Michigan Football, Team 138, 2017 Season.

[iam416]

Ah yes, osu will have no chance vs the Chris Evans wildcat!

This is another great example. Penn State's depantsing of Don Brown is explained away -- well, bye weeks, cupcakes, chance to put in NEW STUFF!!! And ARMPUNT!!! Ok. whatever. But then M gets the same chance -- total shitcans ahead of Wisconsin. And they come up with -- the Evans wildcat?

So, either acknowledge that Franklin did a really great job and outcoached HARBAUGH!!!, which is impossible because the Blog has dedicated considerable space to mocking Franklin. OR, point out how unimaginative HARBAUGH!!!! was with his weeks of shitcan opponents, which is impossible because it's HARBAUGH!!!!

[WingsFan]

There are a multitude of things that aren’t right. Team is young, OL is underperforming (continuing theme since RichRod days), we don’t have a HR RB/WR, and there are too many cooks in the kitchen. When Fisch can go to UCLA and put up those numbers in his first year, you know something is wrong.

Harbaugh is going to need to take a look in the mirror, there needs to be a new direction offensively. All the good programs would clean house after this year’s O performance. I’d show Pep and Drevno the door, maybe bring Jedd back (?), and give him the keys.

[Jeff Buchanan]

........ I consider M's OL a total failure of the staff. End of story.

No, it's not the end of the story. You are ignoring the details associated with the story.

Are coaches responsible for the OL shit show? Yes, to some extent, and Brian has offered this as a cause. He's also, correctly, IMO, said it might be the players.

Players, and in this case the collective performance of a unit, the OL, are only as good, and the unit only as good, as the ability of the players to execute what the coaches have told them to do.

Is there any question that JBB or Nolan Ulizio are playing poorly? Is that a coaching problem? Is it a ceiling issue, i.e., are they playing as well as they are capballe of doing so? Frankly, we don't know.

I think there is good evidence from the eyeball eval (and I'm basing this on Brian's UFRs not mine) that Patrick Kugler at C may be significantly contributing to the sack rate with bad line calls. Still, Brian isn't assigning causation because, given the circumstances that none of us are on the practice field watching the interaction between coaches and players nor are we in the film room when important coaching takes place.

It's without basis to make a claim like this. Brian seems to understand this a whole lot better than you do.

[Jeff Buchanan]

.......... some good comments in the last 10m. Hard to keep up with and I don't have the time to go find them, but Brain has mentioned at one point or another every hit on Harbaugh and his staff that some here are saying he doesn't do.

I don't get the hits being taken against him except the one where he set expectations at 10-2 and has kindof painted this over (made excuses for) instead of accepting responsibility for the fact he was way wrong. There are 2 or 3 posters on mgoblog that have pointed this out and held him accountable for it. They get negged (down voted) furiously - that's a problem but not one that is not present everywhere. Contrary voices are silenced by the crowd instead of being listened to and critically evaluated.

[iam416]

It's without basis to make a claim like this. Brian seems to understand this a whole lot better than you do.

No, it's with basis. I'll get to that. But your arguments remind me of late night drunk debates in college where someone will invariably say "how do you KNOW?" invoking Heisenberg and fending off an entirely losing position. Sure, I don't KNOW that the sun will rise in the east on Saturday. I certainly have a strong basis to say that it will.

My underlying assumption is rather straight-forward: coaching matters. You acknowledge this when you talk about HARBAUGH!!!'s track record. You point to the successes his various teams have had and credit him as being a very good coach. You don't once say, "Hmmm, well, how much of that is coaching and how much is players? can we ever really know?" Of course not. You look at a set of results over time and reach a conclusion. Your conclusion has a basis in fact. It may be wrong, but it has a basis. I happen to think it's the correct conclusion, incidentally.

I look at M's OL performance this year (and last year) and think that they are not being coached well. I think OL coaches make a difference. I think offensive scheme makes a difference. I think the failure of either is attributable to the coaches. Directly.

I can accept some mitigation for the QB injury. The OL, however, has no mitigating circumstances. And I will absolutely blame that which I think is predominant. I will not engage in "how can we ever know" nonsense. I'm not 21. This isn't a dorm room. And I'm not nearly drunk enough.

Happy Thanksgiving, JB!

[Jeff Buchanan]

...... This is how we can know. Brian's UFR Offense is up and this is M's 4th play on their first possession - the Evans Wild Cat shit:

Bizarre all around as M runs a wildcat that ends up being 6 v 6 in the box and so not a tactically horrible thing; UW lines up in a bizarre setup that necessarily sees the DL slant hard to the field; Michigan can’t get their line call right, it looks like, as Kugler ends up releasing downfield into nobody. Heavy slant, LB comes behind it, and JBB has a choice between letting an OLB or MLB hit Evans. He tries to split the difference, slowing the OLB and sort of blocking the MLB. Evans gets crushed but this isn’t his fault, necessarily: all three of Ruiz, Kugler, and JBB are doing the wrong thing. -1 each I guess.

The execution of this play, possibly well conceived and run well during the week of practice for the Wisconsin game, absolutely screwed by the players. This isn't coaching. We can assume they knew what to do on this particular play and didn't do it.

Here's my take. Your average fan looks at the play once as it unfolds, maybe looks superficially at a recap by someone who wrote about it and draws what are essentially dumb conclusions based on faulty observation.

BTW, I like your response to my post about "how do we know?" This is a similar argument I took during one of our back-and-forths in the past. It's interesting because I was arguing the usefulness of observational data in forming conclusions; you took me to task for not using "the facts" to support my position ..... heh. Now you're doing it. I still think your conclusion is supportable by the observational data ...... which,as you have pointed out to me in the past, is trumped by the facts.

I'll concede only this ...... M's OL problems are a coaching issue, IMO, based on the observation that M's QBs have gotten trucked more often than is even remotely acceptable. However, there is objective data that supports player errors in the form of Brian's UFRs within which, by video, he details who made which errors. He didn't do a grading chart because it was useless, the OL play was overall and individually terrible. Coaches are not coaching these players to make these errors.

[Rocky Bleier]

Not criticizing the defense is a blind spot. The stats look good, but it gets exposed against good teams. It a great defense if you have an high powered offense, but against good teams that offense has trouble scoring. Giving up a TD because Brown's defense is always over pursuing can be fatal.

I like Don Brown and his defense, but he does get burned sometimes. Aggressive defense is great, but you need to have athletes that can play in space and cover mistakes. The PSU game stands out of course. Penn State's OC did a good job of identifying and attacking mismatches. Kinnel could not cover Hamilton. Did Brown adjust? He seems to be stubbornly wedded to his "we solve our problems with aggression" philosophy.

[Jeff Buchanan]

......... Here's another evluation of an M play by Brian:

Michigan runs an iso, and they crease the line but there are two ILBs and one fullback. McKeon, at H-back, buried himself in the back of the line hoping to draw attention, I guess, but he didn’t, and this play looks like a Borges play. RPS -2. Maybe file this under busted line call? I dunno.

There are two more of these -RPSs in the plays I've looked at so far where Brian clearly points to play calling if only indirectly but it is nonetheless a frank criticism of the coaching call and he's done this plenty for the Drevno-Hamilton Harbaugh triumvirate of play calling madness.

He's also alluding to a failure of Kugler to make the correct line call .... possibly ..... because you can't know with any degree of certainty.

[WM Wolverine]

Coaching, talent, and experience issues on the OL. Mediocre talent, misses in recruiting. Talent there is all underclassman, tackle position will be very thin again next season without Cole..

8-4 was the floor, very few had more than 10 wins... The issue AGAIN is another season of losing to every decent opponent and not beating one good team. Florida was much weaker than expected while Sparty was tons better, M needed to win 1 or even two of it's likely 4 losses.

[iam416]

Buchanan:

I think coaching involves more than play-calling. I can't really comment on whether or not the play-calling is smart. I'd defer to Brian on that. However, coaching is also about having your players ready to execute. Period. If you can coach your players to execute the play you've called, then what good is the play?

I'll cite an example I've used before, I'm sure. Last year I coached 9 and 10 year old basketball. I put in 3 very basic sets. I'm talking one pass and an off-the-ball pick. I also put in an in-bounds play. They struggled with it in practice, but I thought I could teach them. We got absolutely trucked in the first game. They were clueless on offense and couldn't execute anything I taught them. I switched to an even simpler offense -- ball screens. Set a pick for the dribbler. Crash the boards. We improved dramatically.

My plays were good. They should have carved up the shitass defense we were playing. But my kids couldn't execute and I didn't have enough time to coach them up. So we switched.

My criticism of M's staff isn't the play-calling, it's the development. It's the same criticism levied against Hoke, although far more limited. I do think they know what they're doing. I'm very much not sure that this is a large enough sample size (which ought to, by the way, be the number one counterpoint to my observations). We'll see how next year goes.

[froot loops]

The excuses for the O line are strange. Brian Cook keeps on blaming Hoke and Devery Hamilton. When you have 28 and 30 recruits in your first two full recruiting classes you should figure out how to field a decent line. MSU is fielding a sophmore walkon that was a 6'7 205 TE in High School at LT and he is probably the second best lineman. Does Michigan not have a walk on program? I can't understand why they have shit for depth.

[WingsFan]

Anyone will tell you a college H coach needs 4 years

[Jeff Buchanan]

The excuses for the O line are strange. Brian Cook keeps on blaming Hoke and Devery Hamilton.........I can't understand why they have shit for depth.

On the first comment, it's not accurate. Brian has been critical of play calling, of managing 2105/16 OL recruiting IVO Hoke's well documented OL recruiting shortfalls and of current OL coaching. He's been spot on, IMO, with his criticism regarding the addition of zone blocking schemes poorly implemented and executed.

On the second comment, if you understand what's really going on with OL recruiting and development you would understand.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Buchanan:

I think coaching involves more than play-calling. I can't really comment on whether or not the play-calling is smart. I'd defer to Brian on that. However, coaching is also about having your players ready to execute. Period. If you can coach your players to execute the play you've called, then what good is the play?..........

My criticism of M's staff isn't the play-calling, it's the development. It's the same criticism levied against Hoke, although far more limited. I do think they know what they're doing. I'm very much not sure that this is a large enough sample size (which ought to, by the way, be the number one counterpoint to my observations). We'll see how next year goes.

The discussion here started with regard to Brian's failure to criticize Harbaugh. My response to that was to demonstrate that he has, indeed, been critical but he usually does so with a caveat that amounts to, "we don't know."

Your response was to provide an argument that "we don't know" is a weak one implying that Brain probably does know or, at least, has an opinion, but is unwilling to stake out a position that can be seen as critical of Harbaugh.

I think that's a fair observation. I'm willing to give him some slack here where others may not. If you carefully read his UFRs, and this takes a lot of time that most people don't have, the criticisms are in between the lines but unmistakable to me. He's loath to criticize players or coaches harshly mainly because he mostly refuses to assign causation directly to them. I think that is understandable and reasonable in his position. There's room for disagreement here.

I am, however, not so restrained. It's my view the play of the OL has been and continues to be poor. We agree here. The cause is multi factorial and you, me and others may fairly disagree to what extent.

I made a point in another post of mine that the OL has been bad since the 2013 season and into 2014. Recruitment and development are at play here and it should address Froot's view that he can't understand why there is no depth on the OL. I also think that OL recruiting is less than optimal and there is plenty of anecdotal evidence to support that view. Again, another reason for a lack of depth and the attendant competition that tends to raise individual performance when depth is present.

So, in the context of the original discussion, where you and I disagree, talent, is over the manner by which Brian frames his criticism of Harbaugh ..... and I may see criticism in between the lines where those that don't have the time to actually read Brian's break downs, including video of each play and score cards for performance, don't.

[Mackenzie]

.......... some good comments in the last 10m. Hard to keep up with and I don't have the time to go find them,

Jeff, I chuckled at this part of your post. Your posts, as with many others here, are informative, thoughtful, knowledgable, organized, entertaining, and, I'm sure, both time and labor intensive. So, whadda mean you don't "have time to go find them." Geez, you'd think it was Thanksgiving or something. Stop slacking off!

Just so there's no confusion, I mean that as the highest of compliments.