Spring Stuff 2015: Defense
Previously: the offense.
hello [Patrick Barron]
This is the good part. There were a few folks trying to find the nearest available ledge after yesterday's post. I'm not sure if they're wildly optimistic about HARBAUGH and expect next year's team to be year four Stanford or if I came off too brutally negative. Either way, this post will be a lot sunnier.
It's not a 3-4. Unless Michigan was sandbagging in their spring game they are running a defense quite similar to last year's—at least as far as the front seven goes. We have great experience with paranoid coaches as Michigan fans and not once has a major structural shift in the defense been concealed in spring. Even last year under Sir Puntsalot Michigan went full man press and that was their defense until circumstances dictated otherwise.
So we'll run with the assumption that what Michigan put out there was about what they'll run. This game saw Michigan run a 4-3—actually more of a 4-4, but more about that later—almost all the time. They went so far as to deploy Royce Jenkins-Stone as a weakside end because they were all out of weakside ends outside of Lawrence Marshall.
They will mix fronts, as all teams do. It is not a radical departure from last year's approach. And that's a good thing.
There is a departure. That is…
A hybrid space player is here. The biggest difference between Mattison's defense and Durkin's is at safety. 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.
[@ right: Upchurch]
If you were worried that moving Peppers to safety would make him a peripheral player who mostly shows up when making a tackle ten yards downfield, don't be. The vision of Peppers provided on Saturday was one of Tennessee-era Eric Berry or Packers-era Charles Woodson: an all-purpose sower of havoc. Berry had 16 TFLs his final two years at Tennessee. Woodson evolved into an NFL Defensive Player Of The Year as something beyond traditional positional definitions:
“They’re playing a lot of nickel, you know the old split six, so an eight man front,” said Mornhinweg. “They’ve got a good cover man with [Charles Woodson] down there who’s a very, very good tackler, so they sort of invite you to run the football into that base type personnel group however they’re very good.”
While that would normally be a successful strategy, Woodson’s ability to defend the run as a slot cornerback gives the defense some teeth.
“They feel very comfortable with him playing in that, which really is like a WILL linebacker position, he’s a physical guy,” said Eagles head coach Andy Reid. “He has great speed. He’s a great blitzer, great blitzer. So that’s how they use him.”
Woodson acted as that triple threat:
Woodson is fast enough to get to the quarterback in a hurry, but still strong enough to defend the run. Most of all, he’s a highly talented cover cornerback.
That is Peppers's role. Michigan's "nickel" is a base package with a hyper-athletic WLB; its base set looks like an eight-man front with a guy in that front who can cover anyone on the field. The defense is designed around his uncommon abilities.
Hurst was a regular annoyance to Morris [Bryan Fuller]
Activate DT depth. One of the striking things about the roster is that I had no idea who got struck first when drafting the defensive tackles. Glasgow and Henry were starters last year but both Mone and Hurst flashed ability as backups; a year later everyone's back and Maurice Hurst is in your base every play.
As a recruit Hurst was regarded as a lightning quick first step above all, with questions about whether he could hold up. That makes him an ideal three-technique. Three-techs get more one on one matchups if the nose tackle absorbs doubles, and Hurst is a good bet to shoot into the backfield. That was the case on Saturday. Hurst was a regular entrant into the land where TFLs are made.
He was going up against Ben Braden and David Dawson at guard, neither of whom is established as a starter-level player on the inside. But Braden did start all of last year and Dawson was a well-regarded recruit; neither is a walkon; both have been around a couple years. He was slicing through those guys with regularity.
Henry did well for himself after the first snap and should maintain the starting job. That two-deep looks set to be a high quality platoon.
I am ready to respect your authoritah [Eric Upchurch]
Inside backers are ready to rip. With James Ross out and Royce Jenkins-Stone drafted at WDE, the third linebacker in most sets was an odd duck. It did not seem to matter much, because the ILBs were filling with abandon. I have long been a skeptic about Joe Bolden's ability to hit people hard, but I thought he looked great.
There has always been a hesitancy about his play that has caused things like third and two conversions when Bolden goes entirely unblocked; that feels like it's finally out the door. Bolden showed up in the backfield a ton and hit guys hard when he showed. If that is not a spring mirage that sets Michigan up excellently for fall. Desmond Morgan's return gives Michigan another hard-hitting, dead-stop-tackler with a ton of experience, and Ben "Inexplicably Not Redshirted" Gedeon is ready to be the guy who spots both starters so regularly that he is a virtual starter as well.
The third linebacker should be Ross if healthy. In this defense I wonder how much run he'll get. Michigan has gone from a team that resigns itself to a ton of 4-3 sets against spread personnel (remember Jake Ryan walking out over three WR sets?) to one downright eager to play nickel.
In any case, two senior linebackers is a luxury.
Questions. The pieces are there for an outstanding defense. In my mind there are four main questions:
- Can anyone rush the quarterback?
- Can they find a second man press cornerback?
- Are the safeties reliable enough?
- Will the offense sell them out too much?
The last question is beyond the scope of this post. Suffice it to say that the last two years the defense had a tendency to collapse late after the offense's millionth three-and-out of the game.
Let's try to address the others.
Marshall is a breakout candidate and a 2015 key [Fuller]
Can anyone rush the quarterback? Michigan has not had a standout pass rusher since… Brandon Graham? Jake Ryan had a year in there but then he blew out his knee and wasn't an impact player as a junior; as a senior he had a distinctly muted impact (2 sacks) as a middle linebacker*. Brennen Beyer led last year's team with 5.5; Frank Clark had 4.5; neither was the kind of edge terror that needs to be accounted for every play.
Prospects are dim for that guy to emerge this year. Lawrence Marshall, a highly-regarded in-state recruit coming off a redshirt, has gotten a lot of hype. It would be a meteoric rise to go from not playing to being a terror. Mario Ojemudia is what he is at this point.
Michigan's best hope might be Taco Charlton, who seems set to move back to the weakside end after a season spent on the strongside in a 4-3 over. Charlton has a package of athleticism that is unmatched; this is a point where the proverbial light might come on. A spring injury prevented a hype train from building up steam; he'll be a guy you hope starts opening eyes in fall.
The defensive tackles also offer some promise here. Glasgow offered little pass rush a year ago, but Hurst, Mone, and Henry could be plus gentlemen, especially if they're all fresh because they can rotate freely without much drop in production. And the havoc Peppers causes might open up opportunities for other guys.
Even so this seems like the biggest gotcha in Michigan's quest for an elite defense.
Can they find a second man press cornerback? Michigan wanted to run an in-your-face aggressive defense last year and did so until it became clear that this was exposing Blake Countess to Spock levels of toxic radiation. Jourdan Lewis thrived, though, and returns as Michigan's #1 corner. Is there someone around who can let Michigan go Teddy KGB on opponents?
The two main contenders here are Countess, a year wiser and receiving cornerback coaching from a couple gentlemen with a slightly better pedigree in that department than the departed Roy Manning, and Stanford transfer Wayne Lyons. Lyons started for large chunks of the year for a lights-out Stanford secondary; he was regarded as something of a weak link. He can be the weak link in the #2 defense in the country and I will find that acceptable.
I give the slight edge to Lyons here, as he is bigger and faster than Countess. The boundary corner slot beckons.
A darkhorse: Brandon Watson. The redshirt freshman spent some time at safety last year, which made no sense since literally the only thing he did in high school is line up with his facemask molecules away from the opposition and jam the hell out of them. He looked pretty good on Saturday.
Are the safeties reliable enough? Jarrod Wilson is probably fine. I thought Michigan's tendency to jerk him around because he gave a team a small window to hit a pass in was one of their worst qualities under Hoke. They played nonsense guys over him from time to time, seemingly out of pique, and the defense got worse. Anyway, he's back and he should be reliable to good.
The second safety is not really Peppers since Peppers is a destroyer-of-all-trades in or near the box. The second safety is the guy who comes in when Michigan goes to the nickel that we are all going to interpret as Michigan's base defense by midyear. That is some combination of Delano Hill, Dymonte Thomas, Jeremy Clark, and Tyree Kinnel. Clark and Hill are the favorites. The numbers there are reasonable; can they find a player?
*[A move that was way more bonkers than it seems in retrospect because of Morgan's injury. Michigan opted to move their only impact rusher to MLB when they had Bolden and Morgan at ILB.]
Ryan struggled for all of about two games at MIKE. Then people started falling for comfirmation bias.
Ryan had 7 games of double digit tackles. He finished with 14 against Maryland. Other than Minnesota, he finished every B1G game with 8+ tackles and had 5+ solo tackles in each B1G game besides Minnesota as well. He lead the team in tackles by 10. He lead the team in solo tackles by 12 (to Bolden) and by 38 over the next guy. He averaged 9.33 tackles per game.
He lead the team in TFL with 14 (finishing 0.5 ahead of Clark and 6.5 TFL ahead of the next guy). Yes, he had two sacks, but Michigan blitzed less and he was playing MIKE.
Oh, and Michigan was 15th in total YPG on the ground and 12 on YPP on the ground. They were 10th in Rush D S&P+ which accounts for schedule.
Relative to other teams: Ryan was 2nd in the B1G in tackles per game. He was 12th in BCS conferneces. He was 5th in the B1G in TFL per game, and 1st for a LB that played off the LOS (so not a 3-4 OLB). That's incredible from the MIKE position.
Michigan was moving to an Over front as their base D. They thought that helped them schematically against many of the teams in the B1G. They could have stayed in the Under front and had Ryan split out over the slot half the time. They could have moved Ryan down to DE where he would have been over-matched in the run game because the techniques are quite different. Or they could move him to an ILB position where he could make a more consistent impact down-to-down, and he did.
I know Morgan didn't play in the 2nd half of the season, but Ryan still would have gotten the majority of the reps at MIKE. He was a Butkus award finalist. Ross performed well at the SAM position. Bolden and Morgan played pretty well at the WILL position. Where else did people want Ryan to play so he could be "impactful" enough for them. The only thing I can think of is moving him down to DE in passing situations, which I would have liked, I agree, but that's not a standard down-to-down thing and relies on someone else calling a lot of the defense from the MIKE spot.
So yeah, the complaints about Ryan playing MIKE should probably stop before they go much further.
Sheesh.
The fact is, Jake Ryan did not generate sacks, turnovers, or other "big" defensive plays at a MLB, whereas he had been doing that as a SLB. That's what I meant by "impact," Perhaps "impact" was a poor word choice, since I obviously can't deny that a guy who makes a lot of tackes has an "impact." But it's certainly a different kind of "impact," and in the context of my post above (in which I asserted that predicting the performance of a defense tends to be more difficult when inexperienced players will be inserted or experienced players will change positions), that's a relevant factor.
I'm not arguing that Ryan should have stayed at SLB or that the over front was a mistake or anything like that. Distilled to its essence, all I'm really saying is that when you move people around on the defense, the production you get from them at the new spot isn't always the same as what you were getting at the old spot.
I agree about the misses on the line. I guess it happens to every team, but it feels like Michigan just came up short on lots of solid defensive linemen. I'm actually not as high on McDowell as others seem to be, mostly because he feels like he'll be a solid player but there just seems to be a bit of a Gholston stink with him to me. Hand should be a great player, and I agree that not even making a run at Montae Nicholson is even stranger given the issues the team had fielding a competent defensive backfield for large swaths of last year.
The speed at LB is noticeable, but this also isn't the type of conference to really test you in that area. Sure, OSU will blitz this team, and BYU looks a bit scary in the OOC, but nobody else save maybe MSU is going to really force those LBs to run and cover in space frequently.
The TOs should bounce back, but we've said that for 2 years and they never really did. I'm sure there will be some regression to the mean, but the lack of pressure up front will still be a limiting factor, as will be a kinda-turrible offense. I've always noticed that the best defenses get TOs not just because of pressure on the field but also when their offense is scoring consistently and forcing the opposition to catch up. You watch games like Minny and MSU to an extent and you see offenses that have no reason to take risks offensively, and that will just grind down a defense. But if Michigan can get some semblance of consistent offense, that will force opposing teams to play outside of their comfort level, and that will help foster opportunities for TOs.
THIS. (First part in particular.) How many D performances last year were negated by the O's struggles? Felt like every game, around the last drive of the first half, after playing good-to-great for the better part of two full quarters--and after dealing with a frustrating number of 3-and-outs--the D would visibly wear down, hands on hips, and give up a scoring drive that would put us in a hole of some kind to start the second half. An interception later and the game would begin to get out of reach. Basic competence on O will help offensive production, obviously, but the D will hopefully be able to play 4 full quarters of ball over the *course* of 4 quarters--rather than in each half. You gotta think that would help numbers, to say nothing of wins.
in most of the instances where the defense gave up points late in the second quarter, the UM defense hadn't been on the field very much. While the offense hadn't scored a ton of points they had controlled the ball and it was the opponents defense that had been on the field more in the first half then UM's defense.
with the statement that this team won't be a NC playoff contender but when you look at spartys formula for winning it's been lights out defense and adequate offense that at times appeared downright weak particularly early on. Michigan's schedule features the tougher bgtn games in the 2nd half of the season. Other than the first game at Utah the early games are winnable with great D and marginal offense. That allows for development from very competent coaches used to making adjustments according to talent and performance before the big rival games. Yea yea not Stanford in the 4th year, buuuut I expect 9 or 10 wins.
is going to be huge. If we can go on the road and beat Utah in the opener that would really set the tone for the season.
As much as I like the fact the non-conference schedule is getting better, this is one year where I wish UM had 3 MAC schools and one decent opponent. It'd give the team and coaches a chance to see what they each can do on Saturday's.
However, like you, I think the OCC schedule is tougher then a lot of people think. Utah is a decent program and they are going to be sky high for a Thursday night prime time game in SLC against UM. Oregon St obviously plays in the Pac-12 and aren't going to be awed coming into AA. If BYU's QB is healthy, they are going to give the defense a strong test.
All 4 games are winnable, but it's not out of the question that UM could be 2-2 heading into conference play.
hen you look at spartys formula for winning it's been lights out defense and adequate offense that at times appeared downright weak particularly early on.This was true of MSU in 2012 and 2013, but in other years they've been pretty strong offensively.
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and the offense will be ok.
The reality of getting my hopes up the last 7 years only to have them be largely crushed leads me to think the D will probably be very good and the offense will be a bit of a mess at times this year. Harbaugh is elite, but I'm not sure he's a miracle worker. We're basically getting a horrendous offense back minus the 5th senior QB. I think it'll be improved....but I'm not holding my breath for that much improvement
Just watching the spring game reaffirms that this is going to be a process. The offense won't miraculously turn around in one year, especially without a quarterback. I'm not counting on Rudock as the savior yet.
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how many years of eligibility Rudock has left? I've heard 1 year from some people and 2 from others.
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Defense looks to be deep at all three levels. Looking forward to the football the defense is going to be able to play. Should be one of the best units in college football. Experience and good coaching staff equals success. Go Blue!!!
Morris, we get to something like adequate at QB (we'd still be the envy of a hell of a lot of teams with these two QBs). The o line should be okay. All of this would seem to suggest that we can win a few games this year.
But--crikey--it's unnverving to be worrying about whether we can run with the ball or catch it. Someone please tell me that Ty Isaac is gonna wallop people and that hands are being grafted on all the receivers as we speak.
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