2022 indiana

The portal additions will keep coming until either a) morale improves, or b) Michigan has more transfers in this class than their entire post-Bump Elliott history combined. This time we raided a division rival for tight end.

Barner should be able to make an immediate impact on a depth chart that was expecting to have Erick All back next year. A nobody recruit (ranked some places as a DE), Barner immediately earned playing time, though just one target, behind Peyton Hendershot during their 2020 run. He started the last two years, serving as a team captain as a true junior while almost never coming off the field. Thanks to the COVID year, he'll have two years left to play at Michigan. He's also from Ohio, a state Michigan recently annexed.

STATS

These come with major Connor Bazelak/Donaven McCulley caveats.

Play-by-play data from collegefootballdata show three penalties, two of those false starts at Rutgers. Without looking, I'm going to attribute those to Rutgers blowing their stupid train horn. PFF's grading isn't very meaningful lately, especially the blocking component, but they weren't particularly enamored; Barner got a 53.4 overall this year, 54.3 in the passing game, and 59.7 as a run blocker. They were kinder on his 2021: 60.9 overall, 61.9 passing, 55.3 run blocking.

[After THE JUMP: Indiana's best tight end]

The Book

John U. Bacon is coming on to talk about this, ie "The Greatest Comeback: How Team Canada Fought Back, Took the Summit Series, and Reinvented Hockey."

Like you need more than a link to buy a Bacon book, core audience. He could have called it Hockey Canada's Lasting Lessons and you'd buy it. It's a Bacon book.

The Sponsors

Thank you to Underground Printing for making this all possible. UGP makes custom apparel such as t-shirts and sweatshirts and was founded by 2 Michigan alums over 20 years ago. They have 3 retail locations in Ann Arbor and offer thousands of University of Michigan athletic products for sale, ranging from clothing to accessories and memorabilia. Check them out at ugpmichiganapparel.com or check out our selection of shirts on the MGoBlogStore.com!

And let’s not forget our associate sponsors: Peak Wealth Management, HomeSure Lending, Ann Arbor Elder Law, Michigan Law Grad, Human Element, The Phil Klein Insurance Group, Venue by 4M, and we are recording this on SignalWire.

Featured Musician: Craig Brown Band

Video is Here:

[After THE JUMP: What's to be said]

The screens were pretty annoying, right? Why was Michigan not getting lined up? Why were they having so much success, even on long downs, with this tactic? What was the plan to beat them? How did they adjust? Let's dive in.

Opening up Multiple Fronts

A Walt Bell offense doesn't attack you with the normal array of football moves. They're irregulars, light infantry, moving units across the battlefield with lightning speed and choosing where to engage, which is ideally wherever you're late to arrive in force. The last thing they want to engage in is a battle in the middle. Your troops against theirs? Game over. What they would much rather do is split into two groups, always of varied compositions, use tempo to increase the likelihood of the defense failing to find their others and line up correctly, and use the second before the snap to pick one of those two widely separated points of attack to have the next engagement.

IU's trick was to create multiple fronts, separated by so much distance that defenders had to virtually declare by alignment before the snap which one they were going to be participating in. Bazelak would read the defensive alignment during the second his line was frozen and know which battleground to choose. In this case it was whether Colson (LB on the bottom) and/or Moore (safety just above the bottom hash) were part of the play near the snap or the play out in the flat.

Notice here that the line is run-blocking; they aren't told that the pull is live. But also notice that there's no mesh point; it's not an "RPO"—or at least it's not a post-snap read. The QB sees Michigan only has two guys playing way off for the three guys lined up on the field side, makes the check in his head, and throws it.

This style also dictates how you have to defend them. All those fancy pressures and coverages you use to confound an offense trying to win old-fashioned leverage battles can't help you against Indiana, because they're so spread out that none of your defenders are close enough to each other to swap jobs. Amoeba? Forget it. Want to use Cover 3 to get them guessing if the pressure's coming from the right or left? Get used to Indiana choosing your Rip/Liz calls for you.

I think that's what's going on here.

[After THE JUMP: The adjustments, the reactions, and IU runs out of ideas first]