Notre Dame lost to Michigan 35-31 on Saturday, and one of the more concerning aspects of the loss was ND's continual inability on defense to stop the offense that they should know is coming. In this case, it is a simple zone read run by Denard Robinson, something that torched them just a season ago, with Robinson racking up a dizzying 258 rushing yards.
Look, the guy is fast. The guy is explosive. He is fun for announcers to talk about because he does not tie his shoelaces. But you know he is coming. So be ready.
On Saturday night, ND throttled the west coast offense of Michigan OC Al Borges for the first 30 minutes, and so every commentator at ESPN, and every fan watching at home, said the same thing - time to go back to what worked last season and let Denard loose. Did the Notre Dame coaching staff say that too? Did they prepare the team for the zone read going into this game? Let's take a look.
Here is a video of Michigan QB Denard Robinson running the zone read for a 20-yard gain.
If you watch closely, you will see right DE Kapron Lewis-Moore (#89) get driven hard to the inside. It appears that KLM was in a designed slant to the inside. You can see that his first steps are hesitant and directed to the inside, and the two other defensive linemen also step left. In either case, what this leads to is the Michigan LT having the outside leverage and position to simply drive him inside and out of the play. It also gives Robinson the appearance that the DE is "crashing" toward the center to tackle the RB, meaning that he correctly keeps the ball.
Now, KLM gets cleared out pretty good here, but he's still taking away one of the two choices on the read option, so there is no issue yet. However, ND ILB Manti Te'o (#5) takes two full steps up into the same gap that KLM is already crashing closed. When he does that, he gets caught inside, and instead of being right there waiting for Robinson in the hole, Te'o is trapped away from the football. Thus, even though OLB Prince Shembo (#55) sets the edge and plays the force position exactly how it is designed in Diaco's defense, when he drives Robinson back to the inside, there is no one there to tackle him.
There is of course no one "correct" way to defense any offensive set, but when the Michigan offense sets up with a classic zone read look, ND cannot have KLM slanting/crashing/getting caught inside and have Te'o stepping up into the inside gap. Ideally, if KLM was designed to crash left as it appears, you would have Te'o execute a "scrape exchange," described expertly at the link by the outstanding blog "Smart Football." Had Te'o gone hard right, peeling right off KLM's back, and stepped into the gap, as drawn up in the second diagram at the link, he would have been standing right in the hole waiting for Robinson.
Then the question is: why did this not happen? Again, you cannot always have the "correct" defense called in every situation, and if Te'o were to scrape on every play, Michigan could certainly take advantage of that as well. The problem here is that the entire center of the defense, all three linemen and the two ILBs, all step left on their first move. Presumably the slant by the linemen is called, and the LBs are reading a key; in this case, the key appears to be the tailback, since when he steps hard to the defense's interior left, both ILBs step that way as well.
If this is indeed the call, it is just a basic failing in the defense: you simply cannot have the D-line slanting to the ballcarrier side and have the ILBs keying on the ballcarrier when a QB like Robinson is in the backfield. There must be someone more than just the force player on the backside keyed on the QB; the force player (Shembo) must be "forcing" the play back inside toward a waiting tackler. I am going to caveat this by saying that Te'o is an aggressive player; he may have simply read handoff and stepped up into the hole, ignoring his assignment of the backside gap. However, even if that is the case, this should have been such a huge coaching point coming into a game against Robinson, especially after what he did last season, that such a misstep should have been all but drilled out of Te'o's head. When they line up showing classic zone read, the ILB on the RB side should be scraping or stepping into the hole vacated by the DE slant every time.
The ND defensive coaching staff has shown a lot of good stuff in their 1+ seasons, but at times their repeated inability to be ready for what they, and everyone else, should know the offense wants to do (Navy '10 is obviously the most discussed) has been maddening.
Let's go Irish against the Spartans this week, and look out for the fake.
Hey! They were ready for the fake!
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