the shotgun and run downhill using Denard Robinson as one of three primary tailbacks. You can't get rid of the scare quotes because he's Denard Robinson. If you do run a no-scare-quotes pro-style offense he's not Denard Robinson anymore. He's the guy handing off and you're walking back into the days where Michigan averaged less than four yards per carry and ran 65% of the time.
I think Borges knows this, but Hoke's coachspeak is going to make this the most terrifying spring game of all time.
Some people love this. In my mind they all look like this… and could be coaching Purdue. I would not want to get in a conversation with any of these people because they would have very strong opinions about things they know nothing about. They would repeat inane aphorisms as if those were the final word on any subject, and they would regard any dispute as evidence of a diseased mind. I have talked to these people on the radio some. It's not fun. I close my eyes and imagine the exact dimensions and color of their mustaches. They are boringly consistent.
This is classic Brian Cook, absolutely slathered with a clever sarcasm that is only equaled by its rational intelligence. It's like watching those old movies of pre-accident Chuck Close painting... or in this case, Denard running. Bravo, my friend.
Don't get me wrong, I hate what you're saying and I hope you couldn't be more wrong about next season, ya big naysaying bloggy freak... but that's some good stuff right there.
I need to send this to my mom. Most frustrating person to argue with. She immediately skips to another point if you confront her with evidence that contradicts her ideas. And then she acts like that is ok and normal.
She would be smarter if she just said: "Whatever Brian Cook says"?
Apparently you don't have a lot of experience with the fairer (god that's an ironic word) sex, other than your mom that is. This is SOP.
Let me call it: she is going to say it's hilarious and SO APPLIES to everyone except herself.
I'm printing this off and carrying it around with me for the rest of my life.
Regarding your flow-chart, I guess I wonder whether Brian can envision anything that will change his mind about this topic.
If not, then he is just as guilty of not being able to have a discussion as the mustachioed purveyors of MANBALL (God, I hate that term!) that he is deriding in this post.
close's post accident work, for me, is much more emotive due to the lack of precision his body allows. technically, it is superior as well if you consider that moving around a studio in a wheelchair and lift is no easy task.
+1 for helping to keep MGoBlog highbrow.
I am hopeful and very cautiously optimistic that Hoke understands what pieces he has and how to be successful with them. Every interview he has had he has talked about how he knows he has to adapt and use the talents of D Rob and everyone else. I am hoping he finds a nice balance of the power game mixed in with plays that maximize the best parts of our offense from last year. That type of balance would be perfect in terms of being able to control the clock, have huge plays and be unpredictable.
According to insiders on other sites, it seems like we might be pleasantly surprised at how our offense looks this year.
Lets just say that Denard is very happy with this offense so far.
This is why I will not quickly get over the firing of RR. I can't for the life of me understand why we couldn't have just hired a D-Coord (ala Mattison) and kept RR to run a top 5 offense nationally that was only going to get better. No....but instead lets install a new coach with a losing record that wants to change the system to the way we used to do things, which in the end, didnt necessarily work out so well. 3 years was not enough time to makeover an entire program. I was unhappy with the status quo before RR was hired. A reversion to the old way is not progress!
Although I agree with you that 3 years was not enough time to makeover the program and Rodriguez should have been given one more year, he is ultimately responsible for the horrendous state of the defense and special teams. He hired G. Robinson, a coordinator with no recent success, and then forced him to run an esoteric scheme for which he (Robinson) had no experience. Not to mention his complete neglect of special teams.
I think Rodriguez is a great coach, and will more than likely find success at wherever he ends up next. I also think he should have been given at least another year. But it's pretty disingenuous to give him all the credit for a high powered offense, while hoisting all the blame for the D and special teams on other people. (Plus, you make it sound like Mattison or someone of similar caliber: 1. would have come to UM to work under Rodriguez, and 2. that Rodriguez would be willing to hire someone and let them run whatever scheme they wanted, which he clearly didn't like to do.)
In sum, Rodriguez was the head coach, not the offensive coordinator.
but what we don't know is what was discussed in those post-season meetings between RR and DB. i'm guessing RR out of loyalty was reluctant to get rid of his D assistants, thus was fired. i have no inside info. just my conspiracy theory.
otherwise, i too, would have been for retaining RR and dumping all the D coaches and throwing $$ at quality new guys.
It would've been interesting to see what would've happened had we just hired a new DC and seen what RichRod could've done with another year... Cuz damn. The offense was working & would've been even better this year.
Without Hoke, though, I doubt we would've gotten a DC at Mattison-level. So... there's that.
I am excited about the future, though, because I think if we're going to be the defensive team it looks like we'll be 3-4 years down the road, the offensive playmakers will follow. Kids just want to win, and defense is a huge part of that (obviously).
It's hard to imagine us being able to pull in a top quality DC that would surrender any kind of first right of refusal on who his position coaches would be, and circustancial evidence would seem to suggest that final say on whether those position coaches would be retained would lie with Rodriguez, not negotiatble. Under these circumstances, anyone not named Jeff Casteel probably wouldn't be very successful.
March 25th, 2011 at 11:41 AM ^
...Casteel did not want the Michigan DC gig. It was offered after tOSU game and he declined.
Rich Rod took two shots with a defensive coordinator and neither worked. Why would a third time be different? Would a good DC be all that excited to come work for him given what has gone on for the last three years on the defensive side of the ball?
<br>
<br>Will a good DC fix the special teams?
The only thing that would have made sense if you kept Rodriguez was a complete gutting of the defensive side of the ball with Rodriguez essentially saying he would stay away from that side of the ball. It would have meant Brandon picking the d-coordinator and the d-coordinator picking all his assistants.
Maybe then you could have gotten a top notch d-coordinator in here, if you paid him a lot. But that probably wasn't acceptable to Rodriguez and sadly, we'll never know what could have been.
He hired GERG! Blame GERG if you must but RR hired GERG! RR also insisted on the 3-3-5 and nobody with a name was coming back to coach the D after the Bowl game humiliation.
I think Brian is going to have a heart attack if this team does not win 10 games this year and I do not see that as fair. 8 wins will be failure in his eyes and that seems as unfair as anyone expecting RR to win 9 last year.
Although Hoke has more to work with year one then RR 8 wins and an improved Defense would be a FAIR first year. From what I have read early on I question if Brian is being fair and opened minded to Hoke in his first year.
No. A 1 win improvement over last year is not enough to make being upset about it "unfair," given that a.) we won 7 games last year, b.) the entire offense is back, c.) the defense and kicking can't actually be any worse. The measuring stick for next year is 9 wins, assuming no catastrophic injury to Denard. It was 9 wins if RR was coach, and it should be 9 wins if Hoke is coach. Many people make very valid points re: RR, such as "he hadn't figured out how to hire a good DC and leave him alone before; why would he now?" and I can understand that. But changing coaches in a time where we come back pretty well-loaded and are not undergoing a radical change (I think it's a lot harder to go from Lloyd ball to Spread n' Shred than vice-versa) doesn't, to me at least, give Hoke a pass on his first year. Especially when, in reality, his only qualifications for the job which made him a more desireable coach than other, middling non-BCS coaches with a sub-.500 career winning percentage were that a.) he loves U of M, and b.) he coached here.
I've heard that for 3 straight years...
No you haven't. You haven't heard, seriously, that 9 wins was the expectation. At least not from most people around here. Most people predicted 7-8 wins last year, with 7 being the "expectation," I thought. Nor that a guy with a sub-.500 career record should be Michigan's coach because he really wants to be and used to coach here. I want Hoke to succeed. But to say he had a resume which was really up-to-par with what you'd expect to hire at a place like U of M- top 10 program- is specious.
March 24th, 2011 at 10:16 PM ^
He was talking about choice 'c'.
March 25th, 2011 at 12:52 AM ^
Ha. I thought he was saying "c. I've heard that for three years" in regard to the a. and b. at the end of the post. I should've used a different notation system. And yeah, I understand that argument- that the defense and kicking couldn't get any worse, and we said that after 08 and 09, but I think the defense in 08 was only bad because the offense was so terrible, which I thought then as well. But really, I think when you have what was the worst defense not only in Michigan history, I think, but like what- last in D-1 by multiple metrics?... and the worst kicking game in the country, field goal-wise, it actually can't get worse. At least ranking-wise. I guess numerically it could; we could conceivably give up 70 pts a game and hit zero field goals.
I'll be extremely happy when our power game isn't Smith up the middle. No offense to Smith, as he's a terrific athelete, but that's just not his game. If Toussaint or Cox are able to pound it up the middle effectively, our offense is just going to be that much harder to stop. Hoke's not an idiot. He'd be a fool to ignore what Denard brings to the table. Over time we'll probably transition fully to a pro-style offense, but for the time being, a mix of the two is probably ideal for these players' skills.
Hopefully, Hoke understands what he has with Denard. You have to believe that he does or he wouldn't have made such a big effort to ensure that Denard stays at Michigan and to state early and often that he intends to incorporate Denard's skills in the new offense. If what happened in 08 happens this year because a coach refused to be flexible with the talent at hand, all the love being thrown at Hoke will quickly disappear. Hoke has to know this.
Even if RichRod had stayed, my thought was that Denard's number of runs had to be diminished by a good chunk if you want to keep him healthy.
just step back from the ledge. You just had a bad dream ...
Can we actually see what's really happening on the football field, prior to assuming the fetal position. Remember ... the biggest issue with the past 3 seasons was the Defense, not the offense. This offense will produce no matter what scheme it runs ... precisely because of Denard and the experience we now possess.
Let's have a little faith & Go Blue !
Brian would totally jump from the Bell Tower, not some random ledge.
I agree with the rest of your post.
I prefer to wait and see what happens. There is no way they will take the only good thing with our game the past year and screw it all up. Also, a little dinosaur football might be a good thing!
if it came right down to it, and jumping were necessary, I would have asked that he jump from the RenCen and attempt to land on the offices of the Free Press, but looking at Google Maps, I see that's somewhat improbable.
However, perhaps Brian could be convinced to not actually jump, but glide instead ... large objects dropped from the proper height might do everyone some good (designed to damage property, of course, not actually harm anyone, even Drew Sharp, who may not even be human), and would also remove the nasty consequence of the fall.
I like this post because it spells out the same reason for cautious optimism that I'm feeling. I pray to God that Hoke is full of coachspeak and realizes the offense doesn't need to be an all-or-nothing change into a downhill manball power play toughness competition.
There are quite a few different looks/systems Borges can use from different parts of his career. I'm most excited about the way he's been able to shift the run-pass ratio to suit his offenses (most recently heavier on the passing so we'll see what he does with Denard's speed). I know our offense won't be Oregon 2010/Oklahoma 2009 but we will still have solid production and a good running back emerge...
...That's what I'm telling myself, at least.
Didn't Borges have some quote recently about them being open to running some spread plays, even the read option, just that it won't be their base offense?
Consider me in the cautiously optimistic group. Given how much other coaches and current and former players like and respect the new staff, I'm willing to assume (for now) that they know what they're doing.
I'm coming down on the coachspeak/setting tone side of things. It's too hard to imagine that coaching at Ball State and San Diego State doesn't teach how to adapt to the resources at hand.
1. I think it remains to be seen how the coaches take advantage of the relative strengths of the o-line. If a man lines head up on Molk or Omameh they were going to have to deal with them directly. If not, regardless of the scheme they get to move to block someone else. I'm working under the assumption that Borges has seen a variety of linemen and have thought about how to use them to the fullest advantage.
2. Perhaps, the best way to cut down on Robinson's turnovers is not to run him to the tune of 1700 yards.
3. Borges has said he's going to use some shotgun too, so it's a matter of seeing. I'm working off the assumption that if Borges sees A works and B doesn't then he'll do a lot more of A and not so much of B, irrespective of what A and B are. What coaches intend to do is more relevant for games 1 and 2; what seems to be working is more relevant for games there on. For example, did you think Beilein thought at the start of the year that he'd be running this much man and pick & rolls?
Bottom line is that it's fine to have an eyebrow raised and perhaps point out what could be a mistake, but I would drink myself in a stupor because dumb was pre-ordained.
Perhaps, the best way to cut down on Robinson's turnovers is not to run him to the tune of 1700 yards.
Perhaps, you have no idea what you are talking about. Lots of people run 1700 yards in football and don't fumble as much.
But no one has been asked to run 1700 yards, not fumble, and THROW 30 times a game. To his team only.
Turnovers weren't just on the ground
We are talking about Denard, not "lots of people" here. What some other guy may be capable of is irrelevant.
My concern is less the occasional fumble than the fact that he nearly had to be carted out on a wheelchair at the end of last season. 20+ carries a game with a 193-pound quarterback is a questionable move.
Perhaps you think turnovers=fumbles. When I check stats pages, turnovers = fumbles + interceptions. Now, maybe you're right that the interceptions had nothing to do with all the carries and hits he took. And, I'll calmly listen to any evdience that you proffer.
Really??? There were 2 in all of college football last year (Denard was one), three the year before, and three the year before that. Not exactly "lots."
Brian just watch some SDSU from last year and relax. They did a lot of work from the shotgun and had a tiny fast tailback. Hoke is just practicing good politics.
If it's just politics, he can call the spread a joke all day long as far as I'm concerned. The perception of the program over the last 3 years hurt us almost as much as the results on the field, and if MANBALL quotes are what it takes to change that, they are officially my favorite quotes.
I don't believe we're going to be running everything out of the I-formation and pro sets next year, but if we do then Hoke will be picking up where RR left off, just with the opposite failures.
That fact of the matter is that the SDSU offense passed a metric shit ton last year and did not just run power I runs all day. Their star running back was a tiny freshman and they shredded TCU's defense with a LOT of 3 and 4 WR sets. The big thing is that now we have a quarterback who can run. Now granted Hoke's QB's have not been runners in the past, but that could very well be because he didn't HAVE anyone on his teams that was much of a dual threat QB.
I've only seen some clips of SDSU last year, but that's my sense too. He wasn't running a 1-dimensional, 3 yards and a cloud of dust every play offense. I certainly don't think there's any reason to worry until we see the team do ANYTHING at any rate.
...my analysis as well. MANBALL is for team and public consumption. Assume Michigan's offense is successful next year, because the rhetoric is so strong in this direction it will be deemed power football by the media and the public. The extent to which the offense features aspects that are not really power football will be largely irrelevant to this perception.
Hopefully it will be like Beilein's 1-3-1: the media is 100% convinced we run nothing else, but instead we deploy it somewhat sparingly when JB sees an opportunity.
Some people are afriad MANBALL quotes == Woody's 1957 playbook. In my mind they all look like this…
I'm hoping that Hoke knows that the majority of people are too damn stupid to know the difference between MANBALL and any other non-spread offense. If it looks different and works, there will be no complaints from anyone that we're not following the "three yards and a cloud of dust" mantra.
Because out of the 2 practice-type heavily-edited videos we've seen from spring practice.... Denard is running with the ball tucked in both of them. Multiple times. I'm hoping it's coachspeak, and by "Power Run" Hoke is thinking "QB Power"
Denard has run in all the practice videos I've seen... back away from the ledge for now
Comments