Watching Umass Murder Michigan by Roll Out on Saturday made my inner charting skills come to life. I was miffed how I could call a Roll out on almost all the 3rd down plays but Michigan was powerless to even put a dent in them. I'm never one to do much charting and leave it to the greats(Brian ect) but watching Umass dial up the same gig on many 3rd downs had me wondering... How many yards? Whos at Fault? and that old Back to the Future II question.... Who What Where and When? Or Why? Whatever... On to the chart!!!


Roll out! roll out! roll out! roll out!

[chorus - "roll out!" in background]
I got my twin glock .40s, cocked back
Me and my homies, so drop that!


Disclaimer:My Crude chart is in no way better than anything Brian or TOB does(charting wise, not MS Paint). It maybe laughable.

RO or MP	Yards	Responsible	Result
Roll Out	16 yards	J.Rogers	First Down
Roll Out	0 yards	Floyd	Break up
Moved Pocket	4 Yards	J.Rogers	Holding on Umass
Roll Out	13 Yards	J.Kovacs	1st Down
Moved Pocket	0 Yards	Mouton	2nd Down
Roll Out	8 Yards	J.Rogers	1st Down
Roll Out	10 Yards	O.Ezeh	First Down
Roll Out	7 Yards	Mouton	QB rush TD(Jonas its OK to try and dislodge the QBs head from his body when he tries to rush for the endzone. Wait thats a flag now...sigh/fuck me)
Roll Out	16 Yards	J.Rogers	First Down
Roll Out	5 yards	C.Gordan	Thrown TD
Moved Pocket	8 Yards	J.Rogers	1st Down

• Out of 11 Roll Outs or Moved Pockets UMASS hit on 8 of them. Two were good Michigan defense and one was a UMASS holding call.
• UMASS gained 87 yards on Roll outs
• James Rogers was to blame for 5 of them.
• 6 of the 11 went for first downs and 2 for Touchdowns 
• Mouton could have smashed the UMASS QB on 2 yard line on the TD Roll Out but for some magical reason pulled up and tried to avoid hitting the QB.... Still have a WTF look on my face.
• I'm surprised Robinson didn't dial up a blitz from the left so when the QB rolls right...BAM! But what do I know? Not much I can tell you that
• 5 Roll Outs in the first half
• 6 Roll Outs in the second half

So looking at it.... It's like a money play you use on NCAA 11 when your brother is better than you and this all you got to keep drives alive. It's cheap and dirty but you do it to keep pace or even compete. Coaching was bad here. The Michigan coaching staff showed no adjustment to these plays. I am wondering if Coach Rich Rod is saying on the head set after the 5th Roll Out "Hey Silver Fox do you plan on doing something about this? ". I dunno... I just wonder if Rich needs to be more hands on when teams pick you apart with two TEs and a Roll out play on most 3rd downs. Michigan learned nothing after the half and almost cost the team and a head coach a lot. Until the next chartering bug hits me... I leave you with this.

Year	AVG. Rush Defense Rank	AVG. Total Defense Rank
2002	54.5	42.5
2003	52.7	56.6
2004	61.7	68.5
2005	56.8	35.25
2006	53.8	54.7
2007	50.7	42.3
2008	50.8	49.9
2009	47.8	50.3

 

This kind of blew my mind. I really expected the Big 10 to have much better defenses, but that wasn’t really the case. Granted we are comparing two years to 6 ( I left out Rich Rod’s inaugural campaign at WVU because I was too lazy to look up the stats), but still I anticipated a much higher average defense rank than what we actually had. What I found with the Big 10 was three outstanding defensive teams (OSU, PSU and UW) and 8 meh teams. In the years The Big East featured Miami they weren’t much better than the years without. The Big East also had the top performing group of defenses in 2005.

So now I’m sure you’re wondering, what does this have to do with Michigan? Well I actually feel pretty good with what I found. It seems that Rich Rodriguez’s offenses played against similar statistical talent at WVU and Michigan. I have a hunch that this year, especially with it being a make or break season, Our offense will really come to life. Look at my previous post, those West Virginia offenses were ridiculous. I think now that we have the talent in place, we will put up similar numbers.

I think I know good things are on the way, it just truly sucks waiting for them to get here.

 

 

Year	Rushing YPG	Avg. Oline size	Yards against top Competition*	Total Offense
2002	283.6	286.5	264 YPG 4.9 YPC	418.5 YPG
2003	212.5	291	176 YPG 4.3 YPC	368.9 YPG
2004	251.6	291.2		417.7 YPG
2005	272.4	292.5	266 YPG 2.3 YPC	388.9 YPG
2006	279.1	289.7	314.5 YPG 6.7 YPC	427.4 YPG
2007	297.2	290	322 YPG 6.9 YPC	456.2 YPG
2008	147.6	283.8	116 YPG 2.8 YPC	290.8 YPG
2009	186.2	291.1	95 YPG 2.7 YPC	384.5 YPG

* Top competition is teams with 10 wins or more 

 

So what am I trying to imply with this chart? I don’t really know, I went in with the assumption that would show that Rich Rodriguez’s offenses  had way smaller linemen at WVU and still  managed to run the ball down their opponents throats. This however is not the case, in 08 Our Line was the smallest a Rodriguez line had ever been, in 09 Our line jumped in size almost an average of 10 lbs and our rushing improved 40 YPG. I know that there has been a lot of talk this off season about getting our linemen bigger and stronger. I think the one thing that my chart doesn’t show is that the Big 10 has much better defenses than the Big East did. What really catches my eye is how poorly we have run the ball against top tier opponents. I realize that some of this is due to getting blown out and having to throw the ball, but boy we really need to improve this stat to be successful. In my next post I am going to compare Big East defenses to Big Ten defenses, see how big of a factor that plays on these numbers.

Bold Prediction: Our offensive line will average 10 lbs heavier next year and our YPG will go up to 240. We have to improve this against the OSU’s an Penn States of the world in order to be successful.