Ah, football. The traditions. The pageantry. The athleticism. 

...The massive overreactions to single games.

A few notes from what we saw, with pictures. Please note that history has shown that all overreactions contained here are guaranteed to be incorrect.

So, what was up with the running game?

Not much, it turns out. Since the last month of last season, the book on Michigan has been that you stack the box and fire into the line of scrimmage. Most issues can be attributed to ECU having an extra man available to make a tackle. Where that wasn't the case, the issues do not appear to be with the backs or the offensive line.

Here's the second drive of the game. Michigan is running a split zone with Blake Corum, with Colston Loveland cutting across the LOS.

ECU brought safeties down close to the line of scrimmage all day, always creating a numbers advantage against Michigan's run blockers. Here they've brought eight men in, all charging the line of scrimmage.

Still, Michigan has a good play set up here. The problem in this case is Loveland: he begins his break across the LOS, but then hesitates here and stutter-steps, right in front of the mesh point. He's trying to decide whether to arc around and attack the outside of the wad of bodies in the middle of the LOS, or to charge across and block the edge defender.

Instead, he does neither. Attacking the wad of bodies wouldn't have been great, but it would have set the outside edge of those defenders and allowed Blake to handle the charging defender on his own. Had Loveland read this correctly and run straight at the defender, Blake would have a hole to run through. Loveland hesitates, the defender charges, and Blake almost runs into Loveland as he tries to make an awkward cut and is tackled. 

This was not Loveland's only blocking problem. I give the first drive a free pass; you don't try anything fancy when you're taking snaps at the goal line against an underdog whose only hope is that something goes wrong. But Loveland still biffs a block here that results in the tackle. That's him failing to block the defender rushing in on Edwards.

Does that mean that we're in trouble if teams stack the box against us this year?

Early returns suggest, "not at all."

Michigan's third drive started on its own ten. Michigan runs play-action, and you can see that there are nine ECU defenders charging the line of scrimmage, with their DBs playing soft behind so that they will not get beaten deep. JJ completes this pass to Cornelius Johnson for a 20 yard gain.

We were all excited about JJ's performance, and rightly so, but what jumped out to me on rewatching was how easy so much of it was. Here's a capture I took at random from later in the game:

Look at all that space in the middle. Michigan's receivers were running dig routes into the middle of the field all afternoon; this one is notable because you can actually see defenders on the screen, something that did not always occur.

Crucially, this is not "easy because ECU is undermanned" so much as it is "easy because Michigan has earned that space." ECU doesn't want to give Michigan even numbers to run against, and it doesn't want to get beaten deep by Roman Wilson or Cornelius Johnson, so they ran this defense. And JJ picked them apart over, and over, and over.

It wasn't all easy stuff, of course. JJ has a good arm and knows when to use it. His passing was terrific, and he made some throws that suggest that the passing offense is fully operational in a way we have wanted to see.

Michigan seemed to struggle passing against zone defenses in the Don Brown years. I have speculated that practicing against a defense that runs almost exclusively man coverage makes it more challenging. Whether that is true or not, JJ McCarthy seems to have no trouble addressing zone at all.

This is Colston Loveland making a nice catch against what appears to me to be a three-deep zone. The underneath defender is trying to catch up while the deep safety is closing fast.

Again, it looks so easy. But it is an earned easy, combining JJ's timely read with a perfect throw reaching Loveland's massive catch radius. He finds the window in the zone across the field and hits it in a way we rarely, if ever, saw between previous QB-receiver combos.

Roman Wilson's third TD catch was a similar defensive look, encouraging for a different reason: He didn't rise up and high-point the ball, and there was a defender close to him, but he was open and JJ nailed the pass over the defense to Wilson effortlessly. His skill at manipulating and dissecting zone coverage is very encouraging.

What about the red zone?

Red zone issues were a frequent complaint last season, and with good reason. Despite a powerful running game, Michigan struggled to score close to the opposing goal line. When Michigan dialed up multiple identical dive plays with Donovan Edwards at the goal line, the knives came back out. Is it the same thing all over again?

Well, no. At least, not in this game. Late in the third quarter, up 30-0, with fans already asking on social media why the starters were still playing, Michigan's acting coaches decided to try to get Donovan Edwards a touchdown. Result: dive plays to Edwards. The plays did not work. The reason was twofold: First, like much of last year, nobody had to account for JJ running, which allowed the defenders to fire without caution to the point of attack. Second, importantly, Donovan Edwards is not a short-yardage back; he is good at many things, but he just does power through tackles and fall forward. Earlier in the game Michigan ran similar plays to Blake Corum, in one case easily converting a first down from two yards out, in another easily scoring a touchdown from two yards out.

This would be a worry if there was any real belief that Michigan would try this in a high-leverage situation, but there is basically no chance that they would do so. 

The better data point came earlier in the game:

First and goal from the ten. Last season this kind of goal-to-go situation gave us the willies; Michigan frequently ran the football, hoping for a significant gain. Michigan was very, very reluctant to pass into the end zone last year from goal-to-go, up to and including the high-leverage games late. The inability to threaten the defense with the pass has been a significant contributor to red zone struggles. 

But not this season. Michigan is at the ten and they call a pass play for the end zone on first down, and JJ McCarthy is nails. 

Remarkably, they don't even use the threat of play-action to loosen the defense. The play is designed to score a touchdown: JJ McCarthy's first read involves Roman Wilson in the slot. Wilson is running vertically and cutting into a narrow post route. JJ sees the safety behind Wilson's cover-man move to cover the top of Wilson's route (an end zone view later in the broadcast confirms that the safety completely cut him off). JJ correctly moves to his next read, which is to the left, and sees a receiver bracketed laterally by two defenders.

The protection is ok, but JJ steps back a bit anyway and calmly moves to his right, resetting the passing angles. His eyes are always downfield. This year's JJ doesn't show any sign of wildly running around hoping to "make something happen;" he is making veteran plays now, a controlled scramble, knows what he's looking for. Roman Wilson knows, too. Wilson runs laterally, behind the safety, breaks open, and JJ throws back across for an easy touchdown. 

Again, it looks easy. An earned easy. 

There is a reasonable hope that JJ's mastery of the passing game is the solution to red zone issues that Michigan has been looking for. Remember, part of the problem with those gun dive plays is that defenders that don't play for top ten teams don't have to respect JJ as a runner. But if he now provides a consistent, reliable passing threat even in the restricted confines of the red zone, they have a whole new set of problems to deal with. 

You can't take much from one game against a bad team, but after Michigan wisely lit its first drive on fire to avoid a mistake, Michigan's next five drives looked like this:

Touchdown - 8 plays, 57 yards
Touchdown - 7 plays, 90 yards
Touchdown - 7 plays, 76 yards
FG (1-minute drill, 6 plays, 34 yards, end of half)
Touchdown - 12 plays, 75 yards.

The next drive was the Edwards drive. Michigan gained every yard available within the alotted time until the very last yard for six drives.

We'd all enjoy seeing a higher score number, but with college football's new clock rules, Michigan had only seven drives, including the burned one, before garbage time. There's really not much more you can ask for than that.

What about the questions we have at OT, DE, and CB?

No data. Postgame chatter complaints about OT and DE from this game are mostly overblown. Like everyone else, I look for things that might be suboptimal, and put my Eeyore hat in preseason preview discussions. But there wasn't a lot here.

A few people zeroed in on the tackles as a problem, cued in no small part by the modest running frustrations. Some of those have been covered above, but some have noted tackle play, particularly Myles Hinton.

The tackles were mostly fine today. No notable issues for most of the game, until the late stymied Edwards drive. Myles Hinton did make a couple of mistakes here. I've clipped one of them.

I saw two clear instances of Hinton getting beaten on this drive. However, in both cases it appeared to be an issue of someone, probably Hinton, getting the protection call wrong. Here, the protection has been shifted to the left, with every lineman except Hinton stepping left. Hinton takes a step right, sets up, and then sees a defender charging into the wide gap that has been created. 

Note: It's possible that Edwards was supposed to take that man and Hinton is not at fault at all--Edwards goes to the wrong side of JJ, who is running handoff action. (JJ does complete the pass here).

The later play in the half appears to be the same situation, except that Hinton steps left and is out of position to block his defender. In both cases, it appears to be a mental mistake rather than being physically beaten. Now, mental mistakes are still a problem if they are recurrent, but it's not the same kind of worry as being physically outmatched.

The defensive questions have even less information to go on. Obviously, there wasn't a lot of pressure on the ECU QBs. But there was a good reason for that: ECU did not give the QBs time to get sacked. Here's a sample play, note the clock. At the snap:

And at the throw:

ECU was throwing the ball in three or fewer seconds almost every time they called a pass. In those circumstances it is impossible to get a good read on Michigan's ability to produce an organic pass rush. 

To be honest, the most concerning aspect of the pass rush was not anything I saw Michigan's EDGE players do, but the fact that Michigan's staff called so many stunts, which suggests that they think they need the stunts to get pressure. 

For the same reason, we really have no idea what our cornerback situation is. ECU simply did not have the ability to test the secondary at all. 

Thus, for both, ask again later.

Notes on Donovan Edwards

Edwards comes in for a couple of not-so-complimentary mentions here, which might suggest negativity toward his performance. That would be unfair and wrong. In fact, Edwards was good today. Michigan simply doesn't want him to be the regular short yardage back, and so he got used in a sub-optimal role. And, while I wonder if he missed an assignment above, that mention buries something much more significant about what Edwards is doing this season:

That's Donovan Edwards at the hash, pass blocking. And he stones his guy. He can block. Edwards is, among other abilities, now a fully armed and operational third-down back. The Harbaugh track record for turning RBs into effective blockers continues unabated, and the significance here is that defenses cannot assume that Michigan will deploy Edwards on a pass route and have limited protection options when Edwards is in the backfield on passing downs. It's a great tool to have.

But not his only one, of course. I really like what this play means:

Edwards lines up wide, runs a 5-yard route, and makes a catch. It's simple and it's not a big play. But in a game where Edwards was used as a straight runner and used for pop-pass end-around plays out of the slot, the fact that Michigan is willing and able to execute a conventional pass play like this dramatically increases the range of how he can attack a defense. Michigan has had slot guys like AJ Henning and Eddie McDoom that defenses really didn't have to worry about downfield; Edwards can chip away at them like this, or he can run end-arounds, or, one hopes, he can obliterate them deep if they try to press.

It's going to be fun to watch how they use him.

And finally

Look at how much fun JJ has out there. Gets crunched between two guys, bounces back up, laughs and shakes with the guy that got him.

What a fun player, what a great guy to have at Michigan.

This is fun. Football is back.