Storyline: I’m having a hard time blaming the Michigan coaches for the fluke that occurred in Ann Arbor a week ago. Yes, it was a complete fluke, my Spartan friends. This was a failure of execution by a player on the field, plain and simple.
Courtesy: USAToday.com
It has been over a week since Michigan lost to Michigan State 27-23 and chatter about the final play can still be heard reverberating throughout the state.
What could Harbaugh and his coaches have done differently?
Why did they even punt?
Why use two gunners with no punt returner?
Fans are always going to second-guess coaching decisions when a play fails on the field, especially when that play fails as spectacularly as that final punt did for Michigan. I’m sure everybody in Ann Arbor was watching a Vine of the play on a continuous loop looking for something the coaches could have done. Jim Garrison probably didn’t study the Zapruder film with as much intensity.
The fans can analyze that Vine to death, but the bottom line is the play failed because of execution by the players. This was no fail on the Michigan coaching staff. There was no wizardry schemed up by Mark Dantonio and the Spartan coaching staff (sorry, Frank Fear). This was a failure of execution by a player on the field, plain and simple. Punter Blake O’Neill dropped the ball and exacerbated the situation by not falling on it.
It’s really that easy.
Courtesy: clickondetroit.com
O’Neill muffed the snap and then panicked, which led to the ball miraculously floating into awaiting Spartan hands. This wasn’t about coaching; it was about failing to execute an assignment. Then the oblong spheroid took an unfortunate bounce for the Maize & Blue.
Ball game.
O’Neill cost his team because he failed to execute under the pressure of a game-deciding moment. He did not manage a play that he handles, with ease, 99% of the time. How can anyone fault the coaches for going with the safe play? And how can anyone write and send a death threat to a kid for losing a game.
Yes it hurts, but it’s still just a game. People can be absolute morons.
(Full confession, though: later Saturday night I demanded that Blake be shipped back to Australia. After that, our future president, Donald Trump, can build a wall around that island nation — if it sends any more punters to Michigan. That will “Make America Great Again” … or something like that. Anyway, I had been drinking and it was all in complete jest with friends. But, yes, I’m a bit moronic, too.)
Now back to my point regarding coaching versus execution…. I think the Michigan game is just an example of fans taking the easy way out–blaming coaches rather than players. You often see that part of fandom with reference to Offensive Coordinators. When the play fails on the field, it’s knee jerk reaction to go right to the play call and who called it.
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Consider Michigan, 2013, as a prime example. The UM offense was dead in the water for much of the season and the fan base wasn’t quite ready to fire Brady Hoke. So who took the brunt of fan bases ire? That would be OC Al Borges. On the UM message boards back then Fire Borges was as popular as Go Blue.
In 2014 UM fans got their wish: Borges got the boot. Hoke brought in esteemed offensive mind, Doug Nussmeier, from Alabama. Did things change for the better? Well, no. They didn’t get better at all: UM scored 405 points in ’13, 251 in ’14, and the team went 5-7 on the season.
You can see the same thing, right now, with the 2015 Detroit Lions. Fans are calling for OC Joe Lombardi’s head. The reason? Even with all the offensive weapons at the Lions’ disposal they’re averaging 20 points a game, 26th in the NFL. Plus. they’re averaging only 66 rushing yards per game, last in the league. That’s just plain abysmal. The next worst team, the New Orleans Saints, still get 88 yards per game. And the Lions offense leads the league with 18 total turnovers.
Is it really the play calling? Maybe it’s because the Lions can’t block defenders in front of them? QB Matt Stafford seems to be under pressure on over half of the plays. His decision making has been been questionable, too: he leads the NFL with ten picks. But Detroit isn’t opening too many holes in the run game, so play calling gets harder when the team is always in second- or third-and-long.
Is Joe Lombardi doing a bang-up job in Detroit right now? No, of course not. But he’s an easy target for fans. It takes 11 players, working in unison, to execute a play properly. If just one of them doesn’t execute, then the entire play can fall apart. But, for the most part, fans don’t care about execution: they just want someone to execute when things go awry.
Coaching is really important in sports, especially in football. Getting eleven guys to do assignments correctly, while also beating the men in front of them, is no small task. Many things can go wrong on any given play. So it’s amazing that most plays actually work as they were drawn up. That’s why even good football coaches fail at the highest level.
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Coaches train their teams for every possible situation and, then, put their players in the best position to succeed. It’s up to the men on the field to execute their assignments. That decides the outcome of games.
Look at the still at the left. If Blake catches the ball he gets off the punt.
And if that had really happened, then nobody would be discussing the coaching on that play. And I could live in that alternate reality.
Blake, you can come too.
