Help, what are all these words? The UFR Glossary.

Substitution Notes: Backups got a lot of play. Morris and Harrell were the starters at edge, with Taylor Upshaw matching them for snaps as Morris slid down to DT for Pass rush packages. Backups were Derrick Moore and Braiden McGregor, with spot appearances at weakside for Eyabi Anoma. DTs were Mazi and Jenkins with Graham and Benny rotating in (more for Jenkins than Smith) and a third team of Rooks and Goode. Safety was Rod Moore and Moten, who rotated with Paige until Moore came out with the starters for Kolesar. Sainristil held down nickel all game, including when CSU went 2TE. CB was DJ Turner and Gemon Green mostly with Will Johnson rotating in for a drive here and there.

Formation Notes: Updating the “Hi” column this year to provide more information on the secondary alignment. Press/Off are self-explanatory. “Fld” or “Bdy” mean only the field or boundary CB is playing off. Reminder that "Hat" (as in: tip o' the…) means the other team's player did a thing all on his own. It can be positive (helped) or negative (nice job, guy on other team).

CSU's favorite formation was a 3-wide with the TE half-flexed. Michigan's formations were mostly the same as last year's plus this 5-1 look from Nickel personnel (that's Barrett at the top). I called it "Nk 5-1"

They also rolled out a 3-3-5 look with Upshaw (on the 45 below the hash) dropped back like a LB. Nk 3-3-5.

And this was the look before the 4th and 7 strip-six, which I called "Y-Stack" because the SS, WLB, and Edge are all over the TE, with Paige down near the LOS. Michigan brought the house.

On epithets, pseudonyms, sobriquets, and general patronymity: When I say "Green" I mean Gemon; I'll use "German" when it's his brother. The Johnson is Will, and if Quinten plays he can be Q-Jo. "Moore" is Rod Moore, and Derrick Moore is "D-Mo." The Pollards are going by their first names, Micah (the LB) and Myles (the CB). NHG=Nikhai Hill-Green. Juice=Julius Welschof. And Kody Jones is K.Jones for the purposes of future-proofing. Apologies to the people who asked me to use full names, but the tradeoff is fewer mistakes.

Also "PR" means pressure, "cov" is coverage, and "RPS" is rock-paper-scissors, IE effects of the play calls. Let's do this!

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So Harbaugh was right.

Jim Harbaugh says Michigan's edge pressure is "almost as good or as good" as last year, when the Wolverines had Aidan Hutchinson and David Ojabo.

"Much improvement on the inside" of the defensive line, he adds.

— Alejandro Zúñiga (@ByAZuniga) August 8, 2022

Listen, I'm very excited about the effectiveness of the edge panic vaccines but that doesn't mean…

Did Colorado State move the ball at all?

Well they tended to get to midfield then turn it over. Drives that weren't 100% back-benchers:

• 2 plays and an interception.
• 2 three-and-outs
• 2 four-and-outs
• 6-play, 27-yard opening drive.
• 6-play, 20-yard drive with a strip-six on 4th & 7.
• 9-play, 22-yard drive that got to midfield before the dink-megasack-scramble-4th & 7 sack sequence.
• 7-play, 33-yard drive against backups ended on 4th & 3 when Mazi was reinserted and let loose.

More or less what you want to see against a tomato can. There was definitely a vibe, especially as the game went on, that Michigan was content to let the Rams roll on standard downs until they did something annoying like get to midfield, go for it on 4th down, go for it on 3rd down, pass the ball, or dress sorta like Michigan State. Most importantly, no toes were injured in the process.

How many passing plays did CSU have in this game?

Thirty-two.

And on how many of them did Michigan get pressure?

Let's see… I've got 19 pressures, 10 of them at +2 or more. Hence seven sacks.

So 59 percent of passes were interrupted, and a third of them majorly.

Yeah.

That is INSANE! Isn't that insane?

It's pretty high up there. I had a pressure total of +31 on 32 passing plays, for a ratio of 97%. The five best ratios from the Hutchinson era:

1. 86% (+24 in 28 plays) at Wisconsin 2021
2. 83% (+34 in 41 plays) vs Iowa in the BTC
3. 71% (+39 in 55 plays) that time they beat Ohio State 42-27.
4. 70% (+21 in 30 plays) at Minnesota 2020
5. 68% (+23 in 34 plays) at Nebraska 2021

So Harbaugh was right: We replaced Hutchinson and Ojabo with an army of Hutchinsons and Ojabos. What other explanation is there?

Context. Jay Norvell's team is a redshirt freshman throwing his 3rd through 22nd career passes before more people than he's ever played in front of combined, behind an awful offensive line that's never played together. Someone has to be the worst player Michigan will face all season, and even with Hawai'i and UConn on the docket, that CSU right tackle is a good candidate. His hypothetical UFR score in this game was something like +0.5/-14.5, and that was a significant chunk of the Michigan edges' scores, especially Eyabi Anoma's.

You're throwing out numbers, could you organize them in some way?

Like a chart?

Like a chart.

Like a CHART! (snap data via)

Liked the chart.

I admit when it comes to recreating Hutchinson in the aggregate, this is in the ballpark of best-case scenarios. Like, nobody's going to call Mike Morris another Hutchinson, but he is out there making plays like Glen Steele after another Hutchinson:

#90 on the bottom of the formation

I was hoping we'd get maybe one non-Morris edge (NME) showing out. You have all of them except two old guys.

I do, but keep in mi—

No, no more caveats; do you have a favored NME or not?

Like a ranger, and maybe not the one you expect. Both Derrick Moore and Eyabi Anoma had similar scores on as many snaps, but I found Moore's play to be more translatable to tougher competition. The thing about true freshmen is they usually need to hit their final growth spurt with the filled out chest and the man strength. Moore is a year older than most of his class, has been in a college-ish weight program at St. Frances, and is a believable 270 already. When CSU ran Counter Trey at him he broke it.

#8 DE at the bottom

Those are long arms, and one of those long arms is holding the T he planted in the path of this run in place to deter a bounce. For the purposes of this year's defense, a good bull rush is the first thing I want to see, and Moore has the body, athleticism and strength to turn a 3-man rush into a throwaway.

Moore also didn't get out of his lane, seemed competent dropping into coverage a few times, and knew how to convert a spin move that got countered into a holding call. He's not a finished product, but it took Taco Charlton three years to look like that. I might be as wrong as the scout in the Moneyball flashbacks about this sort of thing but this is me watching every D-Mo snap:

Regardless of competition—and that's probably a big part of it—a +8 in 9 snaps in your first college game is something.

And yet Eyabi Anoma was incrementally better in your charting and had the more impressive THUNDERSACK.

Right, so the thing about that play is guy who supposed to be blocking him didn't know the play had started.

Slow it down and it's obvious this is on the center. The RG saw the snap and stood up but nobody else on CSU is out of his stance when the quarterback is already catching the ball.

That center was the right tackle for Nevada last year. The RT for CSU was a 6th year transfer who couldn't cracking the lineup at FIU. Another guy lost his job at Tulsa. For all of these guys we have to keep reminding ourselves it's a bad line. That said, Anoma also crushed a late Counter Trey.

#18 DE at the bottom

He's skinnier than Moore but showed some impressive get-off that we didn't see in last year's FCS playoffs and goes back to that 5-star ability. We didn't get to see an array of pass rush moves but like Moore those arms and quickness translate:

#18 second from the bottom of the formation

I didn't see him pass set.

As for the non-new guys, Jaylen Harrell started, abused the heck out of that right tackle, and looked stronger when holding the edge than he did last year, while remaining a pre-snap Swiss Army Knife, even if his role leans edge as much as Craig Roh's. The strip was more impressive on re-watch, because the RT he put on his ass got away with a trip and Harrell has to do this while swimming off the turf.

There were a couple of instances of Harrell getting pushed aside or pushed down—he doesn't have the new guys' athleticism. But Harrell's a player, and is probably going to hold those other dudes to smaller roles longer than you'd think given their relative upsides.

Braiden McGregor was in before the young guys I'm hype on, and was eventful. To the upside, he was giving that right tackle the business and did his part to indue the interception with a slap move that looks like it will work against anybody:

#17 coming from our left

…and a swim move he had to have learned from Hutchinson:

The legs still look skinny/not quite strong enough to pay off those wins with sacks. Then you remember he's a third year guy who spent 1.5 years rehabbing an exploded knee and it kinda makes sense that his hands are ahead of his feet.

Finally we have the old guys. Welschof moved from DT recently and tried to go back there when he was supposed to be holding the edge.

#96 at the bottom

If the FCS transfer who sat out two years and the true freshman are doing that better than the 5th year guy it's late, though in Juice's case it's not because he's got good excuses and a COVID year. Is that all of them?

Upshaw?