Mississippi State: Offense vs. Auburn

A series on Michigan's Gator Bowl opponent. You can find all of this content on the 2011 Gator Bowl page in the sidebar. Previously: NCAA rankings, Defense vs. Auburn, Screen defense, Jumping the Screen

Much like Michigan will benefit from having Mississippi State game film against a team with a similar offense, Michigan also played against a team with a very similar offensive strategy to the Bulldogs. That's the good news. The bad news? Mississippi State runs basically the exact same offense as Illinois. The same Illinois team that put up 65 points on Michigan's defense. 

The offense
As MGoBlog pointed out yesterday, the Bulldogs run a rush-first option offense not unlike the Nathan Scheelhaase-led Illinois offense: lots of pre-snap motion, lots of triple option, and very little passing. Mississippi State spent a lot of time in the pistol, triple option... well I don't know what to call it:

Michigan saw this alignment a lot against Illinois. The player lined up next to Mississippi State QB Chris Relf is the B-back, who will run a dive play, while the A-back behind Relf  acts as a traditional option back should the QB pull the ball. They also run a fair amount of traditional shotgun formations, but almost all of the plays include some sort of pre-snap motion and reads.

Quaterbackin'
The Bulldogs have thrown the ball 265 times this year (32% of the time) and run the ball 561 times (68% of the time), and rightfully so. Starter Relf is completing only 56% of his passes. But you don't have much incentive to throw the ball when your quarterback is a 6'4", 240 lbs mantank that runs people over. Like MGoBlog noted, Relf is more Cam Newton powerful than Denard shifty. Expecting the Ray Vinopals of the world to make wrap-up tackles against Relf is a pipe dream. Watching him steamroll a good Auburn defense didn't bode well for Michigan's ragtag group.

Relf doesn't throw the ball much, though, averaging just 16 attempts a game, which is good news for Michigan's secondary. Like Illinois, however, Mississippi State runs a nominal two-quarterback system. "Backup" Tyler Russell was often deployed as the passing quarterback against Auburn, coming in on long yardage situations and given the occasional drive. He's not much better, completing only 58% of his passes, but he'll be a variation that Michigan will have to account for.

When Russell comes into the game, however, Mississippi State almost completely abandons the pre-snap motion and option game. Russell is a pretty standard drop-back quarterback with uninspiring wheels. He'll give Michigan another look to prepare for, but they'll need to worry primarily about Relf's running ability.

Random notes from the Auburn game

• Many of Relf's passes ended up being designed QB rollouts, and we've all seen how Michigan fares against those. Unless Michigan has improved in their defense of these, it could be trouble. Then again, Relf's passes are often off target.
• When Mississippi State gets behind the chains, their drives often stall. Their offense doesn't have a ton of big-play ability in the run game, and the passing game is atrocious in third and long situations. Aurburn's Nick Fairly repeatedly blew threw their offensive line in these situations and caused havoc in the backfield. In general, the Bulldogs' offensive line seemed to have trouble in pass protection.
• Against Auburn, which ran primarily a cover-2, Mississippi State went to the corner/fade route over and over again (a pass behind the corner but in front of the safety). It was their most consistent and effective passing play despite several drops and overthrows.

What does it mean?
Frankly, not great things. Mississippi State's offense looks remarkably similar to Illinois', which thoroughly torched Michigan's defense all game. They look to break contain and get to the outside--something Michigan frequently allows--but if you over pursue, they have counters to get the ball back up the middle. Relf is basically a 6'4" version of Scheelhaase except marginally slower, older, and possibly a better passer. If Michigan doesn't show any adjustments from their defensive formations against Illinois, this could be another ugly performance.

Mississippi State: Defense vs. Auburn

A series on Michigan's Gator Bowl opponent. You can find all of this content on the 2011 Gator Bowl page in the sidebar. Previously: NCAA rankings

For scouting purposes, Michigan couldn't get much luckier than to have a full game of film of Mississippi State playing a team with a similar offensive style (and personnel) to Michigan. As such, the early-season game between Mississippi State and Cam Newton's Auburn squad can give at least a little information on how the Bulldogs might try to defend Michigan's attack.

Formations
Mississippi State's defensive formations were a little unorthodox in this game upon first look. Most of the game, the Bulldogs were in a defensive front with two down linemen and two others in a two-point stance on the line:

As you can see, the two defensive tackles are both in a three-point stance with the defensive ends standing up in a two-point stance. At first, I thought that this was in an effort to get more speed on the field, but when I started to look at the personnel, it was a little more confusing: the stand-up defensive ends are actually defensive ends, not faster linebackers to match Auburn's speed. At times, this allowed the DEs to diagnose the play and attack the proper gaps, but for the most part, it played almost exactly like a traditional 4-3, which is what Mississippi State was in for the majority of the game. They also showed a fair amount of 3-4, but primarily, they were in a 4-3.

More interestingly, however, is that the Bulldogs' defense looked fundamentally unsound for a lot of the game. To steal from Chris Brown at Smart Football again, "football begins as arithmetic". Over and over again during this game, Mississippi State was giving Auburn numbers in the screen passing game. For example:

I'll talk about this play later this week (Auburn faked the screen and ended up throwing a vertical route similar to the Roundtree touchdown against Notre Dame), but you can see from the alignment that Mississippi State is conceding the screen pass. And oddly, they seemed content to run this all game. There was one play in which they baited Newton to make a bad throw (I'll discuss this later this week as well), but for the most part, they sat back and gave up seven-yard screen passes all game. Much of this was because they needed to compensate for Newton's speed and put extra players in the box, but there's no reason to think they won't have to do the same against Denard.

Attacking
Mississippi State was pretty blitz heavy throughout the game. I didn't take note of their blitzing percentage, but safe to say it's high. For most of the game, they blitzed from only one side of the field, trying to force Newton out of the pocket, which he exploited either by scrambling for large chunks of yards or rumbling in the pocket long enough to find an open receiver. Denard's increased tendency to run out of the pocket against Ohio State (despite the one fumble) may being the Achilles heel of Mississippi State.

How did they slow down Cam Newton?
They shut him down occasionally with blitzes, but that was about it. The reason this game was as close as it was is because Mississippi State slowed the game down pretty significantly, reducing the amount of possessions Auburn had (that and a muffed punt that lost Auburn a possession, as well as a recovered surprise onside kick). Auburn had the ball nine times excluding end-of-half possessions. Those resulted in two touchdowns, one made field goal, an interception, a missed field goal, and four punts.

The punts largely came on the heels of big negative plays resulting from Mississippi State's blitzing. But those same blitzes also cost them on a number of plays. The Bulldogs' defensive scheme was primarily to put pressure on Newton and live with the outcomes. For the most part, it was successful, but with more time to prepare, Michigan may be able to counteract a lot of these blitzes.

The interception wasn't really anything other than a bad throw by Newton. Mississippi State didn't bring pressure or show different looks, but Newton threw into double coverage against cover-2, and it ended about as you'd expect.

What does it mean?
With the caveat that this is only one game early in the season, Mississippi State's defense looked vulnerable against a similar offense with a similarly dynamic player. They repeatedly had schematic holes, primarily in the screen game, that Michigan's offense will aim to exploit. The Bulldogs didn't do anything all that interesting, aside from their faux-4-3 with stand-up DEs, but otherwise, they ran a blitz-heavy scheme that sold out on the run. IMO, Rich Rod's gameplanning to counteract this sort of attack throughout the year was far superior to Gene Chizik's in this game. But this was early in the season and we can presume that Auburn didn't have its full offensive arsenal. Regardless, this was an encouraging display, despite holding Auburn to just 17 points.