mike dwumfour

SPONSOR NOTE: Upon Further Review is sponsored by HomeSure Lending and Matt Demorest. Rates are the lowest they've been in three years so it can't hurt to check whether you can save money on a refinance. Or you could buy a house in Ann Arbor! Good luck with that!

Matt's relocated the bus to Pioneer this year, BTW, and invites everyone to stop by and say hi. There's beer. I mean, obviously. Matt. Matt and beer: a good pairing.

FORMATION NOTES: The usual split between one high and two high looks with a lean to two high, and a ton of depth from the safeties:

That was an extreme example since M was blitzing off the corner but the depth of those safeties was pretty consistent. This didn't make a ton of sense against Indiana's offense and almost seems like Michigan getting in some trial runs for what they intend to do against OSU.

SUBSTITUTION NOTES: Standard on DL, with Paye/Kemp/Hutchinson getting most of the work, Danna spotting the two DEs, and Uche/Dwumfour being an either/or with Uche having a small lead in snaps. Standard at LB, where the starters went virtually the whole way. Hinton did get some early snaps. Michigan's short yardage package now adds him as a third DT.

Hawkins's absence in the secondary meant Dax Hill got his first start; when Michigan went to their jetpack sets they brought in Gray instead of a safety.

No real surprises during quasi-backup time late. Jess Speight continues to be the first guy off the bench when it's garbage time. Vilain, Jeter, and Upshaw got a few snaps; Barrett got in at viper a bit.

[After THE JUMP: it was bad, and then it was okay]

11/23/2019 – Michigan 39, Indiana 14 – 9-2, 6-2 Big Ten

Indiana waltzing down the field for an opening-drive touchdown was an ominous sign that the trademark Indiana Stupid Game was about to transpire. That feeling was reinforced when Indiana scored again in short order. They kept throwing wide receiver screens to their tight end. Some goofy pass interference calls and Michigan's punter kicking a 24-yarder that was somehow not a shank buttressed the structure further.

By the time Giles Jackson, hearing no whistle after having literally every portion of his body hit the ground, got up to "score" the world's most emphatically overturned touchdown it was a lock. Michigan would be embroiled in another one of those games, the ones which Indiana should win 37% of the time and wins 0% of the time. A traditionally stupid Michigan-Indiana game. Michigan would find itself embroiled in a stupefying conflict until their center went the wrong way in overtime and Michigan scored anyway or Jeremy Gallon racked up receiving yard #369, and then they'd win. I spent much of the first quarter thinking about the one where Indiana went on 15-play touchdown drives, whereupon Denard Robinson would score in two plays and the cycle would repeat. I braced for the kind of win that makes you want to shower afterwards.

This didn't happen. What happened is Indiana stopped doing anything and Michigan scored over and over again. After Indiana's second touchdown the Hoosiers gained 49 yards on their next six drives; by the time they did anything of note Michigan had put up 32 unanswered.

This has been a rarity over the past decade. Since 2009 the only other Michigan-Indiana game that hasn't been in serious doubt in the fourth quarter was the 2014 edition. That was 34-10 because the Hoosiers had to start Zander Diamont (career YPA: 4.6) at QB. Every other IU game over the last decade has been somewhere between pretty uncomfortable and having your nose hairs plucked out one by one by an old man regaling you with tales of his various lesions.

This was the best of any of these Indiana teams, the one Michigan stuffed in a steamer trunk and mailed to Peru.

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And so here we are. A lot of people are coming out of the woodwork now to say they always believed. This is a lie unless the person in question has also been scammed out of money by a robocall. If you have lost money because a recorded message says They Have Been Trying To Reach You, I believe you. I believe you if you are Raj:

you in October: will Shea Patterson ever complete a pass

me in October: check out this Monte Carlo simulation I programmed showing Michigan having a 0.05% to make the playoff pic.twitter.com/mqdWfIFzXD

— playoff raj (@internetraj) November 25, 2019

Otherwise, no.

Six games ago Michigan was coming off:

• a six-game stretch dating back to last year's Indiana game where they failed to cover the spread by at least 17 points, including horrible blowouts against OSU, Florida, and Wisconsin and a three-point OT win over Army
• Rutger
• a 10-3 win over Iowa in which Michigan gained 267 yards

Michigan's offense sat in the 70s in SP+ a year after finishing 25th and returning pretty much everyone. Jim Harbaugh said something about how his offense was on the verge of clicking that everyone on the internet and off scoffed at. I deleted a sassy quote tweet instead of sending it, not because I disagreed with everyone else but because it was more trouble than it's worth.

Even a couple games later Michigan was coming off a blowout of Illinois that featured an Illini run from 28-0 down to 28-25 and a Penn State game in which Michigan's many, many errors outran a down-to-down pounding. This was progress. It was easy to see but hard to feel. Those games appear vastly different when they're at the tail end of the eight games mentioned above than when they are the start of the final six games of this season.

But it turned out Harbaugh was right: Michigan was close to clicking on offense. Since he said that Michigan's been held under 38 points once, by Penn State. That game featured one Michigan drive end on a blatant uncalled PI, a second go in the tank after Nico Collins had a 45-yard catch wiped out by a horrible OPI, and a drop in the endzone that would have tied it. That was a 417 yard performance that should have been closer to 500.

Every other game has been a hamblasting, culminating in a game where Shea Patterson was undeniably elite. The offense has climbed all the way to 26th in SP+, with legions of Michigan fans badgering Bill Connelly to run the numbers after Iowa to see where this version of Michigan lands.

The looming cliff this weekend looks like it has handholds for the first time. Not many, and perilously spaced. But Ohio State is no longer a blank, unscalable wall of steel.

[After THE JUMP: thrown it to Nico]

SPONSOR NOTE: Upon Further Review is sponsored by HomeSure Lending and Matt Demorest. Rates are the lowest they've been in three years so it can't hurt to check whether you can save money on a refinance. Or you could buy a house in Ann Arbor! Good luck with that!

Matt's relocated the bus to Pioneer this year, BTW, and invites everyone to stop by and say hi. There's beer. I mean, obviously. Matt. Matt and beer: a good pairing.

FORMATION NOTES: About 50/50 3-3-5 and 4-2-5, although the former got almost all of the last third of the game when MSU was in a big hole. Early it was mostly a four-man line. MSU's offense looked almost identical to Michigan's, formation-wise, with almost all gun and a lot of 2TE sets. Notably, Michigan was almost all two-high:

I noted about a dozen one-high snaps, some of which were pretty ambiguous. The rest of the game was either two high or Michigan's occasional three-high look (six snaps), which generally plays out as a two high where you don't know which S is coming forward presnap.

SUBSTITUTION NOTES: Completely standard, with Paye/Hutchinson/Danna rotating at DE with Danna a bit behind in snaps, Kemp omnipresent, and Uche/Dwumfour replacing each other with Uche getting a slight majority. Vilain, Upshaw, and Jeter got in late; Chris Hinton had scattered snaps earlier. That appears to be your second-string DL.

McGrone/Glasgow/Hudson at LB; Hill/Gray/Thomas rotation at CB, Metellus/Hawkins at S, Dax Hill got a dozen or so jetpack snaps.

The near-total lack of novelty here is good because it means Michigan is healthy and settled.

[After THE JUMP: OL? more like No, L!]