After an absolute barnburner in Bloomington, Michigan escaped with a 42-35 victory to move to 5-0 for the first time since 2006. The defense was ugly as expected, the offense was awesome as expected, and the Wolverines once again proved that this season will never produce a dull moment the rest of the way.
With the Michigan State victory over Wisconsin on Saturday, the two in-state rivals are both 5-0 and this will be the first time that both teams enter the battle for the Paul Bunyan Trophy unbeaten since 1999. With next Saturday still six days away, despite the massive stakes; I’ll still take the time to break down exactly what we saw yesterday.
Michigan Offense
The offense once again put up huge numbers while producing 574 total yards of offense and six touchdowns. One huge snap-exchange turn-over on the one yard line prevented a likely seventh touchdown for the offense that would have put the game at 21-7 and leaving Indiana wondering if they could truly compete with Michigan.
Once again at the end of the day I don’t think anyone in the country could argue that Denard is the best player in college football at this point in time. I do not care who Michigan has played, the man has proven that he can do it through the air and on the ground. Has Michigan ever had an offensive weapon that literally makes fans hold their breath every time he runs the ball? Denard continues to put up numbers unlike anything that has ever been seen before in college football. He accounted for an astounding 494 total yards and five touchdowns while adding another signature game-winning drive on the road to his rapidly expanding Heisman Trophy resume. Has Michigan ever had a play that literally made all of us fans hold our breath every time he takes off on a run? Robinson started off fast with a 72-yard touchdown run and fittingly capped the day with his own game-winning touchdown run.
The receiving corps, despite only catching 10 passes on the day, came up huge in this game. Roy Roundtree continues to prove that he is one of the better receivers in the Big Ten. Early on Roundtree made a great move on a helpless Earnest Graham in the open field that led to the second Michigan touchdown on the day. Roundtree finished the day with 5 catches for 126 yards and a touchdown. Despite Roundtree’s great performance, one of the most important developments for the offense going forward was the emergence of Junior Hemingway. Hemingway had a nice catch and run early before opening up the second half with a great catch-and-run for a score. Hemingway made the play of the day when he came back and made a great play on the ball to set up Robinson for the winning touchdown. Hemingway provides the size on the outside that this team has been missing and you will see him used a lot more on the deep ball as teams continue to sell-out against the run against Michigan.
With Michigan having less than 50 plays from scrimmage, it is really tough to judge the running game. Vincent Smith had a nice touchdown run and I think it’s pretty tough to say the running game didn’t perform when Denard has 19 carries for 217 yards.
One primary concern for me was the blatant lack of aggressiveness in the play-calling department from the coaching staff in the second half. The defense had a string of stops that gave the offense golden opportunities to put the team up two scores and put the game away, but I think the play-calling partially contributed to their inability to do so. Magee and Rich kept calling QB Sweep or Inside-zone iso on first and second down and ultimately left us in third and long. I do not understand why we went away from play-action on first down since Indiana made it blatantly clear that they were willing to get beat in the passing game while playing simple man-to-man coverage on all of the wide receivers. Hopefully they call a more aggressive game next week against the Spartans because I fully expect Dantonio’s squad to game plan like Indiana and sell-out to stop the run.
Michigan Defense
Michigan did what they needed to do in this game against the run, holding the primary back Willis to just 3.3 YPC and playing disciplined football on the slot receiver sweeps. However, against the pass, Michigan’s young secondary was absolutely shredded by accurate senior Ben Chappel to the tune of 480 yards passing on 60+ attempts.
At this point it is pretty clear that although our secondary is inexperienced, the scheme that we are playing gives them little to no chance of actually making a play on the ball given our pre-snap alignment. I simply do not understand why on 3rd and 6 our defensive backs line up 5 yards behind the first-down marker and essentially provide an open invitation to throw a short pass for a first down. This is NOT an issue with the 3-3-5 scheme, it is purely an issue with Greg Robinson’s decision to play bend and not break with his inexperienced cornerbacks. Michigan actually had most of their modest success against the Hoosiers when they dropped 8 men into coverage.
The secondary was routinely beat by being nickel-and-dimed all the way down the field with Indiana routinely running the same series of routes. I would have to go back and watch the film, but Indiana’s five-wide set that involved bunched trips routinely left the inside wide receiver in the trips bunch set either wide open on a smash or out route. If Michigan plays with this mind-set next week against MSU the Spartans will do the same thing they did last year and routinely run wide receiver screens (similar to the Hoosiers) for about 10 yards per attempt.
James Rogers, per my observations, literally lined up about 13 yards off the line of scrimmage and only about two yards in front of deep safety Cameron Gordon. If you are this afraid of having this man on the field Greg Robinson, please please please just give someone else a shot to man-up and play aggressive coverage on the outside. Jordan Kovacs, in typical form, racked up a ton of tackles after the Hoosiers had already picked up first downs that typically resulted from him being a step or two slow in coverage. Kovacs just seems better suited to attempt to bulk up and step into the weak-side linebacker spot once Jonas Mouton graduates because he will never have the speed to truly cover wide receivers. Cameron Gordon actually played much more disciplined and was routinely in the right position on the rare occasions that Indiana did go down field.
The linebackers, even Obi Ezeh, were stout against the run and did an excellent job filling gaps. Mouton put together a few big hits throughout the game but I did notice that he failed to get the proper depth on a lot of his drops and routinely failed to recognize receivers in his zone including a blown coverage by Mouton on the first Hoosier touchdown.
In the second half, Michigan actually switched up their three man front by bouncing Mike Martin to the outside defensive end spot and having Van Bergen act as a stand-up interior lineman. This alternate alignment allowed Martin to have much more success rushing the passer while matched up one-on-one with the offensive tackle. I would suspect that this might be something that we see more of on obvious passing downs in the coming weeks.
Upshot
Offensively, this team will not get entirely shut down by any team this entire season no matter how good their defense is. The offense simply has too many weapons that can hurt you in a variety of ways. Michael Shaw needs to get healthy because Vincent Smith isn’t going to provide the big-play counterpart in the backfield that we will need the next two weeks.
The defense was caught in a perfect storm this week and they will need to get much more aggressive in the coming weeks. I do think that our defensive personnel match up much better with traditional offense like Michigan State and Iowa, but I still am concerned about giving up too much space on the outside. The defense must get itself off the field next week in third and long situations as Michigan State will most assuredly be looking to control the clock and keep Denard Robinson on the sideline.
Three Up:
1. Denard Robinson – I’m not really sure how much higher Denard’s stock can get given that he already is the Heisman front-runner, but another last-minute game winning drive while becoming the first player to go 200-200 twice in a career has to count for something.
2. Junior Hemingway – Hemingway has the ability to provide the physical presence at the outside wide receiver spot that the offense was lacking and his huge play late in the game in this one saved the day in a game that very well could have gone to overtime given the woes of our kicking game.
3. Roy Roundtree – Roundtree just continues to make plays and he always finds a way to make the first man miss. He may not have burner speed but he is elusive enough in the open field that he turned in a ton of yards after the catch this weekend.
Three Down:
1. Greg Robinson – The depths that he sinks to just continue to get lower. Yes, the talent is not all the way there on defense but there is no way you should allow an opponent to throw for that many yards. Continuing to play passive defense is not going to win this team games down the stretch.
2. James Rogers – After watching him allow a deep comeback route to be completed on 3rd and 16 I found myself hoping that one of the three young freshman corners have a great week of practice this week and step up to seize his position.
3. Jeremy Gallon – How he still has the punt return job is the biggest mystery to me after watching him bobble another basic return.
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