Coming into the season I kept saying Chip Lindsey's whole thing is he will take something you do and work with it to make a passing game off of that structure. I thought for our first game with Lindsey we would find something we're familiar with from the Harbaughffense that he could revive with a tweak. Sure enough, a lot of the gameplan for New Mexico revolved around the old Baltimore Ravens' trick of using receivers as tight ends they downloaded in 2021 and made a feature of their offense until opponents got used to it.
The reason they do so isn't complicated. Defenses will match personnel with the offense, and then try to keep those skills matched on the field: big chonky linemen for blockers, speedy DBs with great coverage skills for receivers, smurfy quick buggers at nickel to cancel out slot bugs, etc. If you have a player the defense can't really match up with, you have an advantage, and the defense will probably have to do something a little unsound to replace that advantage.
Given this basic matchup math, a third receiver on the field should get an extra defensive back on the field. If that receiver can block the pants off of that DB, the offense just won another matchup. But it's more than that.
[After THE JUMP: How the 56-yard touchdown was set up by the first screen.]
YOU TREAT A RECEIVER DIFFERENTLY
Receivers are treated differently by defenses when they motion. Defenses might adjust to a TE by shifting the linebackers over, but they'll often flip responsibilities between corners and safeties to handle a receiver. They'll rotate safeties in the direction of that motion, and rotate overhead coverage towards the side with the most receiver threats. This presents all kinds of opportunities for messing with matchups.
Haynes's 56-yard touchdown was one such example. The play began by shifting Channing Goodwin to the slot in a twins look, which got a safety rotation and a slant in his direction as well. The initial key block is Sprague, who donkeyed a TE from the bottom of the M to the other side of the hash mark to create the gap. Klein also turned out the edge on his kickout to create all of that space, at least until the end started to come loose as Goodwin reaches him. It turns into a touchdown because of what I assume will be the block of the game from Bredeson.
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But you can also see the cornerback held outside by Goodwin's motion, to the point where he's completely useless to the play.
Note: I'mgoing to try Streamable again, because it's cleaner and you can pause without crap covering the video. They told me to put "[Whitelisted User]" in the title to prevent the temporary takedowns. If that failsthe play is on Youtube here.
While the above touchdown shows what can be accomplished with the tiny-TE stuff that was already in Michigan's playbook from their 2021 Ravensification, Michigan for the last two years wasn't really getting much out of it. If they catch you doing it and your little receiver ends up having to block a guy built to take on tight ends, or if they can ignore the threat of him because they've guessed you're just trying to widen them out, you've got a problem. That's where Lindsey comes in. All offseason I was saying his deal is he packages up the stuff you do with play-action and whatnot that will keep the wheels greased. He did it with Malzahn's offense at several stops. And at several points in this game I thought he used good play sequencing and rock-paper-scissors packages to force defenses to play this thing Michigan wants to do straight.
SWAPPING ROLES
Even discounting last year's offense, the tiny TE stuff Michigan was doing had grown stale after they lost Ronnie Bell. You can really see it with the way defenses were selling out on Michigan's short yardage play. Word got around that they were unlikely to do anything with the motioning receiver, so defenses were free to pinch everybody towards the middle.
Wilson: not Bell. Michigan has to stop running plays where they expect Roman Wilson to be a tiny tight end. Every single time they tried it in this game they just added someone to the box and Wilson did not get an effective block. I didn't like this even when it was Bell; Wilson is smaller and less experienced at attempting to get blocks in the box.
I didn't have to look hard to find examples. This 3rd & 2 attempt wanted to get the safety switched onto Roman Wilson for a key frontside block, but Iowa just took it as an invitation to blitz the linebacker Wilson had dragged out to the flat AND bring the safety down to five yards, whereupon he was able to clonk Corum at the line of scrimmage.
FLIPPING JOBS ON SHORT YARDAGE
When Michigan was faced with a 3rd & short situation they went back to their bread 'n butter: Tight Zone. But instead of lining everybody up and asking the receiver to be the key block, Lindsey had Goodwin flip roles with Bredeson.
These are pretty fundamental responsibilities, meaning New Mexico couldn't just change up how they approached this play when Michigan ran it again.
ESTABLISHING A THREAT
Early in the game we had one of those moments remembered all too well from the last few seasons. Michigan motioned Goodwin into a tight end position opposite twins. New Mexico promptly treated him like a tight end, stunting the nickel with the DE so that Goodwin was overmatched with strength and Marlin Klein was surprised by the nickel's speed.
ROCK/PAPER/SCISSORS
The key to making this work again was to establish those receivers as a threat. Lindsey got to work on this with his first Michigan playcall, which had Goodwin continue outside to block a screen.
Linsdsey wasn't getting one-off; he was establishing the ground rules when he sent a receiver in motion. So let's look at a play that Michigan tried to use as a rock for years under Harbaugh: Inside Zone with a wide receiver wrapper. This was a Ronnie Bell staple because he could get a safety or a nickel out the backside and take that guy for a ride. Fredrick Moore…well he's not quite there.
ROCK:
PAPER:
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Just so those guys don't feel bad for assuming the paper to this particular rock is attacking that edge, we got the jet sweep initially threatened a few drives later.
SCISSORS: