Lessons from TCU for When We Play OSU

I've watched the entire OSU vs. TCU game so far.  Obviously the game is not decided, but TCU is about to presumably go up by 8 points (after this PAT).  Regardless of the outcome, however, I think there are definitely some takeaways from how our offense could attack OSU's vaunted defense.  My impressions:

1.  It's striking how similar-seeming (I'm not a football expert, just an enthusiastic amateur viewer) TCU's offensive game plan is to Michigan's 2017 OSU game plan.  Even if its not true tactically, it seems to be true spiritually.  There is lots of misdirection / lots of forcing the ball to the edges as quickly as possible and then using smaller, speedy athletes to either turn the corner or do work in space.

2.  It's not that TCU doesn't ever run straight up into the teeth of the defense.  However, I really think that TCU's opening drive (in which they basically went the length of the field and scored a TD that was then called back for a rather unnecessary holding call) set the tone with the OSU defense.  They attacked the edge so quickly that it was clear that OSU's defense couldn't get comfortably set and couldn't predict where the ball would go at all.  After this, OSU was forced to second guess and run to the edges which made them more vulnerable to the straight up running game.

3.  TCU seems to be using lots of motion to get to the edge - e.g., they'll have a small speedy guy run as fast as possible to the edge but it's not a jet sweep hand-off.  It's more of a dump-off pass which works because the tracking defender (OSU plays man mostly it seems) can't follow TCU's skill guy fast enough to not get outflanked.

4.  TCU used incredible tempo (at least initially).  It might have been some of the fastest football I've ever seen.  OSU was clearly unprepared.

My fears are that Michigan is not willing to change its offensive philosophy enough to take advantage of 1) tempo, and 2) attacking the edges.  The worst thing that we could do in my view is try to play the OSU defense straight up with the run game.  I do not think we can get any push against the athletes on that defensive line / linebackers.  Harbaugh showed that he could put together something different for OSU last year - hopefully there's something similar this year.  If we play our normal offense, I don't have much hope.

Defensively I do not have much to say other than I'm really scared.  Haskins' accuracy is absolutely incredible, and his poise is just shocking for such a young player.  OSU's missing piece essentially since Meyer has been there is an accurate passer that can take pressure off the run game...  I think it's safe to say they now have that.  Haskins is just deadly.  I think our defense will be in for a long game.