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Previously: 1879, 1901, 1918, 1925, 1932, 1947, 1950, 1964, 1973, 1976, 1980, 1988, 1991, 1999

Special Guests: These are turning into Hardcore Histories with these interviews but what are you going to do when you've got Jim Scarcelli and Johnny Kolesar joining you to talk about the team that might have been Bo's best national championship claim.

1. SETUP AND PAYOFF

(starts at 0:50)

Sap and Seth set up the season because 1984 was rough. Has Bo lost it?

2. THE TEAM

(starts at 26:10)

The defense has a highlight video. The offense had Harbaugh.

3. THE NON-CONFERENCE

(starts at 1:04:30)

• Notre Dame 20-12: Harbaugh is 2-10 in the first half. 'Soup' Campbell's reverse is called "Sally" which Michigan only ran in the big games.
• @South Carolina 34-3: All we hear about are the Fire Ants defense. It's all over after Wilcher's helmet comes off. SC's defensive backs are coached so badly we look up who was in charge of them, and you'll never guess who it was.
• Maryland 20-0: Battle of the Baughs. Slow-motion blowout. Seth's first Michigan game? Kolesar's first pass, the defense's first stand.

--------------------------------------------

THERE WILL BE A PART II

MUSIC:

• "Glory Days"—Bruce Springsteen
• "And We Danced"—The Hooters
• “Across 110th Street”

THE USUAL LINKS

• Helpful iTunes subscribe link
• General podcast feed link
• Download link. (right-click, download)
• What's with the theme music?

Jamie was a tough little, chiseled chunk of steel. You don't see the little bastard!

Previously: The Offense [photo: UM Bentley Library]

A lot about defense has changed since Northwestern DC/former Michigan tight end Mike Hankwitz got his coaching start as a grad assistant for Bo. Like, nobody runs a base 5-2 anymore. Nose guards can't be 175 pounds. Randy Bates no longer coaches the Northwestern secondary. Nebraska ain't so good at it (mea culpa).

But if you've watched enough Dr. Sap videos the Northwestern system starts does start to feel familiar. From the middle linebackers covering interior gaps. To the way a safety comes down almost to linebacker depth when he smells a tight end on his side. To the got-dang soft coverage by the cornerbacks that old guys used to complain about back when they couldn't complain that the latest Michigan head coach is no Bo Schembechler.

This being Northwestern, there are always some holes to fill; this time it's the safeties and hoo boy did Bates chose a bad time to end his 25-year career. It also means there's at least on capital-D Dude around; this time it's The Gaz, and hoo boy.

The film: We are still on Duke, even though I'm down to just official highlights now that some shadow company has re-emerged to strike football video from the internet. Duke runs its offense out of a base pistol with a fullback and uses a lot of zone read, inverted veer, and run-pass options. So they're not quite us, but neither is Purdue or Akron.

Personnel: My diagram (Official depth chart):

PDF version, full-size version (or click on the image)

We'll get to The Gaz. The whole front seven is good and they're deep at defensive tackle. They're at their best though when NT Jordan Thompson is on the field—PFF had him on the Big Ten team of the week after this performance. He's a mean ball of hate with a Hulk-like body shape.

#99 second DT from the top

Last year he was an X-factor, sometimes playing high and out of control and sometimes wrecking all in his path. If this performance is indicative of a new consistency he's immediately in the conversation for best DTs in the conference.

I was surprised by the outside linebacker I liked—it wasn't SLB Nate Hall, who had 16.5 TFLs last year. It was true sophomore WLB Blake Gallagher, who had just 1 TFL last year as a seldom used backup. By their weights last season you might guess the 235-pound Hall would be the interior guy and Gallagher, who as 215 on the '17 roster, is a hybrid type; that was correct last year but Gallagher is up 20 pounds and playing in-yo-face WLB. Hall, who remains over 230, is lining up over slot receivers. That looks as awkward as it sounds:

Hall was up and down, picked on in coverage by the slot receiver at times, good at hurtling himself into an attempt to run outside; he was +5/-5.5 in my unofficial UFR'ing. Gallagher meanwhile is about to become the three-year fave of a low-rung PFF employee who has to chart Northwestern games. I had nearly as many clips from Gallagher as the Gaz and scored him +7/-3, which is a thumpin' good outing for a linebacker.

#51 the guy…oh you'll see

The starters rarely come off the field except WDE Samdup Miller moves inside against spread teams with a rotation of EDGE types coming in for DT Fred Wyatt, who's also the backup nose. They leave The Gaz on the strong side, and Duke's offense learned quickly not to move the tight end away. The middle is manned by throwback MLB Paddy Fisher, who might be Pat Fitzgerald back in pads.

In the secondary CB Montre Hardage plays a lot tighter than I remember—that could be a competition thing. Opposite Hardage is a surprise starter, true freshman CB Greg Newsome, who's got a lot more suddenness about him and put two former starters on the bench. Safety is still a work in progress after Northwestern graduated a Thorpe candidate and an MGo-Favorite. The new FS J.R. Pace wasn't tested much but seems to play hesitant. As expected by everybody, SS Jared McGee, a 5th year senior pushing linebacker size, is not keeping up at safety; purple sippers are waiting for word that redshirt freshman SS Bryce Jackson is ready to handle a complicated position.

[Hit THE JUMP for the rest of the breakdown]

chomp chomp chomp chomp. [Fuller]

This is the defense section: I had to split these up for length which means the offense bits are here.

So Let’s Start With More on the Offense

Yeah so the McElwain presser on Monday opened up a bunch of questions about who’s in charge of the offense. Let’s clear that up with a bit of Bo knowledge and some CK2 references, because everybody who covers Michigan football must understand those at least.

I think Harbaugh told us how he’s going to do it when he said Bo didn’t have an OC, and everybody—or at least everybody who didn’t buy HTTV 2015—missed the reference. Indeed, when Harbaugh was playing here, Bo had a defensive coordinator (Gary Moeller) and more or less allowed Mo to run his duchy. But there was no like position on offense. Instead Bo had a “quarterbacks coach,” Jerry Hanlon, Bo’s right hand man going back to their Miami days. Hanlon coordinated the offensive staff, and called the plays from the box, but never got the title. They also had two offensive-minded former head coaches on staff in Alex Agase and Elliot Uzelac, not to mention Bo was an offensive (line) coach at heart. With all of those vassals with kingship claims, hierarchy was less important than council positions.

That’s how I think it’s going to work now. Pep is your Hanlon—he’s got his job and if he cares what you call it he won’t say so publicly. McElwain is Uzelac—he’ll contribute his thoughts while getting back to position coaching and waiting for an OC job. Warinner is Agase, the guy we know all too well from a long career on opposite sidelines, here because he became available and we need him. They’re not Pep’s vassals because Harbaugh holds the Duke of O title himself, but Pep is the Marshall, and leads the armies.

There. Now the offensive staff makes sense, or if it doesn’t make sense at least now you know it’s only because you don’t know enough about Bo and CK2, and you need to rectify that.

Oh, and Sam’s apologizing to anyone he sees for not being hype enough on Joe Milton, with the why at the link($).

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Defense in General

Really would like to know how solving your problems with aggression works in baseball [Patrick Barron]

The thing about Michigan’s defense is they return all but two starters from an excellent unit, and the coordinator has put out three top five defenses in three years—one with Boston College talent—so sunshine is to be expected. At places used to such riches they’ve learned to ask more about strategies for using the varied abilities they’ve collected. We haven’t learned to do this yet, so this is going to be mostly chatter about backup battles.

What we want to hear: Now that some of Dr. Blitz’s weapons are coming into their second and third years, how are they being incorporated into the defense?

What we’re hearing: This week new linebackers coach Al Washington met with the press. Washington played at BC and later coached (running backs and special teams) with Don Brown there. He was part of Fickell’s staff at Cincy that gave Michigan fits by going to a 3-4/4-3 under front and gap-switching a ton. He has been put in charge of Brown’s Swiss army knife position: the Vipers, SAMs, Edges, and whatnot, right when third year Brown hybrids like Josh Uche and Khaleke Hudson are coming into their own. Adam, our presser guy, has a one-week-old so he wasn’t there to ask our questions, and now I’ve got a beef with the Michigan press corps for wasting this opportunity for knife talk to instead lob questions about Mt. Rushmore. But we got one thing out of it:

He said this might be his fastest defense ever. What have you seen of the talent level out there?

“Man, I’ll tell you what, I made the comparison of somebody dropping a steak in a tank of piranhas. You see the quarterback drop back and it’s like…man, it’s overwhelming. So, speed is lightning quick, they’re physical, and they’re smart. That, to me, is probably the biggest thing.

“These guys get it. This is a lot of—I think he had two new starters last year. Ten new starters, excuse me. So, a lot of these kids are coming back and they know it. They have a mastery of it and so that just makes them even faster. They’re tough. They take pride in what they do. It’s a great group. A special group.”

Piranhas it is.

What it means: If a Minnesota Twins fan complains ask him what state Ron Gardenhire collects a check in.

[After the JUMP: The Piranhas]