From the very first snap Michigan knew they had a problem against Manny Diaz's defense. Those defensive linemen LOVE to get into the backfield. Watch the DT lined up on the bottom hash.

Our left tackle, LaDarius Henderson, is supposed to block down on that DT, normally an easy enough block. But with #91 getting upfield so quickly, the shoulder that Henderson is expecting to shove is now a back.

Before the handoff is made, #91's striped helmet is past Henderson's winged one.

This is Duo, Michigan's base running play. They want to double that guy down to the linebackers. Instead of two guys blocking this dude, you have zero.

Play is dead.

This was their problem with passing as well. Look at Chop Robinson, the DE on the top, on 3rd and 3.

We're mad at Karsen Barnhart for not blocking this guy, but Barnhart's first step hasn't even landed yet and Robinson is already in the backfield.

PSU had Michigan's snaps dialed in and their ends were hopping over the line of scrimmage before Michigan's own linemen were out of their stances. Meanwhile the Wolverine linemen seemed slower than usual in getting into their blocks. And yet they still went on the road and beat a top-ten opponent by double the spread without throwing a pass in the second half. Was it just stubborn manliness? Was Penn State so bad you could put a "RUN!" sign, let their DL into the backfield, and still kick their asses? What the heck just happened?

What happened is actually way more interesting. It has to do with Penn State's system, why it works so well, and what Michigan was doing that most teams can't do in order to squish the best defense in the country into submission.

[After THE JUMP: Hoppin and mad.]

So let's review how Manny Diaz teams play defense, and we'll start with this: every defense is gap-sound, and every defense wants to be aggressive. The defensive coordinator holy grail is a defense that can do both. Every DC believes this is true of his defense, but every one of them is really somewhere on a scale between the two. Some defensive coaches (Tom Allen, Don Brown, Jim Knowles, Chuck Noll) are philosophically gamblers who do things to cover up their risks, and others (Lloyd Carr, Jesse Minter, Nick Saban, Tony Dungy, Ryan Walters) run systems that prioritize getting your job done, and tend to shift jobs around to stay unpredictable.

You can run similar systems either way—for example Walters and Brown both use five-man fronts with man-1 coverage behind it. The difference is usually best seen in the type of defensive linemen you prefer. The gamblers usually go small and quick, while the sound want you to think twice about leaving the line of scrimmage.

Diaz, as you may have surmised, is on the gambler end of this spectrum. He likes his linemen small and quick. He wants them getting upfield and past the blocking, causing havoc, and tasks his linebackers and secondary with cleaning up the mess. Having extremely athletic edges—they're all super highly recruited guys—means they are more likely to be able to shift from rush to pursuit. But he also emphasizes their speed with tons of stunts and interior blitzes from the linebackers to keep the OL guessing.

To understand it better I pinged former Michigan safety Hunter Reynolds, who played in a similar defense to Penn State's at Utah State and now has a growing Youtube channel talking football. Reynolds explained the thinking up front (emphasis mine).

"The philosophy of the defensive line is for the DTs to get vertical and get their feet across the line of scrimmage. The DEs want to control the C gap while also getting penetration up the field. Linebackers are taught to spike their gaps to create more penetration but also to get double teams off of the D Tackles. Pulling guards/flashing TEs cause LBs to shift gap responsibilities."

"Spike" means "fly up into your gap if you see run." The only other thought is if their DTs are doubled, the LBs have to rescue them, because these are littler guys and the whole thing falls apart if you don't get it moving. Fundamentally, it works like a blitzkreig. By moving forward you keep the enemy focused on reacting to you instead of doing what they're supposed to do. All you have to do is break through in a spot to mess up the offense's attack, and if you break through twice it doesn't matter what else happens on that play.

If you're a lineman going against this, you don't know where the attack is coming from, and it's coming faster than you've ever dealt with. And if they're a little bit unsound because of it, that's okay, because once the offense has finished dealing with the havoc created in the backfield, the next wave has had time to gather and respond. Meanwhile the athletes who are out of position are quick enough to make that a less momentous thing.

Technically Michigan had a good playcall on against the above. We're running zone read belly off the backside and they're blitzing the frontside. You've seen zone reads enough in your lifetime, however, to understand that JJ is feeling a little rushed on this one. Isaac is an athletic freak who can start flying upfield, convert to forcing a give, and crash inside in time to hold this to a modest gain.

Passing against this is a pain because the edges are flying up into the backfield like every down is 3rd & 8. Michigan tried to run a play-action pass on 1st & 10 here, and linebacker Abdul Carter timed the snap and shot into the backfield faster than the playside guard could kick him.

He can target the quarterback because #33 Dani Dennis-Sutton is bee-lining for Corum. Once McCarthy gets out of there he can find Cornelius Johnson covered by a linebacker, but you'd have to be a great quarterback to see what they're doing, get out of there, and make the throw on the run.

Which we have.

But you can see how this defense gets so many picks. Is this sound? No, it's downright reckless, as the Donovan Edwards demonstrated. Halfway through this play it is dead. The DE flying upfield of Henderson might have left a juicy lane out the left side but the DT flying upfield of Barnhart is never going to let him get there. This is what we mean by getting in the backfield and causing havoc.

And this is what we mean by aggression not always being the most sound policy. The cornerback, #4 Kalen King, or Isaac has a right to be out there and deep in the backfield in case of a QB keeper, but one of them should have been closing off the backside. That's just not how they think. They think get upfield and cause problems, especially on a passing down.

But you have to be so poised, so fast, so accurate to beat them at this game that either you ask your quarterback to win the Heisman in one game, or you have him fling it in the direction of a Heisman-candidate receiver and let him do the work for you.

Or you can just move them out of the way.

Critical Mass

Michigan's plan for Penn State was to try to win back the size matchup by shifting Diaz's personnel out of the jobs they were recruited for. How do you alter personnel? By changing your own. They call this the "Mammoth" package.

Wookit all the widdle wittany wions wooking at it.

That right there is two tight ends and two extra OL for your skill positions. The lightest tight end, Loveland, is out wide on the top . Myles Hinton (#78), Trente Jones (#93) and AJ Barner (#89) make up the bottom of the formation. Penn State is in 4-3 personnel. Do you see the problem yet?

Penn State wants to get their guys going vertical, but this setup doesn't allow for that. They stunt the playside DE (Isaac) and the DT to create hard nodes where Michigan isn't looking, and are running trap coverage on the backside that adds a cornerback to run fit there. But by extending the offensive line they've added way too many "B"-like gaps for way Penn State wants to play. They've also exposed their nose tackle to a double-team, because

Remember how Reynolds said the linebackers have to rescue the DTs from their doubles? Remember how in previous weeks I've been talking about "hard nodes" where linemen are versus the soft gaps the linebackers have to cover.

Unfortunately Hinton wasn't expecting the stunt and looked back (never look back) instead of picking off the MLB. If he does this might crack for a big gain.

 

Technically nothing has changed about the Penn State defense, except they can't act like they want to because they're not sure what to do. The linebackers are looking for easy reads to decide where to spike or help, not all of these gaps so close together. While they figure it out, the nose tackle is getting doubled all play long, something he is definitively NOT built to withstand. He gets crunched to the ground by Henderson and Keegan, Corum gets to run into a pair of linebackers who were not used to reading and reacting. The guys flinging themselves into the backfield are unimportant to the play because the ball is out of there so quickly. Meanwhile Adisa Isaac and his five stars of twitching super-athlete are spent buried in the chest of a guy wearing 93.

All of that penetrating speed is useless when the job is strength on strength. This is a short-yardage situation but shows the point well. Here Isaac is slanting, but Hinton picks him up and drives him out of the way while Henderson releases on a linebacker.

Isaac's method for fixing this is to bend his shoulder, "get skinny" and get into the backfield free of his blocker. That can't help him here.

If Henderson and Zinter get their linebackers there's nobody until the safety. The penetration doesn't matter because Corum is leaving the backfield before any of them are in any shape to make a tackle. And the linebackers can't just bury themselves in any of these gaps to make things right because there are simply too many gaps. The only guy able to act like a normal linebacker is the quasi-LB coming inside Bredeson on the far left.

Let's look at that guy for a second, because it's going to be relevant in a sec. The reason this defense usually works so well against modern offenses is you're usually just asking a linebacker to make a few simple reads that are all close together. The DT you have to protect is probably no more than a gap away from your assignment. But let's say we extend the line a bit. And then a bit more. And a bit more.

With TE Barner and OT Jones out there with him, this hybrid safety character wearing #0 (6'1/218 Dominic DeLuca) is now playing the role usually filled by a 280-pound 5-tech. The linebacker trying to spike the [/counts from left of center] E gap has a very long way to go after checking the doubled DT in the middle, and while he's waiting for him to get there our poor hybrid is trying to two-gap Barner. Ultimately he gets edged.

Really it's Duo. But adding all of the beef has moved the bounce really far away from the double it's reading. Life is hard on linebackers, but usually not this hard:

The extended surface also creates more lanes for unsound behavior, which in an aggressive system like this is rampant. Last year they were getting out of their lanes all the time as the edges focused on getting upfield, linebackers spiked whatever gaps they could, and Michigan tested players in a new system on how well they can make each other right. Penn State was more disciplined this game, but when it came down to it, they broke.

What's supposed to happen here? The linebackers are reacting appropriately given it's late in the 4th quarter and Michigan hasn't thrown a pass yet. They see Duo and attack their gaps. But here's where the "The athletes have to be incredible to play this way" part comes into play. Chop Robinson, the DE on the left, is trying to come around Barner. He technically can crash and cover his C gap, but if he gets hung up the cornerback (Daquon Hardy) has to make him right.

He does not.

Ballgame.

THINGS

The last play is a bust compounded by the safety coming down too far and Corum being Corum. But I wanted to show it because this is what Michigan was trying to set up all game. You'll note even when the plays didn't go very far, there was only one more block or one stellar play from a Penn State defender to stop it.

When you ask why Sherrone Moore chose to keep pounding away with heavier and heavier sets instead of passing, it's because they *WANTED* to get the linebackers hopped up on goofballs and spiking their gaps. The play-action passing was just delivering McCarthy to edges who were treating every play like a pass-rushing opportunity, so clearing out the linebackers and sitting in the pocket until Roman Wilson or Cornelius Johnson outran a guy wasn't going to happen.

What they could do instead, however, was stress Manny Diaz's defense to its utter limits, put the Ferraris of his front seven in a monster truck derby, and have Corum probe for fuckups. Every extra gap was a potential breakdown, and because they were flinging so many guys upfield,  every mistake was a potential touchdown. All told, this defense didn't make many, and their athletes did an excellent job of preventing leaks from turning into gashes. They were as good as advertised. They're just not set up to play football like it's 1906, and since Michigan can do that, they were going to score more than a typical James Franklin offense was going to score on them.

There was more to it. Michigan also messed with the linebackers by running power with atypical pullers, which combined with PSU's aggressive posture to turn some of these wins into explosives. I'll cover that with Demorest later this week. For now it's enough to understand how Penn State's defense works, and why Michigan wanted to attack it on the ground.