A new partnership with Sports Info Solutions — a company that examines college football analytics, metrics, advanced statistics, etc. — has allowed us to take an interesting look at the Michigan Wolverines' football team over the last several years, and examine several notable trends and tendencies.
Our first installment will take a look at head coach Jim Harbaugh's offenses and the way they have progressed and were "modernized" (if you will) last year from a formational and scheme standpoint under first-year offensive coordinator Josh Gattis.
A criticism of Harbaugh during his first four years at Michigan were that his offenses were outdated, with his preferred pro-style old school attack no longer as effective as it once was.
The hiring of Gattis saw the Wolverines transition to a no huddle, up-tempo system that featured the quarterback in the shotgun nearly the entirety of the time and formations that showcased more wide receivers.
The statistics and data below examine the tendencies and trends Michigan's offense had in the years leading up to Gattis' arrival, and then the changes they made last fall under the 36-year old coordinator.
Operating out of the shotgun wasn't exactly commonplace for U-M quarterbacks in 2016 and 2017, with Maize and Blue signal-callers taking just 154 snaps from the shotgun in the former and 193 in the latter.
The 2018 campaign then saw a huge increase in shotgun snaps (280), before Michigan's quarterbacks operated almost entirely out of the formation in 2019 with 405 snaps, an increase of 125 from 2018.
Four-receiver sets, meanwhile, were a rarity for the Maize and Blue in both 2017 and 2018, with the offense implementing just five in the former and only one in the latter. Gattis helped increase four-wideout looks in a big way last season, with U-M's offense featuring them on the field 30 times.
Part of the reason was likely due to the plethora of talent at the position (Ronnie Bell, Nico Collins, Donovan Peoples-Jones, Tarik Black, etc.), but also because of the way four-receiver sets spread opposing defenses out, helping enhance Gattis' "speed in space" mantra.
