My thoughts on who might be DC.

if Schafer is canned. (But stranger things have happened)

...S-H-A-F-E-R.

(at no one in particular)

that Shafer is canned ( very low probability, BTW )

We should seriously make a run at Jon Tenuta. He is playing second fiddle to Corwin Brown and would probably like a Michigan DC job. He'll be a solid, solid hire

That said, I think our Defense will be solid this year. And Shafer will be the DC.

any idea what this season would have been like with Tenuta, and all his MAN blitz Schemes, with the type of terrible lb coverage and safety coverage issues we had?

As much as a like Venerables, could you image his 50 zone blitizing scheme with the group that shafer had last year? if you dont have good lb play, and good safety play, i dont care how many freekin all americans you have at DE, or corner..

take a breath, hope that our lb's and safeties are better next year and stop trying to solve problems that are not caused by schemes or methods. If after a few years are defense isnt getting better, you will see a change, just like you will see if the offense isnt getting better, or the speical teams.
football coaching is 1/3 finding problems, 1/3 seeing if you have personal that can imediately fix those problems, 1/3 coaching the kids you have to fix those problems...

shafer knows the problems, we didnt have kids that could fix them, and it takes time to coach the problems out... relax

Do you have any sources regarding Shafer being missing for recruiting meetings? I haven't heard anything like that.

Mr maizenblue.. dont forget, i dont remember exactly. but 8-9 returning starters from last yrs team, we gave up like 19 PPG in 07, to 30 PPG in 08. WITH THE SAME DEFENSE. Thats def the D-cords fault and we need a new one i totally agree..

Oh, and.. 3rd down and 4, why the hell are our d-backs giving the WRs so much couchin?, .. 3rd n 4 and our d-backs are 10 yards from line of scrimage.. wtf?

FIRE SHAFER

insight on an available, proven DC. Instead it has turned into what Shafer did and didn't do last year. It doesn't matter,what he did, if there is a better option at DC,no matter how many years he is given, then that man needs the job.

I like all of you are ready to turn things around, and I thought I would just let the Wolverine fan base know about a coach they might not have heard of.

If most are happy with Shafer, then disregard my efforts.I myself thinf there are more proven coaches out there to run this defense than what we have.

PERIOD.

Zone Blitz to college football in 97 and won the national assistant coach of the year award, not those two guys. The zone blitz was run out of the 3-4, not tennesee's 4-3. I am not so sure Shafer is gone and if he is, I don't think he's at fault for the defense. Look past the obvious calls for the DC's head and look at the position coaches and ask the question; "Are they the best position coaches for their respective positions or are they good recruiters"? In the case of Bruce Tall he has a reputation as a good coach, but the Hopson and Gibson choices by RR are more suspect. Gibson is known as a recruiter and the secondary was god awful in excution not scheme. Our two returning starters at CB digressed and our safeties never got better. Hopson does not have a distinguished record, but he was known to be a good recuiter from an area that RR wanted to tap into. Shafer has a record of being innovative and succesful in his career. The only time I questioned his scheme was the Purdue game and I still am of the belief that the call to use the 3-3-5 was RR's in some sort of knee-jerk reaction to losing.

Personally, I don't care if Shafer's the guy or not, but if you look at the last few years of defensive stats, Tennessee is not amongst them. Tenuta is not the answer. I would look at someone who has a proven track record in the Big Ten and someone who can get the most of our athletes. There are some guys out in the WAC and the MAC that are near the top in Defensive stats and there are some guys in the MWC none for Defense. I have no objection to Chavous, but I think the reality of getting him out of the SEC is a tough proposition.

that Shafer called the 3-man front. I was under the impression that was RR's call to change up what hadn't been working lately. GSimmons or Chi may know for sure who called for that defense against Purdue, but either way it sucked bad in that game. It was an experiment in a lost season. It's over. If RR can't be purely judged on one season with someone else's players, then Shafer can't be either. No one can logically argue that Shafer is all at fault here and should be gone. GIVE THE MAN A CHANCE TO COACH.

Just because he hasn't been at all the basketball games, maybe he actually recruiting or as RR has mentioned, he could be learning some defensive specialties from Muschamp or someone else.

I don't begin to claim to know more than any coach on the field, or GSimms or Chi, but one thing this season and offseason has taught me, is you can't fire coaches based on little to no evidence of success. Look at where Auburn and Tennessee are. Shafer is well-regarded as one of the best defensive minds in the game.

You can't defeat an army with rubber bullets. Let's give this staff the chance to change the mindset and approach to playing the positions on BOTH sides of the ball before kicking anyone to the curb.

for those of you that have followed the season, and listened to what was happening, this is a rehash. For revisionist wanna-be coaches that didnt really pay attention, you might learn something.

1. 4 vs 3 man front. Shafer is a 4-3 guy. However shafer likes the 3-4 okie defense, ESPICALLY vs spread teams. Most of the top dc's in the country use some type of nikle package against spread teams, unless they have safeties and lb's that play well in space. SO shafer ran a lot of 3 man fronts against the spread teams and as his nikel package. All dlmen prefer 4 man fronts becasue they are dlmen. But straight 4 man fronts, against spread teams is suicide unless you have lb's that make big plays in space (michigan did not this year) the other alternative is that 4-2 nikle that shafer ysed some as well getting thomopson off the field for harrison. The fact that michigan was not good on 3 downs had ZERO to do with scheme and everything to do with the fact that our lb's and safties were not very good in coverage. doenst matter if we had 50 dlmen out there... the 3-3 exepriment was something the rr people wanted to try, and that was the perfect week to do it.. nothing at stack, wr turned qb who we didnt think would be able to throw, etc. it didnt work, so be it... The less spread we saw, the less 3 man fronts we ran, excpet in passing situations... becasue the best way to blitz is with deception, and the 3 man front offers more deception and flexablity of coverages..

2. this year vs last. 2 words, englemon-adams in shafers system these would be the top two safties in the country. michigan lossing them was huge, and no defense can survive the type of safety play we had this year, unless their lb's were studs. I have never seen a defense of michigan implement as many coverage schemes as this year, and that was 100% due to the fact that shafer was trying to cover up major personal issues and safety....

3. THe wings fell off the freekin plane. IT is ok to have an opinion but dont say "we couldnt tackle or cover, but the rest is on shafer" no we couldnt tackle or cover, thats all that has to be said. It doesnt matter if it was tenuta, veneables, Amato, Gruden, etc. just like it takes time implement a zone read offense, it takes time to implement the techniques needed to run a complicated defense. Shafer wasa frustrated coach, that couldnt spend the time teaching the fundamentals that were sorely lacking as the season progressed.. and it became more and more evident that their was not the personel to fill the holes that were hurting us. Look for major improvements next year. if we dont see it, then you can START to talk about coaching... but even then, it took me 4 years at this school to really implement the type of defense that we can run now.

coaches have to be able to fit the right schemes vs offenses, and shafer did that. Then coaches have to teach the fundamentals and the techniques to implement thier system and give the players a chance to make plays, and that takes more than a season to implement.

very seldom was michigan out of possition to make a play, that speaks more about players than coaches, obviously... the coaches for the most part had kids in places to be successfull, but by sometimes a very small margin, did not exectue well. When a lack of exectuion happends on offense you lose yards, when it happends on defense you give up td's... simple as that...

There are lots of reasons why the defense struggled this year, but at the top of the list has to be our offense. I'm banking on offensive consistency next year; then I'll have a clearer idea of what I think of Shafer, if he's back, and frankly I hope he is.

Let me give an example: our D came out gangbusters against OSU. In the first half, they forced several 3 and outs, even Steve Brown got an INT, all while the Nick Sheridan-led offense didn't do shit until midway through the second quarter, and we couldn't catch a kick to save our sorry lives. But I thought, for a while at least, the defensive schemes were working, keeping OSU and Pryor off balance. Graham and Jamison were applying pressure off the edges, Taylor, Johnson and Martin were plugging up the middle. Score at half was 14-7. Shoulda been a lot worse.

Second half: the levees broke (predictably). Tressel and co. made the adjustments, our mediocre players were exposed, and it was only a matter of time. My larger point being, the Defense had zero momentum to play with in that game and throughout many stretches of the season (Granted, one of the frustrating aspects of the year was how in the rare moments we did build early leads--Penn State, Illinois, e.g.--the defense couldn't hold it. If you recall, we sucked hard in this way.).

But I'm willing to give Shafer another year before I call for his head. This past season was a learning experience, hopefully, for the entire staff. Next year let's see how he works as he's more familiar with the personnel. And I think the Purdue debacle, instituting the 3-3-5 et al, pretending Justin Siller was Vince Young, was on Rodriguez, FWIW. I think that call came from the top; it seemed a desperate move to find something that worked and it backfired horribly.

is that Shafer is probably not going to get fired (I think it would have happened by now, even if it was just a forced "resignation"). The only other scenario where we'd be looking for a DC is if Shafer left, which is possible: perhaps a sour relationship with other coaches trying to change his scheme or a sour taste in his mouth from the failure of the season and the heat on him for his disappointing defense. As each day goes by that seems more and more unlikely and if we don't hear something within the next couple weeks, it is extremely unlikely, unless chaos breaks loose in the athletic department.

That being said, I don't think that Shafer has as good of a résumé as either Chavis or Tenuta, but that doesn't mean he's a bad DC or even worse than them. He hasn't shown he can coach a marquee program's defense yet, but that doesn't mean he won't. I don't think that this year's players were the caliber to be a dominant defense, and adding the game time they had to endure, they shouldn't be good at all. Maybe not as bad as they were, but Shafer, like Rodriguez, is instilling a system, and just because (mostly not that good) starters return, doesn't mean they will be as poised on the field while playing out a new system.

While hiring Chavis or Tenuta might be good in the long run, I feel Shafer and the guys from Rodriguez's staff have the ability to create a dominant defense. Hiring another DC will create more rebuilding for our already struggling defense. I just don't think that's a risk this program can afford.

A PHOENIX/DEATH BUTTERFLY HYBRID WILL RISE FROM THE ASHES!

cant we all agree...no matter who the DC is...the 3-3-5 is NOT the answer. period.

With all of the "Dick Rod can't coach!" and "Fire Shafer!" EMOs out there, it's a breath of fresh air to see a reasoned, sane approach to last season.

No one has to be "happy" about this past year, but change for the sake of change is asinine. Even the best coaches look inept without talent. (And as we've seen over the last decade or so, the best talent can look pretty average without a great coach.)

I'm NOT looking forward to bringing in ANOTHER coach, implementing ANOTHER system. SS will be fine if you give him the right players. How many times did he have them in position to make the right play and they simply didn't get the job done?

You don't HAVE to have a scapegoat for what happened last year, and we don't HAVE to take a step backwards and put in a new system.

Well said, Gsimmons.