The Schemes That Will Decide Michigan-TCU in the College Football Playoff

Both teams will be facing an opponent with a style they haven’t seen much of this season, making for an interesting clash.

There is a narrative heading into Saturday’s College Football Playoff semifinals that Michigan is a team that was just happy to be here last season and will use that experience to have a better showing this year. That conveniently overlooks how and who they got walloped by: a generational Georgia defense. The Horned Frogs are not as fearsome as those Dawgs, but with a penchant for the dramatic all season, TCU still poses an interesting matchup while being the consensus fourth-best team in the field. Michigan is a 7.5-point favorite in the Fiesta Bowl, so how do these teams match up?

When TCU has the ball

The Frogs subsist on big plays. With 84, TCU has the fourth-most plays of 20-plus yards in the country. Michigan is 14th in explosive plays allowed (40), and it’s third among teams that have played 13 or more games. If Michigan can limit TCU’s big plays, it could force the Horned Frogs into sustaining long drives with their slightly above-average third-down conversion rate (51st nationally).

Running back Kendre Miller gives TCU its physical gear in the run game. He is not a scat back looking to bounce runs outside; he’s here to pound between the tackles. When he breaks his longest ones, they come largely right up the gut.

According to Pro Football Focus, 26% of Miller’s 1,331-yard total rushing output has come in the gap between the center and the right guard this season. No other gap along TCU’s offensive line is more than 12.5%, which shows that while exceptionally productive this season, Miller has had the bulk of his success in a part of the field Michigan’s defense hangs its hat on: the defensive interior. If Mazi Smith, Kris Jenkins and the rest of the Wolverines’ interior defense can have success (they rotate plenty of players on that side of the ball), Miller will have to showcase a gear to bounce runs outside the tackles consistently, where Michigan’s perimeter defenders can clean things up. 

Mazi Smith refusing to stay blocked. #70 tries to seal him off, but Mazi keeps working and makes the play pic.twitter.com/uCJplkQ8rR

— EJHolt_NFLDraft🏈 (@EJunkie215) December 8, 2022

This also will come up in short-yardage situations, as well, which Sonny Dykes said after the Big 12 championship game loss is something the Frogs need to be better at. It came to a head during the goal-line stand in overtime where TCU failed to punch it in.

“If you ask me what this football team needs to improve, I would say it needs to improve our short-yardage situation,” Dykes said after the loss. “This year we haven’t been as good as we want to be. It’s been something that we’ve been working on all year, and I think it’s something that obviously needs to continue to get a lot of our attention.”

If short-yardage runs are a problem, TCU can and likely will lean on its passing game, using screens at times to replace some of those otherwise stuffed runs. Quarterback Max Duggan is 12th in the country in passes behind the line of scrimmage, with 98 total—26.6% of all of his passes thrown, according to PFF. For such passes, TCU pass catchers will largely have to deal with Michigan slot corner Mike Sainristil, whose ability to make sure tackles in space on the perimeter is his calling card when not in sticky coverage on slot receivers. That’ll be something to keep in mind, because TCU does rely a bit on slot WR Taye Barber to generate explosive pass plays.

MORE: The Story Behind TCU’s Mesmerizing Hypnotoad

Duggan has the ability to give the Frogs a changeup on the ground as well, whether it’s designed quarterback runs, zone reads where he has to make a decision or broken plays where he simply makes something happen out of nothing to create something special. It’s something TCU’s used mostly sparingly this season, but it adds a wrinkle, and the Heisman Trophy finalist can give this offense another gear if it needs it against a Michigan team that hasn’t faced many dual-threat quarterbacks.

When Duggan passes beyond the sticks, there’s a good chance he’s looking for wide receiver Quentin Johnston, whose breakout 2022 season has vaulted him up NFL draft boards. Johnston has 85 targets, leading all TCU pass catchers by at least 27. It’s easy to see why, as well, given that Johnston’s 6'4" frame gives Duggan a reliable target to hit deep passes down the field. It also gives him a safe target, because one of Johnston’s best abilities is when he turns his back to the defense and uses incredibly fluid footwork to exit the catch with little wasted motion to evade tackles.

If it looks like Johnston’s playing a different sport out there, that’s because he is.

“Growing up, I played football, I played baseball, I ran track, but the sport I really wanted to go to professionally was basketball,” Johnston says when asked about this specific ability. “I was always one of the tallest players playing so I’m always playing [in the] post. In the post what you do is you get the ball, you back somebody down, you fake this way and go the other way, and I was just doing that for so long that by the time I started taking football seriously, at that point it became muscle memory. I get the ball, turn around, look at [the DB], am I playing basketball or football?”

TCU has no problem force-feeding Johnston the ball. He’s had two games this season with 17 and 14 targets, respectively. The Frogs are not afraid to run a certain play until the defense stops it, and if they get behind they’re more than capable of coming from behind or playing tight games. The Frogs have had a 14-point fourth-quarter comeback, two 11-point comebacks against Kansas State (one that fell short in overtime), a last-second TD to beat Kansas by seven points and a fire-drill field goal to beat Baylor.

In fact, TCU is seventh in the country in second-half points per game scored with 19.5. One of the six teams ahead of it? Michigan, which is second in the nation at 21.5.

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When Michigan has the ball

For the last two decades when you turn on the TV, TCU has looked like this:

The 4-2-5 defense was pioneered by longtime head coach Gary Patterson, and after he resigned, TCU went through some fairly wholesale changes on that side of the ball under Dykes’s new regime. Defensive coordinator Joe Gillespie has installed a defense that often features three deep safeties and three down linemen, a front he installed at Tulsa before coming to Fort Worth.

It does not take a rocket scientist to look at the second image and understand that there are fewer people in the box (the area between the offensive tackles in width and five yards past the line of scrimmage). There are also lighter body types on the field versus what you may typically expect. The defense originated as a sub package, where the D would substitute one of the box players in order to get another defensive back on the field in obvious passing situations. As the passing game became more en vogue, it became more of an every-down system (Patterson’s 4-2-5 has similar origins). Here you can see the middle safety come down to make the tackle in the box while not starting there at the snap. The defense brings run defenders from different angles to defend plays on the ground.

Gillespie knew he’d have big shoes to fill but as he installed the system to Patterson’s former players, he asked them to think like a quarterback.

“If you count the box right now, what are you gonna do? I’m gonna run the ball,” Gillespie says. We’re gonna start having to add a bunch of hats in a lot of different ways so there’s got to be a lot of versatility in how we play these. There’s gonna be some of you [safeties and linebackers] that are gonna be roof players that are gonna spin down, you’re gonna come fit the box and stuff like that. We may give the resemblance of one thing and then we gotta come down in a hurry. There’s times that it’s great for you and works really well, and there’s times that you’ve got to sit there and show your cards and lay it all on the line.”

Styles make fights, and this one shapes up to be a fascinating one because of what these teams typically play against.

“The [style of] defense kind of evolved to stop Air Raid offense in the Big 12,” said Michigan co-offensive coordinator Matt Weiss. “So it’s really hard to have a quick drop-back passing game. That’s the Air Raid offense; that’s what it’s designed to stop. You don’t see them playing against people who look like us. So it’s really hard to watch the tape and say, O.K., this will definitely work, but this won’t. At the same time, they have the same issue. They’re not seeing us go against a 3-3-5 defense, so they don’t really know what we’re going to look like, either.”

Both sides say there’s only one opponent each that even gets close to this specific matchup when they turn the tape on. For TCU’s defense, it’s the Kansas State offense, which ran multiple gap-scheme concepts right at them, including the staple play counter that Michigan often runs with great success. For the Wolverines’ offense, Ohio State is the closest analogue to what TCU brings to the table, and the Buckeyes’ D is coordinated by Jim Knowles, who previously coached in the Big 12 at Oklahoma State. There’s an element of mystery in how this is going to play out, but there’s little debate about what Michigan is at least going to try to do.

Expect a consistent dose of running back Donovan Edwards. Michigan has never really hid what their goal is on offense. They want to run the ball. They’re fifth in rushing yards per game and 13th in attempts per game. Heisman candidate Blake Corum went down with a knee injury late in the regular season and in his place stepped Edwards. He’s a slightly different style back to Corum, with much more patience and suddenness. He also has better top-end speed to hit massive explosive plays in the run game. He’s also a complete athlete, with center Olusegun Oluwatimi saying Edwards could be the best receiver Michigan has if he wanted to be.

Oluwatimi’s role in the middle will be vital for this game with Michigan’s second consecutive Joe Moore Award–winning offensive line. While that TCU defense looks like it would be tailor-made to run the ball into because of the lack of bodies, it can be deceptive as safeties fly down from the “roof” of the D to add to run defense.

The players up front are no slouches, either. Horned Frogs freshman nose tackle Damonic Williams is an absolute load and will be Rimington Award winner Oluwatimi’s main responsibility. More is expected of TCU’s players up front because of the numbers.

Michigan is 104th in the country in total passing attempts. But if it isn’t able to get its run game established, all attention turns to QB J.J. McCarthy. Of the two quarterbacks in this game, it’s McCarthy who will have to prove he can produce as a drop-back passer if the situation arises. Everything about Michigan’s offense rests on its running game, and that extends to how it throws the ball. At the Wolverines’ most effective, McCarthy is piloting a play-action passing game that can have him turn his back to the defense to fake a handoff before stepping up into a clean pocket and firing or rolling out on a boot action where McCarthy does well throwing on the run. That’s not something TCU’s defense is built to stop on its face.

McCarthy’s breakout game against Ohio State featured connections on multiple deep shots, some off the play-action passing game (with a dash of confusion from the Buckeyes’ secondary).

Where Michigan can do damage with either wideouts Ronnie Bell, Cornelius Johnson or tight end Luke Schoonmaker may come on intermediate routes behind TCU’s linebackers who are triggering quickly on the run fake because of TCU’s light boxes. Crossing routes may be the best way to shake loose of Jim Thorpe Award–winning corner Tre’Vius Hodges-Tomlinson and Josh Newton on the other side.

It will all come to a head Saturday in Phoenix. No matter what transpires, one of these teams will book its ticket to Los Angeles to play for a national championship