Afternoon. I’m four minutes late and that’s the first time, so feel free to hold it against me.
Availability first. Nothing. Nobody’s in a boot, nobody picked up a brace that wasn’t already on, the chart doesn’t change anywhere. Cam Edwards carried it twenty-two times Saturday and we’ll be sensible with him Wednesday, and that’s a workload thing and not a health thing, so please don’t turn it into one. Thursday you’ll get the real report and it’s going to be as boring as this one.
Now. Two things I said in here Saturday night that were wrong, and I’d like to do those before anything else.
One. I stood in that room and told Ben we couldn’t run the football. I said I didn’t think we ever really ran it. We ran it thirty-nine times for two hundred and nine yards. Five point four a carry. I said that with a stat sheet lying face down eight inches from my hand, and I’m going to be thinking about that for a while.
Two. Somebody asked about Cam and I said a couple hundred. He had a hundred and fifty-eight. Smaller version of the same problem.
I’m putting that up front because the Saturday thing is only worth doing if I come back in here and fix it when I get it wrong. I felt something on a sideline and then I said the feeling out loud like it was a fact. It wasn’t one.
On Eastern Michigan. They’re better than that score and I’m not saying that to be polite about it. Their back is a problem for people, their center moved us off the ball for a half, and they didn’t do one sloppy thing all afternoon. Chris Creighton has been doing that job over a decade.
Notre Dame. I’ve got a lot on it and you’ll get all of it, I’d just like to do Saturday first, because Saturday is the part I actually understand now. Hold those and I promise I won’t run out the clock on you.
That’s it. Go ahead.
Then take us through it. If you ran it thirty-nine times, what were you actually doing out there?
Yeah, this is the one I want to do, so stop me if I go long on it.
Here’s the shape. They came out with an extra body down in there on first down, which is not a gimmick, it’s the correct thing to do to us. We’re a run team with a redshirt freshman quarterback, and everybody in America is going to make Leo throw it until he makes them stop. So the whole opening drive is passes and every one of those was written down Thursday.
Then in the second quarter I go try to run it and I run it badly. And when I say badly I mean I called it badly. We ran inside zone three times in the first half straight at the one guy on their defense you should not run inside zone at. Their three-technique. Tayou. He is the best player on that field and I raised my hand and pointed at him three separate times.
That part’s mine and it isn’t a small part. I built the run plan Monday off two games of tape, and I had a picture of what their front does, and their front did exactly that. Their front also has him standing in it. I never moved the runs to where he wasn’t.
So I quit. I threw it instead, because they were still playing us like a run team and there was grass in behind them and Leo was seeing it clean, and that’s where the third-and-one to KK comes from. Which everybody keeps calling a gamble, and it isn’t. Third-and-one against a defense that just walked eight men up is about the safest throw in football.
And after that they had to change. Once they took a body out of there to go deal with our receivers, the run came back, and it came back looking like something else. Not the inside stuff. We got Cam to the edge, we pulled people, we put both tight ends out there and made them pick, and Brennan Paracheck and Eddie Whiting are most of why that worked. Their safety had Brennan for a lot of the day and that was a hard afternoon.
Thirty-nine carries, two hundred and nine yards, and nearly all of the good part of it is after halftime.
So the honest version of my day is I was wrong for a quarter, I got out of it by throwing, and then I rebuilt the run around what they were handing me instead of what I wrote down Monday. That’s the job. I’d just like to be better at the first part of it.
Was the second-half version in the plan, or did you build it during the game?
Most of it was in there. We’d practiced it maybe six times in camp and it was on the back of the sheet under a heading I hadn’t looked at since August.
Two of those calls were Nick Sheridan’s. He said them into my ear on the sideline and I said okay and called them and one of them went twenty. If you’re writing about the playcalling this week, put that in it.
Fourth down in their territory in the second quarter. You went for it, the slant to KK Smith wasn’t there, you came away with nothing. Do you take that back?
No. I’d go again, and I don’t want to hedge on it, so: I’d go again every time.
We were up six, it’s fourth-and-two, and I liked our offense against their defense a great deal more than I liked the field position I’d have been handing them. You can put me on that one all year and I’ll defend it.
The call is a different conversation. I called a slant, and I called it into a linebacker who had been sitting in that exact window all afternoon, and I knew he’d been sitting there because I’d watched him do it twice from about thirty yards away. Leo put the ball where I asked him to put it. Where I asked him to put it had a man standing in it.
There was a better call two lines down on my sheet and I went with the one I already liked in my head. That’s the whole thing.
Four sacks. Warren-Stevens Tayou had all four and he was in your lap from the first series on, all of it through the interior. What do you do with that?
What I do with it is the protection, because the protection is mine.
Let me give you the number, because I counted it Sunday. On the drop-backs where he got home I had both tight ends running routes. I never chipped him. Not one time, not once all day. I sat five guys in there against a front with a man in it who was beating single blocks in the first quarter, and then I kept doing it, because I liked what their coverage was doing for us and I wanted the extra body out catching.
That’s a trade and I made it about a dozen times and I lost four of them. I’d tell you I made it on purpose except I only made it on purpose the first eight times. After that I was just doing what I’d been doing, which is a different thing.
He’s a terrific player, by the way. Tayou. Somebody’s going to pay him to do that for a living and they should.
So the sacks are a protection plan and the protection plan came out of my computer. That one I can actually fix by Wednesday.
KK Smith has fourteen catches for two hundred forty-one yards in two games. Three weeks ago most people outside this building couldn’t have told you his name.
He’s been the best player at our practice since about the second week of camp and I didn’t tell anybody, because why would I tell anybody.
What we did Saturday is we stopped leaving him in one place. He was outside, he was in the slot, he was stacked behind somebody, and on the long one he came off the ball with nobody inside of four yards of him because of where the other two receivers were standing. That’s a formation doing work. He still has to go run past a Division I corner and catch it over his shoulder while he’s running away from the ball, and no formation does that part.
Their corner, on the back-shoulder in the first quarter, played that about as well as it can be played and it got caught anyway. I think that’s going to happen to some people this year.
Seven catches, no drops. I said Saturday night I didn’t think he’d dropped anything and I got that one right, so that’s one for me.
Leo Hannan had two hundred eighty-six yards and a rating over two hundred and most of it was done by halftime. What was he like in the second half, when you basically took the ball out of his hands?
Fine about it. Really fine about it, which I noticed, because I was twenty once and I would not have been fine about it.
He came and stood next to me on the bench in the third and asked me a question about a look they’d given us in the second quarter that we never went back to. Not about the ball. About a coverage. I answered him and then I stood there for a second going, okay.
The first half is his. I put him in some good spots, and being in a good spot is a scheme, but the ball coming out clean sixteen times is not a scheme. Nobody draws up sixteen-for-twenty-one.
And he ran one in, which I did call on purpose, and it was a terrible idea and it worked.
Zero penalties Saturday. One in two games. Is that real or is that luck?
It’s people, and I did a lousy job of saying so last week, so let me do it properly.
Last Tuesday I stood up here and said it was Marcus and the operations people and four graduate assistants nobody in here can name. Then I drove home and thought about it and that’s a lazy way to give somebody credit. So I went and found out what they all actually do.
Nick Sheridan runs the offensive side of our sideline and there is an entire choreography to it. Who stands where, what order the personnel groups line up behind him in, how a call physically gets from him to a huddle. Joe Rossi does the same thing on defense and does it a completely different way, and the two of them think the other one’s way is worse, and I stay out of it.
Marcus Whitman’s group builds the substitution sheet every week off what the opponent actually does on tape, so we’re not guessing when somebody goes fast on us.
And there is a person on our sideline whose whole job, every snap, is to count our defense out loud. Eleven. Out loud. Every snap of every game. I had not thought about that job existing until about three weeks ago and now I think about it constantly.
Twelve men on the field is the dumbest way there is to lose five yards and we haven’t done it. I’ve never been anywhere near that.
It got really quiet in there in the first half. I was up in the student section and people were already going, like, here we go. Did you hear that at all?
I heard it. And I don’t hold it against anybody, at all.
If that stadium got quiet it’s because my defense couldn’t get off the field on third down, and that’s my defense and that’s my third down. People paid money to be in there. They’re allowed to have a bad feeling about a bad half.
I understand where it comes from, too. Everybody in this state has watched some version of that first half a lot of times and most of those ended a particular way. Two football games is not enough to talk a person out of that and I’m not going to try.
It came back fast in the third, though. That was quick.
You said Saturday the forty-four-yard touchdown was your coverage. I went and watched it. It’s single high, Charles Brantley is in outside leverage, your safety is in the middle of the field. That’s a normal call. Half this league makes it. So is the answer still the call?
Yeah, and I can give you a better version of it than I gave you Saturday, because I’ve watched it four times since.
You’re right that it’s a normal call. It’s a normal call in a normal week. Here’s what makes it not a normal call in that week. Their back had just run through us for a quarter. Bennett was doing whatever he wanted to us and I was standing there getting more and more worried about it, so I took a body out of the back end and put it down in the run fit. That is the entire reason there’s one safety in the middle of the field on that play. I traded the deep middle away to go get the run stopped.
And then the next thing that happened is a man ran forty-four yards down our sideline. I made a trade and I lost it, and I lost it inside of about ninety seconds, which is fast even for me.
So it isn’t that I called something exotic. It’s that I called it in the one week where I already knew exactly what I was giving up, and I gave it up anyway, and I’d do a lot of things differently before I’d do that again.
On him. He returned three kicks Saturday. The one at the end of the third he took a hit he had no reason to take to get us out past the thirty, and I watched him get up slow off that and then go run down on the next kickoff team. He’s playing corner for us in South Bend and he’s returning kicks in South Bend.
I want to ask this one straight. Everybody in this room has watched the same tape and the read on it is not ambiguous. You’ve watched it more than any of us, and you are the only person in this building who won’t say a single word about it. Is that a policy, or is it about this player?
It’s a policy, it isn’t about him, and it isn’t new. And I don’t mind you asking it that way. That was a good way to ask it.
I don’t grade players out loud. That’s the whole rule and there isn’t any more of it than that. If I’ve got something to say about how a guy played I go say it to him with a door shut, and I did that Sunday, and that conversation is his and not yours.
You should write the tape read. Honestly, you should. It’s your job, it’s a real job, and I would rather you did it well than didn’t do it at all. Beth had something last week I thought was completely fair and I did not enjoy reading it.
What I’d argue with is the idea that there’s a better answer sitting behind this one that I’m holding onto. There isn’t. My answer is the coverage, and I happen to think the coverage is the more interesting story, because somebody ran forty-four yards without a hand being laid on him and I’m the person who arranged the field that way.
Anyway. That’s where I am on it. What else have you got.
Three points in the second half. Derrick Simmons had two tackles for loss and a sack, Jordan Hall had eleven and an interception. What changed?
Three things, and only one of them is us, so let me put them in the honest order.
One, they got behind and had to throw it, and they had a hard day throwing it, and I don’t get to take any credit for that.
Two, Joe changed how we were playing third down. We stopped trying to disguise so much and just lined up and played, and that was his, and he said it to me at halftime in about nine words.
Three, we tackled. First half we didn’t and second half we did and I don’t have a scheme answer for that one. Sometimes people just go do it.
Derrick had a good day. I’m not going to do the redemption story on him, because I don’t think he needs one from me. I put him in a rough spot in Week One and he’s been fine both weeks. And Jordan Hall had eleven tackles and an interception and not one person is going to write about it, because of Tre’s, and that’s just how that goes.
Did you get to Noah Kim afterward?
Yeah. Fifteen seconds at midfield. I said something to him and I can’t remember what it was, which is a shame, because I thought about it all week.
He put two balls in there Saturday that not many people can put in there.
And they left him alone in the stands as far as I could tell. Nobody’s told me otherwise. I did ask two people.
Notre Dame. They lost thirty-eight to ten at home to Wisconsin and then they beat Rice fifty-two to ten. Which one of those is the real team?
I don’t know. I’ve watched both of them and I don’t know, and I want to be careful not to pretend I do, because I’d like to be believed in October.
The Wisconsin game is the interesting one, because that’s the one where somebody made them uncomfortable. I’ve been through it twice and I still can’t tell you whether I was watching a team with a problem or a team that had a bad Saturday at a bad time. Those two look identical in September. They look identical for about six weeks.
The Rice game I get very little from. They were supposed to do that. I stood in this room last week and said the same thing about us, and I meant it then, and I mean it about them now.
Here’s the part I do know. Everything that was true about that roster in August is still true. They didn’t get worse in eleven days. Whoever was playing tackle for them in August is still playing tackle. Nobody left.
And I’m not going to sit up here and call anybody a trap game. That’s not a thing we get to say. We’re the team driving there.
What’s the matchup that actually worries you?
The exact thing that happened to me Saturday, except better.
Their front is a real front. I sat there Sunday night watching one man get home on us four times, and then I put Notre Dame on and there are three of him and one of them is a junior. If I walk in there Saturday and run the plan I ran in the first quarter against Eastern, we don’t get out of the first quarter.
So that’s my week. It isn’t a speech and it isn’t anything I’m going to say to the team. I need a better protection plan by Thursday than the one I had last Thursday, and if I don’t have one, that will be the story of the game and it’ll be mine.
The other thing is the noise, and I don’t have anything useful on that, because I’ve never been inside that stadium. Not once, not for anything. Everybody I’ve talked to since Sunday has told me about it. I’ve been told by six different people. I guess I’ll find out.
All right, that’s me. Thursday you get availability and it’ll be short. Thanks, everybody.
The session ran thirty-eight minutes against a scheduled twenty-five. On his way out Mansour asked Kaylin Osei whether the student section had actually stayed for the fourth quarter this time and was told that it had not. Michigan State (2-0) plays at Notre Dame on Saturday. Coordinators Nick Sheridan and Joe Rossi meet with reporters Wednesday; player availability is Thursday.