Theory on no passing: feel free to share your competing theories

It’s a good theory, I’m sure the all time passing yardage list was top of mind yesterday.  But in reality, JJ did throw an incompletion so you can’t really blame them for taking the ball out of his hands 

I'm skeptical of your theory, but it's creative!

I was a little frustrated by the constant running. Seems like everyone here is saying, "because it was working!" — but it really wasn't working. We only scored in the second half when they fumbled the ball on their side of the field — a field goal, after running plays on both second-and-long and third-and-long failed — and when Franklin went for it on fourth-and-six on his 30.

We didn't "dominate" on the ground at all. We did enough to win, certainly, and I'm not apologizing for it. But JJ was, what, 7 for 8 passing?! To suggest that our passing game wasn't working, or that just a few passes in the second half wouldn't have opened up some holes for Corum and Edwards ... well, respectfully disagree on both.

Anyway, yes, we won, and that was awesome. But I think the game was much closer than it needed to be, and the play calling was a bit perplexing. C'est la vie. Onwards!

Would have thought you would have figured it all out by the time we had the higher score at the end of the game.

Crazy theory especially considering it probabky kills JJ’s shot at a Heisman.

Tackles couldn’t stop the rush, and giving up a big/bad turnover was likely the only way Michigan would lose the game at that point.

Quit drinking and go to church.

I (unfortunately) remember a game back in the RichRod days when Wisconsin did something similar to us. They just lined up and ran almost every play in the second half. And it was epically demoralizing.  
 

so I think Michigan knew that it both gave them a great chance to win and that it was a huge “fuck you” to Penn State and everyone else watching. 

Stop drinking and go to bed.

You play to win the game.  I swear a very vocal 5% would rather lose 45-42 and look cool then win 24-15.

You want galaxy brain.  Moore did it to get another Moore award.

I'm glad you had a good experiense at the game but your theory is ridiculous. One can agree or disagree with the play calling, but I have to think that Coach Moore chose to do what he did so as to give Michigan what he felt to be the best chance to win the game.

We neutralized one of our opponent’s biggest strengths. They had no chance for sacks, which would have been a huge boost for them. And we took the crowd out of the game in the second half. If we had thrown the ball at our usual rate in the second half, we might have won by more, but we would also have given Penn State a better chance to win. 

Agree with MaizeBlueA2 that ghostofhoke is crazy.  JJ passing JH in all time passing yards had nothing to do with it.

Not being able to contain the edge rush I assume had something to do with.

I didn't agree with the strategy.  I thought we needed to do some play action on first down which should have worked based on the number of times we ran up the middle.  The DPI on our only pass attempt was off play action.  Of course I was yelling that at my TV when Blake scored his TD.

In any event Bo would have been proud and if Bo would have been proud then I'm sure JH was proud.

We won the game so I have no complaints today.  All I was looking for was a one point victory although it would have been nice to have seen a more dominating performance on the scoreboard.

I don't think this strategy will be enough against Third Base.

.

"Am I crazy? My traveling partners think I am, I think they’re ignorant fools."

Both can be true simultaneously :)

I found this strategy to be very similar to a game against Iowa (?2021) where we basically just played for field position, and to minimize unforced/forced errors.

Have to admit, the wrinkle of having Harbaugh on the sidelines when JJ passes him never occurred to me, but I think the overarching goal was to just salt the game away as safely as possible.

Edit: Props to 1VABLUE1 above who said it better than me....

Penn St is small and aggressive up front. So M used their aggressiveness against them and bludgeoned them into submission.  Now OSU and Maryland have one more thing to prepare for. 

The only opportunity PSU really had to win was to win the turnover battle in the second half, and hope those turnovers led to short fields and points. Michigan had moved the ball well enough on the ground in the second quarter, and it’s defense had stifled PSU’s offense enough, that running the ball like UM did with essentially no passing was a calculated gamble by Moore that was unlikely to lose.
And the way the game was going at the time, if Michigan had made that interception they probably score again and win 31-9 going away, and holding PSU’s offense to under 200yds, a beat down of a top ten team on the road which is what the game really felt like at the end. 

JJ was dinged up, their pass rush was amazing, our right tackle can't pass block.  We didn't need to pass to beat them.

/thread

Obviously your theory is wrong, as I'm sure everyone here has already explained.

During the game, with the score sitting at 14-9 and 17-9, I was definitely frustrated that we were not throwing the ball.

Given what happened to Barnhardt early on, and our defense, and their offense, it made sense to rely on the run. But I felt it was conservatism to an extreme.

But it in the end, it worked, so who am I to argue with success.

Their pass rush was killing our Oline and our D was stopping them. Running the ball was working(ish). The only way Penn St scores is a turn over.

While it was frustrating to watch it was a smart call. Get the lead, to put the ball at risk, play solid D and let frames screw up like he always does.

Plus you do have to wonder if Moore was a bit nervous to not screw it up.

I think the most logical explanation is they had an 8-point lead the majority of the second half. They were content to bleed the clock and lean on the fact that the probability of PSU driving to score a touchdown, executing the 2-point conversion, and then putting together another scoring drive is pretty low.

My crazy reasoning is that Sherrone Moore wanted to prove Michigan can win against the #1 rush defense in the country by running the football up James Franklin's ass for the last 30 minutes of the game. 

My theory: Win the game. 

I can confidently say that had zero impact on play-calling decisions. We wanted to impose our will, while reducing injury possibilities (unfortunately JJ still hurt his ankle), while showing little to OSU. We did it because we could do it.

No.  No way.  Zero probability. 

Winning the game is the only thing that any coach thinks about.  Having Harbaugh on the field for some JJ record is 0.000000000% of the reason for 30 straight runs.

Michigan won.  The adjustments on offense were in the right direction, but Moore was way too extreme with it.  Took it way too far.  

That would not have happened if Harbaugh were on the sidelines.  No way.  The suspension was harmful.   

Sure, neutralizing Penn State's DEs with a lot of running, the heavy formations, etc. was absolutely the smart move, and credit to Moore for making the smart adjustments. 

But he took it way too far.  Failing to sprinkle in a few quick passes, screens, roll-out passing plays, etc....was not so smart.  It worked.  But that does not mean it was the best way.  Far from it. 

Michigan ran 30 straight running plays.  Adding in just 5 well-chosen passing plays in the 2nd half would have made this the three score win for Michigan.  

Lol no way. 

Throw away the season for some little gimmicky stat??? Not a chance.

My theory is that the refs informed both coaches that offensive holding calls were turned off, and Moore said "Fine, we'll run it down their fucking throats."

The PSU pass rush, especially coming from JJs right was a significant problem. He couldn't get comfortable in the pocket.  On TV, it was obvious how quick their defense was.  They made the passing game very difficult.  Their over pursuit ended being an advantage for the running game. 

I think some people are remembering the 2nd half a little differently than what actually happened. I’ve seen multiple comments saying that Michigan kept running the ball because PSU couldn’t stop the run.

But between Michigan’s field goal that put them up 8 and PSU’s failed fourth down conversion at the end of the game, Michigan had 3 possessions. 2 of them were three-and-outs. The other possession had 2 first downs with the 2nd being the result of a DPI on the only play JJ threw it that half. All in all, they had 42 yards of offense on those 3 possessions.

I get the strategy. And it worked because the defense played perfectly down the stretch until Blake broke one for a touchdown to finally go up 2 possessions. But it was playing with fire. All it would have taken was one blown coverage or one missed tackle or one muffed punt or one fumble for the conservative play calling to bite Michigan in the end.

I get that the pass protection was weak, but it’s not like the only pass plays that exist are 5-step drops that require JJ to hold it for 5 seconds. He’s a Heisman-caliber future-NFL qb. It would have been one thing if Michigan already had a 2-possession lead, but to not use him to move the ball down the field more than once with a 1-possession lead seemed questionable. It reminded me of all the moments with Lloyd as the coach when a should-have-been comfortable win turned stressful because Lloyd didn’t seize the opportunity to put the game away and allowed the other team to hang around.

I thought it was an idiotic 2nd half gameplan. I get being conservative and not wanting to mess up the season calling a hero's game, but that shit was unnecessary.

It also fails to prepare JJ in case we get in a shootout with say Bama or Georgia.  Its like we didnt learn from last year.

But judging by how hard he cried over what, beating shitty Penn St. with a shitty gameplan, no theory is beyond the realm of belief imo. 

I thought he did that goofy shit to show you can know what a team is calling, but you still have to stop it. Sounds like some Harbaugh/Harbaugh's staff type shit. Brilliant! Not. 

Much respect on the win, but I hope they made their point. Nonsense. 

My hot take is that it was Michigan's response to the knuckleheads who thought stealing signs was why Michigan became dominant. Here's what we are going to do and you can't stop it!

Here's our signs. We're going to run 32 times straight. Try to stop it.

You could be right because JJ also loves the SHIT out of Harbaugh.

I posted this in another thread but I think it was kinda like JFK & Khrushchev communicating through chess moves during Cuban Missile Crisis.

Moore was sending a recognizable message of support to Harbaugh by running a Schembechler offense for a half to put the game away.

”I love the sh*t out of you man. I did this for you” is the tell.

This post has PTSD.

It would be a real bummer if JH wasn’t on the field for both of those accomplishments (JJ passing his yardage total and the 1,000th win). 

Barnhart was being abused. Didn't want to get jj killed.