8 — Tuesday, September 10, 2019
Sports
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Panic Meter: How worried should you be about the Wolverines?
If there’s ever been a better
timed week three bye, you’d be
hard-pressed to find it.
By the skin of its teeth, the
Michigan football team emerged
victorious on Saturday against
Army. That has done little to
deter criticism in its aftermath.
The Wolverines enter their first
of two bye weeks, with more
questions than answers.
How much of that cynicism
is warranted? Let the official
Michigan Daily Panic Meter
assess those worries.
Offensive line: 6.3/10
Facing a team without a
defensive player over 300 pounds,
and only a handful over 250,
Michigan’s offensive line allowed
pressure in pass protection and
got pushed around at times in
run blocking. The Wolverines
ran the ball 45 times (more on
that later) at just 2.4 yards per
carry including sacks, 3.3 yards
per carry excluding them. It was
an alarming figure against a team
Michigan’s offensive line, frankly,
should have mauled at will.
Ryan Hayes, in particular,
struggled in pass protection after
a laudatory week for the redshirt
freshman.
After
the
game,
Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh
said 2018 first team All-Big Ten
left tackle Jon Runyan Jr. appears
set to return against Wisconsin.
That would be a boon.
“Jon was just really on the
verge of being ready to play,”
Harbaugh said. “He could have
played … He looked good in
practice, but we just felt like we
would give him another week to
make sure this isn’t something
that’s a season ongoing problem.”
Is he going to play in two
weeks?
“Can I say that now? Most
likely,” he added.
Where
does
that
leave
everything, two weeks into a year
that portended the offensive line
as an offensive pillar?
Wisconsin will be the ultimate
test here. If Runyan returns to
stabilize the left side and the
interior cuts down on some
miscues, this ship could find
its level pretty quickly. But the
offensive line being a strength
seemed a foregone conclusion
two weeks ago. If it ends up a
liability — or even merely average
— that severely hampers the
ceiling of a unit that needs to be
one of the nation’s best if it wants
to win the Big Ten.
Defense: 3.8/10
The
sheer
volume
might
have been overwhelming, but
Michigan held Army’s triple-
option attack to 3.8 yards per
carry on the day. And most
importantly, it came up with
plays when it needed to. Lavert
Hill snagged an interception near
the goal line at the end of the first
half, and Kwity Paye and Aidan
Hutchinson teamed up for the
play of the afternoon — forcing a
fumble in overtime to narrowly
escape.
“That was a gem of a defensive
performance, no doubt about it,”
Harbaugh said after the game.
“You can talk about the last play,
that last defensive series, just the
entire football game. We made
mistakes offensively; penalties,
turnovers
and
turnovers
on
downs that the defense was not
in the best position.”
While much of the concerns
feel warped into the offensive
struggles, there are still reasons
to be (slightly) concerned about
this defense.
An upper-echelon Big Ten
defensive line should be able
to win at the line of scrimmage
against Army 10 out of 10 times. At
times, the Wolverines struggled
to do so. Some of that is anchored
in the lack of depth along
the interior. With Wisconsin
looming, finding a run defense
capable of holding up against
maybe the nation’s most bruising
rushing attack is priority No. 1,
2 and 3. It is tantamount to any
hope Michigan has of emerging
from Madison victorious. We’ll
soon learn if the Wolverines have
the personnel to do so.
Quarterbacks: 3.0/10
Read
Ethan
Sears’
SportsMonday column.
Play-calling: 7.8/10
Run/pass
play-calling
distribution is often overblown.
Game context dictates those
decisions more than anything
else, and so, deducing concerns
about play-calling down to the
45/31 split we saw on Saturday
misses the point.
But
when
a
reporter
approached Ben Bredeson and
asked
where
the
“speed
in
space” was, it was an entirely
valid question (though not really
Bredeson’s domain). It wasn’t
that Michigan ran the ball 45
times yesterday, it was that
each one seemed to be an inside
zone without any legitimate
quarterback read. It wasn’t that
the Wolverines didn’t run as
many RPOs, it was that their best
offensive weapon, Nico Collins,
had three targets in a close game
in overtime.
Far be it from us to understand
all the nuance involved in play-
calling, there are clear tenets of
what the Wolverines are trying
to do missing from the field. They
are not getting the ball to their
best players. They are not finding
creative ways to utilize talent.
And they are not getting premier
speed in space.
Until (if?) that changes, this
offense will be handicapped by
itself.
EVERYTHING?!?!?!: 5/10
To be fair, had Army’s field
goal at the end of regulation
drifted inches further and left,
the entire tone of this story would
be cranked up several notches.
A loss to Army ostensibly ruins
Michigan’s most lofty goal, the
College Football Playoff. A near-
loss to Army obviously doesn’t.
But the concerns that put
Michigan in such a tenuous
position
don’t
seem
easily
amenable. And that’s where the
panic should concentrate. The
presumptive returns of Runyan
and Donovan Peoples-Jones will
help, no doubt. That will not fix
the depth issues on the defense.
It will not make the scheme more
assured nor the play-calling less
aggravating. It might help Shea
Patterson take care of the ball
and play more efficiently, but it
will not be a magic bullet.
We are two weeks into the
season, and the Wolverines have
performed significantly worse
than expectations. Given the
nature of their opponents, they
can afford to use those two games
as wake-up calls to help right the
ship without a season-altering
loss. But if it sustains beyond this
bye week, that record won’t stay
unscathed much longer.
MAX MARCOVITCH
Managing Sports Editor
NATALIE STEPHENS/Daily
Defensive linemen Aidan Hutchinson (second to right) was one of two players who helped force a fumble to clinch Michigan’s win on Saturday afternoon.
Gattis seeking to eliminate errors
It’s unlikely Josh Gattis ever
tried to envision what his first
in-season
press
conference
as
Michigan’s
offensive
coordinator would look like
because, frankly, he has better
things to do. But if he did,
he
probably
didn’t
picture
reporters trying their best to
play Operation, guessing at
potential issues to try and find
an answer for why his offense
hasn’t worked.
But the Wolverines enter
their bye week with no topic of
greater importance. They will
likely spend the 11 days before
a trip to Wisconsin doing
the same thing — watching,
diagnosing,
fixing.
If
they
don’t, their season will hang in
the balance sooner rather than
later.
Through two games, senior
quarterback Shea Patterson is
averaging 7.1 yards per passing
attempt, down from 8.0 last
year. Michigan’s run game is
averaging 3.8 yards per attempt,
down from 4.8 last year. Those
two games came against Middle
Tennessee State and Army, and
to put it kindly, neither defense
is
representative
of
what
Michigan will see in Madison,
or throughout the Big Ten
season.
To
hear
Gattis,
and
Michigan’s players, tell it, the
problem lies in self-inflicted
errors. The system is working,
but the execution is not yet
there.
“When you look at it over
the past two games, we got
seven turnovers, we got seven
fumbles, we have 10 penalties
and then we also have seven
drops,” Gattis said. “And so, you
go back and you look at all those
plays in critical situations,
they’re killing us now.
“There’s
been
a
lot
of
positives over the past few
games. We’ve ran 160 plays,
we’ve had 17 explosives and
we’ve had a number of different
other explosive opportunities
that we’ve just missed, whether
it’s overthrown balls, dropped
balls, guys wide open to create
some big opportunities. We’ve
missed about six of those. We
just gotta get our timing down
in every phase and every asset
of our operation in offense.”
There’s truth in this —
the
conversation
would
be
different if Michigan hadn’t
lost five fumbles in two games.
There’s no inherent correlation
between a spread offense and a
lack of ball security. Ditto for
penalties and drops. It’s not the
whole picture though.
When an offense predicated
on forcing players into conflict
— be it on zone reads or run-
pass
options
—
becomes
predictable, the ball getting
handed off 37 times and the
quarterback rarely keeping the
ball on options, it won’t work.
“Everything that we do has
some level of read, whether it’s
an RPO read or quarterback
read run,” Gattis said, and if
that’s true, the Wolverines don’t
seem to be taking advantage.
Maybe that has to do with
Patterson’s
oblique
injury,
which Gattis said has been
an issue in both games. But
the offensive coordinator also
seemed to believe it had little
effect on his quarterback’s
play.
The
reads
are
more
complex than they seem, he
said, particularly against a
team that might be playing
defenders wide up the field,
cutting off a potential run by
the quarterback.
“He
made
some
good
decisions in there,” Gattis said.
“There were some decisions,
obviously, that you wish you
could have back, but you gotta
continue
to
correct
those
decisions and get better from
them.”
Gattis’ message — fix the
obvious errors and everything
else will fall into place —
holds
true.
Center
Cesar
Ruiz searched around for the
right
phrasing
to
describe
the struggles and never quite
found it. “I wouldn’t call them
growing pains,” he said, “but
there’s some things we got to
— some things, we understand
the offense. We understand
everything. … Every game’s not
going to be perfect.”
Right now, mistakes or not,
the Wolverines must find a way
to run the offense as Gattis
described it in the spring.
Option-heavy,
fast,
keeping
defenses off-balance and above
all, modern.
“Obviously is there areas
and room for growth? Yes,”
Gattis said. “Like I said, the
mistakes and everything. But
I think ultimately, it’s my job
to put them in a position to be
successful.”
ETHAN SEARS
Managing Sports Editor
C O M M E M O R AT I N G
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2019
University of Michigan Law School, 1225 Jeffries Hall
4:10–5:30 p.m.
Sponsored by U-M Office of the Provost
A CONVERSATION WITH
U.S. REPRESENTATIVE
JUSTIN AMASH