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greg frey

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Brian

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Frey will return for halftime, and only halftime, of the 2025 Indiana game [Bryan Fuller]

Greg Frey's second stint at Michigan was shorter than his first:

It's not exactly his fault that he walked into a Harbaugh team after years of basketball on grass and the transition didn't go particularly well, but hoo boy did it not go well at all. Michigan's ground game improved midseason when it more or less abandoned everything slightly reminiscent of Frey's approach and inserted mauler Juwann Bushell-Beatty at right tackle.

Meanwhile his impact on Michigan's pass protection was either negligible or terrible, since those are the only two options. If he was brought in mostly to be Michigan's Kevin Wilson insider, that might have worked out okay, but with that knowledge downloaded and the offense seemingly uninfluenced by him there wasn't a compelling reason to keep him around. For Frey's part, he doesn't have to be the other OL coach and can return to his alma mater under Willie Taggart.

Former Michigan OL and Arkansas OL coach Kurt Anderson has been rumored as a potential replacement. His resume is pretty thin, with a couple of grad assistant years at Michigan during the dying days of the Carr regime followed by four years as the OL coach at EMU—the ultimate knife-at-a-gun-fight situation— and three years as the assistant OL coach with the Bills before he landed at Arkansas in 2016.

There he coached PFF fave-rave Frank Ragnow, by their estimation the best C in the country for two years running, and coulda-shoulda-been Michigan Wolverine Hjalte Froholdt, who moved from the DL and developed into an elite-level OG:

Arkansas had a top ten run game per PFF... and was 89th in pass protection. He's clearly not working with the same level of talent he'd have at Michigan, so make of that mixed bag what you will.

Comments

Yessir

January 4th, 2018 at 7:16 PM ^

Can't blame Frey's 1 year here for our offense, but changes obviously had to be made.  

We scored 10,13, 20, 10 and 19 points in our losses this year.  No bueno!

First of a couple offensive coaching moves, me thinks. 

 

 

Joined: 12/22/2015

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East German Judge

January 4th, 2018 at 7:18 PM ^

....one of the things that was never clear to me was why did we have 2 people coaching the OL, is that a common thing?  If not, I can not see how it would help the OL to work as a team to have 2 position coaches, I can see it for the DBs, but not on the OL.

Joined: 10/05/2014

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1VaBlue1

January 4th, 2018 at 7:28 PM ^

Yes, he is considered a very good coach.  He was the OL coach for Rich Rod back when Michigan had its last really good OL.  He also led the OL and running game for Kevin Wilson's #TeamChaos at IU before he was canned for being mean to players (Wilson).  He's one of the country's premier zone blocking coaches, and will fit in quite well at FSU with Taggart.  He's also from Florida and has many recruiting inroads in that state.

I think Taggart is going to make FSU much better than Fisher ever had them playing...

Joined: 01/31/2016

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ken725

January 4th, 2018 at 7:39 PM ^

There was a poster yesterday saying it made sense to have two different coaches because the interior has different technique.

To me it also seems like having two coaches made the OL not really come together as a unit. I wonder if some of those missed assignments have to do with having two different coaches.

Joined: 10/26/2008

MGoPoints: 32857

I Like Burgers

January 4th, 2018 at 9:52 PM ^

Its overthinking things.

Just because you have two techniques (at least) doesn't mean you need two coaches.  Just have one coach that can teach both techniques and get everyone on the same page.

Real world example, where I work has bounced back and forth between having seperate social media groups and a unified social media group.  We all post shit to the web regardless of whether we're in one group or two.  But when we've been in seperate groups, there's been several times we duplicate efforts because one group didn't know what the other was doing. Or the opposite -- one group didn't know the other was capable of doing something good/useful. Just have one person running things so everyone is on the same page, knows each other's strengths, and eliminate wasted effort and fuckups due to miscomunication. 

Same line of thinking and mangagement applies to the OL.

Joined: 10/06/2012

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Occam's Razor

January 4th, 2018 at 7:19 PM ^

Nothing spells success like hiring Arkansas retreads. 

Are there no other options? 

Secondly, are we seriously hiring another OL coach and keeping Drevno around for 2018? 

 

Definition of insanity. 

Joined: 10/23/2017

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ak47

January 4th, 2018 at 7:30 PM ^

Yeah filling out the staff with coaches from a failing Arkansas program that couldn't recruit or punch above its weight is a strange strategy.

Joined: 05/05/2011

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I Like Burgers

January 4th, 2018 at 10:08 PM ^

Like...just where do you think Arkansas should be ranked within the SEC West??  During Bert's tenure there, that was the premiere division in all of CFB.  You could argue that's now the Big Ten East, but to give shit to Arkansas for not punching above their weight is kinda insane.  They were very much a lightweight in a heavyweight division.

If you want to draw a parallel to the Big Ten West, they are/were like the Indiana/Maryland/Rutgers of that division.

Just because they didn't win a ton most seasons doesn't mean they didn't have some select good position coaches.  During his time at Arkansas, Anderson's first season they were ranked  72nd in S&P+ for rushing (admittedly bad) but then improved to 12th this season.  In 2015 he was the OL coach with the Bills where they were the best rushing team in the NFL.

Can't remember exactly what happened to Arkansas injury wise in 2016, but two out of three years, that's pretty good.

Joined: 10/06/2012

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bronxblue

January 4th, 2018 at 7:31 PM ^

People will crap on these guys, but Frey is a good coach. He just is. The fact it didn't work at Michigan (and this is becoming a bit of a trend) says more about the problems with Michigan than the coach. Drevno has been here and should shoulder the blame, but people believing Frey or Hamilton are bad coaches because Michigan half-assed a transition to a new running style that demands lots of repetition and experience or fielded an offense with three different QBs and a bunch of spare or young parts at receiver are just mad and don't care about context.

Joined: 11/22/2008

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trueblueintexas

January 4th, 2018 at 9:31 PM ^

I agree there is no need to crap on any coach who is leaving (unless they did Paterno, Briles, Rich Rod-allegedly type stuff). There are many reasons things don’t work out. I do think it is fair to identify what didn’t work because that is what helps you get better. I think there were significant issues with QB development and game prep. For that I think there is probably a better fit than Pep for Michigan.

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