scott shafer
November 1st, 2008 at 6:45 PM ^
November 1st, 2008 at 6:50 PM ^
You can teach a player all you want, its up to them if they ever do it.
We all went to high school, we all sat in the same algebra, spanish, and science classes, the teachers gave us all the information we needed for the tests, but did we all get straight A's? No. Our teachers can only give is the tools, it is up to us to utilize them.
So if the coaches just tell their players to tackle, they are going to do it? Right? Do you not think that tackling is addressed at meetings and practices? Do you think they just ignore the problem?
As much for for it is to call for someone's head, the issues with this defense lie on more than just 1 person. This is a team issue, not just Shafer.
November 1st, 2008 at 6:55 PM ^
November 1st, 2008 at 7:11 PM ^
The point is that everyone has the same potential for learning and everybody has an equal chance at getting A's. Does everyone step-up and achieve? No.
There is always that group that is perfectly happy getting C's and graduating with a 2.01 GPA. These kids = our defense.
November 1st, 2008 at 7:19 PM ^
You're all crazy.
If you could have your most talented group be the DL, secondary, or LBs, what would you pick?
I'd pick linebackers, followed probably by secondary and then by DL. That isn't to say you don't need a good DL, but my god they can be taken out of the game so easily by quick passes, slants, screens, etc. So yes, we have a great DL, but they can be neutralized pretty easily.
Shafer has run 4 man fronts, 3 man fronts, man to man, zone. He's tried damn near everything. If NOTHING is working, I have a hard time believing that it is scheme. He seems to put people in the right places but players give up contain, bite on the first (fake) handoff, and let their guys beat them in man to man. No one could coach this defense very well. It doesn't help either that the offense sucks. That isn't the reason, but nothing is helping.
How can it be shafers fault that players blatanly miss tackles, and every time they make contact with a player there are about 3-5 YACs. Put that on the position coaches.
Oh, and you know this is not shafer's preferred defense. The 3-3-5 is something RR likes...a lot. Why don't you go bitch at him. Shafer tried it, because nothing he wanted to do was clicking for the players. I guess this didn't either. We have sucky players at the most important positions.
Go make Christmas plans with the family, we aren't going to a bowl game. Get over it!
November 1st, 2008 at 7:24 PM ^
November 1st, 2008 at 7:52 PM ^
Frankie both seem to be missing is the fact that these players are playing worse this year than last year. It's not just that they have not improved, or that they are all new and so we don't know how good they are, but that have gotten markedly worse. Hum... what could explain that? Maybe it has something to do with the coaching change. And everyone please, stop with this whole, "thats up to the position coach" bullshit. The truth is that the DC is the top of the defensive coach food chain and if the "position coaches" are really fucking this defensive over as badly as they would have to be in order to cause what you see every Saturday, then the DC should do something about it.
Nobody thinks that Shafer should have magically been able to make the players better. But it is worrisome that the players seem to be getting worse. If preventing THAT is not part of Shafer's job, then just what fuck is? If you believe all the apologist shit floating around here, then apparently DC's are damn near epiphenomal- they really shouldn't be expected to have hardly any effect on a defense at all. So maybe we should fire Shafer just to get someone cheaper to fill this apparently useless position.
November 1st, 2008 at 9:41 PM ^
Like 5-10 yards downfield of every eligible receiver on the opposing team so that anyone, even a third-string quarterback turned running back turned quarterback can pick us apart with 6 yard curl routes, regardless of how many backs are dropped into coverage (8!). It's bothersome that the defense is clearly worse than they were last year, but its far more bothersome that any opposing QB can be made to look downright godlike with short passing routes due to soft coverage and counterintuitive, unsuccessful schemes.
This seems to be a DC issue. Maybe the position coaches are to blame for telling the players to flail all over the place instead of wrap up and tackle, but the buck stops at Shafer and his firing will make us all feel much better about the future of this program. Last time this happened, we brought in Ron English. I wonder if Rich Rod has his number...
November 1st, 2008 at 10:41 PM ^
When everyone else around you is good, you can look better than you actually are. I think this is the case with Trent. The Trent we are seeing now is the Trent we saw 2 years ago when offenses realized he wasn't nearly as good as Hall. This is the real Trent with lots of straight line speed but always seeming to get beat and is unable to make tackles. English didn't change this last year and neither did the position coaches. Rather, he had enough help back there in the secondary to not need it. He also was playing with some inexperienced players like Warren which offenses took note of. Trent was bad, but inexperience tends to be even worse.
This year though, we lost big names at linebacker and safety. Now there is no one else good around Trent, and thus he looks worse. Some of this is that he may have been overrated because he played with good people last year, but some of it is that he is constantly making up for mistakes by safeties and linebackers.
Trent is just an example, and one people tend to cite when they say that we've regressed. I would just say that he wasn't very good in the first place. This isn't shafers fault. The players aren't executing his assignments. Until that happens, we won't know if his schemes are good.
November 1st, 2008 at 11:10 PM ^
We returned eight of 11 starters, and all three new starters saw considerable game action last year. The loss of three players does not explain our defense completely dropping off a cliff the way it has. Last year we were eighth in the country in pass defense. This year we've made every QB we face (even a 3rd-stringer on a terrible Purdue team) look like a stud.
Exactly what is it about Shafer that inspires such blind loyalty in people? He never worked with RR before this season. Before this year he had three years of DC experience - at Western Michigan and Stanford. He's never coordinated anything resembling a highly-ranked defense. Only one of the four teams he's coordinated has recorded a winning record. Stanford's D is currently performing much better than it did under Shafer. Michigan, meanwhile, is experiencing its worst defensive season in school history. The evidence strongly suggests that Shafer is not a top-notch DC, regardless of what the "coaching fraternity" thinks about him. (Right now, I'm sure he's REAL popular among the rest of the Big Ten, in the same way that we loved John Cooper.)
November 1st, 2008 at 11:10 PM ^
Please then, go ahead and tell me who is better.
*crickets*
Yeah, no one could coach a defense to success when the players cannot do their assignments.
What has Shafer not tried?
*crickets*
He's done 3 mans fronts, 4 man fronts, switching personnel, zones, press coverages, man to man, etc. He's tried damn near everthing, and yet still the players aren't making the plays. Please, enlighten me on what else there is to do.
November 2nd, 2008 at 12:26 AM ^
I love how the fact that Shafer has run a wide range of defensive sets is used as an argument for him being a competent DC. To how retarded this argument is, consider this case:
We take some average football fan, call him Shitforbrains, and make him our defensive coordinater. Now Shitforbrains cannot coach in practice, because he doesn't know how to, nor can he really draw up game plans for specific teams, etc. But Shitforbrains can and does call out all sorts of schemes during the game. Of course the defense cannot execute any of them for shit and gets its ass kicked, but Shitforbrains still calls out all sorts of coverages and fronts. Is Shitforbrains a bad DC? Apparently not, because, after all, what has Shitforbrains not tried? *crickets*
I don't think Shafer is a bad DC because he doesn't run enough schemes. I don't really care all that much what schemes he runs. I think he is a bad DC because none of the schemes are well executed and the defense gets its ass kicked. The last part of that conjunct is really what is important. I don't think it is unfair to expect a good DC to not give up 50 points to Purdue. I know a whole 3 starters from last year are gone, but I don't think Michigan is now without the talent to even be a medicore Division 1 defense.
Do you think Michigan is one of the least talented defenses in the country? Because if they are then either (1) Ron English was an incredible DC or (2) the three starters gone (Crable, Englemon and another safety whose name eludes me, I think) were just fucking amazing players. I think its clear that (1) and (2) are false, so it looks like Michigan doesn't have one of the least talented defenses in the country. So then why is Shafer good again.
In light of the arguments I have seen in favor of Shafer, I hereby dub him The Epiphenomal Defensive Coordinater (TEDC), for he must be a DC who has no causal effect on the defense that actually plays. I'm not really sure what he does, but apparently he does it well.
November 2nd, 2008 at 1:14 AM ^
Who's better? How in the world did you arrive at the conclusion that there isn't an available DC better than Shafer? No one had heard of Shafer before this season, so whose to say there isn't a DC we haven't heard of out there whose way more competent than Shafer? I'm sure there are tons of experienced guys who would do a better job as well, though I'm not going to speculate about who would and wouldn't come to Michigan.
And man, you seem to getting formations confused with schemes. The formations maybe changing, but his retarded schemes are still in place. Week in and week out, regardless of if we deploy a 4-3, a 3-4, a 3-3-5, or a frickin 1-2-5-3, his scheming results in poor angles, huge holes in the secondary, no pass rush on third and long, and the opponent constantly converting on third and long.
Before the season started, I was looking forward to all kinds of awesome trickery on offense and a smothering D. Now I just find myself fantasizing about bad ass press confrences where Rich Rodriguez announces that he just shit canned Scott Shafer.
November 1st, 2008 at 11:14 PM ^
We're probably going to a 3-3-5 for the last three games because it gets BooBoo on the field, and NW and Minnesota run a spread, and OSU will rape us regardless but probably will have a spread look with Wells hammering us anyway.
I will say everyone bailing is a fucking pussy though. Nebraska gave up 513213 points today, Georgia got rocked, PSU put up 20 points on Purdue (we put up 42), I mean, fuck. There is so much shit that can happen. One bad year doesn't bother me.
November 1st, 2008 at 11:44 PM ^
Please then, go ahead and tell me who is better.
Uh, how about any of the EIGHTY DCs in I-A who had higher-ranked defenses than Michigan's going into today? (And after today, there might be 90.) I'd gladly take back Ron English, or Corwin Brown, or even promote Hopson (who was DC at Southern Miss) to the job.
Mstier, you act like Shafer is some tenured professor who deserves to keep his job just because he's currently in it. The guy's driven our D off a cliff. This is on pace to be our worst defense in school history - by a mile. And this is with eight returning starters! I can't imagine how ugly it could get next year if Shafer's still around.
Really, does anyone think Shafer commands the same respect among the players that English got?
November 2nd, 2008 at 9:11 AM ^
November 2nd, 2008 at 1:23 PM ^
November 5th, 2008 at 9:55 PM ^
November 2nd, 2008 at 10:40 AM ^
November 2nd, 2008 at 12:40 PM ^
that's good. These other 80 DC's - who are they playing ? How good is their offense? Do they have anything better than a rag tag O-line and a QB with half an arm? It's easy to compile good defensive STATISTICS if your D is never on the field. I agree that there is a problem, but a defensive ranking means shit. See: UM 2006.
Given that there are only 120 teams in I-A, it's kind of hard to imagine that two-thirds of them could be fielding defenses that are "never on the field." Anyway, that #81 ranking was actually before the Purdue game. Following that not-so-stellar performance, there probably are even more teams whose defenses are outperforming ours.
But hey, at least we're not dead last in the country. Yippie! Give Shafer a raise!
November 4th, 2008 at 11:39 AM ^
PPG (rank)
2007 2008
Michigan 20.3 (#23) 30.9 (#97)
Stanford 28.3 (#69) 23.6 (#56)
Louisville 31.4 (#94) 23.9 (#58)
YPG (rank)
2007 2008
Michigan 330.4 (#25) 393.6 (#91)
Stanford 435.5 (#98) 366.4 (#70)
Louisville 416.5 (#85) 316.5 (#36)
Passing YPG (rank)
2007 2008
Michigan 179.7 (#7) 252.6 (#102)
Stanford 266.2 (#108) 259.9 (#106)
Louisville 251.2 (#89) 224.9 (#80)
Rushing YPG (rank)
2007 2008
Michigan 150.75 (#57) 141 (#65)
Stanford 169.3 (#78) 106.56 (#21)
Louisville 165.3 (#72) 91.63 (#9)
November 5th, 2008 at 1:11 PM ^
November 5th, 2008 at 8:36 PM ^
November 5th, 2008 at 9:48 PM ^