will johnson son of deon

UFR GLOSSARY is here.

FORMATION NOTES: PSU gets weird so some nomenclature reminders. This is Gun Wk Stack, which they used a lot.

This is Pistol Diamond.

And a reminder for some of my nomenclature, this is Gun Trips (H) Y-SB:

Trips is the receiver alignment and I use parentheticals around the (H) because the slot receiver is covered/an ineligible receiver. A dash means motion, so Y-SB means the tight end motioned to a superback spot. "Empty 2x1" means 2 wide to the field, 1 wide to the boundary, and the rest are tight ends. You should be able to interpret the rest of the weirdness from there. You also won't need it again because PSU fired their OC on Sunday.

SUBSTITUTION NOTES: Penn State often used a TE as a slot receiver; M sometimes matched that with regular nickel personnel but often had an extra safety in the slot and moved Sainristil out to cornerback. Snap counts are in the chart now but there was finally a clear delineation between "starters" (Graham, Jenkins, Grant, the four DEs, Colson, Barrett, Paige, Moore, Wilson, Sainristil, and Johnson) and "rotation players" like Goode, Benny, Hausmann, Q-Jo, and Sabb. That's everybody who played.

[After THE JUMP: Draft ding-a-lings.]

Scheduling Note: I apologize for the lateness of this. My prime UFR charting/writing time is on Tuesday but I worked an election (which is a 5am to 10pm commitment plus setup the evening before) this week and only had a quarter charted when it was time to go do that. PSU should be on time.

UFR GLOSSARY is here.

FORMATION NOTES: More even fronts today than usual, which made the OTs' lives hell but did open up some running lanes inside. Also when Michigan went up to 7 guys with their Split! formation I just called it Split 7 instead of identifying gaps where the LBs lined up.

Their other pass-rush formation is this Odd front with a 0-tech nose, two 7-tech DEs, and Harrell a stand-up blitzer that they debuted late against Nebraska. Since nobody has a better name for it I'm calling it Crable, because "Ojemudia at Harrison" is too obscure of a reference.

SUBSTITUTION NOTES: Michigan spent the whole game in nickel personnel, treating various backup Purdue TEs/2nd RBs etc. as receivers. Air Raid offense was used for tryouts at CB, as Will, Wallace, Walker, and Waller. In the 2nd half they went a couple of drives with Sainristil at CB and McBurrows at nickel. Jenkins came out as soon as they were up a comfortable margin, with Benny getting a lot more snaps than previous games. The rest was the usual rotation.

[After THE JUMP: Stars return.]

Is this where we come to talk about the slants? 

Usually we take care of some housekeeping first.

UFR GLOSSARY is here.

FORMATION NOTES: Nebraska used a lot of them with varied personnel. This fullback (#16, Janiran Bonner) is more of a 6'2"/220 running back so I counted him as a back, but he also lined up at TE and WR. Michigan responded to him with their 5-2 personnel.

There was also a 3-3-5 look from Michigan I called a 30 stack.

SUBSTITUTION NOTES: The starters were done after 20-something snaps in this one, with Grant limited to just 17. Harrell and Colson were regulars while the starters were in—both Harrell and Stewart were on the field for obvious passing downs. Michigan was also playing around with different secondary configurations like +Sabb (Sainristil at CB, Moore at Nk), and +CB (Wallace at Nk). Other than that it was the usual rotations before backup time, which they used to rep Wallace and Moore in the slots with one-high looks. Amorion Walker returned and got a few snaps at CB.

Now the slants?

I haven't posted the charting yet.

You're going to make me scroll through all that gibberish?

You could just scroll down to the Neck Sharpies. Or Brian's game column for that matter.

Gibberish, then slants.

And a jump.

[After THE JUMP: Gibberish, slants, more gibberish.]