FORMATION NOTES: MSU was a very basic 4-3 even, as they have been forever. Aside from pass rush exotics, this was the whole game. They would occasionally slide the line to the run strength, and they'd put a nickel on the field for passing downs. They ran a lot of the Dantonio-vintage double-A gap twist blitz from the linebackers; this was about their only gambit on the day. SUBSTITUTION NOTES: Nothing unusual. WR/TE snaps, as per usual: Cornelius Johnson: 50 Roman Wilson: 43 Colston Loveland & AJ Barner: 37 Tyler Morris: 35 Semaj Morgan: 21 Max Bredeson: 9. Morris and Morgan both got a bunch of snaps in Tuttle time. This was a bit of deviation from recent games, where Barner was your #1 snap recipient; my assumption is that Michigan felt like MSU's LB crew was vulnerable to approximately everything when passing and leaned slightly more towards three-wide sets. Only slightly, because Harbaugh. [After THE JUMP: a beatdown]
FORMATION NOTES: ECU was extremely diverse with their fronts but if they had a base it was the "404 tite" that Seth's detailed on this here site. Like so: The 404 is a nose tackle over the C (the zero) and two DEs shaded inside the tackles (the fours). When not doing this they cycled through various four-man fronts with a standup "DE", who was an OLB. At all times their safeties were maniacally aggressive: At no point did any ECU safety line up more than ten yards from the LOS. There was usually one in the box; the guy on the top hash above is a safety, and then the "deep" guy would fire on about 80% of run action. SUBSTITUTION NOTES: QB was McCarthy, then Warren. RB was Corum/Edwards, then Mullings, then Hall, then Stokes. TE was Loveland, Barner, and Bredeson splitting snaps about evenly with Beetham and Klein getting late cameos. WR was a hodgepodge past Wilson and Johnson with Morgan, English, Clemons, Moore, and Morris all getting around 10-20 sn
Note: Michigan is holding several guys out, being conservative, and allowing them time to heal up over the next 1-2 weeks. In some ways, the non-conference is being treated like an NFL preseason. Therefore, this is more of a Game 4 prediction than a current, "as of today" depth chart. IMO, Will Johnson plays last Saturday if that was MSU, PSU or OSU and not ECU.