Defense?!? We don't need no stinkin' defense!

I was lucky on Saturday in that I didn't watch most of our game in Bloomington live. Due to my son's soccer game starting at 3:45, I got a few updates during the first half, saw a little bit of the start of the second half at home, and then watched the final drive at a Pizza Hut surrounded by a bunch of hungry eight year-olds. Of course I recorded the game and was able to watch it later on in the evening. I could fast forward through much of the game when we were on defense. The funny thing is that it took me longer to fast forward through the Hoosiers 98 offensive plays than it did to watch Michigan's offensive plays twice.

The most interesting thing about the game, was that I think both coaching staffs came into the game thinking they couldn't stop the other team on offense. Indiana decided that they were going to be aggressive on defense, hoping to get some big negative plays and or turnovers. They slanted their d-line a lot, had their linebackers key on Denard, and occasionally bringing a safety up to the line. That resulted in a lot of single coverage on wide receivers, and no deep run support, which led to a lot of long plays on Michigan's part. The Michigan coaches, on the other hand, decided to play soft coverage (for the most part), hoping that by forcing the Hoosiers to dink and dunk their way down the field, they would eventually make a mistake. For the most part, Indiana did not make mistakes and held the ball for an impossibly long time. In the end, neither defense did anything to suggest that they will be anything other than putrid this year.

In that sense, I think this game probably reinforced most people's ideas of what Michigan's team will be this year. Those that were convinced that this year is just like last year will point to the 500 yards passing allowed against a traditional doormat of the league and proclaim that the tougher teams in the league will run up the score. Those that see this as a new year point to a second straight road win and the continual video-game like stats of Denard Robinson as proof that even when our defense is the dregs, we can still outscore anyone. I think that both viewpoints are valid. This is probably the worst defense in the big ten, and despite its youth, I'm not sure it will make any quantum leaps this year. At the same time there's a real chance that this is the best offense in the league. Everyone talks about Denard's obvious abilities, but the offensive line is monster, the TEs are good blockers, and the receiving corps might be the best in the league, both in receiving and in blocking. What this all means is that we are likely to see more shootout, last team with the ball wins type games.

Other random thoughts:
-One thing that will help our defense is the inherent conservatism in a lot of coaches in the league--Tressel, Ferentz, Paterno, and to a lesser extent Lt. Dan and the Madison Meathead are all "run or die trying" coaches. Our run defense is not stellar by any stretch of the imagination, but our pass defense is so porus that any time spent trying to establish the run is a wasted opportunity to beat our corners deep, or catch one of our linebackers trying to cover a TE. One or two wasted opportunities might be all our offense needs to win a game.
-I don't think the all-out blitzing, throw the kitchen sink at them approach will work with this defense, but I would like to see us disguise our coverages or vary things up a little bit. Playing 20 yards off the receivers every play seems like its asking to get picked apart. Throw in an occasional four man line, or a safety blitz. I noticed they played Mike Martin at DE a little against Indiana. Maybe moving him around some more, or bringing in other big bodies (Patterson, Will Campbell) on run downs will help against the caveman offenses.
-Having Brandon Herron back this week will help the pass rush, because it will allow us to move Craig Roh to his more natural position, DE on passing downs. It will also be good to get Carvin Johnson back, because I think he may be a little more physical than Thomas Gordon, although Gordan hasn't played that badly
- I don't know why LSU fans are complaining about Les Miles. They all want to go back to the days when they had a handsome, well dressed coach who always seemed to be in full control. But who's to say that if they got rid of Miles they wouldn't end up with another coach like the guy who came before the guy they're all pinning for. Maybe the norm for LSU coaches is not Nick Saban, but rather Gerry Dinardo. At least Les keeps the games interesting, and his press conferences are certainly more entertaining that anything Dinardo does on the Big Ten network.
-Lane Kiffin is an idiot. Up two with Washington driving, already in FG range with two minutes left, he decides not to use any of his three timeouts to give his offense time to respond, instead choosing to use two of them to ice the Washington kicker Eric Folk (who beat SC last year with a late FG) before his 32 yard attempt. Rats are gonna start jumping off that ship soon, if they haven't already.
-Gambler's Lament-Another exhibit why gambling on college sports is bad for your health was the Northwestern/Minnesota game. In our weekly College Pick'em pool (no money, just bragging rights), I had the Wildcats -5.5 @ Minnesota. Late in the game, with Minnesota leading 28-20, i flipped over to another game, figuring I was gonna lose this one. I flipped back a few minutes later to find that not only had Northwestern scored a TD, they'd missed the two point conversion, gotten the ball back and kicked a field goal. Now they were leading 29-28 and Minnesota had the ball with under a minute left. This game was toast for me, NU wasn't going to cover. But with just over 30 seconds left, with no timeouts left, Minnesota's QB threw it right to a Northwestern LB in the flat who broke into the clear and headed toward a pick six. Just about the time I jumped out of my seat, excited that I might actually get this pick right, the Wildcat linebacker realized where he was, realized that they didn't need to score and slide to the ground at about the 30. Good thing I didn't have any money on the game, or I might have been really pissed.
-More Golden rankings stuff later this week, and maybe if I find the time a post about the upcoming game with little brother.

Depth Charges

More than anything else, games like yesterday's game against Eastern are about depth - developing depth by giving backups and second and third stringers a chance to play, and using depth to avoid the inevitable letdown that comes when you play a team you're expected to beat handily.

It's clear that we have developed the depth we need to be a championship team in some areas, but are still sorely lacking in others. We have as much talent at the offensive skill positions (QB, RB, WR, TE) as anyone in the league. The depth certainly helped yesterday. Tate Forcier had his worst game of the year. He missed a number of passes. Not Threet or Sheridan missed, but turn a 20 yard gain into a 5 yard gain type misses. A number of times he passed up a sure couple of yards trying to make a big play. It seemed pretty clear that he had read some of his press clippings this week and wanted to show that he was the newest superstar. As a result, our passing game was not nearly as efficient yesterday as it was the previous two weeks. In it's place was a devastating rushing attack. From the first snap, it was clear that Carlos Brown was going to have a great game. Eastern had no answer for his speed. Michael Shaw looked almost as good.

On the other hand, it's equally clear that we are nowhere near a championship level defense, and we are amazing thin there. With the Big Ten suspending Jonas Mouton just a day before the game, we were left starting a walk-on, Kevin Leach at linebacker. What's worse, he appeared to be the better of our two inside linebackers. Obi Ezah just seems lost out there at times -- tentative, slow, and consistently out of position. EMU basically had success with two plays, a sort of counter that sucked the linebackers into the line, before the RB bounced the play around the end, and a play action waggled that got the linebacker open crossing in front of the moving QB. Both plays really took advantage of the decision making of our linebackers. Given that poor play, I was disappointed to not see more of the backups once we got up big late in the second half. If backups like Kenny Demens, Brandon Smith, and JB Fitzgerald can't get playing time against Eastern, the chance of them helping later in the year is slim to none.

Bullets:
-Eastern may have provided the game plan to beat us this year -- run, run, run, play action to the TE. Keep our D on the field.
-Denard clearly has a long way to go at QB. He made a couple of bad reads that led to our two turnovers. But he has good arm, decent mechanics, and of course could turn off the light and be in bed before it gets dark. The bar is not very high for his passing competency. He only needs to be adequate at passing to make him a quarterback capable of moving the ball against good defenses.
-I was hoping to see more of the OL backups - Omaneh, Barnum, Khoury, Mealer.
-I hope Andy Schmitt is ok. He's a good QB, and Eastern really has no chance of having any sort of season without him. I was watching him with the binoculars when he went down, it looked bad. He planted and his knee buckled.
-There were a couple of spreads this week that looked like fool's gold. Unfortunately this fool only recognized one of the three before the games were played. What's the old saying, "It's not the Xs and Os, it's the Jimmies and the Joes." In college football, most times, talent wins. That's why OSU wins 10 or 11 games every year with the world's dullest offense. There were three games where the talent gap between the two teams seemed to be at odds with the spread:
1) BYU was favored by a touchdown over Florida State. While everyone focused on BYU's win over Oklahoma and how they executed, the truth is, even as much as the 'Noles have slipped in recent years, they still have a lot more talent than BYU
2) Oklahoma was only favored over Tulsa by 18. Everyone wondered if OU could recover from the loss of Sam Bradford. But remember that a program as good as OU always has talent waiting in the wings. Given a couple of weeks, It should have been obvious that Landry Jones (the backup QB) would be just fine.
3) Florida was favored by 30 over Tennessee. With all the hype about Kiffin's comments and conjecture about how much Florida would run up the score, we lost sight of the fact that Tennessee's problem in recent years hasn't been their defense, and that they still have a fair amount of talent, with a very good defensive coordinator, Monte Kiffin.
-Watching the Texas - Tex Tech game, it appeared to me that the new enclosed end of the stadium, which was only partially completed when we went there, makes a big difference in the noise level of the stadium. Perhaps I should attend another game there.
-I think that the end might be near for the USC "dynasty" They really looked quite mediocre against the Huskies and I wouldn't be surprised to see them lose to Cal, UCLA, or even, gasp, Notre Dame. I think Carroll should really think about opening up the offense a little, there appears to be little imagination in what they do.
-Is it just me, or did it seem like Tennessee wasn't really trying to win the game against Florida, so much as just keep the score down.
-I didn't really see much of the MSU/ND game, but it looked very similar to our game against ND a week earlier, except that the absence of Michael Floyd hurt the Irish in the stretch run. I was kinda surprised how much the announcers were commenting on every penalty the Irish got. I think that they've bought into what Weis was trying to convey last week - they only lost to us because of the officials.
-The Arkansas / Georgia game was absolutely bonkers. Ryan Mallet is going to make opposing defensive coaches in the SEC sweat for three years. Of course the Razorbacks don't have enough other talent to win a title, but their games will be fun to watch.
-Ditto for the Fresno / Boise game on Friday night. Boise may have a great rushing attack and some good skill players, but they will get carved up when they play a BCS conference team on New Year's if they don't improve their rush defense. A lot. And why did Fresno keep kicking the ball deep, after giving up two kickoff returns for TDs (one that counted) and two other 60 plus yard returns? Pat Hill is vastly overrated as a coach. Did you realized that he has never won a conference title?

What stage are you in?

It's not quite what Elisabeth Kubler-Ross had in mind, but i've gone through
Denial(at the game - "this can't be happening"), Depression (the next day or two), Bargaining ("Maybe if we run the table, this will all be washed away") and am currently working on Anger (thanks to MGoBlog's UFR) I'll get to Acceptance sometime later, hopefully after a win or two.

Some other observations that got missed in the fallout from the "Upset of the Century"
-I would love to see the LSU/Va Tech game in person this week. Defense, defense, defense, with a modicum of special teams thrown in. After watching most of the LSU game, I'm not convinced that Matt Flynn will be able to handle the pressure of the Hokie pass rush. He looked like he got rattled against Mississippi State. Of course, with their defense, he won't need to do much to win. First team to ten wins.
-If Michigan had done what they were supposed to have done, I would have really enjoyed all the press jumping all over Weis E. Coyote, super offensive genius. He played all these games with his QB selection all summer, making a story where there really was none, and then they come out and look absolutely putrid (122 yards total offense in 63 plays). Defense wasn't much better. It will be interesting to see what contortions ND fans go through to blame this season on Ty Willingham.
-The worst performance by a top ten team this week? It might have been Texas, who had to hold on for dear life against another ASU, Arkansas State, who is projected to finished in the middle of the Sun Belt. Especially troubling is the paltry 117 yards rushing against a team that was 77th in the nation against the run. With a TCU team coming up this week that is 4-0 in their last four against Big 12 teams, they could be in trouble.
-I loved the tribute USC gave to their former kicker (HT: Various AOL Fanhouse bloggers). I think it shows why Pete Carroll is the best coach in the game today. He's like that younger teacher at your high school who had a good sense of humor, was friendly, and knew just enough popular culture to relate to kids. It's no wonder that all the top HS kids want to play for him.
-I know it's not wise to question the guys in Vegas too much, but there are a few lines this week I don't get. A couple of games we've already talked about as being tight games, UT-TCU and VaTech-LSU. Is Oklahoma really 11 points better than Miami? And the Michigan-Oregon line just seems off. The Ducks are getting 8? Can Michigan really score enough to win by 8 or more?

-One final thing, since everyone is talking about the next Michigan coach, I'll throw in my 2 cents. My top candidates at this point:
1) Jeff Tedford - good Xs and Os guy, some pro experience, head coaching experience in a BCS conference, Cal is a very similar school to Michigan. He's been frustrated with Cal's inability to get a stadium expansion done, Michigan's recent announced plans might be a draw.
2) Rich Rodiguez - Very innovative, the fact he listened to Bama last year shows he's available for the right price
3) Kirk Ferentz - Very good at teaching the fundamentals. Knows the UofM president, Mary Sue Coleman due to her time at Iowa, and has (or had) a daughter at UofM. Would he be willing to move in conference?
4) Greg Schiano - Great recruiter, good pedigree

I don't think that Les Miles will ever be offered the job. He desperately wants the job, anyone who pays attention to LSU football can tell you that. But there have long been rumors about character issues (he's referred to as "Loose Morals" by Michigan insiders), and I don't think that Bill Martin would take a chance with that. Especially since he's not really known as a great strategist, and his buyout at LSU (reportedly $2.1 million if he leaves to go to Michigan) might be cost prohibitive.

Breaking Down the Brackets

June 19, 2008 Note: This is a post that originally appeared on Golden's Football Rankings and is reproduced here for posterity.

By now most of you have seen the brackets and have probably turned in a few entries in the office pool. For those of you who haven’t, I offer a few alternatives to the traditional bracket style pool:

Points by Seeds
Each player selects eight teams. You get points when one of your teams wins, based on their seed. One x seed in the first round, Two x seed in the second round, Four x seed in the third round, etc. The key is to pick the right upsets, the teams that are under seeded. Anyone who picked George Mason in this setup last year was golden.

Random Draw
This one is popular in our office when it comes down to the sweet sixteen. Eight players all put in ten dollars and draw two teams out of a hat. The one who gets the winning team wins the pot. Pure gambling. No skill, no analysis required, just simple, plain, dumb luck.

Last Man Standing
A little bit of a twist on the popular NFL game. Each participant has to pick one team to win each round. The trick is, they have to pick an upset (by the seeds) each time. If they pick correctly, they go on to the next round. No limitations on picking the same team twice, as teams rarely upset more than two teams in the tournament. This one takes a large number of participants, as its really easy for a lot of people to miss on their picks at the same time.

Fantasy Draft
For hoops junkies only. Requires 8, 16 or 32 players. Depending on the number of entries, each participant is put into a match for the first two rounds against another participant. Everyone “drafts” four players from the NCAA teams. The winner after the first round of games is the one whose players have the most points. After the first round they advance to another match. At the sweet sixteen, the remaining players re-draft. Can be really fun, but really time-consuming.


Snubs
Based on the Golden basketball rankings, the most deserving teams left out of the dance were Air Force (ranked #35), Syracuse (38), Drexel (40), Akron (41), Clemson (43) and Missouri State (45). The teams that took their places included: Purdue (51), Georgia Tech (52), Arkansas (53), Vanderbilt (56), Texas Tech (64), and Stanford (74). Despite the rankings, the most glaring omission in my mind was Drexel, who had as many road wins as Big Ten teams #3-#8.

Under seeded teams
Teams that appeared to be seeded too low in comparison to their rankings in the Golden poll – Virginia Commonwealth (11 seed, ranked 16), Davidson (13 seed, 21), Arizona (8 seed, 18), Nevada (7 seed, 15), Kentucky (8 seed, 17).
Conversely, teams that appear to be over seeded: Virginia Tech (5 seed, 46), Texas (4 seed, 28), Virginia (4 seed, 36), and USC ( 5 seed, 39).

Final Four Candidates:
Midwest: Florida, Oregon (The Badgers only if Brian Butch gets healthy)
West: UCLA, Kansas, Virginia Tech, SIU, Gonzaga (their history as a double digit seed is impressive)
South: Ohio State, Texas A&M (don’t know what to make of Memphis, wish they’d joined the Big East instead of Cinncy)
East: UNC, Marquette, Texas, G’town, Wash St (easily the toughest region)

My picks right now(ask me again before Thursday, its bound to change): Florida, UCLA, Texas A&M, G’Town.