The Nick Sheridan difference

Nick Sheridan, for everything I've ever heard about him, is a truly great guy. Moments after mentioning to a Michigan insider that I never wanted to see him lead this team again  (despite his positive influence on the program; coaching the young'uns, willingness to stick with the program, etc.) while waiting outside the Brown Jug after the Western Michigan game, he walked up and kindly greeted the insider and seemed congenial.

Regardless, when watching the Delaware State game again, I was looking for things to talk about (there isn't much, and this is just about the last of it), and I finally saw something with Sheridan playing under center that made me thankful for Tate and Denard and freshmen and competent running games. Take a look at Sheridan's 4th down attempt in the 3rd quarter, from the six yard line:

Michigan is lined up in a four-wide set with trips to Sheridan's right. Closest to Sheridan on his right is Terrence Robinson; next to him is tight end Brandon Moore; and the outside receiver is LaTerryal Savoy. The play is a designed roll out to Sheridan's right. Vincent Smith is in the backfield as a blocker. Savoy heads to the corner, Moore runs a square out, and Robinson runs a slant to the pylon.

On the snap, Sheridan immediately starts to his right. Je'Ron Stokes, who is lined up to Sheridan's left, is only there to draw a defender. Smith is looking for a linebacker to block.

Sheridan is now rolling out and surveying his options (kinda). Smith is still waiting to block the linebacker that is crashing into the backfield--Delaware State were scraping a linebacker almost the entire game. Moore is beginning his out route. I believe it's some sort of circle out, the same play that Greg Matthews ran for the winning TD grab against ND. As you can see, Moore is open here, but it looks as though Sheridan is waiting on Robinson to open up. Sheridan can't throw to Moore yet because Robinson and his defender are in the path of the ball, but it looks as though he doesn't even see the route.

Right now, Sheridan needs to throw this ball to Moore who is now two steps ahead of his defender and running away from him. Sheridan, unfortunately, is still staring down Robinson. Savoy is covered up in the back of the endzone, and Smith is cut blocking his defender successfully. Sheridan, however, waits too long and fails to make the pass to Moore. He continues to roll out and look for Robinson.

Still, Sheridan has Moore open and a seam to throw the ball in. He's still staring down Robinson and is, at this point, beginning to tuck the ball and run toward the end zone. It ends like this:

Surrounded by three men with two more coming. Sheridan comes up three yards short, taking a pretty hard hit and never really having a chance to make it into the endzone.

Much has been made about Forcier's tendency to scramble, but continue to look downfield for a pass rather than to tuck and run. Sheridan seemed unable to do this. In this play, Sheridan stared down one route (Robinson), and when it didn't open up, he decided to tuck the ball and run, despite the fact that he had a receiver open for at least five steps in the endzone. Combined with the lack of physical talent that Sheridan has, this inability to properly diagnose plays on the fly shows that his much rumored improvement over the summer is largely suspect--though he has looked a little better throwing the ball, the "not having to think and just being able to play" meme that circled Sheridan et al at the beginning of this year is somewhat fiction.

I don't really want to rag on the kid. He seems very nice and I don't doubt that he'll be a great coach some day. But after that Delaware State game, I need stuff to write about. Sorry Nick.

I can has Roses? No.

Stevie Brown said in a press conference that he was interested in maybe, possibly, playing in the Rose Bowl again this year despite the team's 1-2 conference record. Well, MVictors breaks down the possible scenarios that get Michigan into the Rose Bowl. The outlook? Bleak:

The only scenario that gets Michigan the automatic BCS bid requires Iowa to lose three games. Bollocks. Once Iowa is out of the picture, our chances are wonderful! In a Michigan-Michigan State-Penn State three way tie, assuming the Lions beat the Spartans and the rest of their schedule, Michigan State would actually be eliminated due to overall winning percentage, then the tie-break would go to Michigan who beat Penn State head-to-head. In a Michigan-MSU-Ohio State three way tie, OSU and Michigan State are eliminated based on overall % and Michigan gets through. And obviously the Wolverines would win two-way ties with just Penn State or Ohio State.

The numbers are just as bad as they seem, and Stevie Brown is going to be disappointed that there's about a .0746% chance Michigan has any shot at playing in Pasadena for the holidays. Rebuilding years and expectations and all that. A non-Pizza Pizza Bowl will be acceptable. Roses are too formal anyway; we just started dating.

Denard touchdowns

The Delaware State game saw a lot of playing time for Denard Robinson and rightly so. He desperately needs the kind of in-game polish that Forcier has shown this year, and only game-time experience will help that. Against Iowa, Denard threw a fatal interception that ended the game. A lot of the talk about the pick was that he basically just floated the ball in the air, into the arms of an awaiting safety. I contend that it wasn't nearly as bad a throw as it looked (Stonum shouldn't have broken off his route), but it was still a jump ball at best.

Saturday's game against Delaware State saw a few passes from Denard, and two of them were long touchdown passes. But despite the results, the passes--watching them live and again on the replay--are as much OH NOES DENARD as they are good decisions. Touchdown the first:

Michigan is in a three-wide set. Kelvin Grady who catches the wide-open touchdown pass is set up in the slot. Denard is flanked by two running backs and is going to fake the zone-read before rolling out and throwing the pass.

At the snap, Vincent Smith is coming in front of Denard for the play action, which freezes the linebacker. Delaware State is blitzing hard, leaving their corner backs out on an island with one deep safety. This is a naked-ish bootleg as the offensive line ends up going backside and drawing the attention of the defensive line and linebackers.

The playside defensive end doesn't bite on the play fake, Kevin Grady (no L) is running into the flat for a quick release, and the playside linebacker is also crashing down on Denard. However, Kelvin Grady is running a straight fly route through the seam. His corner tried playing bump-and-run coverage but completely whiffs as Grady meets him. This route technically shouldn't be open with the one deep safety. There's no good angle to see what he does, but it seems like he is crashing down on the outside receiver, who Denard is staring at.

Here, Denard sees Kelvin Grady open in a sea of turf, pulls up to get his feet, and hurls the ball downfield. Touchdown. Unfortunately, this play constitutes OH NOES. The linebacker and defensive end are on top of Denard and end up delivering a shot as he's throwing the ball. Even though Kelvin is wide open, Denard should have hit him earlier in the route, shortly after he passed by his corner with ease--that is unless the safety sat on that route for a while, which I doubt given how out of position he is here. Against better opposition, Denard would either be sacked here or throw a duck into the middle of the field. The smart play is throwing it to Kevin (no L) Grady in the flat for 15 yards or so.

It's difficult to criticize Denard for throwing a 40-yard touchdown to an open receiver, but the pass isn't particularly good. Not only did he probably make the wrong decision by throwing the ball deep when he was being pressured, but the pass was underthrown and lofted, much like his interception at the end of the Iowa game. The second touchdown was almost the exact same play.

Power running game

Chris Brown at Smart Football put a post up today about the power running game and how it's been adapted by spread offenses. Of particular importance to Michigan:

The teams, like Florida, with good running quarterbacks are only too happy to use their runningback as a fullback and use their quarterback as a tailback. When they don’t, they still can use a variety of motions to get them into this look. In this way you’ve seen a big synthesis with spread teams in the last four or five years as compared with the previous five. Whereas from 1999-2005 or so spread teams thought it to their advantage to be four and five wide most of the game to fix the defense’s personnel, in the last four or five they have begun using these H-back types more because of their versatility in the run game: they can be lead blockers, they can kick out the EMLOS [end man on the line of scrimmage] on power, they can pull and trap or lead to the opposite side, and they can be used in pass protection.

Michigan has used this play a lot with Denard Robinson. Denard will be in the backfield, next to a running back. On the snap, Denard takes a step back--a hesitation that's supposed to sell "pass"--while the running back shoots into the gap between the tackle and guard. Denard follows shortly thereafter, using the running back like a lead-blocking full back. Take a look:

Michigan is lined up in a four-wide set with Denard and Grady (I think) in the backfield. Delaware State is in the 4-4 base defense that they ran all day--they actually had a few interesting ways of combatting Michigan's zone reads that, if it was executed by a better team, might have shut down the Michigan running game.

At the snap, the right tackle kicks his blocker to the outside while the center and right guard seal the Delaware State tackle to the inside, thus creating a hole up the middle. Grady's job is to hit that hole and pick up the linebacker whose job it is to fill it.

The right guard has now released and is headed to the second level to block the linebacker in the middle of the field. The linebacker who was supposed to fill the gap is four yards away from meeting Grady's helmet in his chest. Denard has tucked the ball and is following Grady.

It's difficult to see here, but Grady is now engaged with the linebacker in the middle of the pile in front of Denard. The right guard has a clear look at Delaware State's linebacker. Denard is waiting for a hole to open up to run through. He finds one to the right of Grady and scurries through. Unfortunately:

The seal to the outside from Michigan's right tackle has given way and the Delaware State defensive end is now crashing back down on Denard who would've otherwise had nothing but open field until the end zone. The play ends up in a huge pile that pushed 5 yards further by Michigan linemen. In any case, the play worked swimmingly until a block let up. To the YouTubes:

The emergence of Vincent Smith

Though Delaware State proved to be little competition, one of the big storylines that came out of the weekend was the emergence of Vincent Smith as potent runner. Brian at MGoBlog touched on it yesterday:

Pardon the blasphemy, but you know who Vincent Smith reminds me of? Mike Hart. Same lack of killer deep speed that prevents the guy in question from being an elite prospect—Noel Devine would have housed two or three of Smith's carries. On the other hand, Smith appears to have Hart's ability to juke guys out of their shorts and hit zone creases with authority, and when it comes time to get tackle Smith delivers a blow impressively for a member of the lollipop guild. He's probably even shiftier than Hart, not quite as liable to drag a pile but set to become an excellent player over the next few years. I still think Mike Shaw is the odds-on favorite to start next year because he has the explosion to take it the distance and the moves to break more than his share, but in this offense the #2 back is almost a starter and Smith should be productive.

For the record, I cosign just about everything here. I had planned on mentioning this, without the Hart comparison, but Brian beat me to it.

The first thing I really noticed from the game was Smith's patience. It's an old adage and one that you hear about a lot with traditional Big Ten rushing attacks--it was rammed down your throat by the ESPN commentators during the Iowa/Michigan game. Cliche aside, you could see Smith waiting for the field to open up before he hit the holes. It may have looked that way because of how easily Michigan moved the Delaware State defensive front, but Smith just hovered behind his linemen before scooting into the seams they created. It will be interesting to see Smith play against more stout defenses. I have been relatively unimpressed with him thus far through the season (sparing carries noted), but this game was really an eye opener. Watch as he runs carefully horizontally until his gap opens up. He looks none too worried to get into that hole; this is the kind of play that can't really be taught. It's more instinctual.


The other thing that really stuck out to me was his lack of top-end speed. For some reason--and maybe it was the mass of YouTube clips I had watched of his scurrying past defenders in high school--I thought Smith was a burner. But the clip below shows that he's going to have trouble beating any legit DB out in a foot race. Here (and watch the patience and the cutback), Smith makes a great move to get into the open field and has nothing but blockers and the end zone in front of him, but is quickly wrapped up by a defender giving chase. I remember remarking to myself when he broke open, "There's no way anyone's touching him. Touchdown."


So that's a little disappointing. But nonetheless, Smith proved himself to be a heck of a running back and will definitely be one of the prominent rushers next year, likely behind Michael Shaw who looked monstrous on Saturday. If Smith can up his top-end speed in the offseason, he'll give Shaw a run for the starting job, though. Don't be surprised to see him get a few more meaningful snaps this year, however.