Blame GREG not RR

Submitted by mxair23 on

The defense is the issue at hand not the offense, or the recruiting. So why call for RR's head when he is doing all that he can to get this team back into shape. Gre Robinson has shown time and time again that he does not have what it takes to coach a defense! I will always stand behing the head coach because I am devoted to Michigan Football!! All we need is a defense and we are well on our way to winning the Big10 again.

 

FIRE GREG ROBINSON!!!

PurpleStuff

October 31st, 2010 at 12:25 AM ^

We got a stop because GERG called a blitz they weren't expecting and after Gordon's sack we were able to hold on by the skin of our teeth to force a punt. 

If shouting at people made them good at football, Notre Dame would be undefeated right now.

Anyone who can look at our defensive roster and expect a not-crappy unit doesn't know anything about football.

RockinLoud

October 31st, 2010 at 12:41 AM ^

Yes, I was saying yelling at them turns them into all-americans, obviously...

What I saw was a defense playing scared prior to that, then I saw a defense afterwards that actually had a slight swagger.  That's what coaches do, they motive, they get them to play with a fire and tenacity.  Does it always work?  Nope.  Does it work sometimes?  Yes.  Can it only go so far?  Yes.  All I'm saying is that in this particular instance, I saw a difference in the defense, lucky blitz or no blitz.

PurpleStuff

October 31st, 2010 at 12:46 AM ^

The defense made one positive play, the sack by Gordon that directly resulted from a blitz called by GERG.  After that they nearly gave back the twenty yard advantage it created and on the next possession they let PSU again march down the field for a FG.  If that is "swagger" then I think your sample size is a little off.  The DB's did not play "scared."  They played "crappy".  They did that because they aren't very good, either because they severely lack talent (Rogers and Floyd) or because they are true freshmen (Talbott, Christian, Avery).  Those are the only guys we got.  The fact that GERG hasn't turned them into even a barely competent unit just means he is a human being.

RockinLoud

October 31st, 2010 at 1:13 AM ^

I would say that they displayed more than they had been up until that point, like I said.  And yes, they were playing scared, and thus were playing crappy, that's what happens when you play scared.  I'm not blaming them in a way, some of them are true freshman, but at the same time that's what a good chunk of the problem is and it needs to be addressed. The lack of talent is a factor, yes, but they lack fundamentals just as much as talent (save for Floyd in some instances).  Is it merely due to youth and inexperience?  I don't know, I want to just chalk it up to that and give the coaches a free pass and believe they're all awesome coaches, I really do.  But at what point should the coaches be held responsible?  Not a simple answer, and is something that I think we're going to be debating on this board for the next year. 

PurpleStuff

October 31st, 2010 at 1:14 AM ^

When experienced players and upperclassmen are starting you can judge the coaches on the defensive side of the ball.  That 2008 offense made a ton of mistakes and couldn't do anything right.  Did it mean Rodriguez and Magee were fucking up or was it because the roster was a big bag of shit?  This defense sucks for the same kinds of reasons (lack of experienced talent and a ton of underclassmen seeing the field for the first time).  Next year the defense will be better/competent (think 2009 offense) and with our offense it will be good enough to win a whole lot of games.  The year after that they have a chance to be really good (think 2010 offense). 

I know it is frustrating but on some rational level we all should have known this was going to happen.

umchicago

October 31st, 2010 at 11:13 AM ^

horribly coached.  these DBs play way off the LOS.  shouldn't this allow them to keep an eye on the WR and the QB.  but no.  our guys are continually running around chasing WRs with their back to the QB.  a prime example was psu's first drive of the game when the QB scrambled for 10 yds on 3rd down to get the first down.  the DBs all had their back to the QB.  one of them should have easily made the play.

it ain't rocket science.  you can harp on talent, lack of experience all you want. but these guys are horrible coached and appear to be getting worse.  Floyd, Rogers and Cam have gone from seemingly serviceable-looking players early in the season to completely incompetent now.

PurpleStuff

October 31st, 2010 at 12:01 PM ^

Please remind me when those guys looked like serviceable players.  When we lucked out and UConn dropped every other pass?  When Rudolph ran past all of them for a 90 yard TD?  When UMass hung 37 points on us?  When Indiana torched our entire secondary?

This is the exact same defense we've had all year and the exact same team everybody knew we would have going into the season. 

umchicago

October 31st, 2010 at 2:50 PM ^

the D was serviceable the first two games.  yes, even the DBs.  at least in the ND game Cam was in a position to make the play, even the 90 yarder, but seemed to misjudge the ball in flight.  ever since, he's consistently been out of position and takes even worse angles.  and to deny that floyd didn't play ok those first few games is just being blind.  his game has regressed considerably and seems to give up big plays each game now.

PurpleStuff

October 31st, 2010 at 3:49 PM ^

We gave up over 500 yards of offense against them, despite the fact that their starting QB missed nearly the entire first half.  Gordon also gave up a long TD against UConn.  The D was only bailed out in that game because UConn fumbled in the red zone and dropped a ton of passes.  And UConn's offense isn't any good.

If by regressed, you mean "continued to play terribly against increasingly competent competition" then yes, this defense has regressed.

New Carr

October 31st, 2010 at 12:33 AM ^

I don't care how many underclassmen, injuries, bad luck/attrition, bs there is....That is all a good excuse to not have a good defense.  It is also an excuse to not have an average defense.  It may even be an excuse to have a bad defense.....

But the worst defense in all of college football?????

Sorry...Michigan recruits to many athletes and has too many facilities and program focus on football to be that bad on defense.  It is a disorganized, confused group of kids lacking fundamentals.  How none of these guys have been coached up over the past year or two is retarded.  Its one thing to be shitty but show improvement.  Its not like they are getting burned on post patterns all day because they are slow as shit.  We get beat on garbage....like draws and screens.  Thats coaching.  Thats recognition and contain that they lack....and it hasn't gotten better over the course of the year. 

I am sick of the "haven't seen the field", young players, etc...excuses.  Again, I could accept having a bad defense....like the 80th or 90th  in the country.  Bottom 25%, fine...whatever, we can have excuses for that, rationalize away...just or unjust.....But to be the absolute worst...that takes effort my friends.  That takes a total f up.  I mean, you think Bowling Green, and Tulsa, and Eastern Michigan have the athletes on defense that Michigan does?  

Sorry, the 3-4 schemes are retarded. 

GERG is an RR hire....Its on him.  I love the offense, but the defense and special teams are atrocious. 

Seth9

October 31st, 2010 at 12:37 AM ^

Rich Rodriguez is the head coach. He hired Greg Robinson and thus bears responsibility for his performance. And he doesn't get a pass for one bad hire because he only hired Robinson after firing Shafer. And let's not even talk about Hopson.

So unless you're going to argue that it's not the coaches' fault that the defense is as bad as it is (and that it's not their fault that it's regressing as the season goes on...), then it's on Rodriguez.

mxair23

October 31st, 2010 at 1:06 AM ^

that is when I'll blame him for the defense! Did he make a bad hire, yes. Can he right a wrong, yes. 

Firing RR will only turn us into ND...we all see what that product looks like!

Seth9

October 31st, 2010 at 2:38 AM ^

If Rodriguez isn't directly coaching the defense, then it's his job to hire someone who will do a good job. He's failed twice. Three times if you count the disaster that was Hopson. Meanwhile, he's not exactly done well at recruiting defensive players either, when you consider that a bunch of them have failed to qualify, and in a number of cases (particularly Dorsey) he should have known that they were not going to qualify.

The bottom line is that Rodriguez, as head coach, is responsible for the entire team, not just the offense. And he's shown no ability thus far to either coach a successful defense, nor hire someone who can coach a successful defense. Or an adequate defense. Or a below-average defense that isn't a total disaster. Sure there's been injury and depth problems, and he gets something of a pass for that. But the defense has been regressing, to the point that an injury-laden Penn State starting a walk-on QB can shred us when they get two weeks to prepare for them. That is inexcusable, especially when you consider that a healthier Penn State only managed to score 24 against Kent State, 22 against Temple, and 13 against Illinois.

MileHighWolverine

October 31st, 2010 at 10:25 AM ^

the fact that McLovin is gonna get killed by whoever they play next, yet he looked like Elway out there last night.  It's amazing that they were able to do to us exactly what Purdue did last year, trot out a nobody and embarrass us.  We scored a ton of points in that game last year too and we still lost.

FingerMustache

October 31st, 2010 at 12:39 AM ^

people can defend Gerg all they want with: its not his fault, our defense doesnt have enough talent or experience. but guess what, anyone can succeed with a lineup of 5star seniors. i dont believe for a second that this defense is in the bottom 20 in terms of talent. and can you really say that we were inferior in talent to UMass.

Gerg has done nothing to warrant keeping his job. his schemes dont work. i cant even remember the last time we won a defensive RPS (this refers to the effectiveness of playcalling).  the veteran LBs, who he specifically coaches, are constantly making mental errors. he isnt a big recruiter.

i dont see how you can blame RR for the defensive struggles. hes not the one making the play calls. hes not the one coaching up the players. hes probably not the one making defensive personnel decisions.

i actually found it interesting that RR ran into the defensive huddle and got into the faces of the players, and on that series we got a stop.

 i really dont care if hes won superbowls. i dont think he has the type of resume that earns him the benefit of the doubt. if it were up to me, Gerg would be gone at the end of the season. (although i think in reality he will get another yr).

umchicago

October 31st, 2010 at 11:21 AM ^

i'm no coach, obviously.  and i don't know the coaches.  but this D is bad in all areas.  yes, even DL.  i won't harp on the LBs and DBs.  that has been done ad nauseum.  but even the DL is poorly coached and we have good talent there.

even with 4 down linemen, the DL constantly fails to keep contain.  how many times are we going to see slow QBs get outside the DE on scrambles???  or be nowhere to be found on cutbacks.  and the pass pressure, well we all know that's non-existent.

SixWingedAngel

October 31st, 2010 at 12:42 AM ^

I think a good amount of blame for the defense can rest squarely on Rich Rod's shoulders.  The reason I say this is because Rich Rod doesn't seem to trust his D coordinators.  Looking across the tenures of both Shafer and Robinson, it seems like Rich Rod is a backseat driver when it comes to the defensive side of the ball.  It is apparently not his forte, but when things aren't going right it is almost like he forces his coordinators to put in packages that he likes (i.e. nickel with Shafer and 3-3-5 variant with Robinson).  In that way he is the ultimate Sunday Morning Quarterback who goes and second guesses the gameplan at every opportunity.

I realize that a large part of this is just him trying to secure his own job, but the fact of the matter is that for a guy who is trying to sell the winningest program on a radically different way of viewing the game; he seems to have very little patience for buying into his D-coordinators' ability to do their own job.  It seems kind of funny to think, but if RR is forced to leave the program, the thing that may have sealed his fate was the fact that he wasn't able to get Casteel (a coordinator he trusts) to follow him out of WVU.

BlueinLansing

October 31st, 2010 at 12:54 AM ^

was there for RR to trust his defensive coaches prior to the Purdue/Shaeffer debacle in 08.  All of 09 and the first 7 games of 2010?

 

HE was the one who wanted Demens on the field, yet on the 2nd f'ing series vs Iowa Ezeh is back out there and Iowa goes right down the damn field.  It was RR who demanded Demens be back in the game, and he f'ing right.

M_Born M_Believer

October 31st, 2010 at 1:49 AM ^

While there is plenty of blame to go around after that less than steller performance on Defense last night.  I find your back seat driver comment seriously interesting.

Let me put it this way.  You are the boss, you hire someone because you believe that individual can do well.  But things start to unravel and the person you put into place to do a job is not meeting your expectation.  You now have  a difficult balancing act.  You need to show respect to the individual you hired by giving them room, yet you know that ultimately you are accountable for the final product.  So seeing there is some lacking in the performance you are expecting do you make the judgement call and start to interject your opinion.  This normally spells doom for the individual that has their boss stepping in.

I believe that GREG is done.  I fully understand the youth/lack of depth.  I have stood by those facts religiously, but I have no faith in GREG anymore as it appears RR is quickly losing faith too.  The difference here is that I fully expect RR's boss (Mr. Brandon) have a heavy influence in who the next DC is.  Again revert back to my first paragraph.  Dave wants to give RR every opportunity to win and flourish, but will inject himself into the next DC hiring......

Easy to make a partial shift in the program than to make a major one.  That is the ultimate decsion that Mr. Brandon will have to weigh......

goblue1327

October 31st, 2010 at 12:46 AM ^

I don't understand the argument "RR doesn't work in the B10". Are you saying the spread n shed in general wouldn't work in the B10? What evidence is there for that? We have the #2 offense in the country. Did you see what the Iowa D did to MSU today? Did you see what our offense did to that same Iowa D (excluding turnovers). So you are saying that horrible defenses don't work in the B10. Well obviously. I don't understand the need to fire RR immediately. If next year, when the two deep will be filled with non-freshman and people who have actually seen the field and the offense continues to gain experience and cut down on turnovers, we should be fine. I know people are upset and the last 2 1/2 years have not gone to plan. But if we fire RR we will be having this exact same conversation about a new coach 3 years from now. 

nazooq

October 31st, 2010 at 3:29 PM ^

How about looking at how the default offense performs (with Denard at the helm) in Big Ten games that are still in contention (which I'm defining as the point in the second half when Michigan falls 17 points or more behind):

Against Indiana: 42 points on 12 possessions (3.5 pts/pos)

Against MSU: 10 points on 7 possessions (1.4 pts/pos)

Against Iowa: 7 pts on 6 possessions (1.16 pts/pos)

Against PSU: 10 pts on 5 possessions (2 pts/pos)

With the default offense, they can't score because Denard can't pass the ball down the field against Big Ten teams with a pulse (MSU, Iowa, PSU).  Maybe it's his shoulder, maybe he's nervous, but he can't pass the ball more than 10 yards downfield.  In his third year, with an offense full of his guys, Rodriguez's offense can't get the job done against Big Ten defenses.

Maize_and_Drew

October 31st, 2010 at 12:48 AM ^

I get the feeling that the coaches aren't on the same page when it comes to the defense.  I know Rich Rod wants to run the 3-3-5, but I'm not convinced that GERG is the right guy to do that. 

As much as I love GERG and his wonderful hair, I'm wondering if it's time for Rich Rod to give Jeff Casteel a call and convince him to come to Michigan.

gater

October 31st, 2010 at 1:02 AM ^

How can Gerg be blamed when he didn't have the ability to pick a single defensive assistant?  Is it a coincidence that Shafer looked terrible with these assistants and now Gerg does?  Shafer is proving he's one hell of a DC as 'cuse. Why would any decent DC want to come into a situation where he has terrible assistants forced on him just because they are the HCs friends?

jmblue

October 31st, 2010 at 1:28 AM ^

DCs rarely have a chance to hire their own position coaches.  I don't really think that's it.  Besides, GERG had the chance to hire whomever he wanted at Syracuse (when he was the HC) and his defenses were still awful.  The evidence suggests that he's just not very good.

VinnieMac25

October 31st, 2010 at 1:25 AM ^

im not going to say fire gerg, but why is he not the one yelling at the players to make a stop.  Pulling them aside, explaining do this, don't do that.  No turnovers on the day and they still lose by 10.  Sure the refs had some shady ass calls, but PSU won on the 3rd down conversion everytime! With a walk-on qb at that, scary what might of happened with bolden in at qb.  3rd and 4, lets play zone safeties are so far deep, the out is covered so the slot is wide open with the curl.  No adjustments at all. 

BlueTimesTwo

October 31st, 2010 at 2:00 AM ^

I know we are short on defensive talent, but I would like to think that a top notch DC would find a way to force a walk-on to try to beat us, rather than let him get into a position where the only throws that he has to make are the ones that any walk-on could make.  We do seem to get RPS'd to death, regardless of the players.

DoubleMs

October 31st, 2010 at 3:40 AM ^

We can't have another DC switch. I think that'd sink year four faster than anything else. The guys like GERG. He just needs to lay the hammer down more. Challenge them to succeed more. He's acting too much like their dad on the sidelines. RR fired up the D with his pep talk where he butted in in front of GERG and started yelling, and they went out and played their hearts out for the rest of that series. 

Don

October 31st, 2010 at 8:49 AM ^

He beat Syracuse all three years that Robinson was there, and WVU put up 41 and 55 points on Robinson's defense in 2006 and 2007.

If it was due to Robinson's tenure with Denver during its Elway-led Super Bowl run, you can balance that out with a 6-10 season as DC with the Jets in 1994, and getting fired as DC by KC after the 2003 season. Besides, if Super Bowl rings automatically translated into college coaching success, then Charlie Weis would still be at ND.

If it was due to Robinson's tenure at UCLA, consider this: from '82 through '88, Robinson was Terry Donahue's DL coach, and during that span UCLA went 66-17-4, and won 7 straight bowl games. In 1989, Robinson was elevated to DC. UCLA promptly went 3-7-1.

If it was due to Robinson's single season at Texas in 2004, that ignores the fact that Robinson was only co-DC and certainly didn't build that defense.

My suspicion all along has been that RR hired Robinson because he knew that GERG was not a fire-breathing guy who would demand that all his assistants do it his way. RR knew that Shafer had no support from the defensive coaches that he brought with him, and figured that an easy-going guy like Robinson would "get along" with the existing staff.

I have the same opinion now about the hiring of Robinson that I did the day I incredulously heard that RR had selected him: Rich Rodriguez may have very possibly hitched his wagon to a horse who was going to drive it over the cliff.

BlueCheez

October 31st, 2010 at 9:14 AM ^

This is RR 3rd year and we are playing 4-5 freshman in the secondary.Why? Because we can't retain anybody.Guys with no shot of being drafted would rather move on and play on the nfl meat squad than stick around.If your a 5 star recruit and weigh 193 instead of the 185 that is demanded,well than you won't be playing.If you are a 5 star corner who is coached to play 15 yards off the LOS and then give up a million yards receiving each week, you too will be benched.We will continually be playing freshman or backups or worse yet walk-ons forever as long as this coaching staff is here.If RR is here next year or the year after it will still be the same thing over and over again."We are still very young in the secondary", but just wait till we get some experience back there.     This is like watching Loyola Marymount basketball back in the day(176-163).This defense sux and always will as long as RR is still here.

Firstbase

October 31st, 2010 at 9:15 AM ^

...that RR, for some reason, isn't the right coach for Michigan. Will one more year make a difference? Probably not defensively. We'll struggle mightily next year, too, notwithstanding the new recruits coming in. 

Not sure what to do. Is it the kids? The coaching? The schemes? I just don't know. I recall a play lastnight when Penn State was driving late and threw a long pass toward the end zone. Their receiver dropped the ball in front of Floyd which was clearly a catchable ball. Floyd was so tentative and out of position that I'm thinking it's more of the "bend but don't break" coaching philosophy that's affected the players than it is the players themselves. 

It's probably time for a defensive coaching change, but RR likes GERG a lot, so both coaches may have to go. 

Dammit. No good options here.

readyourguard

October 31st, 2010 at 10:07 AM ^

DBs are:

  • out of position constantly
  • can't tackle
  • can't cover
  • don't use proper technique
  • and have had more attrition than just about any other position on the team.

Anyone else think we should hold Tony Gibson's feet to the fire? 

I do.