Spring Scrimmage

Upchurch

It is spring, the season with all the rebirth and egg-laying rabbits and such. In this pastel, paschal period of the year, everything is positive. Your baseball team could win the World Series, your backups arrived with 20 lbs more muscle/less fat ready to decapitate enemies, and your linebackers exploding everything in the backfield says everything about your linebackers and nothing about your offensive line. So question:

I am about to devote all of my attention to Spring Football. What can I learn about this team with this exercise? Is there anything that my eyes can show me that the hype is hiding?

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Ace: In previous years, I've had the opportunity to see a few spring practices (in the RichRod days, which coincided with my internship at The Wolverine) and get to know a few players both on Michigan's squad and at other levels of college football. Almost universally, the first thing I've been told about spring practices, and the spring game in particular, is to expect the defense to look well ahead of the offense—and that, if this is the case, it's a good thing. That's especially true when installing a new offense, as Michigan is this season.

Mmmm true freshmen dominating walk-ons. [Fuller]

If you're skeptical, think back to those Rodriguez spring games and the general excitement they brought as Tate Forcier or Denard Robinson slashed through the defense with ease. Those were fun games. Those were also bad defenses. It's a whole lot easier to install and run a base defense than to get the offense fully up to speed, even with a limited playbook; if the offense looks like they know what they're supposed to be doing better than the defense, it's a point of concern.

So, strangely, I'm hoping for an ugly spring game—if it even resembles a "game" at all, which it hasn't for years. That's not to say I hope the offensive line looks totally overmatched—quite the contrary—but with a Doug Nussmeier's system still being put in place, the defense should more than hold their own at this juncture. Since we'll be seeing a very unfinished product on offense, I think more than anything we'll learn where the defense stands as they also make a transition, albeit a smaller one, to playing more 4-3 over with a reshuffled coaching staff.

[After the jump: preparing for platitudes]

Thanks to Bryan Fuller for joining me at the Big House this past Saturday to shoot photos of the spring scrimmage. Here are a few photos and our galleries from the game. 

 

one of these things is not like other..(Upchurch)

 

ummm that bicep is freakish (Upchurch)

 

I have a feeling we'll be seeing a lot of this (Fuller)

 

Lewan has a killer stache! (Fuller)

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Photo Galleries:

Photos by Eric Upchurch

 

 

Photos by Bryan Fuller

 

If you have any questions or comments that you would like to pass along, feel free to leave a comment or contact me directly. [email protected]