coaching changes
greg frey

Exit Greg Frey Comment Count

Brian

37416908645_52fc0e87ff_z

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

chunkums

January 4th, 2018 at 10:26 PM ^

South Carolina was a debacle where we were missing three of our linemen by the end against a good defense. Whatever. Against Wisconsin (#2 rushing defense) we couldn't run the ball when there was almost no threat of passing. Against Ohio State (#7 rushing defense) our top backs averaged 5.0 and 6.1 ypc, again with no threat of a rushing attack. We couldn't run the ball against elite defenses when we had no threat of a passing attack. Can anyone? 

Joined: 06/30/2008

MGoPoints: 29029

Losher

January 5th, 2018 at 12:14 PM ^

I liked that there were people who told me that wanting the linement to be stronger so they can blow other teams off he ball every play and not just once in a while was stupd and that i obviously didnt wtch the gamers cause we could run the ball against the likes of rutgers and maryland. i want a guy who is going to put it on the players to win at the line and this is something that happens on teams where players and systems dont work together. every year teams all over the country have true freshmen/redshirt freshmen/ true sophomores starting and doing well, it just seems like soemthing needs to be done. 

Joined: 06/02/2012

MGoPoints: 827

Giff4484

January 4th, 2018 at 8:12 PM ^

but at this point after 10 + years of horrible to meh Oline play as a unit, its time to get the best guy out there not guys who were removed by Burt on a meh SEC team.

Out of every coach we need as a program Harbaugh has to hit a homerun with the Line coach.

Joined: 08/16/2009

MGoPoints: 2628

Ty Butterfield

January 4th, 2018 at 8:16 PM ^

I don’t think Frey is a bad coach. More of a situation of the staff not meshing well. Sometimes it happens. Good luck to him at FSU.

Joined: 09/07/2009

MGoPoints: -81685

bdneely4

January 4th, 2018 at 8:18 PM ^

Stating that we just hired the top 10 best assistant coaches and this fan base would figure out a way to complain. I am frustrated and tired of losing, but everything is not doom and gloom. We are light years from where we were 5 years ago and have a coach that has proven success. Do I want more success? Of course I do. I am pretty confident that with how competitive JH is that he is thinking of every option he can to figure out what decisions need to be made for us to be as successful as he thinks we can be.

Joined: 01/06/2009

MGoPoints: 13938

mGrowOld

January 4th, 2018 at 8:27 PM ^

The article didnt say we hired the 10 best assistant coaches but rather 10 assistant coaches from a 3rd tier SEC school with a losing record that just fired their HC. Would being a bit disappointed be acceptable after that article cause it sounds like we're on our way to making that a reality.

Joined: 10/04/2010

MGoPoints: 213285

RobM_24

January 4th, 2018 at 9:32 PM ^

Urban Meyer made Luke Fickell good somehow. Maybe Bert was just weighing down the elite Arkansas assistant coaching talent, and JH will let them shine. (sarcasm, but also ... Bert really does suck, so ...?)

Joined: 01/27/2014

MGoPoints: 63771

newtopos

January 4th, 2018 at 8:33 PM ^

Arkansas might not have the same level of recruits as Michigan, but they recruited fairly well, and very consistently under Bielema -- always or almost always ranking in the 20s of 247Sports composites for recruiting classes. 

Nonetheless, their offensive production did suffer when Sam Pittman was hired away by Kirby Smart to Georgia and Anderson was hired to replace him. 

Pittman: 2014: #22; 2015: #4. 

Anderson: 2016: #39; 2017: #43.

 

 

Joined: 09/26/2009

MGoPoints: 3434

chunkums

January 4th, 2018 at 8:44 PM ^

In an ideal world, I'd rather have Drevno exclusively coach OL than bring in Anderson, who has a worse track record than Drevno. I don't think he would take a demotion, but I think it would be ideal. 

Joined: 06/30/2008

MGoPoints: 29029

Big Boutros

January 4th, 2018 at 9:23 PM ^

I agree. Drevno's resume as an OL coach is extremely impressive. I don't know what has happened here, but if you offered Michigan the guy who successfully started four true freshmen at USC, rebuilt the Stanford OL, coached three Pro Bowlers at SF, etc, we would be thrilled. His playcalling stinks but I would think Drevno is a far superior position coach to Kurt Anderson.

Joined: 07/08/2008

MGoPoints: 23338

andrewgr

January 5th, 2018 at 12:32 AM ^

Drevno has 4 years left at $1 million per year.  Is Michigan really going to eat that contract and tell him to walk?  I mean, it's not out of the question, but I can also imagine the administration balking at that.

UM finds itself in a position very similar to what Ohio State was in during the 2015 and 2016 seasons.  A very good OL coach got promoted to OC and did terribly at it, but couldn't be demoted.  It was a decision that very possibly cost them a National Championship, but to his credit, Urban corrected it after only two years.

Joined: 11/15/2013

MGoPoints: 3059

Maison Bleue

January 4th, 2018 at 9:27 PM ^

What worries me is that we have a couple perfect “Frey type” tackle recruits committed for 2018. Now that Frey is gone, aren’t they just undersized tackles that don’t really fit or current scheme?

Joined: 11/30/2012

MGoPoints: 23341

Jordan2323

January 4th, 2018 at 9:58 PM ^

Is that Frey recruited his type of olinemen. Drevno was recruiting a completely different type than Frey did. Now, whoever is our line coach, hope they can work with Frey’s guys.

Joined: 11/09/2013

MGoPoints: 48922

His Dudeness

January 4th, 2018 at 10:08 PM ^

And here I was singing his praises about fixing our OL... Welp I've been wrong before and I'm wrong again here. Watch the nobody Arkansas OL coach come in and turn it all around. That'd be nice.

Joined: 11/24/2008

MGoPoints: -973290

bacon

January 4th, 2018 at 10:49 PM ^

Rick Trickett is available.  I'm not sure if he's still as well thought of as years ago, but he's had a ton of OL men go pro. He's also been an OL coach for 10 years at FSU and has a national championship.

Joined: 01/04/2009

MGoPoints: 18646

Frank Chuck

January 5th, 2018 at 7:06 AM ^

Look at Arkansas' rushing stats and OL sack stats under Sam Pittman and then do the same for Kurt Anderson. There is a precipitous decline in performance. Need further proof? Look at how UGA's offense (specifically the running game) improved considerably after Pittman joined Kirby Smart at UGA. Compare the last few seasons of Richt versus year 1 of Smart w/ Pittman versus year 2 of Smart w/ Pittman.

Joined: 05/01/2015

MGoPoints: 15858

GRRBlue

January 5th, 2018 at 12:47 PM ^

"...He's clearly not working with the same level of talent he'd have at Michigan..." 

Did I miss some collective cohesive talent over the last 10+ years?

Joined: 12/03/2014

MGoPoints: 4041