corwin brown

[Big Ten Network]

Previously: 2004 Michigan State

We're back to break down another vintage Michigan Football game. Last week we covered the Braylonfest, which earned generally strong reviews from the commenters (thanks to all those who gave feedback). This week we're turning back the clocks 12 years and looking at the 1992-93 Rose Bowl Game, a rematch between Michigan and Washington and one that would be remembered by many for the electrifying performance of Tyrone Wheatley. 

 

The team: 1992 was year #3 of the Gary Moeller era. After winning the Big Ten in each of his first two seasons, Moeller's '92 squad came into the year with the goal of making it a three-peat atop the league and most of all, hungry to avenge a beatdown in the Rose Bowl at the hands of Washington the previous year. Their 10-2 record and postseason ranking of 6th in the AP poll set them up for high expectations going into '92, especially with plenty of talent returning. 

On offense Michigan did lose the biggest piece of them all from '91, Desmond Howard. After winning the Heisman Trophy, Howard was picked 4th overall by the Washington Redskins in the 1992 NFL Draft. However, the majority of the talent on the offense besides Des did come back for the 1992 season, including starting QB Elvis Grbac, the RB trio of Ricky Powers, Jesse Johnson, and Tyrone Wheatley, FB Burnie Leggette, and 3/5ths of the OL (All-B1G C Steve Everitt and G Joe Cocozzo both returned). To fill in the holes on the team, returning LG Doug Skene kicked out to tackle to replace the departing Greg Skrepenak (though Skene was back at G in this game) while new starters in RS So Shawn Miller and Sr Rob Doherty slid into the LG and RT holes, respectively.

[Bentley Historical Library]

A new class of receivers were needed to replace Howard and Yale Van Dyne, Derrick Alexander and Walter Smith stepping up to take those gigs and getting support help from heralded true freshmen Mercury Hayes and Amani Toomer. Alexander would lead the team in receiving yards by a longshot, followed by TE Tony McGee, who had a breakout season by hauling in 38 catches for 467 yards. Alexander earned 1st Team All-Big Ten while McGee got second team honors, but the story of the offense was the emergence of Wheatley at running back, moving past Powers on the depth chart to run for 1,357 yards and 13 TDs, winning Big Ten Offensive Player of the Year.  Grbac's numbers, while worse than 1991, still earned him 1st Team All-Big Ten and when combined with an offensive line that saw four players earn honors, the Michigan offense scored 35.9 points per game, 5th most in the NCAA in 1992. 

Defensively Michigan was excellent as well. They allowed only 14.2 points per game on the year (7th best in the NCAA) and like the offense, returned plenty of starters. It was liftoff time for DL Chris Hutchinson, who won Big Ten Defensive Lineman of the Year. A team captain and a senior, Hutchinson was dominant most of the season next to fellow returning starter Buster Stanley. Ninef Aghakhan and Tony Henderson helped round out the group up front. The LB group had plenty of experience too, Steve Morrison and Marcus Walker in the middle (Morrison earning All-Big Ten honors) and Martin Davis returning on the outside. 

Returning FS Corwin Brown was the star of the secondary, a co-captain of the team and also an All-Big Ten First Team honoree. He started opposite SS Pat Maloney, who was new to the lineup after the graduation of Otis Williams. At corner, Dwayne Ware returned and was joined in the rotation by Coleman Wallace and true freshman Ty Law, who passed Alfie Burch on the depth chart rather early into the season. Two-year starter at P Eddie Azcona returned for 1992 but would be supplanted by Chris Stapleton, while first year starter at kicker Pete Elezovic took the reins. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: the game]

Brady Interview Football 
soak it in

This week in limited concessions to SEO. So it turns out Esquire googled AJ Daulerio and found this site's bluntly titled piece on him in the aftermath of the ESPN sex tantrum that outed some woman no one had ever heard of for dating some guy no one had ever heard of. They quoted me, so score. That makes me essentially Tom Brady. If I was not getting married in five months this might have had some utility.

I unsubscribed from Deadspin's feed a while ago when they removed full feeds because there was too much junk to wade through just to get to "Dead Wrestler of the Week" or Tommy Craggs writing something long, so I've lost track of what's going on with athlete dongs. Apparently this is:

The topic turned to a video Deadspin had posted of a drunk girl having sex in a bathroom stall at a sports bar in Bloomington, Indiana.  After a few days of trading emails with the girl, who was begging to have the video taken down, he refused to take it down.  Then the girl's father contacted Daulerio to let him know "You gotta understand, I've just been dealing with watching my daughter get f---ed in a pile of piss for the past two days."

So, awesome. We've moved beyond the thin veneer of "making ESPN acknowledge its sexism" or "Josh Hamilton is a hypocrite" or "Brett Favre is someone you've heard of" and we're just randomly holding up unfortunate young women not connected to sports in any way for internet leers. At least no one's pretending anymore. Except of course Daulerio is, so here's Tom Fornelli ripping him for it.

We'll always have Notre Dame. Tate Forcier transferred, completing his destiny. He used Twitter to make his announcement. It's sad and obviously omits "class" when it talks about the various places he worked hard. In retrospect it's all just so obvious. Homeschooling, yo. It either turns you into Tim Tebow or… not Tim Tebow.

This was cosmically ordained. Now Tate Forcier is the avatar of the Rodriguez era: high expectations, fun here and there, eventual letdown, premature termination. I'll miss the moxie. In memoriam:

 

BONUS INCEST SPECULATION: I wonder if he'll end up at San Diego State? He's from San Diego. He has a redshirt year, and SDSU's QB graduates after 2011. Those Montana rumors from earlier now have a lot of credence, but if he's willing to sit out a year home seems like an attractive option.

This is hard, veteran fluff. Mattison is saying some awfully nice things about Brady Hoke:

"When Brady got the job (at Michigan last Tuesday), I said to myself, 'If I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this with Brady,'" Mattison said. "I wouldn't have gone to any other college team. I wouldn't have changed what I was doing for anybody but Brady.

And you can't have a defensive coordinator hire without the magic word:

"You put the best front and the best coverage out there, and the intention is to be aggressive," Mattison said.

Jarrett Irons also says Mattison is a "helluva" recruiter.

Speaking of recruiting, not to be, like, you know but… Michigan has eight coaches. Seven are white and one is Fred Jackson. Most are old, and even the young-ish ones look like old white guys spiritually. This 1) is bad, 2) looks bad, and 3) can be offset if the last two guys are "energetic recruiters" in the same way Zack Novak is "heady."

If Vincent Smith is having problems I'm not sure he's got anyone he can talk to with any clue what it's like to be a poor black kid:

jeff-hecklinskimark-smithal-borges-headshotdarrell-funk
I am sorry to hear your troubles. In these times I always turn to the advice of Robert Goulet.

The only thing separating this staff from your local realtor is Mark Smith's terror at being photographed. For a lot of reasons, we need some people on staff who know who Waka Flocka Flame is. (No points awarded for knowing of the existence of a "Small Wayne.")

I've heard the last two assistants are likely to be guys without ties to Michigan but there's a guy out there who seems like a natural fit: Corwin Brown. He's a secondary coach, and Michigan needs a secondary coach. He's currently with the Patriots but his role one of those assistant (to the) position coach roles the NFL invented to give anyone who gets fired a job. He's probably not making an exorbitant amount of money.

Brown wasn't a good defensive coordinator but ND defensive backs developed pretty well under his guidance and he was a monster recruiter for them. Since I have mentioned him as a plausible candidate there's no way he gets hired, but the fit seems obvious.

The DL coach, meanwhile, can barely know what a defensive line is since Hoke and Mattison are on staff and should only touch down in Ann Arbor to drop off signed LOIs. Beyonce for DL coach?

[Side note on yesterday's post on Mattison: the 12.1 PPG number I cited isn't right. It was around 17 points per game. Oddly, I got this erroneous info from M's own database, which said opponents scored 157 points in '95.]

All tapes have not been erased. If you're wondering, there will not be a Gator Bowl UFR because what's the point? I do have the Utah-SDSU game from this year and I'll do the offense from that game after Signing Day. I might pull some Picture Pages from the defense if I can find something that illuminates the difference between Greg Robinson running a 3-3-5 he doesn't understand and Rocky Long running the D he invented, too.

But anyway someone did bother to look at the tape of Michigan's bowl demolition. Here's Craig Roh playing DT on first and goal:

msu-td

This would be a seven-yard touchdown up the gut. Surprise. That play features errors by Mouton, Demens, and Kovacs and is yet another item to add to the pile of reasons Greg Robinson was a bad idea.

Not a feature. I'm arrogant. I know this for a lot of reasons but there's a statistic to back it up: the Michigan version of quiz bowl (a dynasty, BTW) held intramural tournaments occasionally and my first couple years in college I played in them. They kept extensive stats, and I was in the top five in correct answers. I was number one by a mile in incorrect answers*. Arrogance is not a feature, it's a bug.

There's a response to my post about Will Smith and robots and Michigan's hidebound image of itself on Maize 'n' Brew that "loves" the arrogance of Michigan fandom that I can't disagree more with. Arrogant fans are above all unpleasant to be around, no matter if they're on your side or not. When I was in Chicago for Blogs With Balls there was barhopping wherein I hung out with various Chicago based bloggers. One was Brian Stouffer of House Rock Built. I'm not sure who the other was. Stouffer's a really nice guy. The other guy was ND Nation in the flesh, a guy who actually brought up the African-American grad rate canard in a conversation with a stranger he'd just met. That sort of clueless insecurity is arrogance.

Also, this:

We are an arrogant program, and I am an arrogant fan.  I don't argue with Brian's awareness of the arrogance, but I think there's more to it than that.  He's right - "certain outsiders" can't really teach me, or many of us, anything.  Yes, many of the things rivals say about Michigan are true.  And yes, our bowl game opponents and OOC opponents will say Michigan just "lines up and comes after you" because that's what Michigan does.  Sure, we haven't won a majority of those games (even in the past thirty or so years, Michigan's bowl record isn't fantastic) but the formula works.

Is this:

lemon-of-troy Ned Flanders: Pardon me, neighbourinos. Some of our boys are lost in your town. You wouldn't have happened to see them, by any chance?
Shelbyville Guy #1: Sounds like Springfield's got a discipline problem.
Shelbyville Guy #2: Maybe that's why we beat them at football nearly half the time.

The post is neatly summarized by Shelbyville Guy #2. This is not so good.

*(Which cost five points if offered before the question was over.)

Etc.: Kellen Jones reconfirms commitment, if you missed it in yesterday's recruiting post. Oversigning picks up steam as a media concept. JMFJ on JMFJ. Holdin' the Rope on the early days of Hoke—boy, is that blog name going to be one to explain in a few years.

This qualifies as big enough news.

obi-ezeh-smoked    

The twitters are reporting that linebackers coach Jay Hopson is expected to get the defensive coordinator job at Memphis. Dienhart:

Michigan LB coach Jay Hopson has been tabbed to be Memphis defensive coordinator.

Bruce Feldman is also reporting it.

Instant reaction: good luck with that, Memphis. This site's patience with Hopson ran out two plays into the Notre Dame game this year when Obi Ezeh failed to diagnose a screen and Armando Allen ran for 20 yards. That was Notre Dame's longest run of the year by 20 yards. (ZING!)

After that game I laid out a bunch of facts that pointed to a post-season exit:

Mouton and Ezeh belong to Jay Hopson, and the inside backers are the only guys who belong to Jay Hopson, and they're playing terribly. As far as recruiting goes, Hopson got shut out of Mississippi last year and was the guy responsible for recruiting both defensive tackles who bolted on Signing Day. …I don't recall any recruit mentioning Hopson this year. This blog's even got a tag about Mississippi because of it, and Michigan has shifted its focus away from all the places Hopson has connections. The number of kids they're recruiting in Mississippi is zero, and I can't recall anyone they're seriously involved with who's in the deep south.

Unless the two inside guys get radically better over the rest of the season, I wouldn't be surprised if Hopson was replaced.

After the Wisconsin debacle:

Wisconsin's passing game was almost exclusively zingers over the middle to incredibly open receivers 20 or even 30 yards downfield. On every damn one both MLBs were vastly out of position and the throws were easy. The pair was also very poor in run support: Graham and Martin combined for 21 tackles. They [Ezeh and Mouton] combined for eight!

These are returning starters and redshirt juniors. They have gotten so much worse this year, and it's obvious to everyone from Bret Bielema to stupid bloggers with charts. There is not quite enough data to outright support the ouster of a coach but I find it hard to believe that Jay Hopson could be any good. Maybe he just got stuck with mugs, but Jesus these guys can't even scrape to the right hole when Wisconsin is literally running the same play to different sides of the line four times in a row. Is this a defensive scheme change? I don't think so. Run to the damn hole.

Now that he's actually gone, it's no sugarcoat time: Hopson failed at all aspects of his job at Michigan. At least Tony Gibson can point to the walk-ons and whatnot when attempting to explain what went wrong with his section of the defense; Hopson had two redshirt juniors with three years of starting experience between them. They went backwards, and the big-time recruit backing them up also proved unready.

Meanwhile, a—possibly the—primary reason Michigan lacks depth on the defensive line and might have to turn down a couple of recruits who want to come was Hopson getting "commitments" from two defensive tackles who eventually went to Arkansas and Texas Tech on signing day. Arkansas and Texas Tech! It's not like Florida or Oklahoma or LSU swooped in on these guys.

When Michigan pulled out of any area Hopson had recruiting connections in and the linebackers imploded, this was a matter of time. Hopefully Michigan takes the opportunity to pick up a coach with serious experience or established recruiting chops. Michigan fans will immediately turn their eyes to Corwin Brown, who killed Michigan as Notre Dame's DB coach/DC, but he's an awkward fit because neither he nor Tony Gibson has ever coached linebackers. If Michigan hands the linebackers to Greg Robinson they might be able to use Gibson and Brown as ninja recruiters who split the secondary. I have no idea if that's possible; Robinson's last job as a position coach was a stretch as a DL coach for the Jets from 1990 to 1993. Since then it's been coordinator or head coach.

This makes Rodriguez 0/2 on his new hires since coming to Michigan, with Greg Robinson currently sporting an incomplete. If Rodriguez doesn't make it at Michigan the guys he picked to run his defense will be a primary factor.