[Fuller]

What goes into deciding whether to go punt block or punt return when you’ve got such an explosive return man in Jabrill?

“Uh…same thing that goes into when you throw a fastball or the curve. You know, you’ve got to pressure- the ability to pressure a punter keeps people in protection, sets up the ability to return. The ability to return a punt sets up the ability to pressure, and it’s really not unlike making calls of any kind in the game of football. You do all your work and you crunch all your numbers but you coach the game by feel, and it pretty much is that.”

How pleased are you with that unit? Does that unit still have more to give?

“The punt return unit?”

And punt block.

“I’ll tell ya, I’m really pleased, actually, with the punt return. The amazing thing is we’ve had 51 reps of it in five games now. Somebody needs to go back far and see how many times there’s 51 reps in five games. Obviously it’s because we’re playing amazing defense and what have you, but if you really look at what the unit has done, there’ve been three returnable balls kicked to us out of 51, okay? Obviously we had a round robin with all the Australian rugby punters against each other in the first four games, and everybody found out it’s really hard to return one of those. Three returnable balls, and we’ve- you know, the baseball analogy is we’ve hit the ball hard but unfortunately we’ve knocked it off the wall for doubles and triples. We haven’t had a home run yet.

“I think the thing that goes unsaid is Jabrill’s amazing decision-making back there [and] unselfishness to not risk balls that shouldn’t be touched or should be on the ground, protecting his teammates, those kinds of things. Besides being explosive the punt returner needs to be a great decision-maker and really needs to handle the ball well because one of the things we always say is if you have the ball you have the team, and you need to take care of the team. It’s been effective. I wish we could get more returnable balls, but I’m not in control of that.”

[After THE JUMP: Baxter is the Yogi Berra of this coaching staff]

Blake O'Neill – there seems to be more to that fourth and 16 story. What's the background of that?

“He took off. Coach Harbaugh asked me what happened and I said, ‘I don't know, you're going to have to talk to Blake.’ You know, he has the ability to run every single time he has the ball and obviously fourth and 16 was more than he could get. But, you know what, I think if people know he's going to run that's good for us, because he's going to run. So, he has that option every time.”

Are punters in general getting more athletic and have that option more?

“Well, if you have an athletic punter you have the option. If you have Blake O’Neill or Tom Hackett, you know, those are good athletes. I mean, there's details that go into it which I would choose to not share because I don't think it would be to our best advantage to do so but – you know, I hate to go second grade on you but that's for me to know and you to find out sort of thing with our opponents.”

Talk about how he's done for you. Probably exceeded your expectations?

“No, he's been what we thought he would be.”

That good?

“Oh, sure. That's why we went after him. Those guys that play the game, they grew up playing – they have a skill set that doesn't exist in this country. In Australian rules football, you pass by punting or what they call a hand pass; you punch it to each other. It's not rugby, it's Australian rules football. When a father and son go out to play catch in the front yard they punt to each other, starting when they’re five years old. In this country they throw it to each other. So, one: he's a very mature guy. He's older. Two: he's composed. And number three: he handles himself really well. Obviously he's been very accurate and we are very pleased with that and want that to continue. You know, I'm superstitious about not being superstitious. We just got to keep playing well.”

Are you looking for the next one already? The next Australian?

“Started last year.”

So there's something in the pipeline?

“I know we’re not allowed to talk about recruiting so, you know…”

Not specifically, but you're looking?

“There’s young people in this country, too, that we’re looking at. We're just trying to find the next good player for Michigan.

“So, recruiting. They say recruiting is just like shaving: you miss a day, you look like a bum. But you have to… It's a never-ending process.

What were the wind conditions Saturday? It was hard to tell, because the flags up here were going this way, these flags were–

“Well, if anything, the thing that I guess even I'm learning to deal with is when we played in the west at USC, Fresno, Arizona, whatever, even when I coached at Tulane there in the dome we had breezes. This has been wind.

“If you looked at the stadium at Maryland I think that upper deck blocked a lot of it, but The flags on the upper deck on the east side of the stadium were standing straight up this way, but yet the wind in the stadium was going toward the flags. And then down where we kicked the field goal there was a crisscross and when the field goal went up into the wind it just stayed right there, so it's something that we – every day we can kick into the wind here we kick into the wind here, okay? Kick off, field goal, punt, all that stuff because it's something we need to deal with and the winds swirl and it's just, it's a factor. But I'll tell you, it's an underappreciated underfactor of any factor in the Big Ten. It's something you deal with every game and we're going to continue to deal with it.”

Did it affect the squib kick right before halftime?

“No, that was bad.”

I was hinting at that because Jim said something on his show on Sunday about how that's something that's on the practice list now.

“Well, it's something that's been on the practice list but, you know, it's – obviously if the biggest problem on your whole football team is a squib kick that went 12 yards too short you're doing a good job. So it's like anything else; I've seen NBA players shoot air balls on free throws, too. So, yeah. We'll get a little better at that.

“But I'll tell you this, Will Likely and the guys that support him – I went into the defensive staff last Monday and said, ‘This is the best kickoff return/punt return combination scheme I have ever gone against that I can remember.’ They are awesome, and a little bit that went into the squib kick was I didn't want to have him hit it so hard that 4 ended up with the ball again so, you know. All right, so they got the ball at the 39 instead of the 25. But we are practicing it.”

Talk about Kenny's play and how far he's come since the spring.

“Wow. Thank God Kenny Allen has embraced competitive spirit, competitive excellence. You know, he was a part-time kicker in the spring. Really wanted to win the punting job. Has come – my intent has been to use him as a punter, but boy, the guy that's got the ball right now has got a hot hand and Kenny's good with that. It's fun to watch these two teach each other things. They just get along great.

“And then as a kicker, my goodness. He worked at it over the summer and those kind of things and I think even on his goal sheet it was, ‘Hey, I want to compete for the job,’ but he's running right at his… his percentages aren’t quite 80 right now; he's 6-for-8. Two balls have shaved the right upright, but he's running right at 80% in practice and whatever else, and 80% is an effective player. He's done a great job kicking the ball off, both hang time, distance, location, so I'm really pleased with his progress and just glad to see a kid who embraces competition have success. It means a lot to him, so it's been good.”

Ty Isaac got a roughing penalty in the last game. How do you coach guys when they’re going after the punter to go after the ball?

“Well, first of all, you don’t go after the punter, you go after the ball. That was a misplayed situation. He should have gone with his hands and eyes down to the ball and didn’t do that.

“You know, the one we got the time before on Jeremy Clark, clearly the punter was outside the tackle box and that- Jeremy Clark played the situation right. With a rugby punter you’ve got to try and go up and block it. We just gotta do a better job of knowing how to block punts. Shouldn’t have done that.”

To revisit recruiting Australian punters and that you started last year, is it that they’re better do you think? Better than American-born kickers.

“Here’s what I can say: punter is the hardest position on your whole football team to find. You can find kickers. You can even find defensive linemen. Now, there’s not enough of them, but you can find them. It’s hard to recruit them and get them, you know what I mean? Punters are becoming kind of like an endangered species because there is no skill set anywhere in any sport that youth play in this country that has you drop a rhomboid spheroid flat and try to hit it with your foot. That’s what it’s called in the rule book, by the way.

“So we’re just looking for players, because the one thing is you can find great kickers and they can come in and maybe some of them can play for you as a freshman, but punters you’ve got to develop. So what do you do when the current farm isn’t yielding the crops you need? You expand your farming area.”

With the Australian kickers, the only thing they really have to learn is more of the spiral punt here, or are they learning that there?

“I don’t know. We haven’t spiraled one yet, and I don’t plan on it. Here’s the thing. It’s like this: you take what the kid does well and you do it. So, you have five pitchers on your pitching staff. Each of those pitchers has a different style, and what you do is that pitcher pitches that game in his own style and that’s kind of what we do.”