In 2021, Michigan leaned on its rushing attack to win games early in the season and to close out big games late in the season. They ran the ball with a balanced attack that featured schemes from all of the backgrounds of its diverse offensive coaching staff. Still, Michigan had tendencies. In its first game in 2022 the running game looked different to me. I wasn't exactly sure why, so I wanted to deep dive into the analytics to see if I could find anything.

The caveat in all of this of course is it's only one game. One game against a non-conference opponent in transition. There are a few reasons Michigan's run game may have looked different Saturday, but it did look different. Here is what I was able to find.

Blake Corum and Donovan Edwards are RB1 and RB1B for the offense. In their first action of 2022, the two backs had remarkably similar games.

Each played 14 snaps while Corum had 13 carries and Edwards had 12. Corum finished with 76 yards while Edwards had 64, good for a 5.8 yard per carry and 5.3YPC respectively. Both backs found the end zone against Colorado State and each caught one short pass.

Pro Football Focus rated Edwards slightly higher than Corum in the run game. Edwards had slightly better yards after contact average and was a more consistent runner, while Corum had three runs over 10 yards compared to Edwards one.

CJ Stokes had an intriguing debut. He had roughly half the snaps and carries but had an identical YPC to Corum. He looked good in the zone read with McCarthy and showed some burst on an 18-yard run. Michigan would be a very strong position if as a freshman Stokes can be a solid RB3.

Michigan uses a mixture of zone vs gap blocking schemes in the run game. In their first game vs Colorado State 42% of Michigan's rushing attempts were zone. In 2021, 26% of Michigan's runs were zone. Again, this is one game of data and one where the offensive line was making substitutions on the left side of the line. It will be interesting to see moving forward if this change holds. New offensive coordinator Matt Weiss comes from the Baltimore Ravens, whereas the RB coach Baltimore ran more gap scheme than any team in the NFL. Weiss and Moore have each said their job is to execute Harbaugh's "vision" for the offense, but obviously their backgrounds are part of the offensive scheme.

Here is how it broke down with Michigan's three main backs.

Blake Corum ran zone on around 25% of his carries in 2021, so his numbers don't stick out. Donovan Edwards however was gap heavy in 2021, running zone on only 18% of his plays in 2021 while on Saturday 58.3% of his runs were in zone scheme.

Ryan Hayes was an early scratch for the home opener against Colorado State, but Karsen Barnhart, "the sixth starter", suffered an injury that forced him to leave the game. Rather than playing their third tackle Jeffrey Persi, Michigan elected to move LG Trevor Keegan to LT and play backup Giovanni El-Hadi at LG. While Keegan had some dings in the pass rush, the two made for a great pair in the run game.

Michigan favored the left side of the line running the ball 20 times for 137 yards and 2 touchdowns. The Wolverine's longest runs and most yards after contact came on runs to the left. The run game targeted the LE gap, running outside Keegan and often with Luke Schoonmaker blocking. This scheme had 11 runs for 93 yards, an 8.5YPA.

Blake Corum was heavy to the outside lanes with 8 of his carries coming outside the tackles. Edwards was incredibly balanced with no gap getting more than 2 carries. All but one of CJ Stokes carries went to the left side.

Again, I am not here to make any drastic conclusions regarding the run game. This was week 1 against a softer non-conference opponent with injuries to an otherwise steady offensive line. The play calls appeared to be rather vanilla, so as the playbook opens up, the scheme tendencies could change.

Still, this game felt different in terms of the run game and I wanted to see why. Will we eventually chalk it up to anomaly based on opponent and injuries, or are we seeing a shift in the run game scheme strategy under new coordinators Matt Weiss and Sherrone Moore. With Michigan set to face Hawaii and UConn, we may have to wait a bit for the picture to become clearer.

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