are we saving the obvious counters for PSU/OSU?

This game felt like the army game from last year or the time we put denard under center at Iowa.  Thanks for actually pointing out what really caused it.  
 

Now I’d like to know whose game plan it was...

Can we fix this or is the season doomed? I was worried about Wiscy & PSU. Now I'm worried about Maryland and Indiana.

Given the opponent, this game plan is a fireable offense.

I have a few thoughts:

1) Michigan has botched recruiting to the point where their scheme cannot be flawed.

2) Under Harbaugh, the scheme has regularly been flawed but he used to have the talent to make up for it. They no longer do.

3) Assuming Michigan's academics are always going to be an issue regardless of coaches, they need to improve their scheme while simultaneously simplifying it. Don Brown's defense's, on top of no longer making sense, are far too complicated. Give me a coach who can teach a few things well over being worried about having too many bullets.

4) I don't know what the fuck they're trying to do on offense. Might as well have built on the prostyle offense Jedd was a part of with Harbaugh establishing the "Stanford style" he had preferred than to meddle with a spread offense he knows less about.

At this point just give me coherence.

Welp, almost as much fun reading about the coaching malpractice as watching it on Saturday. Spread and speed-in-space replaced by manball and meatgrinder-in-phone booth. Harbaugh had to control the offensive game plan.

What coach thought this game plan would generate 40+ points? That is necessary in current football to ensure success. If things don’t go well, you still score 30+.  PSU scored 25 v OSU, BC scored 28 v Clemson, UM scored 24 ... all lost.

What happens when Milton plays a very good defense?

It looked like 2019 all over again with Shea handing off, then turning around to see no one for 15 yards when that could have been a read option keep. And this happened multiple times.

It looked like a completely different game plan versus building on the week-1 successes.  Also, MSU was poorly scouted and when basic stuff was not working there was no adjustment at halftime.  I don't get it.  Very strange.  It was like the coaches thought "MSU is so terrible we don't need to prepare any of the good stuff" ... wrong.

Appreciate the effort this must have taken, but I just can't right now. Too fresh. I was "concerned" going into the game, I always get that way when this board gets all cocky. 

/sigh

This is pretty infuriating. We had a great offensive game plan in week one. The media and this blog were gushing about it. The perfect blend of speed in space and manball. There were so many ways we could build off it and continue to keep opposing defenses guessing...then we come out with this sludge fart of a game plan. Credit to MSU. They took away our pin & pull and kept everything underneath in the passing game. But we made zero adjustments throughout the whole game. That is coaching malpractice. I don't know if Gattis was handcuffed by Harbaugh in this one or the coaches looked past MSU or what happened, but we took multiple steps backwards on offense from both a execution and play calling stand point.

The 2019 spring game highlights are just the continual tease of what things could be. A lot of those plays have never seen the field for us in an actual game.    

My takeaway is the team was not prepared on either side of the ball, again.

That falls squarely on the shoulders of Harbaugh.

 The consensus here seems to be that he's a better than average coach but I don't see it at all.

There are a few strong candidates but I have to say, when you take both offense and defense together? Worst gameplan of the Harbaugh Era

Maybe I'm being dense, but I feel like Seth meant the title to be "Arrogance is a feature." On my reading, what he's arguing is that Michigan didn't respect MSU and so came out with a vanilla game plan, which suggests that arrogance is a feature (not a bug) that's baked into the football program and which leads to results such as these. Or am I not getting it?

Mentions of the Army game may be appropriate not because the details of the game are similar but because the Army game plan and play calling were completely mystifying--similar to this game. When I look back at that game what Michigan was doing was almost incomprehensible. We had all assumed that the Army game was a speed bump in Gattis' development that would not be repeated. But maybe instead Gattis is prone to a few really bad game plans, particularly when he does not respect the opposing defense, and then is unable to make adjustments on the fly.

The two wild cat calls immediately made me very concerned for Gattis. Even before the second snap. The first one is whatever. The wild cat is fashionable and it worked last week. Michigan seems to view it as some fancy trickery much more than it really is but whatever. The head scratching part was running it the second time. Given how spectacularly unsuccessful it was the first time, the 3rd down play was either stupid beyond belief and had no chance of scoring or it was the most obvious trick play ever. Even casual observers KNOW that Michigan had never passed out of the wild cat. Even in that OSU game when they kept running it over and over unsuccessfully. They did not have to show run out of the wild cat on the previous play to get them with the pass. I am sure every MSU coach and player were well aware of the tendencies. Doing it two times in a row didn't increase the deception--it made it more obvious. 

" In fact they took the clever parts of the offense that were so successful against Minnesota out of it, to the point where I wonder if Josh Gattis had much to do with this gameplan at all."

This is the key line in my opinion.  What in the name of sweet fuck happened?  Almost like those games were called by two different people.  Or the same person with someone else imposing upon him.  It looked like a whole different offense.  I'm not all that well-versed in football nuances (never played beyond high school) but it was pretty obvious watching the offense that we didn't even attempt to do what we did last week.

I think MSU was prepared to take some hits on those bubble screens and such in return for shutting down our inside run game.  They must have been flabbergasted that we never even really tried it...

Game theory curiosity on this. And I’m not sure how I lean, but the old “lizard brain” theory comes into play. If a coaching staff feels they have perceived superior advantages, it seems they would want to mitigate variance and be less risky. I.e protect your qb, run the ball, no turnovers , and let the perceived advantages win out. But it’s fools gold and it lets the opponent stay within striking distance, allowing for a few big plays to flip the script of the game by luck, bad officiating, or just finding their own advantage. Wouldn’t you rather come out and find a way to hang 70 on your opponent any way possible even if it exposes you to some turnover potential? Or is that just too risky for our coaches?

I wonder if Harbaugh’s “influence” on the offense will have Gattis looking for another gig soon or if he was a willing participant in this debacle. I understand the Head Coach has the final say with every decision, but if the OC feels like his hands are being tied, he will probably look elsewhere for an opportunity where he had a like-minded head coach or one that will give him full reign to game plan and call his own plays.

Seth, don’t you think formation selection is as much a problem as anything?  A lot of two tights, sometime with wing-adds and condensed slot sets, that draw everyone (and I mean everyone) in to help against the run.  
I feel like those kinds of sets just invite 8-ish man boxes all day and it leads to beating our heads into a wall. 

I’d prefer we just spread to run.

Against Minnesota the whole spread the field speed-in-space thing worked very well.   So naturally the coaching staff ditched it against an opponent with a speed disadvantage.  

Unreal.  

I have a lot of issues with play #1 under "Problem #1: Execution."

First, I hate lining up in a condensed formation to run the ball inside. There are too many bodies, and all it takes is one guy messing up a block to kill the play.

On top of that, when you bring 8 or 9 guys into the box, that's a lot more to sort through for the offensive line. The rule on power for the pulling guard is to block the MIKE vs. a 3-man core and block the SAM vs. a 2-man core. I think Stueber gets confused about whom he should block. 

To the contrary, if you spread things out, it more clearly defines the blocks for the offensive line, because there aren't extra safeties and corners edging into the box.

On the Corum touchdown, I think the blocking is fine from Mason/Mayfield. Mason and Mayfield should double team to the WILL linebacker, but the WILL never shows, so they don't have to come off their double.

This isn't coaching, this is arrogance masquerading as malpractice.  Was the objective to mano-o-mano MSU to death?  How do you "build" on what worked with Minny by totally scraping what appeared to be your offense's identity... and why are we seeing this kind of schizo approach in year 6?!  

Gattis - year 2, Warriner - year 3, Brown - year 4, & Harbaugh - year 6 = No Stability.  There's something going on in that building and it ain't good.  

Arrogance has been a staple of Michigan football since 1969.

So after six years, it's now "don't trust the coaches?"  Got it.

That was coaching malpractice. Harbaugh said the team has to own it...well, he does too. All the drumbeats of him being on the hot seat? Own it. Because there is zero excuse to lose to one of your main rivals as 20+ point favorites. Nothing about how MSU played Saturday should be a surprise - that is how they play in this rivalry, and once again Michigan's own arrogance is their downfall.

I mean it wasn't MSU lucking to victory or a refjob...it was MSU thoroughly outplaying and outcoaching Michigan the whole damn game. The fact that it was a 3 point loss actually hides how lopsided the game was. After what we saw a week earlier - and yes, I understand Minnesota was massively overrated - there's just no excuse for the arrogance in display in the conservative gameplan. 

The thing that gets me though is - where was the playcalling from a week prior? Shoot, even the year prior with these very same coaches against the very same team? You are so arrogant to think you don't need to be aggressive against your 2nd most hated rival? The fuck, man. 

I'm not on the "fire Harbaugh" bandwagon but for the first time I have no interest in defending him. He has to own this, not me. He has to figure out a way to beat OSU, not me. MSU felt like an inflection point. Even with covid and all that (there's really a lot of weirdness going around in football this year), to see Michigan revert back to their old selves again under Harbaugh is just really tiring.