A team can line in 6 different formations and still turn around and hand it off tackle left. That doesn’t make it creative, it means a lot of energy spent on the same vanilla offense. I think Michigan has stubbornly kept the offense vanilla in the past, believing they could line up and overpower other teams based on talent and execution. They have been very wrong about that.
That’s what Urban understood incredibly well in his early days. His offense may have simplified as his talent has increased, moving up the helmet ladder. In his early days, his spread offense was incredibly complex and unique to the game. So unique, that Bill Belichick called him up and asked him to review his offense with him in the film room. That was after two Super Bowl wins.
So maybe we can agree that Michigan’s formations are complex, but after the snap the issues begin?
First few series
Zone read (back going right) maybe RPO
RPO screen off zone read
Inside zone (went up the middle)
RPO screen off sweep
Boundary sweep off what looks like an RPO
Looks like a straight inside zone give up middle (QB acts like it's a zone read, WRs run a screen, but unclear if that was a real option)
Jet sweep
All hitches out of shotgun empty
A bootleg comeback route on a nice play-action rollout look from the gun
Double play-action out of the jet look (Patterson misses, through there was some pressure)
A lot of intermediate routes out of shotgun 3-wide
A zero-yard pass with everyone going deep out of shotgun 3-wide
Bootleg comeback route on a nice play-action rollout look from the gun, looks like the receivers are going deeper
Inside zone give up middle, maybe off RPO
All hitches out of shotgun empty
One short route and a lot of deeper ones from shotgun four-wide
Power right
Inside zone left
A play-acrion out of two-back with a nice 3-receiver levels concept (I'm phrasing that wrong) to the right
Inside zone off the jet look
Just a nice set of intermediate routes out of shotgun twins two-tight
Play-action boot and dump off out of singleback
Inside zone with a wide front
G-down run (Off tackle to the left)
Play-action (Might be spider 2 Y banana, in any case, blown up)
Something I can't 100 percent see out of five-wide
Not a ton of off-tackle left.
I write all this to say, vanilla is not what we're seeing. We have this issue where we assume that bad offense is simple offense. But it's not. You have a word up there that matters far more "execution." If you run your stuff well, you'll win more battles. If you win battles one-on-one, you do well. And there aren't a ton of schemes that fix, my left tackle and right guard are turnstiles. You just need to get them to play better, or you'll suck.
You mention the Urban/Belichick thing, and at a part, you're half right. You wrote "his spread offense was incredibly complex and unique to the game." It was unique, but it wasn't THAT complex. It just did some ahead-of-its time stuff with getting slots on linebackers in the passing game and making the QB have to count in the run game. He was an innovator at that point, but it wasn't because it was complex. If anything, it was because it was simple. When you have less, you run it better. When you run it better, it works better.
The best offenses look complex but play more simple. Granted, we're stuck in this patter where we assume complex=good, when it's really not the case. Michigan needs to find some things it does well, and do those a lot.
