defensive backs

As mentioned yesterday, both Steve Lorenz($) and Sam Webb($) are reporting that 49ers DBs coach Greg Jackson will take the same role at Michigan.

Jackson is an LSU grad who spent a dozen years in the NFL as a safety after going in the third round of the 1989 NFL draft. A few years after his retirement he took up coaching at various small colleges, bouncing from Idaho to ULM to Tulane, before getting a break and joining Wisconsin in 2010. When Harbaugh went to the 49ers, Jackson got the DBs job despite no previous NFL or Harbaugh experience (unless you count some time spent together as players with the Chargers).

While it's hard to suss out Jackson's impact independent of the team-wide renaissance Harbaugh brought to San Francisco, and harder still to suss out the influence of the defensive backs versus pass rush in general passing statistics, Football Outsiders provides specific enough stats to take a stab at it:

TEAM	YEAR	Pass DVOA	Adj Sack Rate		Line Yards	Open Field Yards
San Francisco	2010	25	14		3	7
San Francisco	2011	6	22		4	1
San Francisco	2012	6	17		15	2
San Francisco	2013	10	29		22	2
San Francisco	2014	4	17		25	9

Pass DVOA is Football Outsiders catch-all efficiency stat applied to just passing plays. Adjusted Sack Rate is FO adjusting raw sacks by adding grounding penalties and adjusting for down, distance, passing attempts, and opponent.

Line Yards heavily weight the first few yards of a carry and discount yards from 5 on and are used to get an idea of who is winning the battle at the line of scrimmage; Open Field Yards is a ranking of yards gained after the back gets ten.

So. San Francisco's pass defense was consistently very good despite being unable to get to the passer. Their run defense slid towards very bad but maintained elite production from the guys tasked with not turning ten yard runs into 50 yard runs. That run ended this year but even so they were still in the top third of the league.

That is a statistically ideal profile for a defensive backs coach. I mean: in 2013 the 49ers were one of the worst teams in the league at getting to the QB and still had a top-ten pass D. And that's without huge amounts of talent. His secondaries were both responsible and opportunistic:

Jackson helped guide the 49ers to the best pass defense in the NFC and the fourth-best in the NFL, in 2012, allowing just 200.2 yards per game. That total is the lowest given up by the 49ers since 1997 (165.4 yards per game). The 49ers secondary also boasted two Pro Bowl selections (S Donte Whitner and S Dashon Goldson) and a First-Team All-Pro (Goldson).

In 2011, the 49ers secondary tallied 22 interceptions, which ranked second among all NFL secondaries. Goldson and CB Carlos Rogers each recorded a career-high six interceptions, and were both selected to the Pro Bowl for the first time in their careers. Rogers was named a starter in Hawaii, while also being selected Second-Team All-Pro. The defense finished the season ranked fourth in the NFL in percentage of pass attempts intercepted (3.9).

The advanced stats do reflect the impact of those interceptions already. I mention that in case anyone is like WHY U NO TAKEAWAYS about last year's D.

With just one year at a major college, Jackson has little track record as a recruiter.

PREDICTION BASED ON FLIMSY EVIDENCE

Jackson doesn't have a long track record, but what he's got is stellar, and on the NFL level. His NFL experience as both a player and a coach should help him recruit, and his deep roots in Louisiana as an LSU player and Tulane coach should help him get kids out of a talent-rich area that Michigan has tapped semi-regularly for a while. His SEC background could free DJ Durkin up to hit Ohio, where he's from.

Jackson's got Harbaugh continuity, as well.

UPSHOT FOR THE REST OF THE STAFF

It's still coming together. Our previous assumption that John Morton is likely for the WR job is now in question, though. On WTKA this morning Sam mentioned that while he'd heard a bunch of guys were in town to interview he had not heard that Morton was one of them. Since it seems like the only solid piece of information linking Morton to Michigan is a Sacremento Bee article that's now a couple weeks old (one that did nail Tim Drevno), I'm moving him off the board since it seems Dougherty is getting some sort of job.

Sam mentioned Youngstown State DL coach Tom Sims as a possibility, so he's added to the "others" section.

OFFENSE	COACH	confidence	DEFENSE	COACH	confidence
OC	Tim Drevno	lock	DC	DJ Durkin	lock
QB	Jim Harbaugh	lock	DL	Greg Mattison	lock
RB	Tyrone Wheatley	very likely	LB	Durkin	lock
WR	Jimmie Dougherty	very likely	DB	Greg Jackson	lock
OL	Drevno	lock	OLB/DE	Roy Manning	probable
TE	???	none	ST	John Baxter	lock

S&C: Kevin Tolbert (lock)

OTHERS: John Morton (WR), Tom Sims (DL).

Michigan has a spot to play with. Harbaugh's Stanford staffs split the OL between the interior line and a TE/OT spot and that looks like a reasonable idea for the ninth and final assistant. The other possibility is another defensive coach, whether it's a CB coach or Manning staying in the secondary and Michigan adding another guy in the front seven like Sims.

Via Hail to the Blue in the comments, "The softball team is in action today, tomorrow, and Sunday in Lafayette, LA at the Ragin' Cajun Invitational. Follow @umichsoftball on Twitter for live updates. Couple of tough games against UL-Lafayette today and tomorrow down here."

Pitchers and Catchers! There used to be a day sometime in the late summer every year when I start to get really excited about football. This tingling would progress to a low hum when practices started up, and would be a spinal vibration by the time I'm racing into the stadium for whatever MACrifice we're starting against. I miss that. Last year we were doing the basketball book so August was just a bleary eyed gauntlet, and the year before the season started in Jerryworld. This year I already know that excitement will be damped down by a month's worth of reliving The Horror.

Baseball's version of that is pitchers & catchers reporting. Mack Avenue Kurt:

Pitchers and catchers reporting isn't so much an event, or even a day on the calendar, as it is a metaphor: It is the day that winter's back begins to break; a promise that day follows night.

Rk	Sport	Revenue
1	Football	$81,475,191
2	M Basketball	$14,799,440
3	Ice Hockey	$3,248,026
4	Lacrosse	$2,378,900
5	W Basketball	$440,353
6	Baseball	$312,388
7	Softball	$300,721
8	Volleyball	$151,635
9	W All Track Combined	$141,452
10	W Gymnastics	$100,723

You can't dampen pitchers and catchers day, not when Omar Infante is the rookie you're praying will lead the offense, not you're seeing his back plus Prince Fielder's and your 4th best pitcher's because the expense of being so awesome has passed what awesome can net.

Sorry, this is supposed to be about Michigan not the Tigers. Ah but it is, for it's a lead-in to Raoul's comprehensive preview of Michigan's baseball team. It's still tough for a northern team to be more than a good mid-major in this sport, but Bakich seems to have Michigan heading in that direction.

When baseball is really good (e.g. their 2006 run) they're the fourth sport in these parts. Are they Michigan's true #4 sport? There was a interesting thread this week where the question of that sport's identity was posed by Wolverine Devotee. To that discussion I added the list at right from Michigan's Title IX reporting. Some of those teams (like lacrosse) are benefiting more from ticket sales/TV revenue generated by opponents' fans. I tried to compare where each stands among other universities, but many schools lie their asses off in those reports regarding women's sports revenues, for example West Virginia says their W Track & Field team takes in what Michigan's hockey team does. My guess is this gets them around a Title IX provision but I don't know which. Either way it makes the stats useless.

As for Michigan's fourth sport, I still think it's softball.

My bloody valentine. Sunday there will be a whole bunch of recruits who don't have drivers licenses yet watching the Wisconsin game at Crisler. Next week there will be a large and star-heavy group of those who can drive, and who can also say things like "I'm committing to Michigan," say, for example, if they were suddenly taken by a wave of euphoria that might accompany an effective conference title clinch over a rival. This is not crazy; it has happened before. Go make our football team good, basketball.

FWIW HopeInHoke's diary shows winning the conference from here is possible, but nowhere near a certainty. MSU's only road loss in-conference is to Wisconsin; remember when that was a thing we used to just chalk up to "happens to everyone"? LSA's weekly stats report shows Michigan's superior to an average of remaining opponents in everything but rebounding.

[After the jump: things Marcus Ray et al. say about Michigan's 2014 secondary]

Taylor on an island [Upchurch]

Brian forwarded me a mailbag question regarding where Michigan's defense is getting attacked through the air, i.e. are there certain coverage areas that have been particularly weak? It took me most of a day to chart every passing play; the resulting post is rather straightforward. Consider this your bye week from my logorrhea.

Data are here.

What I tracked:

1) Where the ball starts (hash or center). If the tackles lined up inside the hash it was "center"

2) Which zone it was thrown to, on a telephone keypad grid. 1, 4, and 7 are around the numbers to the sideline; 2, 5, and 8 are the area around the opposite hash to the wide side only, and 3, 6, and 9 are down the middle.

If a ball was on the line I always erred to the zone closest to the quarterback. This makes sense if you imagine a player covering Zone 6 will be responsible for carrying a player through that zone, and would be in better position to defend that pass than a guy over him.

3) Which side (strong or weak) of the defense. I noted "Strong" as wherever the SAM lined up in 4-3 sets and where Countess lined up in nickel sets. Once or twice this conflicted with the offense but it's better this way for identifying which players are being targeted.

Weakside/boundary players, usually: R.Taylor, Wilson, Ross/Bolden, Beyer (as WDE) on nickel, Clark on 4-3.

Strongside/field players, usually: Countess, C.Gordon, Beyer (as SAM) on 4-3, Clark on nickel, T.Gordon, Morgan/Bolden, Stribling/Hollowell/Lewis/Avery.

Sacks, throwaways, scrambles, and other such events that took the emphasis on coverage were excised. I couldn't reward those things which occurred because coverage was good enough to make them happen so keep that in mind as you read.

Chart?

Jump.

Awww.