Sunday, November 4, 2018

Total Destruction

David Guralnick, Detroit News 
Everyone knew this was coming and when everyone knows something is going to happen it usually doesn't.  The line even jumped 2 points on Friday as Vegas thought this might happen.  It did on Saturday and Michigan beat its third ranked opponent in a row.   It's hard to put into words the domination as the Wolverines crushed the Nittany Lions on both sides of the ball.   Penn State looked like they didn't have any game plan for Michigan's #1 ranked defense and struggled all day just scoring one late TD.   It was a great win and I don't know about you, but things are starting to feel normal again.

Was the game perfect? It wasn't so we go to the Cheers and Jeers.

Cheers:
  • Don "F'ing" Brown 
  • Michigan's pass rush 
  • +3 in turnovers 
  • Higdon another big day! 
  • Shea running the offense 
  • No rust from the two weeks off 
  • Welcome back Tarik and Rashan officially 
  • 403 total yards of offense 
  • 186 total yards for PSU
Jeers:
  • Nordin was slow the to ball all afternoon, which caused a blocked punt 
  • Back-up QB McCaffrey's broken collarbone 
  • Thought the play calling got way too conservative in the 2nd qtr. 
  • 9 penalties for 80 yards 
  • No shutout :-(
I feel terrible for Dylan McCaffrey but that is why you don't have Shea in there late with him running the ball.   Hopefully he can heal up and be ready for the bowl game/playoffs.  

Don Brown gets the game ball and I thought the offense and play calling was good at times.   I didn't understand why Michigan kept running into the strength of Penn State's defense so much, which was killing drives in the 2nd and early in the 3rd quarter.    Michigan does have an issue with field goals that they will need to fix.   If that block didn't have so many penalties, that could have been a momentum changer.

The meat of the schedule is now over and the Wolverines will have to keep their focus with a trip to Rutgers and IU at home before they head to a Big Ten East Championship game against Ohio State in Columbus.   Unless MSU can pull an upset in East Lansing next weekend.   :-)

Great win!


4 comments:

Unknown said...

I thonk they should play more zone....after all McSorley went 5/13...thats just not good enough!

Tommertoffo said...

I agree with the play calling in the 2nd quarter should have been better.....but I don't like the criticism that it was too "conservative".

It's just we need a more varied running attack. What happened to the tailback pitchout? Imaging bringing in I formation with Mason as a FB and fake to Mason with a pitch to the TB in the opposite direction. Bo ran that with such success. D-L drives to plug the middle, and Higdon is free to the outside.

How about the wishbone with it's multiple options using trap blocking when it's 2nd and 8 or 3rd and 4. D-L cannot over-commit because the delayed run schemes prevent them from doing so.

The shotgun, unless it's RPO, is a great impediment to running up the middle; particularly when you don't have a lead blocker.

So, I agree 2nd quarter play calling was anemic....but not simply because we "ran up the middle". It's how we did it.

Mike Tebbe said...

Alot of times you set up future plays with the redundant play that we all think WTF... It is painful to watch for sure...

Glad to see Tarik and Gary back !!!!

Nordin is still an issue...

Any info on the recruits attending? The few pictures I saw looked like they were freezing their ass off.... DeLoach and Crouch at LB in the future sounds great to me :)

Unknown said...

no matter how well this team does there are ALWAYS armchair QBs that are crtical of coaches and play calling which absolutely kills me!!! We should play more zone!