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Ross Fulton Analysis: Breaking Down Ohio State's Offense At Michigan · Buckeyes TomOrrow Morning

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  Welcome to Buckeyes Tomorrow Morning for Thursday, November thirtieth. I'm your host tom
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  Or the game against Michigan in three hundred and sixty six days. We're gonna
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  get in the wayback machine, not go too far back, but we're gonna
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  go back about five days or so to the last the game against Michigan,
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  talk about some of the good that some of the bad for the Ohio State
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  offense. There was a lot to talk about on both sides of that spectrum.
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  There was a lot of good. Everyone was expecting great going into the
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  game. Everyone thought everything was terrible coming out of the game, and the
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  truth, as always, sort of lies somewhere in the middle. We're gonna
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  be breaking that down today with our buddy Russ Wolton, the x's and OS
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  guru at bucke Huddle dot com and has always when Ross is on the show.
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  We are presented by Jeff Ruby Steakhouse, the award winning upscale steakhouse in
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  downtown Columbus, then one of the top fifty steak houses in America by Food
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  Network. Go to Jeff Ruby dot com slash Columbus to learn more and make
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  a reservation today. All right, Ross. We are not going to break
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  down every single play of the game, but we are going to start at
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  the very beginning the first play of the game. We're gonna start looking at
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  a couple plays on the run game and they we'll get in another the pass.
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  But let's start right at the very beginning first play of the game.
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  What did we learn here? Yeah, I mean, so going back to
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  like big picture, and we alluded to this earlier this week, but Ohio
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  State did, on a per play basis, have a better success rate than
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  Michigan. So there this is. This is one of those complicated situations where
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  a lot of what Ohio State did worked. They certainly had to adjust,
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  as we'll discuss here. It just unfortunately, obviously turnovers make a big difference,
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  and they could just never make that up. But you know, the
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  reason I wanted to pull up this play is I do think that in a
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  in a low possession game like this, even when you get it going,
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  unfortunately, when you essentially waste the first quarter, it's it's hard to make
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  it up, particularly when you get the ball first, right, And so
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  Ohio State's plan coming into this game was to focus on running weak mid zone.
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  You know, after all the discussion we had about like diversifying the scheme
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  gap runs. Obviously, I guess for Ryan Day and his staff, their
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  takeaway was that they probably thought they had done enough of that to keep Michigan
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  off balance that they could go back to running their bread and butter zone scheme.
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  And you know, Minnesota had had some success against Michigan doing so.
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  The problem was that that did not fool Michigan. And so we see here,
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  you know, they're trying to run week zone into a three and five
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  technique, which is really hard to do. We're gonna talk more about Michigan's
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  scheme. I mean, there's a lot of credit that I will give to
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  Jesse Minner and Mike McDonald before that. To me, it's the most probably
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  the most complex scheme in college football right now, and it makes things difficult.
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  And you see some of that here, just like small tweaks, Like
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  so Michigan kept playing a two technique, so on one side, so they
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  instead of having a guy shaded in between the center and the guard, he
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  is head up on the guard. That makes it difficult when you're running zone
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  plays to identify the combo blocks and to figure out which side to run to
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  and so you'll see some of that confusion here on this play. And so
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  the upshot of all of that is, you know, they don't come up
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  combo off or they both leave the two techniques, he's able to make a
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  play. They aren't able to get movement on the front side. But all
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  that's just to say, again, you know, the plan obviously was to
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  run, to go back to their like standard week zone and focus on that,
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  and that did not work. Michigan was ready for that. Now again,
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  to their credit, they adjusted. We're going to talk about that here.
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  I mean most notably, they had a you know, first drive of
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  the second half they ran you know, eight consecutive runs, probably the best
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  we've you know, how to say, run the football maybe all year.
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  So as in the passing game, adjustments were made, Like Ryan Day does
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  a really good job diagnosing what's going on. It's just you know, when
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  you have eight possessions and you don't make use of the first couple that small
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  things matter. Well, it did look a lot better to start the third
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  quarter. As you said, that was probably the best they had looked running
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  the ball all season long. The chip training was a big part of that
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  drive. He actually had the longest run of the day, which at the
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  time I don't think you would have you know, you would have thought,
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  oh, that's a nice play, but you would not have expected this is
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  going to be the longest run of the day. I think it about twelve
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  yards or something. But you know, let's let's break down why why this
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  were, how they adjusted and why this worked. Yeah, and so after
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  about that first quarter, Ohio State and Day and justin Fry, I mean,
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  they did diversify the run game. I think Chip Tranham had his best
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  game he had in a while. He did, he does a really nice
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  job here. This is a one back power play setting up the blocks and
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  then you know Michigan isn't too high and so this gets some you know,
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  some of the discussion here. So once Ohio State Michigan played a lot of
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  variations of Cover two in cloud coverage. Marvin Harrison discussed after the game he'd
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  never seen so much bracketing and double teaming. Ohio State was able to eventually
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  take advantage of that in the run game. They did so by you know,
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  they started mixing and gap runs, they used counter runs here, they
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  used one back power as you said, it's the biggest run of the game.
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  Unfortunately they only ran at one time. They interspersed a lot of different
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  variations of inside and outside zone on this drive too. They got under center,
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  they used some motion, they kept Michigan off balance, especially when Michigan
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  had to fit with seven man spacing because they're playing a lot of these cover
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  two concepts. So you know, we're going to discuss more with the passing
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  game. So again, it's sort of like one of those I guess,
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  you know, bittersweet. I mean, Ohio State, I thought moved the
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  ball pretty consistently in the second half. They obviously had one drive where they
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  went three and out. They ran a you know, a crack toss for
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  two yards and you know they had a mecha book up the seam. Michigan's
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  safety broke up that play. You know, we could get into whether mccor
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  should delivered that a little quicker boca, you know, can you hold on
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  to that? And then you're in third down, So you know, again
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  when you have a possessions like little things matter. But like they did figure
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  out what was going on, as I said, on a per play basis,
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  had you know, more yards than Michigan did. So there's some good,
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  as you said, there's it just was like a little too little,
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  too late. They could never quite crawl out of the deficit that they were
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  in. All right, So now let's take a look at the passing game
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  when we're just kind of going to go sequentially through the game with five different
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  plays here and you know, break down what we learned on each of them.
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  The first one, it looks so easy. It just Trayvan Henderson kind
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  of leaks out of the backfield and the cord throws it about three yards in
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  the air and it turns into a nice a nice game, I think,
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  a first down for them, relatively early in the game. And I think
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  this is a good example of him taking what was there and making the most
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  of it. Yeah, okay, so this gets into this is a good
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  example of a lot of what Michigan was doing. And again I I you
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  know, I will fully admit that from an Ohio State perspective, I would
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  am jealous of when Michigan is able to accomplish if defensively in scheme wise,
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  and like, to me, that's been the difference the last few years is
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  like Michigan has a very, very expansive scheme that's very modern and that has
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  a lot of answers to different things. And I just still think that Ohio
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  State is sort of behind the times. But so like here you'll see like
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  what Michigan did a lot of Again, like they always wanted to maintain a
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  cap cloud coverage over Harrison. So like when you especially when you had like
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  Harrison and Abuka to the same side, you get basically a two over three.
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  And what Michigan runs here is called two steel, so it's covered two,
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  but it's essentially rotated to the field here there it's a four man so
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  basically the defensive end becomes the boundary flat defender, the cornerback rotates back to
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  a dpath. Everyone's rotating, you know, down to the field. If
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  you think about it that way, two steel is just a way like if
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  you're you're setting your passing strength, you know, Hio State it's a team
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  that likes to run to the boundary as we've discussed, and put multiple receivers
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  to the field. So essentially you're just rotating your cover two to the field
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  while and then bringing you know, someone off the field edge, and so
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  you're getting numbers back to the boundary against the run, playing cover two and
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  keeping your corner back to the boundary out of the run fit and so you
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  know, it puts a lot of pressure. All the types of coverages they
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  were using, the different brackets, the different ways that they were, you
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  know, keeping a safety on top of Harrison, a lot of pressure on
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  the quarterback to diagnose what's going on. I personally think McCord did a nice
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  job here, just as you said, like getting the ball out to Harrison
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  like this is a soft zone. I mean, this gets into you know,
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  I have seen that this is one of those where you people have posted
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  the Twitter photos and said, you know, still shots and said the McCord
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  should have hit Stover down the middle against the safety rotation. I mean in
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  theory, sure, perhaps he could have thrown it to the middle of the
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  field, pulled Stover away from that corner that's falling back to Dpath. But
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  you have to think about it from a quarterbacks perspective, like they need to
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  diagnose the coverage and know what the scheme is supposed to do. You can't
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  wait around to see whether the defense executes it correctly. So like Sobs going
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  down the seam, you have a deep half seam defender, so you have
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  to assume that route is covered. I you know, I again we've talked
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  about this this year. Your mileage may vary. I personally think that it's
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  a strengthen thecords that he goes through his progressions and gets the football out in
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  a way that can result in positive plays. Like he's not someone who's going
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  to generate plays like Caleber Williams or JJ McCarthy for that matter, outside of
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  structure, and so, you know, I personally think that's a positive.
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  Obviously, some people would rather have someone who can hold onto the football and
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  do the latter. But I think this is a good example of like,
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  you know, you're getting early in the game, you're trying to figure out
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  what Michigan's doing. They're throwing a lot at you, and you get a
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  positive play, all right. One thing that was not positive play was on
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  the third drive. The first play of that third drive, Ohio State has
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  it still scoreless, McCord throws an interception, will Johnson makes a nice play
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  to jump the route, and you know that was that was a play that
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  kind of really was one of the first really impact plays of the game.
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  So walk us through what happened here. Yeah, I mean, to be
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  honest, it's like the impact play. I don't think you know, Ohio
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  State never created a similar something that flipped the field to overcome it, right,
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  So turnover, negative play, stealing a possession, and so again this
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  is this is just a really tough one. I mean, hats off to
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  Jesse mentor in Michigan for what they're doing here. Ohio State runs a RPO,
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  so McCord is reading the backside. Linebacker Maryland had a lot of success
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  throwing this against Michigan. Michigan has played all year a lot of like Cover
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  three, soft cover threes, spot drop zone, give a you know,
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  corner, we'll have ten yards off the ball. So this throw has been
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  there. Unfortunately, like Michigan, a lot of what they put on film
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  is not what they did against Ohio State. They likes playing a lot of
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  those sort of cover three concepts. It was overwhelmingly these like Cover two in
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  the flat bracket Harrison during the game. As we discussed, Ohio State eventually
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  figured out ways to crack it. You know, we're both running the football,
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  and we'll show a couple examples of what they did in the passing game.
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  But here you basically have a double and it's it's even harder. So
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  to go back to what McCord. So he's his read is that backside linebacker.
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  The backside linebacker travels with the run play, so his it is his
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  correct read to pull and throw. Now, this is the downside of an
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  RPO, right, because Michigan is essentially running a bracket on Harrison. But
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  it's even it's even more unique bracket in that Johnson is playing the inside and
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  hard. So when you tend to bracket, you send put the corner to
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  the outside and the safety of the inside. Here they're flipping them and so
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  there's just nothing there and so it's the right read to pull it. To
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  throw the RPO, you just have to basically eat it if you're record and
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  that's you know, Ohio State doesn't major in RPOs. This is sort of
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  the downside of them. You know, you got to chuck in the stands
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  or I guess you could say like purposely throw it behind Harrison. I mean,
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  he's Marvin Harrison. Maybe he makes a great play or at the minimum
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  it's incomplete, but it's just a dead play because Michigan had the right call
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  on and you just got to you have to minimize your losses, all right.
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  You mentioned earlier the folks on Twitter taking still shots and drawing arrows and
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  stuff, and you know, here's what you should have done. And I
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  think this next one was another one that you you thought was probably not a
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  great example of you know, Twitter is still shot the schematic diagnosis. So
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  run us through. We'll put some video on this one and you can you
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  can tell us what what was hap it in here? Yeah? Again,
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  so you know downside we talked about before the game, downside of getting a
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  third and long Michigan throws a lot of things at you here Ohio States and
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  a trips to the side to one side. So Michigan's gonna run what's called
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  clip clip is a cover two modified to uh play to trips, and so
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  the outside defender has the flat. You're then going to have the nickel carry
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  the number two receiver vertically and you have a safety over the top. And
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  so Ohio State runs like what's a smash or China concept effectively, so you
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  have receiver number two going to the flat or you know, running an out
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  route and you have a corner route and there's been lots of concert nation.
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  They Michigan trades them off, which is what they're doing. You know,
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  they're matching routes. We've talked about matching that mccor did not throw the corner
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  route, but again, like you can't wait around. The corner route is
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  in fact open because the Michigan safety plays this incorrectly. He does not get
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  over the top enough of the route, and so in practice it is open.
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  However, when you are in you know, you have four seconds.
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  You have to diagnose the coverage and figure out what is the available play,
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  and so as you would draw it up on a whiteboard, Julian Fleming is
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  double covered. You have a nickel carrying him vertically on the corner route and
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  then a safety over the top of them, and so the single matchup it's
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  you know, it's not great because clip is basically designed to take this play
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  away is the out route. So I do think it's the right place to
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  go to the ball. I mean again, it's sort of just it's sort
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  of just a dead play against what they are facing. But taking still shots.
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  As I said, like the quarterback can't wait around to see whether the
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  defender in the secondary makes a mistake. I mean, it's particularly when you're
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  facing a good pass rush. So I just I don't agree that McCord made
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  the wrong decision here. I don't think any of them are a great decision,
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  but you have to you have to read things and throw it on the
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  break, not waiting around to see whether the safety plays it correctly. All
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  right, Well, there was there was some stuff to complain about, especially
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  the start of the game in terms of the Ohios Jed offense. Second half,
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  they went down the field, there were there were some real you know,
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  boy, this is going to be a big, legacy defining kind of
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  drive for Kyle McCord and the ohiose Jed offense. And they did make some
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  plays when they really needed to. One of them was that touchdown to Marvin
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  Harrison to cut it to a one score game again kind of mid mid way
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  through the fourth quarter. This was you know, this did not look like
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  anything incredibly complicated to the you know, to the layman. I mean,
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  was was there was there anything really really elaborate to this play or was it
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  just kind of run Marvin Harrison across the middle and let him do Marvin Harrison
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  things. Well, it's elaborate the sense that again it's cracking what Michigan is
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  doing. So earlier in the first quarter, if you recall McCord through a
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  pass to Cad Stover where he basically had to break it up and he was
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  getting carried by the linebacker, and Harrison came open on a shallow cross on
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  that against a poach coverage where the safety is coming over, So they came
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  back to it. So you kept what they started to do because of that
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  cloud coverage is Day would either have Harrison run off the safety and come have
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  someone come underneath, or have someone else run off the safety and Harrison come
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  underneath, like they used him on a knife concept where he then he cut
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  it back outside for a first down, and same thing here, So like
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  they're going back to drive a drive concept with there, they're putting Harrison the
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  slot and they're using drive with the inside two receivers, and so basically you
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  know drive is the inner receiver is running a deep in and the receiver right
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  outside of him is running a shallow cross, and so you're using concepts internally
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  that Michigan is just for as complex of what they're doing on defense, they
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  don't have a lot of experience their reps handling those kind of concepts coming from
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  multiple receivers to the same side, and so that's what you're seeing here.
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  And so I mean it looks easy, but that's because you're cracking what Michigan's
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  trying to do using you know, poach coverages where the opposite side safety to
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  trips is coming over to help on the trip side, and so you're basically
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  occupying those safeties getting Harrison on the underneath coverage from Michigan. And so you
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  did see a lot of that. Again, like I'm of the opinion like
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  Ohio State for his complex and as jealous as I am of Michigan's defensive scheme,
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  like Ryan Day is very good at diagnosing things eventually, like he will
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  get to it, and like he has the tools. And Ohio State moved
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  the ball consistently. They had the one punt. You know, it's a
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  game where you have again we talked about like the number one sp plus defensive,
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  like one punt is the difference in the game. Then, like you're
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  not playing that great a defense in my opinion, and we're gonna show here
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  at the last interception, Like I feel like but for the unfortunate incidents of
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  like this interception, Like I think Ohio State was gonna score like they had
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  Michigan. We're gonna you know, we'll talk about here, like what they
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  were doing in passing downs, and like I think Ohio State had a good
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  plan and was starting to figure it out. All right, Well we started
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  with the first play of the game. We're gonna end with the last play
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  of the game. Ross make everyone feel really bad about how close Ohio State
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  came to winning this game. Yeah, and I mean this is like again,
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  so like Michigan was using particularly like Ohio State, and they started trading
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  the slot off a lot, like moving the slot from one side the other,
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  doing things to mess with Michigan's passing strength. And the response Michigan was
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  using passing downs was playing like a lot of three high tampa. We've talked
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  about that from Jim Knowles, and so you're playing at you know, cover
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  two where the middle deep pole runner is the is a safety and so you're
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  ohisot was getting a lot of this three high tampa both at the end of
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  the first half and here, and so Ohio State but like they were doing
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  well, right, So like first play McCourt maybe to me, had two
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  of his best throws of the season on that last drive, Like he hit
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  Harrison on a smash concept against Cover two. Like you know, we talked
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  about how he they had that against Rutgers and he threw it poorly, didn't
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  put enough air on it, and it was an interception. Like that was
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  a great throw by him on Harrison on that against that Tampa. Then two
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  plays in a row, they used, uh, this concept which is like
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  a y cross with a deep dig behind it. So the y crosser Abuka
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  would occupy that middle safety and allow the dig to come open underneath. So
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  they hit it to Fleming on the fumble that Abuka recovered, and they use
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  it again here and to me, I mean he has Harrison open. Uh,
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  he sees it correctly. You know, Michigan runs a twist up front
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  and unfortunately what happens is Josh Simon steps on Donovan Jackson's foot, which puts
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  him off balance, and you know, Harold from Michigan is able to knock
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  him into the backfield and disrupt the throw. And you know it's one of
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  those things like you're in a game like this, you know, little things
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  happen, and you know, fifteen more seconds he probably hits that throw and
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  who knows what happens. You know, that's just the difference in again,
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  in particularly where you've you're having to play catch up the whole time because of
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  big mistakes like whether it be the interception or you know, making as we
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  talked about, making decisions like planning on fourth down when Michigan was not doing
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  the same, or playing for a field goal at the end of the half,
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  and so they were just in catchup mode the whole time. And you
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  know, for unfortunately from Ohio States perspective, it it just wasn't quite enough
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  whereas they were able to do it against Notre Dame. Well, we will
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  be back a little later on in the week. I'm the tripic to tomorrow
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  another day this week, we're going to take a look at the ohiose Date
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  defense. What there is to learn from that performance. And you know us
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  said yesterday, you know we tested yesterday. You know, good performance,
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  bad performance, and it's you know, as always, there's a little bit
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  of a little bit of both, every a little bit in the middle.
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  Not quite as uh not quite as bad as the hot take e Folks want
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  to tell you not quite as good as you probably hope going into the game.
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  But we'll take a deep dive on the defense coming up a little later
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  on the week. But for now, that will do it for us.
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  We again thank you to our sponsor, Jeff Ruby Steakhouse, probably offering nationally
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  acclaimed USDA Prime Stakes, seafood and sushi, impeccable service, live entertainment,
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  and an attention to detail that is simply unmatched. Jeffruby dot com slash Columbus.
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  That'll do it for today. Thank you guys all for joining us.
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  Have a great day. We'll talk to you tomorrow.