GBMWolverine: Coach's Corner -- Michigan Football -- Michigan at Northwestern -- What Happened and What it Means for the Future -- Part I

Posted at 6:00am — 10/10/2011

GBMWolverine: Coach’s Corner — Michigan Football — Michigan at Northwestern — What Happened and What it Means for the Future — Part I

In the preview of last week, the theme of order and disorder was brought up as a potential factor in the game outcome. There were indeed both present and the factors certainly played into the outcome of the game. Northwestern, it was stated, would like a little chaos to take advantage of Michigan’s weaknesses and speed up the game. That happened early as the Wildcats caught Michigan’s defense on its heals and attacked the flank as predicted with quick strikes.

Michigan did not defend well early due to a combination of factors. First, Michigan was slow getting to the edge, losing contain on running plays and not being in position to defend the quick, short passing game that spreads employ. Six yards was the frequent result. Second, the edge defenders, corners or whomever, could not get off the blocks in time allowing those three yard gains to become six yard plays. Northwestern either executes very well locking the defenders in or Michigan’s defenders still need to get stronger. Third, contain was lost at the edge several times, bringing back bad memories of last year. It appeared that several times Michigan just could not get to the edge in time. Persa broke contain all too easy many times, but truth be told he is a very good athlete who gets the job done and must be given credit. His injury cut down his running opportunities, probably by design. Again, early on Northwestern was rolling with the read offense racking up some good yardage. Finally, the spread put some good, quick athletes in space and as we all witnessed Michigan whiffed on occasions, which is the intended outcome of the spread.

Northwestern smartly ran plays off quickly not allowing Michigan much adjusting or substituting. It is almost amazing that with the three Michigan turnovers in the first half that the damage was “only” 24 points as Northwestern was rolling and Denard threw three clear picks that were on no one other than himself.

So, the first half was chaos for Michigan: on the road, the star player is on the ropes and, by association so is the entire team. The ending of the first half was a fitting capstone to the microcosm of disorder. The clock was stopped at six seconds, a play was ran, the clock was ruled to have expired after Persa could not find a receiver, then a review put two seconds back on the clock for a field goal. I got the stopwatch out and the play appeared to take up between five and six seconds until the ball hit the ground. But it did not take up a full six seconds. Shame on Michigan, really, for letting Northwestern drive that far in only a short amount of time. Praise for Michigan for not yielding the touchdown, although observers will note the receiver was wide open and dropped the ball

And so we leave chaos for a moment but will return shortly, the second major theme is the inevitable discussion of one Denard Robinson. Maybe an analogy is in order: Denard is like the stock market, the market goes up and the market goes down, and so does Denard’s passing fortunes. Just like the stock market there is an innate whim to sell in bad times. There was an innate impulse by many observers to bench Denard after the three really ugly interceptions.

Frankly, credit is given to the staff for not jumping off the cliff and abandoning ship, it must have been at least a little tempting. But the truth is that a special athlete like Denard can turn a 180-degree path on a moment. And that is what happened. Ugly or not, the staff stayed the course and went with the athlete that had the best chance of pulling off big plays. The passing did not morph into a thing of beauty in the second half, but enough damage was done with the passing game to turn the tide. Denard was spied out all night and this will be a constant the rest of the season (has been already most of the year). The antidote is to hit receivers in a space being sacrificed by the spy or spies. There were opportunities and again they went awry. Part of this scene is pure confidence, part is the realization that Denard is not Tom Brady, and part, a big part, is the unwillingness of Denard to stop throwing lollipops off his back foot. Coaches can only work on fundamentals and corrections so much, the player must execute. The system is well founded and there are ample opportunities to hit some plays to get guys out of the box.

Going into game seven, Michigan has made its bed. It will be the coaches’ job to again go back to the drawing board and stubbornly demand improvement. It will be up to Denard to not give in and be serious about his reads, throwing, and cutting back really bad turnovers. Again, there is absolutely no excuse for continuously throwing off the back foot. It will be Devin’s job to be ready.

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Written by GBMWolverine Staff

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