Connor Stalions documentary reaction & Michigan sign-stealing saga | Joel Klatt Show

we've got to get into the Connor stallions docu documentary it was released on Netflix The Untold sign stealer that came out on Tuesday here's what I want to do um I want to talk about what we know what we don't know and then I want to talk about like what should we think about it and then how do I view it let's start with what we know here's what we know sign stealing occurs in almost every single game in college football that's that's a fact that's true it occurs in three ways it happens in Game just looking across the field at the opposing signs it happens in advanced scouting but without technology through television copy so there's a staff member assigned in the building to watch every single television copy and just scour that television copy for any audio or Visual Evidence of sign or signal so that's the second way and then the Third Way is Advanced illegal scouting okay so those are the three ways that you can steal signs the first is obviously the most difficult which is just ingame deciphering across the field and and that's the most pervasive and the most prevalent in college football it happens in every game now for Michigan and Conor stallions I feel really confident in saying that all three of those occurred all three of those occurred there's there's no doubt in my mind that illegal Advanced scouting occurred there's no doubt in my mind that advanced legal scouting occurred and there's no doubt in my mind that in-game deciphering occurred all three of those occurred okay so now you have to ask yourself like okay what do we not know then let's ask ourselves these questions what do we not know the first one is obvious who for Michigan knew to what extent did they know what was going on and in what timing those are really important questions I think that that everything in regards to that question is speculation at this point now if the investigation comes out and proves something about someone or some people then obviously we'll deal with that but at this point I do think it's it's evidence of the way you view this whole situation what you think about who knew what did they know and in what timing did they know it um what else do we not know well this one is is a little bit bit more difficult to explain but it's it's also true everything I'm saying is is true we have no way to measure the percentage of influence the legal versus illegal scouting had it is impossible to know and guess what that's not coming out in any investigation you have no idea I don't think even the people in involved Conor SC stallions himself could not give you a percentage of of influence of one of those three categories I'm almost certain all three categories occurred and there's zero way that you're ever going to be able to to decipher the percentage of influence the legal portions had versus the illegal portions had all right so now let's start to get into and by the way nothing that came out in the Netflix documentary was news I didn't think I mean the the biggest piece of news that I got from it that didn't know that I didn't know was the the factoid about his time at Navy and basically his first job as a student coach at Navy was to what decipher signs right so like that should suggest even a little bit to all of you regardless of of where your angle is on this if you're you're pissed at Michigan if you're not pissed at Michigan whatever it is that should at least give you a little bit of evidence that this is a pervasive I would say act in college football like this happens all right and I'm not and I'm not trying to to minimize it and I won't minimize it and let's get into kind of more of of the actionable items of this whole topic okay now here's what I I I want to talk through about about sign stealing is that as as some of you know or many of you know I went on coward last year and said The more you know about football the less you think this had to had an impact and the less you know about football the more you think this had an impact on each game is what I was referring to so people have said that I minimized it that I whitewashed it for Michigan and I I still don't think that that's the case I tend to minimize the impact of sign stealing and I'm going to explain why right here okay so let's let's explain my rationale of why number one it's still regard regardless of how well you do it it's still just a probability or an educated guess because you don't know if they've changed their signals or their pattern or their mechanics so it is still a probability now it could be a high probability it could be a low probability but it is still a probability there is a chance every single time that you're wrong there's also vagueness and you see this in some of the videos people will say well look he yelled run right okay which run right I I'm not sure and this is by the way this is not six-year-old soccer so I'm not going to send all 11 Defenders and just run them over to the right side in order to stop the run they still have a job to do they still have details to execute with within the content of their defense and the structure of their defense that Rings true whether you decipher or don't decipher a sign okay so it's still a probability and it's still an educated guess then you get into this idea and and this is where really I sit which is offensively you can negate the impact of what's going on if you feel like this is happening and this is also true every team and I think that they do this but every team and every coach should go into every single game Thinking to themselves hey the other team is at least trying to figure out what we're doing from our mechanics because remember that first way I told you of of stealing signs that's legal and pervasive so it's you have to have an at at least at a minimum some acknowledgement that this is going on okay so so once that happens you have to build in some Solutions in order to combat what inevitably is happening to you on the field so what are some of the solutions within your offense well you can obviously huddle uh you can go hyper fast so you can change and Vary your pace to make it almost impossible for them to communicate what they feel like they're deciphering and then here's here's kind of a last one the quarterbacks can handle more on the field and this is where I want to sit for just a moment for just a moment I'm not going to sit here and decry where we're at in college football from a schematic standpoint but I am going to try to give you or or paint a picture in the past quarterbacks were given much more autonomy to control what was going on on the field so let me give you an example of what I'm talking about in the past we would have things called a package of plays and we would get into a formation a Personnel Group in a formation and then call a package of plays that package of plays might have three plays it might have four plays in it and then it was the quarterback's responsibility to get into the right play based on the defensive structure so our attitude was they cannot be right whatever they're trying to do they cannot be right okay so what does that look like a simple version of this is as follows We R in the West Coast system so let's get into a a zebra group okay that's that's a 11 personnel one tight end one back three wide receivers so we're in zebra group we' get in a formation called Trey right okay so let's get into Trey right we're going to stick the the tight end of the field so the wide side so we're Trey right uh wide side is to the right and then we're just going to call wide package that's it just wide package in the hollow on yellow one ready break and you clap and you walk up to the Huddle or out of the Huddle and up to the line of scrimmage now it was my responsibility as a quarterback to get us into the right play so remember now maybe a signal has occurred maybe it hasn't occurred but whatever has occurred from the mechanics from the sidelines now it's in my hands as a quarterback so we walk up to the line of scrimmage and here's what I have if the middle of the field is open meaning there's two safeties high in the middle of the field guess what we have run ratios we can block everybody in the Run front which means that we want to run the football but we don't want to run our wide Zone to the three technique cuz I don't feel like we've got great angles in the way that we're trying to block towards the three technique we'd rather run it to the one technique now the three technique is the defensive tackle that's lined up on the outside shoulder of the Guard the one technique is lined up on the outside shoulder of the center so we want to run it to him he's the shade is what we'd call it in football terms and we want to run that that wide Zone that direction so now I can either run 96 zone or 95 Zone well middle of the field open Where's the one technique here he is I don't need to move the defense so I can get into a live color with my Cadence and I can just say okay here we go we're going to go red live color here we go red 95 red 95 and we're running the ball to the to the left we're running 95 Zone one technique is to the field now maybe they're bringing pressure because they like to bring it to the one technique I'm not sure he's to the WID side of the field maybe they're just sitting in that structure of Defense what I would call is kind of a split hawk or whatever they've got a structure that we want to run the ball over to the wide side so I just get in there and use a live color right away red 96 red 96 here we go and we're running to the right now they start to shift or I don't think I know whether two safeties or not and so I decide you know what I'm going to need to move this defense with my Cadence that's where the yellow comes in now I can use the color yellow which means it's a dead Cadence yellow 95 yellow 95 said hut hut no one's moving why it's a dead color now now I see this safety and he starts to dip a little bit and guess what now I know he's coming down and now there's just going to be a single safety as soon as there's a single safety regardless of coverage one three whatever it is I know that we can't block the Run front once we can't block the Run front I don't want to run wide Zone what do I want to do throw the football well what do I have if I've got a single safety and I'm in a 3x1 formation a single receiver that's probably in man demand so I want to run an X tag X is my weak receiver he's over in the boundary on my left side and guess what I can run 200 jet X slant X Omaha X Sluggo whatever it is and then y spacing on the right side so I've got a foundation over here if I don't like my one-on-one but I can definitely run one-on-one I can even run two jet glance whatever it is I can call a Pass based on that leverage and based on that defense so what do I do I get in and say yellow yellow 95 yellow nothing happens I go boom here he comes here it comes the safety he comes down hey alert alert alert alert now we know we're changing the play Red 200 now we got red 200 because we know in wide package we're running 200 jet XL y spacing bam we got a one-on-one now we're throwing it out there so guess what I did I controlled everything in the game from the field as a quarterback we stopped doing that in college football because coaches wanted to go fast number one and they wanted to control it from the sideline because they couldn't always coach every quarterback to do that so they wanted to control it well in order to control it from the sideline what you have to do signal and you have to Signal not just to the quarterback but to all 11 players on the field because they're already in the formation that's how we got to this point that's how we got to this point if you know that it's going to be a problem you can absolutely negate it I will speak to that based on the way that Ohio State played Clemson in the semi-final Clemson has been a Renown for stealing signs for years and years there are some teams that are better at it than others and Clemson in particular when Brent venables was there and there have been articles written about this this is not hearsay and I'm not slandering anybody like I said there are two ways to do it legally and they did it better than anybody and guess what they were game planned against specifically because of that by Ohio State in the semi-final they used a muddle huddle they got to the line quickly they did different things and guess what Clemson could not handle that so how do I view all of this first and foremost the National Championship in 2023 is not even close to Tainted not even close it's not even close to an asteris not even close number one when this operation were still plausibly happening they were blowing people out and there was little to no Advantage needed nor gained number two once this operation was brought to the Forefront and then it was eliminated they got nothing but better the first week that Conor stallions wasn't on the field they beat Michigan State 490 zero you think that they were stealing signs in the Penn State game Ohio State in the playoff against Alabama like so no this national championship is not tainted at all if anything they were given a break that this all came out in the middle of the year if this all came out after the year there would be a huge cloud of Suspicion but there's no suspicion because I know they did it without the third version of sign stealing in the second half of the year that's what we do know because it was eliminated what should we think about 2021 and 2022 that's murkier much more murky part of me as I just talked about you know tends to minimize sign stealing because it can be mitigated because it's a probability an Ed and an educated guess and then part of me is like man there were some close games and a play here or there yeah that absolutely could have or did influence outcomes of games I think it's hard to say it's much murkier I do know this like did sign stealing help Aiden Hutchinson get 15 pressures on CJ Stroud and 2021 probably not I don't want to minimize what happened on the field because I'm generally a players Advocate I want to advocate for the teams that feel like they were cheated as well I know Ohio State feels like they would have won a couple of those games if this wasn't taking place I know that they feel that way my heart breaks for a guy like CJ strad who probably wins a Heisman Trophy if if it breaks the other way right so like yes this had an impact this had an impact in those years and it's and it's much murkier which brings me to kind of how I feel I'm really disappointed in the lack of Integrity from Connor stallions and whomever knew I don't know exactly who knew what they knew and in what timing but my disappointment would be in their lack of Integrity just as is is the case when I'm disappointed in the lack of Integrity of these coaches that are poaching and and and tampering with Talent that's not on their roster all of these rules that are broken I'm disappointed in there's no question if a rule was broken they should be punished which they were they had to play the bulk of their schedule without their head coach everybody thinks that I'm a Michigan apologist that's not the case their lack of Integrity or at least Connor Stallions in this case has put them in this situation and they're going to have to pay the piper to some extent now the idea that they would have to somehow vacate anything in 2023 to me is comical it would be way over the pale from the NCAA and I don't believe that that would happen I'm disappointed in the lack of Integrity from whoever knew I do not think that it is evidence that Jim harbon knew that he gave Conor stallions a game ball after the Iowa game that came out in the Netflix documentary and I was like see he knew well I don't think that that's evidence that he knew that the third category was taking place I think it's evidence that he knew that Conor stallions was really good at the first category which was deciphering ingame it's a messy situation I'm disappointed in all of it I really am I I want to move forward I want to move forward for the players and it sucks it sucks for everybody involved it really does and we'll see who knew in what timing and to what extent thank you for watching the Joel class Show YouTube channel and if you like this clip make sure to like it and subscribe to the channel and you can stay up toate on all of my college football coverage