On Today's Defense

...suddenly scares the crap out of me.

5-7, 6-6. I have a hard time seeing more than 3 wins the rest of the way with how bad the defense and special teams look.

Some great thoughts. But Firstbase made one at least as good. 

basically 2.....2.....2 f'ing 100 yard rushers (114 & 96).  that stat is scary.

GERG called an excellent defensive game

We gave up 432 yards to a D-II team.  That's not excellent.  The defense looked lost, unprepared and unmotivated.

lol...Yeah, they are just gonna be vanilla and let teams hang around and possibly lose so they dont have to show anything for "big" games...lol

why couldn't we play delaware st again?

ugly kicking + ugly defense = long painful season

I'm beginning to think that GERG has family members that post on here.  How the hell can you say he called a good game?  UMASS is a D1-AA team!  The spread was close to 30 points...it's not like UMASS scored on some fluke special teams plays, they simply marched down the field a few times.  Not good, not good at all.

Rich Rod has to be wondering what he has to do to get a decent DC on staff.

The hand wasn't tipped?  I think you overestimate the complexity of our defense.  We're just trying to get guys in the right spot and have them make their tackles - I highly doubt GERG has some complicated exotic packages that he is keeping under wraps.

Bottom line: We have mediocre middle LB play, a very young secondary, and a line that is a little undersized.  We're just not that good and the only thing we can do is keep trying to recruit better players and try to get everybody on the same page so they can progress together as a unit.

The hand wasn't tipped

What hand is that? The "Michigan has a lot more depth in the secondary" hand?

it was at least partly just a let-down from last week.   Its very hard to get sky-high for every game.

That being said........damn.....that looked like one of the worst Michigan defensive efforts i can recall since........last year.

UMASS is not a bad team....not by a long shot.  But they made our defense look pathetic.

Please tell me we are not really pathetic.....

Without the 2 quick scores just before the half......that was most likely a loss.

We dodged a bullet.

I didn't realize how blindly loyal most readers are on this blog until this game. I'm not advocating a regime change by any means, but if you can't admit that this was an absolutely abysmal, embarrassing showing on defense, then you have lost any hope for objectivity. We were at home. We were playing a FCS school. We gave up more points than either of UMass's FCS opponents so far this year. This was a horrible, horrible defensive performance today.

There's little sense in blaming anyone right now, but this is not a proud day for U-M football. If not for Denard, we would have lost this game. And badly.

am i the only one who thinks that ezeh is a big reason for our defensive struggles. he looks lost in pass coverage. and he allows himself to get sealed off on the run plays way too easily. it seems like he seeks out the TE or pulling guard and is satisfied with just allowing himself to get wrapped up.

Look at some stats from his days with the Chiefs.  I said we'd be winning games 41-38 and I stand by that.  He's still a vast improvement over Hopson with the linebackers.

yeah, I'm going to go ahead and disagree with this. we looked exactly like UConn's D looked in the first half of that first game. slow to ball, unable to wrap up and not really awake at all. there were definitely a lot of plays where guys were in the right spot, but couldn't make a play. that stuff is not on Coach Robinson... but you can not possibly say he called an excellent game.

the scary part is that UMASS looked like a minor league ringer for Wisconsin, except there's no we come out of that game with a win if our D plays like this.

this isn't the end of the world, folks, and whoever said this is the same team as last year, go off yourself, but there's going to be some adversity this year and we're going to have to scratch and claw at times. This team did not look awake today, and UMASS played their guts out behind a bigass line. We'll refocus, and I bet we see huge difference in effort next week against Bowling Green as we prep for the B10 season.

Denard still looks pretty unstoppable, and I liked the emergence of Shaw and Stonum today. We'll be fine. If anything, I like that Denard played the whole game and will maintain his sharpness as a result. Would we all like M to be ahead enough to give him a breather? Sure, but this way he keeps the momentum up.

Our d sucked today.  The scheme and the execution were horrible.

But as long as we don't  show a new blitz or new personnel and we win our D coordinator called a good game.

the question is; do we judge the defense by its best performance or its worst?