Personnel notes: Michigan didn't change much at all from the Notre Dame game. Leach played basically the whole game for Mouton. Kovacs again got the fourth quarter when Mike Williams tweaked his ankle. Substitution on the DL continued as before. The only difference is that JB Fitzgerald did get in some as a replacement for Leach or Ezeh.

Michigan did debut a couple of new looks in this game, as described by Steve Sharik earlier this week. One was a pure 3-3-5 look that could have come right out of the West Virginia salad days; the deathbacker played as a MLB. The other was an aggressive eight-man front run defense Sharik calls "split" that M ran against a lot of their ace sets. I noted the 3-3-5 stack somewhat but not the split, which looked like an under to me. I'll work on it for next week. If Robinson stops adding packages I'll eventually be able to ID them consistently.

BTW: This completes Michigan's collection of fronts: They've run even and under 4-3 fronts, a 3-4, and the 3-3-5. Robinson was not kidding about "multiple fronts." The under is still the base, though.

Steve also talked about the "Down G" play that EMU ran a lot. The basic principle here is much like the basic principle was against Michigan State's power ground game the past two years: you are an unblocked DE; there is a guard pulling around who wants to kick you out and open up a crease inside you. You have to get into the guard and make the tailback bounce it outside, where a linebacker will pursue and clean up.

BONUS! In my never-ending quest to make UFR more complicated every year I've added a third defensive metric: tackling. Missed tackles get minuses, as do routine tackles on which the ballcarrier picks up YAC. Open field tackles, tough tackles, and tackles where the guy goes down right where he's hit get pluses. It's very experimental.

So that was concerning, wasn't it?

Slightly, yes, but after looking at the tape I'm more encouraged than I was immediately after the game.

How can that be?

To explain that I think I need a—

Chart?

So… there you go. I'm still working on the tackling bits, obviously. I wouldn't take the minuses on the safeties too seriously.

Why does this make you less concerned than you were before?

We already knew that Ezeh is the kind of guy to get dragged out of position and open up a 24 yard scramble, and we had a strong suspicion that even though the starting linebackers were poor their backups were worse, and all this bore out. Most of the defensive line played up to expectations except Van Bergen, and Banks may add some additional interior depth going forward. The secondary was par for the course, too, and the tackling was pretty good.

Come on, look at that 36-yard all-run touchdown drive. This is Eastern Michigan!

Is that a question?

This is Eastern Michigan?

Fine, fine, okay, yes. It's not like I expect the defense to be good or anything. It's just that the EMU game didn't reveal anything particularly surprising or new. And ten of their points were on the world's worst pass interference call and a thirty-six yard drive. They gained under 300 yards and Michigan outgained them by 180-some. I'm fine with what happened, mostly.

The most disturbing bits were the zone read breakdowns. How does that happen when you practice against it all day every day? I don't know, but when any EMU QB pulled the ball out he had plenty of space.

Any hope for defensive depth in the future?

In the secondary and at linebacker, no. Leach slotting in ahead of Fitzgerald and Fitzgerald proving that wasn't a crazy decision with some really bad play indicates that there's no cavalry coming in the backups. Michigan is riding with Mouton and Ezeh, like it or not. Pray they improve. (To his credit, Ezeh was better at hitting the hole in this game. Baby steps.)

Meanwhile in the secondary, Michigan went the whole game with the starters until Williams got tweaked and Kovacs returned; no corner other than the starting pair saw a snap until uncharted garbage time, and that didn't even include uber-frosh Justin Turner. I did include converted WR/RB Teric Jones, whose redshirt is burned. Burning that redshirt is a whopping statement about where the secondary depth stands: next to Charlie Weis on a precipice, looking down at disaster.

The line, though, looks like it might pick up another contributor in Greg Banks and at some point you figure they will unleash Will Campbell on short yardage. He was part of the goal line set that saw a few snaps and probably should have been in on a few more. He's a tough guy to move.

So… no on Fitzgerald?

Not yet, at least. Watch the linebacker to the top of the screen (not the guy on the line, the guy lined up on the 32, which is Fitzgerald) here:

Michigan was playing that play to spill all day, spilled it, and Fitzgerald was nowhere to be found. He is not mentally ready to play.

The safeties look halfway competent, don't they?

Um… well… mentioning this will probably doom them forever, but maybe? None of ND's long plays can be blamed on the safeties, though part of that was the defensive scheme and part of that was the ability of Notre Dame to exploit an injured, short Cissoko in his first start against a good offense. And Eastern didn't find anything long. The only play on which a safety got a big negative was the long Western touchdown. Just MAC teams, sure, but by this point in any other season there would have been two or more plays from the safeties that make you groan and clutch your rosary. Obi Ezeh's "so we got that going for us" quote about Woolfolk may be accurate.

Heroes?

The starting defensive line outside of Van Bergen, who didn't do much.

Goats?

All linebackers not named Ezeh, who was decent.

What does it mean for Indiana and the future?

I'll keep it brief since this was a game against Eastern Michgian and you overrate it at your peril: the team is basically what we thought it was. If you want to load up against it and grind down the field you'll have success doing it, though I wonder if teams will manage to score a lot of touchdowns with that sort of approach. Michigan's going to bend a lot; hopefully they won't break.

Greg Robinson is busy installing all sorts of different stuff and slants and various games to cover up for the fact that he's got no depth, two seniors, and three walk-ons contributing. I think we're going to see a lot of instances where the games work and Michigan swarms something and a lot of instances where Michigan gets caught and gashed. There are places to attack this defense, and the safeties are going to have to do a lot of cleanup in Big Ten play.

Is there any upside for these guys? Maybe. It is a new system so Michigan is behind mentally and should improve more than veteran units whose failings are more likely to be physical shortcomings than mental errors. Look at Eastern's long touchdown drive: mental error after mental error. If Michigan can fix those things—or, more conservatively, mitigate them—they appear to have the horsepower to be completely mediocre. Again: getting Ezeh and Mouton up to a level where they are decent is the key to the defense's season.