Utah Utes vs. Michigan Wolverines: Breakdown of the game - part 1

Well the first game is in the books. The breakdown of games will normally happen on Monday, but with the holiday, we postponed the Utah game discussion until today.

We were surprised that Coach Rod went to the gadget stuff so early. He never gave the base offense much of a chance, and must have really been concerned about the offense. We weren’t sure what type of play calling to expect, but we weren’t pleased with what we saw.

As we talked about in the preview, the defense needed to carry the day, but they did not perform as well as we hoped they would early in the game. However, they showed improvement in the second half.

We knew the offense would struggle, but the level of their struggles surprised us a bit. We thought the running game would work well, especially the belly play, but they did not seem to use it that often; certainly not often enough in our opinion.

We are not willing to let the season slide; we refuse to give up on this team at this point. We expect to see a team that improves each week. It is week to week improvement and getting better with each snap in every game that Coach Rod and his staff should be judged on.

We were surprised the defense played so poorly in the first half. They were weak in fundamentals and execution. Coach Shafer tried a number of different schemes and packages in the first half, but nothing seemed to work. Are we going to see more 3-4 in the future? It depends on who we play, but you can bet that when we play spread teams from now on, Shafer won’t wait as long to go to a 3-4 as he did Saturday.

The nickel defense was very good. Graham at Nose Tackle provided some penetration that made the blitzes effective. There were two differences between the play of the defense in the first half and the second half: first, Michigan tackled much better in second half. There were double digit missed tackles in the first half. Secondly, positional play improved in the second half. The last-second touchdown in the first half should not have occurred. The safety to that side (that the play went to) cannot go inside the hash. In cover four if you go too far into middle of the field, the inside seam is almost impossible to defend.

As we mentioned earlier, it was surprising that Coach Rod and staff went to some of the gadgets, and went to them early, instead of trying to establish base schemes and building off them. It indicated that the staff had idea of what to expect from this team.

The team handled itself impressively. No nonsense and very little taunting or trash talking. They just played hard. As we said before the game we knew this team was going to be prepared and in shape, but the key would be "execution" and now maybe that statement makes more sense.

Couple of thoughts:

Why do posters, after a seven month lay-off and looking forward to Michigan football, turn so quickly on 17, 18 and19 year old kids? What did they expect from players like Evans, who was playing in his first game? We think the kid feels bad enough already.

Nobody really knows if Coach Rod was the right hire; the jury is still out as to whether the spread offense can be effective in all conditions. This would be the case no matter who took over the program and no matter what offense they installed.

One thing that may have been overlooked from this weekend: does anyone not believe that Witherspoon was a key recruit?

We are concerned about Coach Rod's comments about offensive line not being physical. Why would they not be physical? If not in that game, then when? The Zirbel injury really hurts this offense.

We have watched practices and this is a great group of kids. Despite the loss there were positives. It was impressive that we had little let down when we subbed defensively. Mouton, Patterson, Sagesse, Stewart, and even Dutch all played well in the 2nd half. Yes, the first half was a different story, but conditioning and coaching is building depth. This has been lacking in years past.

Look for Barnum to make a push. It may not be until late in this season, and maybe not even until next season, but he is the type of player that we need to recruit for this Offensive Line. He is athletic and physical.

Our main argument with regard to Steven Threet is that he may not be head and shoulders above Nick Sheridan, but he is the only quarterback on the team that gives us even a remote chance of beating a good team. And the only way he will make progress is to play. After the Utah game, Coach Rod and staff may now understand this.

There has to be something about Carlos Brown that we just don’t know about. It's not ability; does he rub people the wrong way? Does he not practice well? There is no explanation as to why he is not yet a key figure in this year’s offense; perhaps the injury set him back further than is being made known to us.

Part 2 at 12:00pm EDT will breakdown the offense.

written by CoachBt, MaizeMan and ErocWolverine

Thanks for stopping by http://gobluemichiganwolverine.blogspot.com/
If you have any questions please e-mail erocwolverine@gmail.com