9/9/2023 – Michigan 35, UNLV 7 – 2-0

I thought about copying and pasting last week's column and seeing if anyone noticed. It would have various references to ECU instead of Unlv, but acronyms are acronyms and maybe it would slide by. The accounting of JJ McCarthy's incompletions would be off by one and factually inaccurate, sure. I was banking on the nuclear glow coming off of McCarthy's arm obliterating all detail and leaving nothing but a crater of Buddhism (but fun!). I could have gotten away with it, I'm sure.

The pattern of this game was the pattern of the other game: big long Michigan drives on which some disappointing run plays are washed away in a torrent of third and medium conversions. JJ McCarthy's eyes glow white and he starts levitating. The opposition can do nothing on the interior and cannot pass protect and is only able to eke out a first down or two. Michigan irritatingly turns it over on downs due to over-reliance on a dive play. They lose the shutout when the backups to the backups get in. The final score doesn't reflect the statistical bombing that has just occurred.

Same, game, same column. It could work. I could scurry off and sip a mai tai or something. Wave to Dan Aykroyd, who is on a boat. Sort of thing.

-------------------------------------------

But no. No, I shall not do that. I shall stand and deliver because there is another thing that is more or less JJ McCarthy-level that should be addressed, and that is what is happening on the interior of Michigan's defensive line. You may have caught this from John Duerr on Twitter:

UNLV is going for it on 4th & 5.

Mason Graham breaks out his superman cape.

This is next level stuff from a 20 year old sophomore in college. pic.twitter.com/00hDOiDWwt

— Due# (@JDue51) September 10, 2023

What the cropping somewhat obscures is that right next to Mason Graham, Kris Jenkins was doing the exact same thing to the tackle. Jenkins is not a 20-year-old sophomore but he does play for Michigan at this moment, so we've got that going for us. Meanwhile Kenneth Grant is rumbling around stunts like he's not 340 pounds, then impacting people like he is.

[Bryan Fuller]

This is a long way away from converting Ben Mason and Jess Speight to DT and then playing them. The turnaround here is incredible; I remember a distinct sense of relief when Michigan was able to land George Rooks, a bonafide four-star defensive tackle. Rooks is now at Boston College because he would be the #6 DT on this roster, tops.

And there is no more important position on defense to have both depth and dudes. Georgia's recent run was built on talent everywhere, yes, but the most talent was at DT. When Michigan brought their Joe Moore award OL up against the Bulldogs they got shown what "generational talent" meant. There is nothing more dispiriting than watching the middle of your offensive line get shredded, and nothing more bloodlust-inducing than watching the middle of their offensive line get shredded.

To be sure paragraph: to be sure, Michigan has to sustain this level of production against better opposition. But even this objection is fairly weak when we've already seen what Kris Jenkins and Mason Graham looked like against the Big Ten. In Jenkins's case that was 20 pounds ago; in Graham's case he was a true freshman. It is not at all unreasonable to project the big gap ups they've demonstrated this year into the season-ending gauntlet. Grant is more speculative, but only just. And the big issue we projected, conditioning, isn't that relevant when you are DT option #3 on a defense that immediately boots teams off the field.

Michigan might have three first-round picks at DT out of no top-100 guys. That's a confluence of luck, development, and scouting that doesn't come together very often, and it's got Michigan pointed towards the biggest goals.

AWARDS

Known Friends and Trusted Agents Of The Week

the same [Barron]

you're the man now, dog

#1 JJ McCarthy. While I did not copy and paste last week's column I absolutely could have. 22/25 a week after 26/30 is crazy cuckoo banana nuts, as were a healthy subset of McCarthy's throws in this game. Drop eight? Don't care, eat this dig. Lift the coverage? Here is Donovan Edwards. Single coverage? Catch and run to Roman Wilson. Also, Jay Harbaugh took his head coaching opportunity to run the guy twice. Elite. LFG.

#2(T) Kris Jenkins, Mason Graham, and Kenneth Grant. Naturally. 14 tackles, 2.5 sacks, and 4.5 TFLs between the three in limited snaps. See above about the rest. 4 points each.

#3(T) Braiden McGregor and Derrick Moore. 2.5 TFLs and a sack between them, with both guys playing excellent run defense while providing organic pass rush.

Honorable mention: Roman Wilson and Cornelius Johnson both had good days catching the ball but got slid down here because of blocking issues. Tyler Morris emerged into that chain mover he was projected to be and had what's likely to be a +2 block. Jaylen Harrell cleaned up a couple of blitzes for sacks; Mike Barrett's blitzes created one of those and he was otherwise solid. Blake Corum did average 5.3 YPC despite getting a bunch of wedges.

KFaTAotW Standings.

(points: #1: 8, #2: 5, #3: 3, HMs one each. Ties result in somewhat arbitrary assignments.)

16: JJ McCarthy (#1 ECU, #1 UNLV)
6: Kenneth Grant (T3 ECU, T2 UNLV)
5: Mason Graham (HM ECU, T2 UNLV), Kris Jenkins (HM ECU, T2 UNLV), Roman Wilson (T2 ECU, HM UNLV), Cornelius Johnson (T2 ECU, HM UNLV)
2: Ernest Hausmann (T3 ECU), Mike Sainristil (T3 ECU), Josh Wallace (T3 ECU), Blake Corum (HM ECU, HM UNLV), Braiden McGregor(T3 UNLV), Derrick Moore (T3 UNLV)
1: Tommy Doman (HM ECU), Donovan Edwards (HM ECU), Tyler Morris (HM UNLV), Jaylen Harrell (HM UNLV), Mike Barrett (HM UNLV)

Who's Got It Better Than Us(?) Of The Week

McCarthy hits Wilson with a strike that turns into a 47-yard touchdown just as the broadcast is talking about the reason McCarthy has 47 on his hand.

Honorable mention: Derrick Moore gets a pure edge rush sack; McCarthy does just about anything; play above where Graham and Jenkins simultaneously teleport into the backfield; Myles Hinton obliterates a guy.

MARCUS HALL EPIC DOUBLE BIRD OF THE WEEK.

Fourth and two wedge is stuffed.

Honorable mention: McCarthy gets up a little gimpy after a QB draw ends with a helmet to his thigh; Colston Loveland jet sweep gets crushed as Johnson whiffs a block; Tommy Doman puts a kickoff out of bounds?

OFFENSE

Hey let's talk about McCarthy in this bit. For the second straight week we can individually consider McCarthy's incompletions:

• Unblocked blitzer up the gut bats a pass down.
• Well-covered corner route to Wilson is overthrown.
• Miscommunication between Fred Moore and McCarthy results in a throw to no one.

That's it, that's all. Everything else was caught.

The McCarthy themes in this game were twofold. Fold the first: pinpoint third down conversions against eight man coverages. No better example than his first, when UNLV dropped eight and JJ found the window provided by an underneath route to hit Tyler Morris:

Look at that window:

This is in a similar vein where it's play action and he gets a tiny window but the LB is not facing him because PA, and then bang:

McCarthy has been nailing dig routes in the first two games no matter how many guys are in underneath coverage, and I keep going back to Michigan quarterbacks past who were told to avoid the middle at all costs. McCarthy's got the greenest of all lights here.

Fold the second was moving around in the pocket to find time and/or pull defenders up to create openings for wide receivers. Sometimes this was fairly basic "nobody is in front of me, I should move up" stuff but he also pulled off another one of those pocket drifts he had in the first game, buying just enough time against a blitz to get the ball out.

BUT! No, not really. I do wonder about the throw everyone's gaga about, this dart to Johnson:

That's fit in there but do you want to fit it in or do you want to dump it to Loveland for an easy second and two? I dunno. That's going to be a DO in UFR but last year Sam Webb had an animated discussion about a slant that went in one window instead of the other with Al Borges and there's an argument to be had there.

McCarthy knows where Morris is going [Fuller]

Option routes. Michigan has them now, in spades.

This requires a level of trust in both receiver and QB; mostly QB since the WR can pretty easily decided to break it out against an inside leverage defender. But here this is Morris and McCarthy and McCarthy seems to know his footwork and know what he's going to do and etc etc etc. Mind meld is not proven but is suggested by McCarthy's confidence in throwing to Morris on third and medium against seven and eight man drops.

Also in doodads. Michigan's touchdown before the end of the half was a purpose-built convert from this distance play. Johnson's route runs off a zone defender; Wilson breaks down to imply a hitch and then when he breaks inside the defender isn't agile enough to tackle:

Michigan's using Wilson's speed for YAC opportunities, as they did on the 47-yard TD.

He runs! McCarthy got two carries in this game, one a zone read keep, the other a draw. Both were chunks. I continue to believe that you need to incorporate McCarthy's legs in these games to be able to run at maximum efficiency in the big ones. But, yeah…

[Barron]

…after you get to the sticks you can get out of bounds if the sideline's right there.

Run game issues are multifarious. So the thing about the ground game is that there is no one quick fix. Flopping out the tackles for (at this point very hypothetical) upgrades isn't going to do it by itself. Last week's UFR dwelled a bit on wide receiver blocking; that cropped up a few different times in this game to nerf what were otherwise well-blocked plays. It seems unlikely that any of the inline TEs are going to match Luke Schoonmaker's blocking from a year ago. Both Hinton and Barnhart had instances where they didn't get a guy blocked; Edwards and Corum were once again not really performing at the levels we expected them to last year. Here's an interesting tweet from Michael Barret's dad:

He didn’t practice at all during fall camp only workouts so his timing is off a little with new O line but I saw a couple plays yesterday where he was a split second time wise from breaking it big! He gonna be fine!

— Michael Barrett Sr. (@lilmike70) September 10, 2023

That would mean that both Edwards and Corum haven't been hit in a long time; the rust seems apparent. There were a couple of opportunities for Edwards to gear down and burst inside of a force player like he started doing midway through last year that he did not take.

But yes wide receiver blocking is a problem. Cornelius Johnson just has to do better than this:

WR #6 to top

That airball sets up the play that we're just about to talk about.

Wedgin' it. Michigan's failed fourth down conversion in the third quarter was part of a story. Part #1 was Michigan's first touchdown; they got down to the three and then went tempo to prevent UNLV from subbing on a goal line package. Conversion: easy.

Then they wedged it in on first and goal from the two on the next drive. Hooray, wedge. But also we remember the Rutgers game last year, right? RIGHT?

Apparently we do not. When Michigan was faced with a similar redzone situation in the third quarter they ran the "anything else" play, got a UNLV DE to splort himself upon the ground, and got a walk-in touchdown to go up 35-0. Fool me once, fine, fool me twice, fine, fool me three times nope even if you're UNLV.

big [Fuller]

The tackle situation. Very strange: Michigan announced preseason that the four "starting" tackles would alternate in the first two games. As late as Friday Rivals was reporting that was still the plan… and then they quickly flipped that report. As a result another game with Barnhart and Hinton. Hinton improved considerably but was still inconsistent on the ground; Barnhart seemed to be about what he's been.

You can see why Michigan might be giving Hinton a longer leash. On one play he took a DL lined up over him and blasted him back eight yards. He has more upside than anyone else on the tackle depth chart. But we got a lot of One Guy plays* in this game and Hinton was the guy a fair bit. UFR will obviously spend a bunch of time on this.

*[These are plays where everything is blocked well… except for one guy, and then the play goes nowhere.]

Cumong man. One thing UFR probably won't spend a lot of time on is PFF's vendetta against Trevor Keegan, because he graded out as Michigan's second-best run blocker behind Barner. I choose to believe that I have scared PFF straight.

DEFENSE

[Fuller]

Hello, defensive ends. In addition to the defensive tackle items above, Michigan got some output from their DEs. The guys who stood out were Braiden McGregor and Derrick Moore. McGregor had a shoestring TFL when he slashed through a double team and then had multiple events where UNLV thought they could leave him unblocked only to find out that, no, you cannot option Braiden McGregor. At one point he played both sides of a mesh point for a TFL, and plays that attempt to run away from the backside defensive end are free run stops for him.

Derrick Moore did this:

standup DE #8 to top

We talked about this on the podcast; I assert that this is opponent-invariant burst. Look at that guy get off the LOS. Many, many LTs are going to get got by that.

Jaylen Harrell got a couple sacks in the first half but once you watch the film this doesn't seem like a paradigm shift; Harrell wasn't blocked on either play. He got through via UNLV OL miscommunication and clever Jesse Minter blitzes.

Linebackers? Barrett and Colson tied for sixth in tackles with four each; Haussman had three. Nobody registered a stat outside of that, and in the aftermath of going over the game again I realize I had exactly zero takes about them. This is a side effect of the DL play. LB's can't fill gaps when there are no gaps.

[Barron]

Grand cornerback battle. Will Johnson got in for one series so he must be on the verge of a full-time return. The guy opposite him is likely to be Josh Wallace, but the other contenders appear to be:

• Keshaun Harris. Harris has started the last two games and has not looked particularly out of place. He ran a fade route for the WR in this game and was otherwise largely untested.
• Ja'Den McBurrows. McBurrows has exclusively played as a nickel so this configuration would see Sainristil move to the outside. This feels like a contingency plan.
• Jyaire Hill. Michigan rotated in DJ Waller, Kody Jones, and Cam Calhoun at about the same time they rotated Hill in; in your author's opinion the other guys don't look like they'll be ready this year while Hill's athleticism pops.

Wallace seems like the bet since he's the least likely to make a big mistake and it seems unlikely many teams are going to drive the field against this DL.

[Barron]

Safety depth. With both starters out it was again Quinten Johnson and Keon Sabb at safety. Sabb looked like a promising sophomore, alternating mistakes with nice plays. Both guys had issues tackling, with four misses between them. Nobody is getting Wally Pipped here. The guy who actually stood out amongst the great safety morass was Caden Kolesar, who got twenty snaps and had an excellent anticipatory PBU along with another coulda-shoulda PBU. Kolesar does have the option of a sixth year, FWIW.

When the defensive line is this dominant there does not appear to be a whole lot else to say. Back seven takes are minimal because the number of plays where they had to do anything was similarly minimal. I was disappointed that UNLV's touted go-go offense did not, you know, go. They had one triple option that got Mike Sainristil and picked up a chunk but other than that the promised weirdness, frippery, and explosiveness was not present. I assume UNLV is saving that stuff for teams they're more likely to beat?

SPECIAL TEAMS

stop practicing kick coverage [Barron]

Le boom. I was happy enough that Michigan took a penalty on a Tommy Doman punt late because that meant we got to add another blast to our sample size. The ones that counted saw Doman average 46 yards with plenty of hangtime; the long UNLV return was only possible because a gunner with a clean shot at Jacob De Jesus missed. Meanwhile all of his kickoffs were touchbacks aside from one that would have been a touchback if he hadn't pushed it out of bounds at approximately the two.

If you're the guy who catches the punts you have to catch the punts. Experienced some light irritation when a punt that was about 40 yards did not get fielded by Jake Thaw, who was about ten yards away from a punt that went approximately an average distance. When you're the steady caretaker punt return guy that's job one.

Tyler Morris looked like an intriguing option when given an opportunity.

MISCELLANEOUS

CBS Big Ten is weird. It's weird. Nessler and Danielson had an aside during the game about how they used to call games from the old Michigan press box and Bo would yell at them not to screw it up. Bo has been dead for almost twenty years. It's weird.

Also weird: why do Brad Nessler and Gary Danielson have no idea what a catch is? They spent a ton of time in this broadcast grousing about the incompletion Mike Sainristil forced where it's clear the WR doesn't have possession and doesn't survive contact with the ground. It has always been the case that it is an incompletion if you catch the ball, immediately hit the turf, and the ball pops out. It was not at all close. And yet.

I miss last year when half of Michigan's games were Big Noon Johnson/Klatt things.

using more of the screen for replays [Fuller]

Some scoreboard progress, but… still way too many useless/inefficiently-presented stats up there. Fumbles zero fumbles lost zero interceptions zero should not be 60% of one of your slides.

Commercials! This week's indignity was a commercial one play into the second quarter.

HERE

Photos. Recap. Best and Worst:

Michigan’s starting defense remains un-scored upon in 2 weeks, and rarely even challenged during what could loosely be called the “competitive” portions of these games.  For example, Michigan gave up 10 first downs and forced 7 punts in the first halves of games against ECU and UNLV, and 3 of those first downs occurred on a single ECU drive to start the 2nd quarter…which ended in a punt.  They’ve given up a shade above 150 total yards of offense over those 4 quarters, and nothing even resembling a viable scoring attempt by either opponent.  Yes we’re talking about two middling G5 teams but…Delaware scored a TD against PSU’s starters, and OSU gave up an 11-play, 75-yard TD drive to Youngstown St., so being that comprehensively stout against anyone shouldn’t be overlooked just because UM’s deep backups gave up shutouts late.  And that’s the thing – despite what the announcers kept saying that UM still had their starters in the 4th quarter, here are the players who made all of the tackles in said quarter: Waller (4), Goode (2), Guy (2), McBurrows (2), Hausmann, McGregor, Stewart, Hill, Pierce, Jones, and Etta.

The State of our Open Threads:

One thing that was substantially lower was the "suck" though - only six instances this week, primarily because the game was not on Peacock perhaps. There was a marked decrease in the amount of "Harbaugh" talk, with only 19 instances this week, which is down from 30 last week. I suppose that we are at peace with this temporary self-imposed inconvenience then.

There was a slight increase in "fire", 22 mentions to 28 mentions, although this time it was mostly in jest as opposed to being directed at someone or something, like Peacock.