GBMWolverine: Coach’s Corner — Michigan Football — Sugar Bowl Preview — When Michigan has the Ball
Posted at 4:00pm — 1/2/2012
GBMWolverine: Coach’s Corner — Michigan Football — Sugar Bowl Preview — When Michigan has the Ball
As always, taking care of the football and limiting penalties is a must. And this is magnified playing a traditional ball control team that forces mistakes on the defensive end and protects the ball when on offense.
A primary game key, we believe, will be the play of Michigan’s offensive line. This unit must play its best game of the year. Virginia Tech has recorded over 120 negative plays this season, resulting in over 600 lost yards. This is an absolutely incredible stat. If Michigan is going to win the Sugar Bowl, the offense cannot consistently be in 2nd or 3rd down and long situations.
Virginia Tech uses multiple blitz packages and the defense is particularly effective in the nickel packages. Virginia Tech is famous for its use of a 4-4/8-man front the team used in the 1990’s. With the advent of spread offenses, Tech has adapted to a more traditional 4-3 look. Watch film and you will find that Virginia Tech still uses many of the same (previous) packages, the defense has simply moved the robber-back to a safety position thereby changing coverages.
Coach Bud Foster, a master of the chess game between coordinators, still likes to use his defensive backs in blitzes and will at times have all 11 defenders within 6 or 7 yards of the line of scrimmage. The Hokie base coverage is a cover 4, also sometimes called quarters or four deep. What we also observed is that in many packages Virginia Tech will use man coverage principles while in the 4 deep coverage and that the defense will actually play a 9-man front much of the time.
Stopping the run is still a premium objective for the Virginia Tech defense. The safeties do as much run stopping as anything, in fact, the top two tacklers are the safeties, and the leader of producing negative plays is corner-back Kyle Fuller. The defensive ends, Cilins and Gayle, are up-field, aggressive football players. They lead the team in sacks.
The standard method for attacking this type of defense is to run right at it. The use of counters and slow developing schemes generally is not a good idea. Michigan has used few counters lately and the quick inside read with Toussaint has produced great results. In the passing game, the 300 series, quick hitters, three step timing patterns, slants and hitches are generally effective. Michigan must hit some passing plays to avoid allowing Virginia Tech to load the box and control the game. But an offensive coordinator can also use flood routes and other types of packages that incorporate the running backs out of the backfield. Rub offs and other “pick” type plays also can be effective.
Tomorrow we will have our GBMWolverine Staff’s Predictions for the Sugar Bowl so stay tuned and come back to see what we say along with adding your prediction to the message board.
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Written by GBMWolverine Staff
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