I haven't watched the entire season but what is the temperature on Barrett here?
He has seemingly been bad in the handful of games I watched (IU, MSU, PSU and to a lesser degree Wiscy).
As a Michigan fan, I see his totals in these games and it strikes me as the fly in the ointment.
Looking at total defense, those are 4 of the 5 top defenses OSU played (all ranked in the top 50 of the NCAA in total D) and Barrett was not good at all throwing the football.
The outlier was Nebraska, who I think is inflated by a mediocre schedule (0 wins over CFP and AP top 25, #42 in SOS). The other 4 games (IU, MSU, PSU and Wiscy) are pretty ugly in total.
Has Barrett regressed? Play calling regressed? Both?
I also think it's multi-layered, but id put the largest blame on his QB coach and play-calling.
Tim Beck just isn't Tom Herman by any way, shape, or form and its plagued the offense. The play-calling has just been head-scratchingly bad at times with no rhyme or reason for what they're doing. Mike Weber will be gashing defenses on plunges, and they go away from it for 4 drives while they try and establish the short passing game. It's infuriating....like last year, it feels like they want to be balanced to a fault, and cut their nose off to spite their face.
Lack of outside receivers is a major issue as well. It's the same situation Meyer found himself in at UF, where a majority of his receivers were hybrid guys. Thankfully the Bucks have a few studs coming in that are true receivers, but right now their best outside threat is Noah Brown who is a former RB.
Lastly, their is no timing in our passing game. We literally fake zone read, use our run game as an impediment to the pass rush, and JT waits for a guy to break wide open unless it's an underneath throw. If the read isn't there, he's gone. But it isn't sophisticated at all, and I think generally pretty easy to defend for a defense. Again, it's not much different than how Tebow operated. Thankfully, the power-run game has been decent and keeps defenses honest just enough. And it wasn't as if Herman's offense was that sophisticated, but there were definitely more elements of a rhythm based passing game. Seam routes to TE's come to mind immediately. We get Baugh involved this season, but it's nearly all on check down or waiting for him to sit down in zone coverage. It's completely non aggressive.
Truth be told, Bama beats the Bucks by 21+ points IMO....and Michigan for that matter. Neither team has enough wrinkles offensively to stop them from man-handling the LOS.