Substitution Notes: Forgot to do this for the offense. Smith, Jeter, Hinton, and Jenkins rotated at the 2-3 inside positions, with Mazi the nose when they had a 3rd guy and Julius Welschof coming in for passing downs. I didn’t see Jess Speight but Braiden McGregor got some run. Hutchinson was in and out with the other OLBs—Ojabo, Upshaw, Morris, and some Jaylen Harrell. Linebacker was Ross and NHG until backup hour, when Junior Colson and Kalel Mullings came in ahead of Michael Barrett. Dax played the hybrid nickel role or strong safety when they went 3-4, with Moten coming in as the extra safety with Hawkins. Cornerback was Green and Gray mostly, with rotations from Turner.

Formation Notes:

I used tech numbering for the fronts starting from the first strongside player with his hand down. So a standard odd front would be “404” for a nose guard (zero) flanked by 4-techs on the inside shoulder of their tackles:

…and a standard over front would be “32” for a 3-tech and a 2-tech. I didn’t bother with “3i” etc. (e.g. below) because that’s getting into the weeds and too hard to see.

Hi. I’ve shortened “Cover Look” and “x-high” to “Hi” and a number of DBs who are sitting at least 9 yards off the LOS to save space.

Expected Points Added. I’ve added a new column that shows the value of the play (to the offense). We’ll see if there’s value to glean from it later. Expected points are based on the points an average offense will score from that down/distance/field position on that drive. For example a two-point conversion attempt averages +1.1 EP. So if Jabrill Peppers intercepts an option pitch on an MSU 2PA and takes it back to the other end for 2 points, we calculate the result of –2 points for the offense minus the 1.1 EP they were expected to get, to call that a -3.3 EP swing for the offense.

[After THE JUMP: Good kids and bad vets]

I was mad for a moment but I do not recall why that was.

Yes, WMU scored on their first drive, helped by Ojabo committing a not smart taunting penalty and Gemon Green getting Freshman Jourdan Lewis’d on a 30-yard throw he had covered as well as you could hope for. What made it feel bad was the second drive moved the ball as well before Michigan was able to string a few good plays together and induce a punt from the 39. In order of annoyance:

• Ten-play, 75-yard TD drive extended by Ojabo taunting/Green whiff.
• Ten-play, 51-yard drive to a short punt extended by Hawkins dropping an INT then Ross failing to chip.
• Well-scripted 40-yard meatball drive at the start of the 2nd half that petered out at midfield on a questionable hold.
• Nine-play, 52-yard Late Game O’Neill Crew drive to a missed FG.
• One six-and-out, two three-and-outs.

Those first two drives were slow going, but also felt very vanilla. Michigan was running easily identified coverages and getting picked apart by zone beaters. They rarely changed their personnel group—the “2-4-5” that’s really just the Don Brown 4-2-5 with Dax Hill at Viper—or shifted their fronts while flipping between coverages. Eleby was clearly rattled at the beginning—when you haven’t played in front a crowd since 2018 and your first one is a packed Big House that’s understandable—and that saved the first drive from being worse.

And then Macdonald flipped to Page 2 of the playbook and the defense looked like a defense.

There’s our three-four! Daxton Hill is hanging out in the slot like he’s the SAM and there’s no safety over the top of the slot receiver. WMU checks to a play meant to punish Hill on the edge for doing that, and Michigan’s all over it. Third down:

This looks like Don Brown at first blush—LB over the TE, two LBs hovering behind a 4-man line, 1-high—but it is not. The ILBs are blitzing, the OLBs are backing into coverage, with Jaylen Harrell—a guy recruited to play defensive end—taking the running back down the sideline and into his safety help. The crossing routes of this Mesh play get routed right into each other as neither receiver seems sure of the coverage or what Hutchinson is doing there with them. They try to turn that into a pick by then Josh Ross has flushed the QB and it’s time to chuck the ball where a WR might plausibly be (he isn’t) but a defender won’t. The weirdness is the point.

Daxton Hill: Space Spacebacker of Space!

That’s right, he’s the Viper now, at least on the base “2-4-5” that we’re just going to call a 4-2-5 because it’s accurate. In that Peppers is less of a linebacker—like Peppers and Khaleke Hudson were under Brown—and more like Peppers in 2015, a pure nickel who squeezes the slot to temp you into testing it.

Because that messes up everything you’re trying to do in the box—who wants an extra player in there when you’re trying to meatball?—offenses are built to recognize this behavior and attack it. Go right ahead sirs.

Also the Hutchinson strip sack occurred on a play that was designed to attack Dax’s aggressive alignment again, and after Eleby read that was the play he appears to hold off because Dax was coming in to pick six it if he tried.

Collectively the four plays where the offensive concept was “Let’s try to edge Dax Hill” were worth –3.78 expected points. It’s not the *worst* idea in the world, but it was up there with running a no-read zone read on the goal line with under 10 seconds left in the half in ways to burn points in a football game. Like with Peppers circa 2015, the way Michigan has Dax Hill responsible for a huge swath of the horizontal space along the line of scrimmage will continue to encourage offensive coordinators to try to punish it. Washington’s John Donovan tried it a lot when he was running PSU’s offense in 2015. Check back next week to see if he tries it with Giles Jackson, who’s going to be more dangerous than Skyy Moore and Not Skyy Moore.

The zone coverage was bad and then suddenly it was not?

Early on WMU caught Michigan in a Cover 3 versus an out route. This almost always goes badly for the Cover 3, which is the first defense you learn in JV football, and why quarterbacks with the arm to make those throws are swiftly moved up to varsity. This continues all the way up, and against defenses with MUCH greater talent than Michigan’s.

Michigan shelved the Cov3 stuff after the first drive because WMU was looking for those quick outs. The Cover 2 busts were more concerning because they routinely involved the returning starters. Watch how new starter RJ Moten is playing this versus how Josh Ross and Brad Hawkins react:

Moten is the bottom safety, Hawkins the top safety, Ross the top LB

That is some hesitancy from guys who’ve spent years in Cover 1. I’m more comfortable with Hawkins staying back until he’s sure versus Ross, who freezes. That wasn’t Ross’s biggest mistake in coverage. This is a thing he should have known from all the Cover 1, which still plays its LBs in zone underneath:

#12, LB who backs out first

If you let that guy cross you without a chip there’s nobody to stop him until the safeties. And Ross isn’t even concerned; he peeks at the QB, who’s in the middle of getting blown up by Hutchinson, instead of trying to do anything about the guy he just loosed. Even a momentary chip and this is a thundersack.

It’s very frustrating to have your senior LB do this, but his job got harder than anybody else’s. It’s also got to get cleaned up because this is the kind of stuff that any offense can attack, and given the next guy is Junior Colson, a pretty raw true freshman, getting Ross cleaned up seems the most viable option. Not just because he’s a senior captain, but because his senior captainy stuff helps him to be in two places at once when Michigan asks him to be both linebackers.

This is the 5-1-5, a thing I saw a bunch with the Ravens when I wrote my Macdonald piece this summer. Michigan only dipped their toes but you can feel the water. Good: five defensive linemen for five offensive linemen, a man and safety help for all three receivers. Bad: one linebacker to deal with three guys in the backfield. Sure enough the RPO throw isn’t there because there’s plenty of coverage, and the line is instantly gummed up with dudes. Ross’s job is to clean up any leaks, and you can see him trying to guess where that’s going to come before it’s identified and he gets out there. Linebacking in this system is hard. At the moment, Ross is the guy who can do it.

To a lesser degree this goes for Hawkins, but as I said his caution in zone at this point is preferable to peeking at the running game. It also makes him a better run defender since he’s always had that underrated ability to fly down and make a stick that fan brains don’t contemplate:

The transition costs that set these veterans back were necessary but can still be frustrating.

Speaking of frustrating, Green was supposed to be Brian’s boy.

You’re not talking about this.

Because that can happen to anybody. German Green remains a good to excellent man-to-man cornerback. This has no linebackers in coverage and is expecting the ball to go to one of these WRs in all the space. Both CBs play right on their respective WRs’ hips, and when the throw comes Green flips inside where he can break it up if accurate.

Unfortunately he still seems a little lost in zone.

On the other hand at no point did I want to give Vincent Gray a gentle talking to.

Um yeah. By the end of the offseason we were calling BS on the program talk that DJ Turner II was the savior because what can you say about Gray that anybody is going to believe? I did believe they would start Turner anyways because very few guys ever come back from a JT Floyd 2010-like campaign. I was still ready to not believe my eyes or my charting on this one until Sam was like “No that was the fastest guy in the MAC" whom Vincent Gray was running with step for step without interfering.

Combine that with the play above and several throwaways at Gray where he was in position to intercept if the ball was catchable and you’ve got the beginnings of a Floydian turnaround. Caveat MAC but Gray also seems to be more of a natural when facing the offense. His stick that Ojabo wiped out wasn’t just a blast; Gray stayed over the in-breaking route that’s supposed to clear him out during the play-action mesh, read the QB’s eyes flip to the flat, and then broke.

This game was the best possible that could be hoped for from Gray. Next step is to put two good days together.

PFF didn’t like Nikhai Hill-Green’s debut but you like him?

I do. NHG’s job wasn’t as difficult as Ross’s. Most of the time NHG was tasked with seeing how the double in front of him was going and then activating to ensure his impact was felt. His impact was felt. He was also Ross-esque as a blitzer.

He had one bad missed tackle on La’Darius Jefferson after flashing outside to maybe TFL, and he was the LB who got caught peeking at the play-action when WMU was able to bootleg down to the goal line on the first drive. Those were big negatives that resulted in an even +/- day. They’re also fixable things. We didn’t see much of Junior Colson—just enough to know he’s fast—so it’s reasonable to assume he’s nowhere near Hill-Green at the read-and-attack stuff. I can see why the coaches like Hill-Green though, because he is willing to stuff his nose in there.

Do you have a favorite non-Hutchinson defensive end outside linebacker?

The “linebacker” who frustrated me the most was David Ojabo. His athleticism didn’t translate to pass rushing like Hutchinson’s, and meanwhile his rawness was very evident on a number of bounces to the edge that should have been TFLs. He was also getting held like a motha on most of those plays so I’ll reserve judgement. His athleticism also isn’t quite good enough to play linebacker.

This goes back to Michigan playing with a fifth defensive lineman instead of a hybrid linebacker on the weakside. A hybrid safety like Ohio State or Alabama uses would run that play out of bounds for no gain. A regular OLB from the Wisconsin ranks would probably keep it to two. It gets four because for all of his athleticism Ojabo is a defensive end, and not a Rashan Gary freak who can move like a linebacker at defensive end-size. He has to get a better feel for what he can get away with and not give up the edge, which will come with time, probably not in time for Ohio State.

If I had to choose one of the DE types to pair with Hutchinson, it’s probably Mike Morris. Not only does he seem to have the pass-rushing ability of the other guys—e.g. Taylor Upshaw—but his DE/DT positional flexibility allows them to switch between their fronts without changing personnel. Just put his hand down as a DT and you can quickly go 5-2 from 4-3 even if the offense is trying to tempo on 3rd and short.

#90 the 2nd guy down on the DL

Speaking of Don Brown anchors,

Aidan Hutchinson’s All-American campaign is on. They only had him on the field for about two thirds of the game, but in that time he did damage. You saw a few of the plays above already. Here’s the strip sack:

And you can search his name in the play by play and find four more instances I felt I had to clip to belabor a point I don’t need to make. The WMU tackles were vastly overmatched, and when they started trying to chip Hutchinson or double team him, it created single-blocks that the other DL—especially Welschof—were able to turn into pressures.

You know another way to quantify his play without making your readers search on their phones?

Chart.

Not a lot of surprises there.

Who’s Mr. Worldwide this week?

As a reminder, our criteria here are versatility, the ability to make your teammates better, being cool against long odds, and enjoying time spent under highway overpasses. This is decided after the second UFR. Your top three this week:

1. Ronnie Bell. THE CATCH, which might actually be what we needed to finally get rid of John O’Neill. The Catch and Run which I remind you was a 3rd and 3. He also blocked on the Corum TD and had a big return. All of Michigan Stadium is his highway overpass, and the love that he was getting from 113,001 people in it as they carted him out was heart-stopping as well as gut-wrenching.
2. Mike Sainristil. Michigan’s best tight end. From Eastern Massachusetts, which is just one big highway overpass.
3. Nikhai Hill-Green. Earned the start in his first game as a redshirt freshman over returning starter Michael Barrett, five-star Junior Colson, four-star classmate Kalel Mullings, and a legion of former starters and never starters who left the program because they could see “the other guy next to Osman Savage” was going to get all their playing time. Made Mazi Smith and Chris Hinton and Donovan Jeter look cool by shooting into their double teams when they were starting to give way. Seemed to enjoy ending up buried by said double-teaming linemen who were indiscernible from overpasses.

Easy 3-2-1 point system so our standings:

3: Ronnie Bell
2: Mike Sainristil
1: Nikhai Hill-Green

All complaints about these selections should be directed to local author John U. Bacon, in person in a few hours.

You seemed to be getting upset about something on the radio today.

I had to stop charting the refs for my own sanity. I have never seen a group of people so consistently incompetent who weren’t doing so on purpose. John O’Neill, his fat side judge, and the sleepy umpire don’t know the rules. They don’t watch the game. They make it hard to enjoy because their wretched ineptitude is inserted into more plays than not.

You can tell the players feel like chumps if they don’t take advantage. I watched several Eleby games this offseason and never saw him take a dive before. It didn’t work for him but it did for his punter. Hutchinson fell down and they gave him a flag. Once again in an O’Neil game a team losing by a lot got escorted to the red zone chunk plays off of ridiculous non-calls. They blew the Bell catch. Nobody could possibly be enjoying this. Please get anyone else.

Heroes?

Aidan Hutchinson, Daxton Hill, and Vincent Gray. Just three totally alike dudes.

Maybe not so heroic?

Ross, Ojabo, Hawkins, Green not in man coverage.

What does it mean for Washington and the future?

Baltimore Rome wasn’t built in a day. The guesses about Macdonald’s defense were pretty spot-on, including the one about how Clinkscale’s coverages are going to take some time, and linebacker is a very hard job.

Aidan Hutchinson is a cheat code against WMU OTs. This could mean Hutchinson is every bit the Bosa as the Bosas, or that the WMU Ts are awful, in which case you are worried about the non-Hutchinson DEs when they face better competition, but still not worried about Hutchinson.

The DTs can survive a good MAC interior OL. There were no walk-ons. A day of taking on double-teams was mostly quiet, which again might spell trouble down the road. We’re going to have to adjust our points expectations for them now that they’re not being asked to be playmakers as much. Mazi Smith’s push-pull move is nice but needs to be paired with something or come out faster. Encouraging signs from Kris Jenkins, who wasn’t supposed to be a contributor until next year.

Cornerback not gonna die? Green has to clean up his zones but Gray’s performance was encouraging. WMU clearly wanted to Ricky White him and it didn’t happen. String two good games together then we can talk about breathing when a ball is in the air.

Nikhai Hill-Green and RJ Moten may start for four years. Strong debuts for both guys, who passed last year’s starting viper and third safety to earn starts in Year 2, which is Year 1 because of the COVID year.

David Ojabo not quite baked. Pulling him out of the oven for most of last year showed as much as the athleticism. He was the hidden (and not so hidden) reason for a lot of good defensive plays turning bad. Might be better suited to an Uche role this year while he gets a better feel for edge things offscreen.

Hill is your spacebacker. Much better use of his abilities than uncoached Cover 2 safety #analysis.