I went to a football game in Bloomington, Indiana yesterday and a track meet broke out. Denard is clearly the most exciting football player in the country and he continues to impress everyone, whether it was the second play of the day or the final one.
Michigan's offense accounted for 574 yards on offense on Saturday with their quick strike offense. The problem lies with Michigan's defense that gave up 568 yards of total offense as well. The Michigan offense is explosive and they will have to be to keep up with their young defense. This is a crazy stat: Michigan finished the game with 18:13 it total time of possession, IU 41:37. The Michigan defense was on the field more then twice as long as the Indiana D and still won the game! You have to give a tip of the hat to Mike Barwis and staff. If you would see a stat like that in the box score you would think it was a 42-7 win for the team with 41:37 of possession time.
Most of you watched the game, so I will just quickly move to the cheers and jeers:
Cheers
- Denard = Unbelievable. The IU crowd would cheer when he was stopped for a 5 yard gain.
- Junior Hemingway had a great day and a big catch on the final drive.
- The Michigan offense line. Was strong in pass protection and run blocking.
- Mike Martin = Beast
- Offensive play calling in the second half. When the D got stops, I thought Michigan was much too conservative in playing calling. IMO, Michigan had a chance to put the game away and was too predictable on the read option hand offs to Smith instead of mixing up the plays.
- Michigan's bend but don't break defense will hurt Michigan against teams with a better defense. IU could throw that WR screen every play for 8-12 yards each time. I know why Michigan's DB's play off the line so much, but at some point you have to stop that play.
- Pass rush was hot and cold all day. You can't let a senior QB stand back there and pick apart your defense. Michigan needs to pressure the QB to protect it's young secondary.
I am happy to be 5-0 and heading into a big game against MSU next week. The defense needs a better strategy on getting stops. Michigan can't keep it's defense on the field for 40+ minutes and think they will win to many more games this year. Next week will the best defense Michigan has seen all year, so it should be interesting.
4 comments:
time to beat up on Michigan state
I disagree on the play calling in the second half. Denard missed a couple wide open shots downfield as Indiana completely stacked the box. You have to run some to keep the defense honest, and frankly at that point running Denard every play was risky since we could not have him out of the game.
On the other hand...why can't we just run the zone-read from inside the 5 yard line. The I-form scares me everytime we line up in it
"Why can't we just run the zone-read from inside the 5 yard line."
If you mean the opponent's 5 yard line, it is because the defensive secondary creeps up into the box so we either need to stack our guys in there (I-formation) or pass. Passing generally wont work unless it's play action (I-formation works well for that) so either way you look at it, the I is the best way to get into the endzone.
If you mean our own 5 yard line, it is because doing anything out of the shotgun is dangerous. If you have a bad snap or the QB slips, it's an instant safety for the other team. Running the ball out of the I can get you some space in the backfield so that you can spread the opponent out again.
Your points are valid; I just thought that the play calling in the second half when we got stops was pretty predictable. I didn't see any crossing routes or fake run passes.
Michigan had a chance to take control of the ball game. Your right Denard did miss some long throws. My point was there were shorter routes available that would have given us some longer drives and kept the Defense off the field.
Side note, I also thought they could have been a bit more "creative" when Tate was in for a couple of plays. There could have been a drive there and they ran the read option and WR screen for a yard.
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