nikhai hill-green

Now you're making me mad, Attrition Monday, as yet another important 2021 piece from the 2020 class who played less in 2022 is now in the portal. This time it's a guy Michigan *REALLY* could have used in 2022, however. Best I can tell, Alejandro Zuniga was the first to have it:

Losing Hill-Green is frustrating, totally understandable, not unexpected, and totally frustrating anyways, plus argggh and grrrrr and aahh maaaaan. He was, in my mind, one of the diamonds in the rough that helped to characterize the resurgence of the last two years.

[After THE JUMP: I may get a little misty-eyed at this one]

Previously: Podcast 14.0A, 14.0B, 14.0C. The Story. Quarterback. Running Back. Wide Receiver. Tight End. Offensive Tackle. Interior OL. Defensive Interior. Edge. 

INSIDE LINEBACKER: HAVE THE KIDS GONE TO SCHOOL?

RATING: 3

Depth Chart

NOTE: this piece is dealing with the true ILBs, excluding all the EDGE-like players. Players like Jaylen Harrell were discussed in the EDGE preview and will not be talked about here. 

The 2021 Michigan defense had one primary weakness. The edge rushers gobbled up all-conference tackles for breakfast, the defensive tackles held their own against the run, the corners managed to fight blow for blow with Ohio State's receivers, and the safeties included an athletic marvel who was impossible to edge, a trusty centerfielder who rarely ever busted, and several ahead-of-the-curve youngsters getting better each week. But linebacker? That was the the giant glaring weak spot on the defense. 

Michigan's linebacker room last season was set up to fail in several ways. For one, they lost Cam McGrone a year too early, perhaps the greatest example of a player making a poor decision to leave school to early in recent Michigan memory. Rather than rehabbing his ACL in school and coming back to be the man in the middle of an excellent Michigan defense, McGrone bolted to be a 5th rounder who, after one season, was cut by the team who drafted him. Losing McGrone deprived the LB room of one surefire and (likely excellent) starter, but it also further decimated an already thin LB room. 

Secondly, the LB room was set up to fail by transitioning defensive schemes, moving into one with Mike Macdonald that placed extra pressure on them to clean up mistakes that popped up in the 5-2 defensive front. A ton was thrown on their plate, and the loss of McGrone meant that most of that was put on the plate of very young players. Josh Ross played the role of the old dog forced to learn new tricks after spending four years under Don Brown, while the kids were either true freshmen or second year players whose first year was the COVID season. In other words, a whole bunch of guys starting from square one. 

The result was mostly what you expected. Ross was given the hard stuff, for the most part, and did his best, but mental errors and his athletic limitations in coverage dragged down the baseline. The kids rotated in and out, flashing promise and high potential but only occasionally knowing what was going on. Teams like Penn State, Nebraska, and Georgia tortured them with Sixty Minutes of Linebacker Hell, and the pieces beyond those kids were even worse, with the exception of one former VIPER who re-emerged when they reincarnated the position in a minor role. 

Now Ross departs, the Not A Viper is still around but is probably not a true ILB, and the kids are our only hope. Have they gone to school? We'll soon find out. 

IS HE RUNNING IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION?

[Patrick Barron]

The athletic marvel of this positional group and arguably the biggest X-Factor on the Michigan defense is one JUNIOR COLSON [recruiting profile]. Colson's story is unique and memorable, a Haitian who endured the tragic earthquake and was placed up for adoption by his family with the hopes he could obtain a better life in America. That led him to the Colson family in Tennessee at age 9, a family that had ties to U of M and would help guide Junior to Ann Arbor. He didn't know about football until he got to America and was late at picking up the sport even after he got to the States.

[AFTER THE JUMP: No. Serious. Injuries. Please.]

Formation Notes: Bowl games tend to get a lot of looks because coaches use the extra time to install more of them. Georgia used a lot of multi-TE sets and varied formations with them to hunt good matchups. I stuck with numeric conventions to make it easier to follow, so for example this is Gun 13 Heavy (shotgun, 1 RB, 3 TEs, heavy formation).

And here’s the next play with the same personnel, which we’ll call “Gun 13 Empty 5w.”

I referred to this defensive setup as “4-4 Zero” because there are no safeties.

The offense is a “Gun 12 Str F Flex’ since it’s a normal 3-wide with the extra guy to the strong side (“Str”) with an "F" (not on the line of scrimmage) TE flexed out.

Finally, this is Bone:

Substitution Notes: TrueBlueinTexas provides. As in the second example above, Michigan tried to have a 5-2 unit that replaced Moore, Ojabo, and the starting DTs with Jeter-Speight-Jenkins-Harrell. It immediately got burned in a matchup problem. They also ran a lot of 4-3 with Barrett at SLB and Dax Hill on the bench.