Running into a brick wall

I said in my game column yesterday that Michigan's offense was incoherent against MSU: they didn't test the Spartans' defense deep despite safeties playing 8 yards from the line of scrimmage and they didn't test the defense horizontally to put a strain on overly aggressive linebackers. The other problem was that Borges called running plays on 19 of Michigan's 26 first downs, including 9 of 11 in the first half. What you'll see below will not surprise you: MSU's safeties are less than 10 yards from the line of scrimmage on a 1st and 10 early in the game. Borges calls a running play, doesn't audible, and the results are exactly what you'd expect.

It's 1st and 10 early in the first quarter. There was absolutely no reason for MSU's safeties to be cheating as strongly as they are in this alignment other than Borges has obvious tendencies that can be exploited. As such, Michigan's three-wide, one-back set gets defended like this:

Jeremy Gallon begins to run across the formation on a jet sweep.

As the ball is snapped, look at the leverage of MSU's linebackers and safeties: all but one of them is on the balls of his toes and running toward the line of scrimmage.

By the time Gallon has passed Denard who will utilize Fitz Toussaint as a lead blocker, MSU's three linebackers are two yards from the line of scrimmage. Their two safeties are no more than six yards from the line of scrimmage.

One of MSU's linebackers is already beyond the LOS. Fitz Toussaint will block him as the lead blocker, leaving an MSU safety (highlighted) unblocked to hit Denard in the hole. Notice that both Denard and the safety are equidistant from the LOS.

Seeing an unblocked safety (highlighted) already at the line of scrimmage, Denard cuts back inside...

.... and is clobbered.

Video

The Takeaway
This is fucking infuriating. There was no doubt in the minds of MSU's linebackers or safeties; Michigan is running and there's no chance of Denard pulling up to throw here. Look, for example, at Gallon who is effectively running a wheel route. Who's covering him? Roy Roundtree runs into the screen to try and block anyone, but if he had run a route downfield, he would've had one-on-one coverage. For Borges, a guy who claims to want to attack vertically, this should be his bread and butter. Instead, it's a one-yard loss because he ran the ball on 73% of Michigan's first downs. This is untenable. If Michigan doesn't develop play action off of its base offensive sets or at least start breaking tendency, mounting a consistent offensive attack against good defenses will be impossible.