Michigan has struggled badly with mobile QBs in spread offenses for years. Look at their loss to Northwestern a couple years ago, or the issues they had with Drew Stanton and MSU or Troy Smith and OSU or Minnesota. Their DC English refuses to adjust what he's going to do based on the opponent--they ran a base 4-3 for at least half the game against both App State and Oregon's spreads. Lloyd Carr finally laid down the law and made English come up with a better plan to handle those situations. They changed safeties, stopped rushing the DL up the field so quickly, and got the reserve DBs up to speed. They bottled up Juice Williams & Co. very adeptly last week thanks to those changes. One other issue UM has--they don't have anyone like Dixon or Williams on the roster to run the scout team, and their coaches are unfamiliar with how to run the option-spread even on a scout-team basis.
Thanks for saving me some time. As for their offense they are starting to come alive. it seems like they went over the bump that they had in the beginning of the year and seems to be more efficient/patient with throwing. At the end they do have the best RB,WR and OT in the big ten and possibly top 5 in the nation in those categories. Add the experienced QB, it s a quite dangerous offense when they play in synch-which unfortunately they are starting to as we come closer to the big game. anyways, i ll go ahead and stop defending michigan before i throw up.
