Washington Snowflakes: The Offense

Man, the Michigan fan base has to be the whinest bunch of doomers ever. Beat a team by 21 while racking up 350 rushing yards? Obviously, that just means we are going to lose our next 4 biggest games because we should've also thrown the ball for another 350 yards.

We just ran over a team at a 6 ypc clip. Like...why wouldn't we stick with what the other team can not stop? 

I’d rather be UM than oSU this AM.

I thought the conservative gameplan was the right call.  Everyone knew Washington wasn't going to win unless their defense forced turnovers or turned 3-&-outs into short fields.  The success of the running game ruled that out so there was literally no reason to practice chucking the ball around or whatever just to achieve balance.  Balance is a means to winning, not an end in itself.  And winning this game however it's done was important for the program, for Harbaugh, and for the fans.

If they use the same approach and lose I will criticize them, sure.  Certainly after whatever that was last year, it does feel nice to crockpot a team a la most of 2018 in front of a full stadium.  (Remember the 2018 Wisconsin & PSU games were "close" at half but ended as blowouts.). And at least, while in the moment, watching Michigan grind Washington's respectable D into a fine puree I wasn't thinking about any future hypothetical losses.  

if we are going to run so much why not incorporate play action? so we can get cade some easy throws.  idk maybe cade got hurt on that blind side hit or they were reading the defense but playcalling definitely shifted after that leading to the 4 and out at the goal line.  We have great RBs but is this sustainable? Teams are going to be stacking the box here on out and we are risking injury if we keep being stubborn

Bo would be proud. 

I don't mind running through opponent's gut every down when we are able to move the chain consistently. But on the other hand I am concerned about the ineffectiveness of our passing game. Can any of our tight ends catch the ball?

I wouldn’t expect to see a lot of passing against NIU, they give up 231 yards rushing a game and not against great competition either. We are going to run roughshod all over them. 
 

Our good ol buddy Rocky Lombardi is the qb but they only throw for 185 a game and rush for more than that. They aren’t gonna rush against our defense so he will have to throw a lot. I can see him attempting 45-50 passes so our pass defense will get some good work in. 

The Good: Our RBs and OL are legit. It's one thing to get 300+ yards against Western....it's quite another to get 300+ yards against a quality defense like Washington. They don't give up over 30 points very often. The coaches exploited Washington all night on the ground. That first drive in the 2nd half was a thing of beauty, Wisconsin fans would shed a tear watching it.

The bad: I'm not going to complain too much about the passing game...it was pretty evident the coaches were going conservative because (a) they did not think UW's offense could do anything (b) turnovers were the only way UW could stay in the game (c) UW's secondary could be one of the best on UM's schedule and (d) our WR corp is a lot more questionable after losing Bell. Considering those factors, it's pretty obvious the coaches felt a conservative approach would win them the game...it worked swimmingly, so I'm not going to complain about it. Obviously they can't do that against everyone, because better offenses will get Michigan behind on the scoreboard demanding more of a balanced attack to get back in it. But one thing that bothered me were all the yards left on the field in the screen game, due to poor/nonexistent one-on-one blocking from our WRs. That has to improve, this offense needs those screens as part of its playbook.

The ugly: Dear lord I hate our fanbase sometimes. We win convincingly against an opponent that before the season was AT BEST a pick-em game. Michigan beat the spread, convincingly. Pretty big statement win. And a sizable portion of you guys are doing nothing but whining and complaining. It is tiring. "What about MSU and OSU???" Well fuck me you guys, I had no idea that's who we were playing yesterday!!! And the thing that bothers me the most is that you guys would complain if we threw the ball more (and it didn't work, because UW is good), because then you'd be saying "well why are we passing at all when out RBs are averaging 7+ YPC???" It's literally no-win. There's always something to complain about. And somehow it portends negative things for future games because of ...reasons (omg not enough reps for Cade!!!! AHHHH!!!!). It is your choice to view it negatively. 

It's very easy to come up with optimism: a running attack that can put up 300+ yards against Washington despite little/no passing threat demands attention by every single one of our future opponents. This will most certainly lead to opportunities in the passing attack for some chunk plays. They did what they did last night with basically zero play action attempts...do you guys seriously think the coaches don't know how to run play action?

If you don't like the way Michigan plays, please just go root for somebody else. I beg of you. 

Overall, hell yes, a great and dominant win. It would have been foolish not to lean on a dominant running game, so I'm perfectly fine with what they did in this game.

It's clear that between QB, WRs, and TEs, there are doubts in the passing game. That said, UW has a damn good secondary, so why bother when we are destroying their will to play football on the ground. So, doubts, yes, but they didn't matter today. Why put the bulldozer away if it's churning away? That would be as foolish as an OC to do that. We won, and we won with style and margin. Can't ask for much more.

Passing game doubts? We'll get some confirmation eventually, as we will eventually get to a team that slows the run game. And if we don't? Then we're looking at a magical season. Even without the new-fangled "forward pass".

Enjoy a dominant win, folks, and worry about the other stuff later. 

After Vastardis went out with the cramp, did anyone see who came in? Did Zinter move to C and Filiaga come into at RG or was it something different?

I noticed Jones came in at RT when Stueber had to leave for a play. Glad to see him earn the backup role after hearing very little about him the past couple seasons. I know OL typically take a while to develop, but I still always get a little nervous when high end recruits don’t get much attention two years in.

Also, two games in we have to really like what we see from the OL run game. Hayes-Keegan could really be blossoming in front of us.

Am I allowed to be both happy that Michigan won on Saturday and pessimistic about our chances vs teams that can shut down a 1-dimensional offense?

"take what the other team gives you". it's a good strategy. it's an effective strategy. it's a winning strategy. and it was hugely successful against UW. the debbie downers on here need to learn that strategy too.

For real though, why did Washington seemingly always have a safety deep?

If you’re best position group is arguably your corners and you’re playing a team that is clearly only interested in running and has a question mark in the passing game, why not just completely sell out against the run to try to make Michigan prove they can throw it downfield at all?

Loved the running game but why do we run all routes at the sideline ? Doing same thing as last year ! Throw vertical

So we’re a “manball” team now, right? Like the nostalgic “Michigan Man” wants?

I remember how the coaches would just fire off all sorts of new stuff on meaningless games and get rocked by tougher teams. Perhaps optimistically, we should look at this as the staff keeping things in the garage? I'm sure there are other factors, but when you can run the bread and butter 7-8 plays in a row for a touchdown, why bring out the passing game? 

On the other hand, I guess you could argue there are equally vanilla passing plays, but maybe those are also more risky, especially with Cade's batted passes issue.