Upon Further Review: Defense vs Northwestern

Again, no video because Viddler has blocked my account. I'll work on a locally hosted solution for next year.

I'm so confused.

I am also so confused.

Chart?

Chart.

A schizophrenic day from the defense. You can see the huge numbers put up by the front six, and they're deserved. Northwestern ran for 2.4 YPC excluding sacks and Michigan got to Bacher three times. Michigan picked off Bacher twice. When Bacher passed and was not sacked he was usually making a throw in the face of heavy pressure; on several occasions he made plays where you throw your hands up and say "if he's going to do that, more power to him." Outside of those plays and the three enormous disasters, Michigan's D obliterated Northwestern.

Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

Well, yeah.

So what happened on the three disaster plays?

Disaster one was the third and eighteen draw from the twenty-one that went for a touchdown. There were a couple of errors that allowed the RB through the line, but that's to be expected on third and forever. Then Brown comes up way too fast, overruns the play, and sends the RB into the endzone. Brown ended up with a net positive because he made two other big plays, one INT and a pass breakup, but that's quintessential Brown: poor angles and poor awareness of the situation on the field.

Disaster two was third and goal from the seventeen. Michigan ends up rushing three with Will Johnson dropping into a short zone, and playing zone behind it. Remarkably, on third and seventeen Michigan does not get sufficient zone drops from Harrison and Ezeh and the post opens up. This, too, has been a bugaboo all year.

Disaster three was the long touchdown that is definitely someone's fault, but whose? Varsity Blue went inside the play and tentatively settled on Stewart. GSimmons had a take I agree with:

Stewart might have over played the fade...impossible to tell if Trent has lost on the fade or not, i would bet he did, since he sometimes has a tendency to over play the shallow in cover two, so he can get those big hits he lies to do underneath.. you can see warren at the top of the screen doing a good job of carrying the fade, even if Trent is within arms length Stewart shouldn't be over playing number 1 that hard, especially with three vertical threats to your side.

but i put a lot of blame on Harrison for not holding the vertical of number 2.... if the guy will do anything to at least get in between the receiver and the passer, he could at least discourage a throw, forced a bad throw, or at least forced a higher throw which probably wouldn't have helped since Stewart was so far away. a common theme all year of holding inside verticals... first OLB's now nickel backers.... of course the easy thing to do is to blame the free safeties and corners, but often times are coverage problems have been due to lb's.. or perceived lb weaknesses being in the back of the mind of safeties and corners...

This goes back to the safeties (Stewart way out wide) and dodgy play from the corners. Also a problem all year.

West Virginia fans were none too enamored with Tony Gibson as a DBs coach; is he a problem?

The correct answer, as per usual, is "I don't know," but I also don't think so. Michigan had one all conference safety since 1999: Ernest Shazor, and that was based more on one spectacular, Dorien Bryant decapitation than his actual play on the field, which you will no doubt remember was responsible for such things as "Deandra Cobb 80 Yard Touchdown 1" and "Deandra Cobb 80 Yard Touchdown 2." Shazor entered the draft early and was completely passed over. Until Jamar Adams managed to stick on the Seahawks' practice squad, the only Michigan safeties who made it to even the periphery of the NFL (Hendricks and Cato June) got moved to linebacker.

This is the long way of saying that Michigan has a rich history of horrific safety play and that there must have been something wrong in the recruiting and development of them during the Carr era.

Meanwhile, Ryan "Yards After" Mundy transfers to West Virginia and suddenly becomes a competent starter on a good defense. Then he gets drafted by the NFL. One player who was a safety at Michigan was drafted to play safety in the NFL in the entire Carr era: Charles Drake, the #240 pick in the 2003 draft.

Yeah. We got problems. I think the overall trend at safety will be upward.

Heroes?

The entire defensive line was excellent save Jamison, who was just okay; Mouton had the best day of his career and Ezeh did decently, too.

Goats?

Probably Stewart, maybe Harrison and Trent.

What does it mean for 2009?

Well, the bad news: as we approach the end of 2008 I think we can say that the defensive line actually lived up to the hype. These guys are really good, and at least three of them will be gone. Mike Martin looks like a great prospect, but I think he'll prove mediocre at best as a sophomore starter. When you can surround a sophomore DT with two guys who require massive attention you can get away with it (see: Terrance Taylor, 2006), but unless Graham comes back Martin will be the #1 priority of opposing defenses and it's the rare sophomore indeed that can deal with that kind of pressure.

On that topic: please, Brandon, come back.

The good news: man, was Jonas Mouton good in this game. He consistently shot past blockers and into the backfield, reminding this observer of Larry Foote and Ian Gold. He's got the recruiting accolades and consistently improved over the course of the year. He still needs work in coverage; other than that I don't think you could have painted a rosier picture at WLB as the year comes to an end.

Also, Stevie Brown remains Stevie Brown, ready to implode at any given moment, but at least in this game he made a couple of good plays to offset the one he gave up. Maybe you can see the tiniest bits of progress in his season to date? Maybe we can foresee a guy who gets to be Ryan Mundy next year?

Best not to get your hopes up about that.