"Never mind the maneuvers, just go straight at them." –Admiral Horatio Nelson
"Never do this." –Dude who fought at the Somme

[GAME OF THRONES SPOILER ALERT]

So yesterday military and football strategists were dunking on the Night King's gameplan for taking Winterfell. Leaving aside the unique military advantage of being able to convert your enemy's defeated soldier's into fresh troops, iceman here had a thousand lifespans to plan his attack on humanity, and somehow the best he could come up with was to walk straight into the Godswood.

[END SPOILER]

A direct frontal assault could be your best chance in some cases, but if we learned anything from 20th century warfare, it's that that you should probably avoid it when you can. That's not just my thought. In 1954 the British military historian B.H. Liddell Hart published Strategy: The Indirect Approach, a seminal work on military history largely informed by the lessons of two World Wars he participated in. The book, which is in the public domain, discusses the strategies of great generals and their counterparts in various time periods and theaters, and is well worth the (short) read that most people who reference him never undertake (especially his take on Ludendorff). Hart favors tactics that get the enemy moving one way then hitting them where they ain't:

To move along the line of natural expectation consolidates the opponent's equilibrium, and, by stiffening it, augments his resisting power…An examination of military history—not of one period but of its whole course—brings out the point that in almost all the decisive campaigns the dislocation of the enemy's psychological and physical balance has been the vital prelude to a successful attempt at his overthrow.

Admittedly, Hart's conclusions are colored by his biases, and he is so often misquoted by wannabe business Napoleons that most people who've heard of Hart now roll their eyes at his mention. But the guy had a point, and I think if he was alive this spring, Hart probably would have really enjoyed some of the things he saw in Michigan's running game under new offensive coordinator Josh Gattis.

Others did as well:

Q pin/pull concept paired a flare RPO. @UMichFootball ran this a ton out of 22 personnel. Good stuff @Coach_Gattis! pic.twitter.com/FHsaG96S95

— All-22 Film Breakdown (@All22_Breakdown) April 19, 2019

Brian commented that these plays reminded him of the way Scott Frost attacked us in 2016. Here's an example of one of those things except run two weeks later by the offensive staff Gattis was a part of at the time:

A lot of plays could lay claim to represent the Indirect Approach school of rushing offense—simple outside zone is a good candidate—but here you really see the Hart philosophy at play. You've got three frontside receivers and a backside tackle pull directing defensive material away from the point of attack. Look at all the guys whose reads are telling them to move/stay to the (offense's) left:

That's a lot of red.

A zone read of the unblocked defensive end is there as a contingency; worst-case scenario the optioned DE (Taco) decides to fling himself upfield into Barkley's path, and quarterback can dive forward behind a puller and a double-team, still a numeric advantage.

The way to defend this from Michigan's base cover 1 would be for the weakside linebacker (McCray, with the green edged thought bubble above) to beat the crack block from the top receiver, and for the cornerback on that side (Stribling) to see the crack and "replace," i.e. take over McCray's edge duties and force Barkley back inside. They both misplayed it and Barkley picked up 30 yards en route to…

/checks drive chart
/looks at scoreboard
/re-checks drive chart

So that's what we mean about getting the defense moving one way to attack elsewhere. This play is a stark (not sorry) example of this running philosophy. Now let's see how 2019 Michigan's using it.

[After the JUMP: Gattis hasn't given up]

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Let's start with the second play that All-22 tweeted out, because it went more according to plan. It's a Flare Screen run-pass option attached to a Pin & Pull run. The Pin & Pull is an old Harbaugh staple—you can take the link if you're interested in how they decide who pulls and whatnot. Its basic principle is any lineman in a position to pin a defensive lineman where he is does so, and the rest try to pull around—good ol' fashioned flanking tactics. Here's Michigan running it last year:

And here's them running it this year:

Gattis has done two things with the old power staple:

1. He buys himself an extra threat by turning the quarterback into a ballcarrier.
2. He uses that extra threat to get rid of the one defender with a chance of making a play, forcing him to run the opposite direction to cover a run-pass option flare screen to the running back.

In the Indiana example Michigan got good yardage from everyone making their blocks, particularly Onwenu. But after 12 yards the weakside linebacker was able to become relevant and that's all we get. Patterson just stood there watching. In the spring game example, that linebacker has to run himself completely out of the play, and even with Bredeson failing to get out in space the play gets to the endzone because the other linebacker was distracted by the flare screen too.

Let's watch the one from the spring play again but this time keep your eye on the middle linebacker, #34 Jordan Anthony, and see what happens to him when Tru Wilson takes off like that:

Anthony is NOT supposed to do that. He's not the guy being read, and needs to react to two linemen running the other way. McCaffrey's eyes are clearly on the WLB, Devin Gil, to decide if the flare screen is open. It's a mistake. But you know how things are on flare screens and the like: sometimes your buddies need help. The way Michigan ran this play last year, that guy isn't thinking about threats to his left. Run this way, not only is he tempted to go the wrong way, but that simple mistake is a death sentence; those false steps by Anthony are all a McCaffery needs to migrate to the endzone.

And that's the point. The flare screen, along with the spread formation, gets half the defense moving in the wrong direction when the offense is about run out the other side.

Anthony isn't the only guy stepping the wrong way. Hawkins, the deep safety responsible for all that receiver material on the other side, also took a step the wrong way, essentially removing any chance of him beating McCaffrey to the pylon. And though he's got less of an excuse, look where spring hype leader Donovan Jeter is lined up and what happens to him.

"FailingHardtofindCow"…seriously I love you gfycat.

Let's try to think of that as a sign Cesar Ruiz is going to reach block everyone to death, not that our best shot at a new DT screwed up.

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So now let's get to the second play*, which could have gone for all the yards after Gattis caught Don Brown with the wrong blitz. Use a re-watch of the clip below on Glasgow, the weakside linebacker:

Glasgow is #23 the LB to the top

We call that "attacking the mesh point" (the spot the QB and RB would come together while reading the option)—a blitz strategy used against teams that option a lot. If you watched enough of Michigan last year, when they lined up like this (with two tight ends or a full back and a tight end on the same side) it usually meant they were doing something out of their zone-read/split zone/arc zone package. That Glasgow blitz would blow that package up in any number of ways. Had Gattis been around, he might have proffered this solution:

line colors are mostly so you can find the guy after all the moving

Again, Joe Milton here reads linebacker (green above) to make sure he's going with the running back, except this time the WLB blitzes and the MLB has to bail after the flare screen. That's fine—Milton is just reading whether someone is covering the flare. When Glasgow gets to the mesh point both backs have already split.

This should give the offense a big play. It didn't because Mustapha Muhammad(-0.5)'s block didn't go nearly as well as McKeon's in the previous example, and because Filiaga(-1) couldn't block his DT the way Onwenu handled his. It still got a chunk of yards despite these issues because the defensive player who would normally be unblocked and flowing to the gap is running full speed away from the ball.

In the words of Hart, true concentration is the fruit of calculated dispersion.

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* The tweet says 22 personnel but unless one of the off-screen receivers was a fullback or something this was 12 personnel, meaning 1 back and 2 tight ends. When coaches say "22" they mean two backs and two tight ends, like how you would say "3-4" to signify a defense with three down linemen and four linebackers.