Safety

[Patrick Barron]

Previously: Podcast 14.0A, 14.0B, 14.0C. The Story. Quarterback. Running Back. Wide Receiver. Tight End. Offensive Tackle. Interior OL. Defensive Interior. Edge. Linebacker. Cornerback.

Depth Chart

Safety Yr. Also Safety Yr. Nickelback Yr.
RJ Moten So.* Rod Moore So. Mike Sainristil Sr.*
Makari Paige So.* Caden Kolesar Jr.* Rod Moore So.
Damani Dent Fr. Keon Sabb Fr. Michael Barrett Sr.*

With Dax Hill and Brad Hawkins off to the NFL, data here is suddenly thin. So is experience. Michigan does not have a scholarship safety with junior eligibility; they have just two guys in their third year on campus. That's a departure from the Hawkins Dynasty, which spanned from 834 to 1160 AD and saw Michigan repulse barbarian encroachment from Manchuria.

Things aren't totally bereft. Michigan started a true freshman in The Game last year and thing went ok; he's back, and so is the guy who started next to Hawkins for the bulk of the year. (Hill was basically a viper/leo/hero spacebacker.) There's a little experienced depth, and Michigan made hay with safety recruits after the OSU breakthrough.

You still wonder about a safety position without so much as a scholarship junior.

SAFETY: TOO YOUNG TO BORE?

RATING: 3

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catch the baaaall [Bryan Fuller]

I didn't have much of an opinion on RJ MOTEN last year and it turns out Seth didn't either:

RJ MOTEN

Game Plus Minus Tot Notes
WMU 4.5 1 3.5 I like him.
Washington 1 3 -2 Mostly ranged high. Blamed him for the one big cov bust.
NIU 2 1 1 NIU was heavy so this was just a nickel role.
Rutgers 3 5 -2 Boring when not asked to be a DE.
Wisconsin 0.5   0.5 Platonically boring.
Nebraska 1 2 -1 Not blaming for the illegal TD. Good and boring.
Northwestern 3 6 -3 Main culprit on the TD. Also on the 3rd and 16 screen.
MSU 9 2 7 Part of the reason there weren't more points. CATCH THAT!
Indiana 0 2 -2 Barrett got his snaps, two bad events.
Penn State     0 DNC, but got the final lick.
Maryland 6 4 2 Not boring enough. Wasn't making these mistakes in Sept.
OSU 2 4 -2 One big drop, one big coverage mistake, one redzone stuff.
Iowa 3 1.5 1.5 Generally boring.
Georgia 3 2 1 Good and boring until he had to do LB things late.

Freshman safeties grading out around zero is fine, especially when the notes indicate that some of the minuses were because he was being asked to do things out of safety purview. Zero-ish means that they're in the right spot to dissuade throws, and that's a year one win. That's also why there are six editions of the world "boring" above, although one is actually "not boring." For the record around here, "boring" is a word of praise for a safety, one born of many exciting times where a Michigan safety would have his own private rumspringa when he was badly needed to tackle someone.

[After THE JUMP: ok a couple rumspringas, but not many!]

Previously: Podcast 7.0. The Story. Quarterback. Running Back. Wide Receiver. Tight End And Friends. Offensive Line. Defensive Tackle. Defensive End. Linebacker. Cornerback.

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we have very reasonable expectations [Fuller]

Free Safety Yr. Strong Safety Yr. Nickelback Yr.
Jarrod Wilson Sr. Jabrill Peppers Fr.* Jabrill Peppers Fr.*
Dymonte Thomas Jr. Delano Hill So.* Wayne Lyons Sr.*
Wayne Lyons Sr.* Jabrill Peppers Fr.* Dymonte Thomas Jr.

So, JARROD WILSON…

shoe-throw-o[1]

Never be too proud to recycle a joke, I say. I know what you animals want. You want the man I've listed on half the depth charts in this preview, most of them at least semi-seriously. You want…

HYBRID SPACE PLAYER: NICKELBACK WITHOUT THE NICKELBACK CONNOTATIONS, YOU KNOW, THE BAND, BOY DOES THAT BAND SUCK THEY'RE JUST NOT GOOD AT MUSIC OR BEING ALIVE

RATING: 4

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[Eric Upchurch]

Everyone all together now: the hybrid space player is a reaction to the spread offense. He must be a triple threat, capable of blitzing, playing the run, and covering. He is very very important. They made Charles Woodson into a hybrid space player right before he was the NFL's defensive MVP, because the NFL is basically a passing spread league:

NFL offenses are identifying the nickel corner as a key part of any defense. “This varies from defense to defense, but the amount of your sub package that you play nowadays — because we’re seeing more three wide receivers on the field — your inside player is going to play as many, if not more plays,” Capers says. “You could be in some form of your sub defense two-thirds [of the time].” The number Hayward throws out is 75 percent; Whitt says 80. No matter the math, the point is that the nickel cornerback is as much a “starter” as any other spot in the defensive backfield.

Michigan State's lack of appropriate HSPs last year led their defense to get torched by every decent spread they came across, because said spreads would put their #1 receiver in the slot and run 'em at MSU's inexperienced safeties, who were not cornerbacks. This has been your hybrid space player preview review.

So… JABRILL PEPPERS [recruiting profile]. This is a man that has been hyped to the moon. Tellingly, his coaches aren't trying to put the brakes on. They have in fact shoveled on a little more coal. Harbaugh in spring:

"He’s been A-plus, he really has, all spring. He was just out there taking reps. … A lot of times a guy’ll get in the front of a drill, which he would do, but he would go through the repetition of the drill and I’d see him back in the front again and then again. It’s like, ‘Hey, come on. Jabrill Peppers isn’t taking every rep in these drills.’ But that’s the kind of youngster he is."

Harbaugh again in this fall:

"He's been good, he's been all the things that have been advertised about him. He's a tremendous football player."

The spring game indicated that Michigan had in fact built its defense around him playing HSP/nickel/whatever:

Under Hoke it was difficult to tell who was the strong safety and who was the free safety. That will not be the case this year, as Jabrill Peppers was operating as a lightning fast outside linebacker for big chunks of the game. He tattooed running backs in the backfield more than once.

Peppers barely left that location. When Michigan went to a nickel package they did so by bringing in an extra safety and leaving Peppers over the slot, where he nearly caused an interception by breaking on a quick slant to Bo Dever.

That was the plan last year as well, but even before he got hurt Michigan was forced to adapt. Press coverage was a disaster in the Notre Dame game and Raymon Taylor was out, so Peppers was delployed as a boundary corner in the Miami (Not That Miami) game. (That's a spot he may resume if things don't go well with Stribling and Clark; he has been repping there a bit this fall.)

Miami did people wishing to have any useful scouting from Peppers's freshman year a favor by going at him over and over again on the usually-sound principle that freshmen seeing their first extended action should be slow-roasted until they can be pulled apart with forks. That didn't go the way the Redhawks thought it might.

They did get one completion on him, that a bullet skinny post against zone that Peppers still got a rake in on. His first extended playing time looked pretty damn exciting, and then his knee locked up and it was goodbye season. There are a ton of fascinating counterfactuals from the last year of Michigan football; "what if Jabrill Peppers is healthy?" is one of the best. Does he end up the starting running back halfway through the season? Does Michigan lose to Rutgers? (A: no.) Does Brady Hoke eke out his job at 7-5?

Anyway. That's in the past.

Also in the past is his high school scouting, but other than a bunch of talk and those clips above it's all we have to go on. Also it is fun to revisit, so let's revisit it.

"Peppers is a rare athlete with potential to be great at the next level. He is one of the most talented players I have ever seen at the high school level. At 6-foot-1, and 205-pounds, Peppers has college ready size to go with un-matched speed and explosiveness."

Also

USC coach: "Holy s---, that's him? I've only seen two players in high school with a body like that and both of them are named Peterson [Adrian and Patrick]."

And this player comparison is a damn good one.

"I think his impact on the game [would be maximized by] letting him roam around a little bit and freelance and let him play – an Eric Berry style of safety where they would walk him up. I mean, Eric Berry had 15 tackles for loss.  He is that kind of a player.  Eric Berry, I thought, was maybe the best player in college football a couple of years ago.”

That remains the mission. Be Eric Berry. Or Woodson. Judges will accept either.

I know it's a lot to heap on a dude who's barely seen the field but every indicator from the program is that this gentleman is the real deal both on and off the field. He will start living up to the hype this year.

[After THE JUMP: how many shoes are you wearing stop throwing them]

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Five on five. [Upchurch]

When news broke recently that Jabrill Peppers was moving to safety, Brian threw up a quick explanatory post, Why Peppers Might Be A Safety, talking about how modern spread offenses dictate modern quarters defenses, which in turn dictate that the safety over the slot is the glamour position du jour.

An offensive innovation like the zone read will open up the entire book again as coaches figure out ways of running all the things they already like out of new looks, new play-action, etc. But defensive innovation, with a few notable exceptions, is much more reactive.

Often what we call a "new defense" is just rediscovering an old, unsound thing that takes away the thing offenses are doing these days. The 46 defense was bringing a safety down. The zone blitz was having a defensive end playing coverage. The Tampa 2 had a middle linebacker responsible for deep middle coverage. The 3-4 made three linemen responsible for six gaps. And the hybrid man/zones of today put your deep coverage into the middle of the run-stopping game.

The way a defensive innovation becomes a sustainably great defense is great players. Dantonio's quarters dominated college football with a string of NFL-bound defensive backs. The 3-4's proliferation through the NFL was accompanied by a rush on anything that looked like Vince Wilfork. The Steel Curtain (the first Tampa 2) was built around Jack Lambert. Miami (NFL Miami)'s "No Name" zone blitz defense had a 6'5/248 lb. track star named Bill Stanfill at WDE. And the '80s Bears could pull off this crap:46 defense

…because that "46" was the jersey number of one Doug Plank.

You don't need to be a football guru to see what made the 46 defense tough: there are eight dudes in the box, six of whom are just a few steps from the quarterback. Running into a stacked box is futile (DO YOU HEAR ME? DO YOU HEAR ME, AL?!?). You can try to identify who's blitzing and throw to holes in the coverage before they arrive, but you'd better have Dan Marino.

[After the jump: how to 46 a modern offense]