Michigan football had its first test of the season on Saturday against Maryland, and it passed — but it wasn’t pretty, nor was it perfect.
Fox Sports’ premier color analyst Joel Klatt, who was on the call, is generally complimentary of the Wolverines, but he garnered some criticism from Michigan fans due to him not overtly praising the home team during the 34-27 win. On ‘The Joel Klatt Podcast,’ Klatt explained why he was critical of the Wolverines, what he saw from the team, and his expectations for the maize and blue when they face off against Iowa on the road this upcoming Saturday.
“First and foremost, I wanted to address this: people thought I was being heavily critical of Michigan during the game and I was praising Maryland too much,” Klatt said. “But remember, how we watch college football in large part is based on the expectations that we have for each program. And like it or not, Michigan in particular after last year, they have expectations that are far greater than just beating Maryland on a random Saturday in September. Their expectations are about competing with and potentially beating Ohio State, winning the Big Ten Championship, and returning to the playoff with a team that is better suited to win a playoff game than the one that went to the playoffs last year and got run out of the building by Georgia.
“So when I’m watching and analyzing Michigan, that’s the lens with which I’m going to do it. And for Maryland, they’re a team that is building, fighting, scratching, clawing for some growth within a really tough division in the Big Ten East. So I saw a lot of growth from Maryland and I saw a lot of questions from Michigan when you look at it through those lens of expectations. And I think that’s an important part of how we view college football because that’s how you view it. If you’re a fan of Maryland, you want to see them grow. If you’re a fan of Michigan, you want me to tell you was that good enough to beat Ohio State. Was it good enough to go to the playoff and maybe even have more success in the playoff than we did a year ago? Well, let’s go through it.
“What did that game tell us about Michigan more in particular? The one answer that I got about Michigan on Saturday was I felt like they adjusted well, in the face of the first in the face of adversity for the first time this season. And that’s, by the way, across the board, players, young players, coaches and young coaches. And I thought that was a plus for Michigan. Because the way that the game started isn’t how the game finished for them. They adjusted on both sides of the ball to enough of a degree to win the game. The game was playing out very interesting, by the way, and if you look at it in its totality. Michigan fans, I don’t want you to view that when through maize and blue colored glasses. Let’s view this through clear eyes and clear eyes will tell you that there were four plays that dramatically impacted the results of that game — dramatically impacted.
The opening kickoff going off the face of Tai Felton and recovering it subsequent on the next snap, the first two plays of the game. Kickoff — bam. You get the ball and you score a touchdown, seven-nil as Gus said it. Those two and then the two short-yardage touchdown runs from Blake Corum, those those four plays I felt like masked what was otherwise a very evenly played game. Good news for Maryland, probably not great news for Michigan. But within that evenly played game, I felt like there was some things that we can pull out we can learn from Michigan, and you can learn both from the players on the field and from what the coaches did during their adjustments — namely at halftime and throughout the game.
“Let’s start with the fact that Maryland’s defense was determined to force Michigan to snap the ball 10-12 times. They played a bend-don’t-break-style of defense. I was talking about it throughout the broadcast that they were dropping eight into coverage, dropping seven into coverage, and they weren’t blitzing J.J. McCarthy. They weren’t allowing him those easy, big plays on the outside. They weren’t allowing the wide receivers to run through the deep middle of the field or the deep seams of the defense, wide open for McCarthy to hit them. Now, nhey did have some guys open down the field and McCarthy overthrew them and I think that he’ll learn from that, but for the most part, the coverage was really good. He had to hold the ball several times in particular on obvious passing downs, to the point where he almost made a couple of really critical mistakes because he was trying to do way too much in the face of — something that my old quarterback coach would have called ‘pea soup.’ You know there’s nothing there. It’s dirty, it’s ugly. It’s gross. It’s pea soup. Do not take chances with the ball when you’re looking at pea soup. That’s what he used to say. And I’m kind of laughing at the fact that I’m actually saying that out here because I used to hate it when he said it, but that’s what J.J. McCarthy was dealing with. When that type of defense is being put out there in front of you, the coaching staff has to adjust and Michigan’s coaching staff adjusted fairly well.
“What do you have to do against a bend-don’t-break-style of defense in particular, a defense is going to drop eight and the coverage you got to run them out of it. And that’s exactly what Michigan did. Kudos to Blake Corum on an historic, historic day: 30 carries, well over 200 yards. The guy was sensational. He was the best player on the field. And he needed to be at times because the other parts of the Michigan offense were not clicking, and Blake Corum carried them. Now that’s what you have to do in the run game, just running out of time. The offensive line did an outstanding job, I was very impressed with the offensive line both in pass protection as well as in the run game.
“The other thing that you have to do, and this is where the coaches have to get involved, is that you’ve got to start being conservative in your passing game and flood the underneath zones, in particular, with what I would call zone beaters, hooks, flood concepts. You throw five hitches out there if you want to get it into empty, four hitches out there, four slants. We used to call it ’lion.’ You’ve got to do things to that underneath. Defense, they’re going to flood those zones and make it difficult on the zone defenders to cover in those short areas. And I don’t think that they did a good job of that. They didn’t adjust well from the playcalling perspective. More on that in a moment. And then, from a quarterbacks perspective, you’ve got to take what the defense gives. If they’ve got soft coverage, you’ve got to dump it down. You can’t be looking for those home runs where they’re going to drop all those guys into coverage. So did they adjust? Yes, in the run game. Did they adjust well in the passing game? Not really. Not really. And I think that it was twofold. You had youth in your quarterback J.J. McCarthy, really the first time he had seen that as a starter. and you had youth in your play callers.
“I was critical of the play calling situation for Michigan and I will stand by that. Matt Weiss and Sherrone Moore are the new co-offensive coordinators. I think they’re both really smart guys, loved meeting with them on Friday. But I pressed them on like — who’s the play caller? I’m a firm believer that you’ve got to have a play caller when the rubber meets the road, when there’s big third downs. When when you face adversity, who’s the guy calling the plays? Because that guy — it’s important that he establishes a rhythm. It’s vital for the success of an offense to have a play caller that can establish a rhythm and I felt at times like they weren’t establishing a rhythm. So I was critical of their play-calling situation because they wouldn’t tell me who calls the plays. They wouldn’t tell me what the sequence was. They kept saying, ‘Well, we both do.’ Well that doesn’t work. At one point in our meetings, I almost got a little sassy. I was like, ‘Stop, timeout. Who has veto power?’ And then he was like, ‘Well, no one has veto power.’ And I was like, ‘No, no. So who has veto power?’ ‘Well, no one has veto power except for Coach Harbaugh.’ ‘Timeout. You’re not hearing me again. Let me ask it again. Plainly, this time: who has veto power?’
“Somebody’s got to be the play caller. And I think that at some point this year that’s going to have to come to fruition. Why is that the case, Joel? Well, because it’s important for a play caller to establish rhythm so that he can be the architect of the game plan. Great play callers build their way to success, build their way. It’s a sequencing type of deal. You’ve got to lay a foundation, you’ve got to chum the water so that later in the game you can get to things that you have prepared the defense to see. You have to train them to see a certain look, a certain movement, a certain personnel group, a certain formation so that you can get them thinking one thing and do another. Great play callers do this all the time. All the time. Great play callers also know that you never get bored taking a profit and if something’s there and it’s working, stay with it. Stay with it. I felt like Michigan got away from some things that were really working, in particular in the run game in order to try things that were on their call sheet. Play callers, especially young ones defensively and offensively — by the way, they can get bored with things that are working and they want to legitimize their Tuesday night work and their Wednesday night work. Because guess what? Coaching takes a lot of time and a lot of work and you spend hours, countless hours, away from your family and you want to legitimize that work at times. But really great play callers will just sit right in that pocket. That is success on the play sheet. You find something, you prod and you poke and you build your way to success and then you stay there and you force the opponent to take you out of it. You force them to adjust.
“It’s like a great fastball pitcher that is blowing by a hitter and that hitter does not have the bat speed to catch up with the fastball and then, all of a sudden, he starts throwing breaking balls. Why in the world did you do that? OK, so for example, did that happen in this game against Maryland? Yes, it did. They tried to throw a jet sweep pass with Ronnie Bell. And listen, I’m not against the jet sweep pass. This is not me saying you can never call gadget plays. I’m just saying you got to build your way to that moment. You’ve got to show that jet sweep on film several times. Maybe it’s even weeks prior. Maybe it’s one time during that game. You’ve got to get the defense primed. It was the first time that they had seen that jet sweep action and handed it to Ronnie Bell and they were ready for it. They were ready for it. They were playing their keys, were disciplined with their eyes and they were not primed for success. So, I didn’t think that that Michigan built their way into the sequencing of calling a play like that.
“This is what I’m talking about in offensive play calling: you got to build your way to success and you’ve got to have a rhythm and a sequence that can get you there. I think that they’ll learn that from that game and hopefully moving forward it’s better for them.
“Defense, I thought, adjusted really well. They did not stop the run early. They stopped it as the game went on. Credit to Mazi Smith as well as Jesse Minter. He started blitzing a little bit more, dropped a safety. I thought that was a really good adjustment.
“Moving forward, what should we take from all of this for Michigan? OK, so now you’re gonna go face Iowa. The trouble that the play callers and J.J. McCarthy had in the passing game is going to pay huge dividends this week when they go play Iowa, and the reason is because Iowa does something very similar to you than what Maryland did to this team last week. Which is, it forces you to be conservative. Iowa is going to sit there and they will maintain their levels of defense, no matter what. They sit in there for three cover for every snap. It’s maddening. It’s like, ‘Well, why is Phil Parker’s defense so good?’ It’s because they don’t care what they’re doing, they care what you’re doing. They’re so sound, and what they do is that they can spend gobs of time during the week on what you do, and they know you sometimes better than you know yourself from a tendency perspective. And then they line up correctly, they pursue the ball and they tackle well.
“The other thing that they do is they get takeaways. Why do they get takeaways? Why does Iowa always get so many takeaways? Quarterbacks panic. Quarterbacks panic when you’re sitting there and you’re holding the ball in the pocket, and there’s nobody open. And there’s all these layers of defense. It looks like there’s 13 of them out there, 14 of them out there and you then panic. You jump at a throw. And when you jump into throw, you get a little anxious in the in the pocket, guess what happens? You throw it just behind a receiver, just a little bit high, and then that ball gets tipped up and guess what? Layers of sound defense. What they do to tip balls and overthrows? Take away — BAM! that’s how they work.
“So what did J.J. McCarthy learn against Maryland? That he needs to be conservative that he needs to take what the defense gives him. What did the play callers learn against Maryland? One, that somebody needs to be the play caller and two, you’ve got to build your way to success. Do not get outside of what is working, force the defense to take you there. Alright? You don’t need to legitimize your work on Monday and Tuesday night on Saturday. You’ve got to just do what’s best for your team, calling the plays during the course of those series.
“So it’s going to be a great game. I can’t wait for it. Gus and Jenny and I will be there in Iowa City as we really get the first test for this Michigan offense, because that defense is outstanding. And they’re going to be tested and J.J. McCarthy is going to be tested like he has never never been tested. And I think that he will learn from what he did this this week against Maryland.”
Michigan and Iowa will kick off at noon EDT at Kinnick Stadium in Iowa City. The game will be nationally broadcast on Fox.