Pretape Thoughts: EMU

Best. Halftime. Ever.

Substitution stuff:

• Both Brandon Logan and Antonio Bass saw their first action of the season. Bass was expected, but Logan? Redshirt burning for a guy like Logan?
• Notable absences: Lentz, Van Alstyne, Mundy, and Dutch. Stenavich also came up hobbled late in the second (I think) and was replaced by Mitchell.
• The offensive line was patchwork. In Lentz' absence Mitchell and Bihl split series, Mitchell at LG and Bihl at C with Kraus occupying the other spot. Riley was flagged for holding and was beaten a couple other times in pass protection... against Eastern! Apprehension level++ re: RT. When Stenavich went out, Mitchell became the LT and Bihl was in at center. Jeremy Cuilla came off the bench next and appears to be the guy after Mitchell.
• Even though Will Johnson was listed as a starter, the starting DTs were Massey and Branch, who played most of the first half. Watson was again used sparingly. Biggs and Woodley were the first team DEs. Late in the game Crable came in (and almost had a couple sacks), as did Woods. Jamison also saw his first action of the season and had a badass sack.
• McClintock played zero snaps until garbage time.
• Michigan spent large portions of time in a nickel type set with Jamar Adams playing the part of "extra linebacker placed over slot reciever".
• Obviously, Max Martin got the bulk of the first team carries.

General offensive impressions:

• A lot of really nice rushing plays that probably don't mean anything in the grand scheme of things. Martin was extremely effective at finding the correct cutback lanes in the toss sweep plays he was running, but Michigan was crushing the EMU front so utterly it's hard to tell how effective he will be against tougher competition.
• Henne wasn't asked to do a whole lot and had a couple passes he shortarmed, one to Avant, another a screen to Breaston. He also launched a ball into space attempting to hit Avant in the end zone. I'm in paranoia mode re: Henne now.
• Where was Dutch?

General defensive impressions:

• Well, it's good to know that there are some running quarterbacks on the planet who don't torch us. Aside from a couple passes between levels in the zone (one of which was a fluketastic off-your-back-foot thing) EMU did nothing all day.
• OMG we got good coverage in short zones. Harris had at least two instances of excellent coverages that were followed up with plays on the ball.
• Branch was excellent again, as was Crable, though Crable missed a couple opportunities to make sacks. He has to rein it in a little bit.

One question:

How bad is Louisiana-Lafayette, who lost to EMU 31-10 last week?

PS: The color guy in the OSU game was just discussing the Hamby hate-mail and just said "were out of control with our talk radio, we're out of control with our blogs," which is total garbage since I know of three OSU blogs and precisely zero of them said anything negative about Hamby, let alone hateful or threatening. Way to verify that voracity.