1. Claim that the playcalling in 2007 has been good. It hasn't.

2. Indict the coaching staff in a way that ignores the fact that we are coming off an 11-2 season in which we were a score away from the national title game. Whatever inherent flaws there are in the coaching staff, they obviously do not make losing inevitable.

3. Back down on my assertion that Mike DeBord, while not a particularly good offensive coordinator, is generally competent and an improvement over our previous offensive coordinator.

4. Trip over myself trying to *the guy* who comes up with the perfect analogy to describe how much DeBord sucks or to generate the singular, telling stat to crystallize the failures of Lloyd Carr. 

5. I will not exaggerate our talent or our failings in an effort to drive home how disappointing the season has been so far.

To put it simply, we all know what the expectations for the year were, we all know how the team has played and despite the best efforts of the Big Ten Network, we have all seen enough games to know what has caused much of the failure and what has caused the successes. Maybe the message boards crave another great blog entry with a wonderful analogy they can share with their friends and laugh at, another "Mike DeBord is like ..." catchphrase or "Michigan's offense is like ..." silly comparison. But as they stack up (and they are stacking up) the analogies and comparisons and catchphrases become not only harsher, but increasingly lacking in insight,  increasingly inaccurate and increasingly popular solely for their humor and pejorative value. 

Look at why we've played the way we have, and hazard some guess as to what to expect the rest of the year.

From what I've seen, we've basically been plagued by four failures so far this year, four things that are primarily to blame for the bad start. Some coaching related, some player related, and here's my take.

I was not the guy who coined the phrase "non-scoring offense" or proselytized belief in its existence. But having heard the term enough times, I was the skeptic who pulled the stats, did the analysis and said "you were right, I was wrong, there is a non-scoring offense." And past analysis showed that in the first 3 seasons of DeBord as OC, the non-scoring offense may have led to frustration, it may have led to boring games, it turned should-be-blowouts into pedestrian victories and it robbed us of the eye-popping numbers we had expected to see (in 1999 for example). But it rarely led to losses. DeBord may have been maddening but still careful in his use of the non-scoring offense.

2006 continued the same, a season in which we went 11-2 and the offense only failed us in one of the two losses. The key to the non-scoring offense not costing us games is how it was used. It was used when we were comfortably ahead and against significantly inferior opponents. However, this year the strategy has changed. This year, it's being used any time Ryan Mallett is in the game. And that is killing us.

There was no better example of this than against NW. Against NW, Ryan Mallett had practically the whole first half and generated 0 points. We had one missed FG and no other drives into scoring range. Henne, given just over a half, generated 28 points. The difference was the willingness to throw repeatedly on 1st down with Henne in the game, to force the NW defense to back men out of the box and cover Manningham and Arrington (and to punish them when they didn't). With Mallett, we continued to run right into that run focused front. With Henne, we took the easy throws they were giving us. 

In fact, so far this season we are effectively averaging about 32 PPG with Chad Henne at QB (67 points in just over 2 games of action) and about 18 PPG with Mallett at QB (52 points in just under 3 games of action). Over half of Chad Henne's drives have ended with TDs or FG attempts. Under 1/3rd of Ryan Mallett's have. It's not because Mallett has played badly. We have not scored with Mallett because we have used the non-scoring offense every time he has gotten under center. 

With a runningback who will consistently gain good yardage but who will not break the big run, you need to capitalize on the defensive focus of the run game. You need to take the short pass when they back off to play safe in the secondary. You need to go down the middle when the safety creeps up to attack the LOS. Otherwise you are asking too much of Mike Hart and asking too much of the freshman QB forced into too many 3rd and long situations.

When DeBord is in scoring mode, he is very good at using play action pass or run looks to generate big gains. No Carr offense has featured more post routes, seam routes and waggles than a DeBord offense, all plays that work for us because we force the defense to defend the run first. But with Mallett in, when we force the defense into 8 in the box (or some functional equivalent), we simply run again and trust Hart to make them miss. And when it doesn't work, we focus on blocking better.

So how does this play out? Hopefully, with Henne back in, it becomes an irrelevantly maddening trait and not a cause for concern.  And amazingly enough, it is *again* not the reason we've lost. The two games where this has been the biggest culprit were two wins, two maddeningly close wins against inferior opponents, but two wins. 

Yes, the spread option with a mobile QB can be an equalizer, but at worst the defense should be able to play a game of "pick your poison". You should be able to set up a defense where either you press the WRs and hope coverage holds long that pressure gets to the QB, or to hang back in coverage with everyone in zone, contain the QB, keep him in the pocket and not give the QB any open options despite the time to throw. Heck, against Appalachian State we should have such an edge that we can take everything away, but even if you say our defense is inexperienced and untested, at least the pick your poison approach should work.

Somehow, we wound up in a defense which allowed everything. We played soft on the WRs and gave up easy, short completions, but we also gave up the big plays. We neither spied the QB nor contained him. We didn't get pressure on the QB, but we didn't blanket the WRs in zone either. We played a defense that was designed around all the weakest parts of a contain defense and the weakest parts of an attacking defense ... all the aggression of the contain and all the safety of the attack.

Why did it improve? Two things happened, lineup changes and a change in the offenses we faced.

Lineup changes: Brandent Englemon and Donovan Warren are simply better than Steve Brown and Johnny Sears.  That has helped tremendously, particularly with respect to the big plays. But the bigger change has been the emergence of Brandon Graham. He allowed us to get consistent pressure from the front 4, without forcing us into blitzes, and any defensive coordinator looks better when he can count on getting pressure from the front 4.

Conventional Offenses: English is fine against a conventional attack. He knows how to get players where the ball will be if he knows where the ball will be. 

How does this play out? In all likelihood, with continued great success against conventional attacks but hold your breath against Illinois. We'll see if English has learned and if Graham makes that much of a difference.

Unlike the first two, the defensive failures against NW were frequently the result of well defended plays and missed tackles. A 65 yard pass pickup when 3 UM defenders *almost* knock a NW receiver down and then let him go. A 50 yard run which should have been 5. Against App State and Oregon, it was frequently offensive execution problems. Missed wide open receivers. Bad blitz pickup. Lack of effort from the WRs at times. Dropped passes. Fumbles. A bad decision leading to a critical interception.

What can you say? How does it improve? Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. Maybe they aren't trying hard enough. Brandon Graham described Michigan's opening against NW as walking onto the field unmotivated, feeling like it was a HS game. That's inexcusable (whether that's Graham's talking about his own attitude or his take on the team).

How does this play out? Hold your breath. More unmotivated efforts will lead to more losses.

I'm not usually one to write off poor performance as "complacency" on the part of the coaching staff, but I'm seeing signs this year. I see it in the fact that we held so many players out of so many practices in spring and fall,often for "precautionary reasons" and then came out with an offense that looked out of sync the first two weeks. I see it in the way Hart was held out for the middle of the game against App State, until victory seemed impossible. He came back in, ran healthy and ran hard and nearly won the game for us. I see in the way a seemingly healthy Chad Henne played one series against NW, led us to a touchdown and sat on the bench until halftime, when we were down 16-7 and the Mallett led offense had done nothing.

How does this play out? It would be easy to say that at 3-2, having struggled with a terrible Northwestern team, that complacency would be cured by reality. I wouldn't count on it, not with rumblings that the EMU game plan could once again be Henne for a drive and then Mallett.

Where might our problems recur?

Non-scoring offense? Against any team the coaching staff feels is inferior. That could be anyone except OSU, Wisconsin and MSU, potentially.

The problems with the spread? Eastern Michigan and Illinois.

The complacency? Eastern Michigan, Illinois, Minnesota.

Execution problems? Could happen at any time.

So other than the games against quality opponents that could beat us no matter how well we play, the game that looks riskiest is Illinois. That's the game where I could see us coming out with the non-scoring offense, playing a gameplan designed with the assumption of victory and find ourselves behind because of our difficulty with the spread.