Previously: FFFF Washington Offense 

Much of the focus on Washington's stunning loss to Montana has revolved around its anemic offense and the whole "scoring 7 points against an FCS team" thing. That's understandable- it's the reason that the team lost the game and from a box score perspective, Washington's defense was pretty good. They held Montana to 13 points and only 232 yards of offense. They did their job. But just because the story of the game was written through Washington's offense, that doesn't mean that there wasn't anything interesting to glean from watching their defense. After all, the Huskies have produced some excellent defenses in the last 5-7 years. 

So, we will embark on this defensive FFFF journey. As noted in Wednesday's post, this is my first time doing FFFF, so it's going to be a tad more rudimentary than what you may have been used to with Seth the last few years, and probably not quite as well versed in formation terms and plays. I admit it, I'm still learning. With that said, let's get started. 

The Film: We are obviously still on Montana. That is the only game that has been played this season. 

Personnel: The diagram from Seth. Correct from the start this time: 

Washington plays with a few guys who are out there very consistently. Defensive tackles Sam "Taki" Taimani and Tuli Letuligasenoa (this is a fun week for Pacific Islander names) play on most plays and don't get rotated out often. There are several other DT's who rotate in if Washington chooses to play with more DT's (see: Base Set section). At the LB level, Jackson Sirmon and Edefuan Ulofoshio play most every play. I don't think I ever saw Sirmon leave the field, and though Ulofoshio went missing for a period of the game, his absence was clearly missed. Those two guys are going to play a lot of snaps against Michigan. The three starting corners play most of the time too, Trent McDuffie, Kyler Gordon, and nickel Brendan Radley-Hiles.

The two positions that see a lot more rotation are safeties and edge. Washington plays with 5 DB's pretty often and who the other two besides the three starting corners are can vary a good bit from play to play, including Julius Irvin, Kamren Fabiculanan, Alex Cook, and Asa Turner. Similarly there's a pretty hefty rotation at the Edge position, which are either OLB's or DE's depending on who they are and classifying them was not simple and will be discussed at length much more later on in this post. Ryan Bowman plays the most of them and is more of a DE. The other spot (if they go with two Edge players) is a constant rotation of different types of players, including Cooper McDonald, Sav'ell Smalls, Jeremiah Martin, Bralen Trice, and Jordan Lolohea. Expect the Huskies to be switching out the parts that accent the core of their defense, which are their two traditional LB's, two traditional DT's, and their three corners. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: More about Washington's defense]

Base Set: So here comes the fun part: classifying the edge players for the purpose of identifying the formations. Seth and I conferred quite a bit and more or less decided that if a player was over 260 lbs., they were a DE, and if they were at that weight or below, they are a LB. Which means that Martin, Bowman, and Lolohea qualify as DE's, while Smalls, Trice, and McDonald qualify as LB's. With that in mind, the base set for Washington (by frequency) isn't really any one package, but rather three common looks that are used often: the 4-2-5 (depicted in Seth's chart), the 3-3-5, and the 4-3-4. The differences between these looks aren't terribly meaningful. They all have (at least) two DT's, two traditional LB's, and at least four DB's. The only question is whether you have a fifth DB and how many edge guys are deployed, and which ones. Every so often on short yardage you'll see three DT's out there, but that's not often. 

The other wrinkle of course is that even if Washington lines up in a "3-3-5" in the sense that they have 3 DL, 3 LB, and 5 DB's, it may see four players down at the line of scrimmage, with both of the edge guys standing up, one of them being an edge DE and the other being an edge OLB. Either could rush or drop into coverage. Deception and rotation were hallmarks of Washington in this game when it came to lining up.

Man or zone coverage: Washington plays a lot of zone. What types of zone varies, but the one hallmark is they almost always have one deep safety who lines up a mile away from the play. Here they've got a deep safety who's practically lined up in Vancouver: 

I clipped this photo because it was one of the only times where the deep safety was visible pre-snap. Normally you could only count 10 purple jerseys on any given play which meant that unless the Huskies had someone sitting in the penalty box, there was a deep safety on the play. That was consistent on almost every defensive snap. 

Pressure: I charted Washington as rushing an average of 4.16 players per snap, which is pretty close to the historical average for this column, perhaps a bit on the lower side. As stated previously, the Huskies do a lot of different things with their edges, so sometimes they will be rushing and sometimes they'll be dropping into coverage. When the blitzes come, it actually doesn't come from the traditional ILB's all that often. Rather, the most effective blitzes I observed in this game were from the DB's, particularly the corner blitzes (more on that later). 

Dangerman: There are definitely a few candidates for this designation, but I like CB Trent McDuffie the most. McDuffie is a preseason All-American and I think he lived up to that title in this game. He started the game with an impressive PBU that probably should've been an INT: 

Corner #22 at top of screen

He followed it up on the very next play with an excellent corner blitz that results in a shoestring run stop: 

And let's go with one more PBU to kill a drive later in the first half: 

He's a good one. Can play zone or man, and will probably bottle up whoever he's in charge of covering, and is an effective blitzer when necessary. Washington has produced a lot of good corners in the Petersen-Lake era, and McDuffie is the latest in that storied lineage. 

Overview

So what are the features of Washington's defense, and how can Michigan can attack it successfully? The first two features meet you right in the middle up front, and they are not small boys, Tuli and Taki. A fearsome pair of space-eating defensive tackles, they're not here to pass rush, but sometimes they still get into the backfield and make things happen. On this play, the corner blitz chops down the runner before he gets to the line, but he wouldn't have gotten to the line because Tuli and Taki had shoved the guards a couple yards behind the LoS: 

#91 and #94 in the middle of the DL

And here's Tuli getting off his block and into the backfield for a TFL: 

DT #91 in the middle of the DL

He moves well for a big guy. Montana was rarely able to generate consistent push up the middle against Tuli and Taki. Their few solid runs behind the center and guards came on the instances when a backup DT was in the game. Michigan's interior OL played pretty well against Western Michigan, particularly Vastardis and Filiaga. This will be a much more telling test for them. 

The good news is that there is room for the Wolverines to take on the army of Washington edge guys and attack. I was rather surprised at the manner in which Montana found some success testing the edges and attacking the revolving door of edge defenders. Though I like Ryan Bowman as a player and a pass rusher, his run defense was only mediocre and it had some worrisome moments. Take this play on one of Montana's last drives: 

#55 at top of the DL

He's taken out of this play very easily and wasn't even attempting to set the edge to begin with. The only reason this play doesn't end in six is because Montana's RB doesn't have the finishing speed necessary to take it to the house. If that RB is Blake Corum, though.... 

Here's Bowman failing to hold the edge again: 

#55 at bottom of DL

Edge defender Jeremiah Martin fared even worse on the play that got Montana its lone touchdown. Hey, Josh Gattis, if there are any QB reads at all in the offense, this might be a good time to bring one out of the garage: 

#3 at bottom of DL

Martin also was featured matched up on a wheel route, something that Washington asks even their burliest edge defenders to do and something that should be a clear opportunity for Michigan to exploit. He gets the PBU here on a ball not thrown to the guy he was supposed to be covering, but the matchup there caught my eye: 

#3 standing up at the top of the screen at the LoS

That's a 6'3", 270 lb. DE running after a RB on a wheel route. If Michigan can get the edge defenders matched up on Corum, Haskins, or Henning, that's an obvious mismatch to attack ASAP. 

Washington's traditional LB's Sirmon and Ulofoshio both had their moments. Jackson Sirmon is a bit more of a traditional LB and could probably be attacked with speed, while I didn't come away as impressed with Ulofoshio (who is the other player starred on Seth's diagram) as I had expected to be. He did make some plays though, and is the most competent Husky LB when it comes to coverage: 

LB #48

Speaking of coverage, let's talk about that component of the game. Washington and its zone is generally pretty good, but I thought Montana was able to find the soft spots underneath (which will be there) decently well and then there were a few opportunities that fell by the FCS quarterback wayside: 

One more: 

Can Cade McNamara hit those throws? To be determined, but some will be there. That's the nature of playing a zone team. And it should be noted that both of those plays came on third down situations and the incompletions ended drives. Michigan may need Cade to make a couple of those to embark on long scoring drives. 

Another element to talk about is the amount of times Washington broke contain. Montana's QB Cam Humphrey is not exactly Denard Robinson and the goal line situations were the only instances where the Grizzlies trotted the QB read option out there. But there were instances where the pocket broke down and Humphrey was handed the opportunity to run. A couple were called back from holding penalties that ultimately weren't related to contain breaking so I chose not to clip them, but it's a storyline to monitor. 

Finally, I've pointed it out a few times earlier, but watch out for the corner blitz. Washington likes it, it's effective, and sometimes it can completely erase an open receiver on a third down play: 

It was also their most effective mechanism for generating pass rush. Andrew Vastardis and Cade McNamara have to be ready to identify potential blitzers before play and make sure that they have the bodies to account for it.