Michigan's New Offense?

Brady Hoke is the new head man at Michigan, and with a new head coach Michigan also will be getting a new offensive coordinator. His name, Al Borges. As has been documented over at MgoBlog you can go and check out his history as an OC, it's a pretty large resume. Being from the state of Michigan, and with Michigan football in turmoil I want to take a look at what Borges has done at his most recent stop at SDSU. Due to the lack of high quality cut ups, I'll just be using diagrams to illustrate some of the concepts Borges utilizes. Upon reading about his "Gulf Coast Offense" it doesn't appear that he does anything really out of the box.

Looking at the highlights of the Poinsettia Bowl against Navy first.

First play is a play that all Michigan fans will love, power. It's third and two and SDSU lines up in a double tight end formation with a flanker split to the left. It's one of the oldest and most popular schemes in football and was completely absent from Michigan for the past three years. The left side of the line blocks down, the full back kicks out the defensive end, and the right guard pulls and leads through...I'm sure some UofM fans will shed a tear watching this and thinking about their boys doing this next year. I can't blame them. They would run power again later out of this same formation, but away from tha flanker for a short touchdown.




They would run power again for a TD later, this time out of a twins formation.




For a touchdown later in the game, on a third and one play SDSU would line up in a double tight formation, with a wing to the right and run a beautiful fake dive play-action pass to the tailback running a wheel out of the backfield.



Borges does open it up as well, here we'll see an example of the shallow-cross concept.



And now diagrams from the Utah game.

Out of a trips left formation on the goal line it appears this is a fade play that's designed to be thrown to the split end (mostly because the other three routes are run pretty lethargically .



Later on SDSU would run a stick route from an under center two back look, and actually throw backside to the slant for a touchdown.



Borges would call up a nice little play action, fake flanker screen later on for a touchdown. The Z releases as though he's running a quick screen, taking two steps up field then coming back and showing his hands. The quarterback has executed a play action fake, pumps to the Z, and eventually hits the Y who has sold himself running downfield to block on the screen and ran past the coverage. Borges has some creativity.



And unlike what many people believe, that Hoke is diametically opposed to any zone running game, I just don't see that as being true. Here SDSU aligns in double tight one back formation and runs inside zone for a touchdown. I think Hoke is less anti-zone, and more pro man and zone concepts in his offense. The two can coexist.



My initial reactions are the Borges is definitely a pro-style guy, lots of motions, formations, and in-depth passing game I'm going to assume. What will be interesting is to see if Borges can truly adapt to utilize one of the, if not the best weapon in college football with Denard Robinson.

More to come.