Breaking down Michigan football QB Davis Warren against Fresno State

The Interception

The other thing that Warren struggled with was setting his feet on his throws. Let's go back to the interception. Michigan football was running a common play-action passing concept known as Yankee. You'll see this from a lot of pro-style offenses and especially in the NFL. Essentially, you have one receiver running a deep post to clear out the coverage and another running a deep over route into the vacated area of the field. The video below explains the play a little more in-depth. Fresno State is running a quarters coverage on defense.

Again, if you're lost, all you need to know is that Davis Warren makes a great read to see that his deep receiver Fredrick Moore is open and throws it to him for what should have been a touchdown.

Everyone who watched the play live probably said the ball was under thrown. In reality, the ball was thrown late. When Warren reaches the top of his drop back and sees Moore open but he hesitates for just a fraction of a second. He takes what's called a hitch step instead of immediately setting his feet and throwing.

The result, the extra fraction of a second allows the defense to catch back up to Moore and intercept the ball. It was Warren's hesitation to make sure that his receiver was open that led to him throwing the interception. To be fair, Fredrick Moore should have done a better job of coming back to the ball to break up the pass. But it's a tiny mistake that caused the difference between a touchdown and an interception.

This was a theme we saw all night, Warren didn't really set his feet when he threw which messed up his timing and caused him to get the ball to receivers just a little bit late.

While it doesn't seem like a big deal, this hesitation limits the receiver's ability to run for yards after the catch and often leads to interceptions. When fans talk about wanting the Michigan offense to be more explosive in the passing game, it's hitting receivers in time that creates explosive plays. We saw this problem a lot from JJ McCarthy in 2022 and it is very fixable, it just takes time. There are NFL quarterbacks who struggle with this. Warren will improve, in the spring game Warren actually did a better job of this than he did on Saturday.