Similarities between Brent Venables and Mike MacDonald

"Is that it?"

Exactly, you'll never totally shut down the best offense in college football.  NFL teams figured out how to slow down Mahomes and similar teams, and now that approach has come to this level.  It's all about playing deep safeties and max pass coverage against the high flying offenses, forcing them to go on 15-play 8 minute drives that increase your odds of a pick or fumble, rather than blitzing the shit outta them.  If it takes that long to score each time, there's a hard limit on how much those offenses can abuse you.  And most college QB's aren't mentally trained yet to deal with the myriad of coverages and zones that an NFL defense throws at you, which also helps eventually shut down drives, and create more field goals than touchdowns.

There were quite a few articles recently discussing that NFL teams (re)adopt cover 2 against elite quarterbacks to prevent big plays. 

Completely agree about the strategic implications. The strategy was *perfect* against Ohio State.

It didn't work as well against MSU... sort of. MSU did not torch Michigan through the air with regularity; it was Walker making plays that got us. Not a great sign, but it suggests to me that Michigan has a strategy that's repeatable against teams in the playoff. 

Also agree.  We saw this even in the Big Ten championship.  Iowa did a nice job of moving the ball between the red zones, but no big plays and struggled to get it into the end zone.

Disguising the defense forces offenses to second guess and that extra time helps the defense so much.  Not enough can be said for all of the other assistant coaching changes as well.  We have some good players in our secondary, but Clink took them to another level.

I honestly felt like we were outcoaching the other teams all year.

The only chink was when MacDonald learned the hard way about substituting at MSU, but that was probably good in the long run as someone was going to exploit it eventually.

I agree with this more than the original post. It's too early to tell, and in the long run success will depend very much on recruiting. So far the new regime hasn't blown the doors off in recruiting. I'm optimistic that they may have landed some under-the-radar guys who may over-perform because they're well-matched to our new system. And I give them a bye for the 2022 class because it usually takes more than a year to build good relationships. Also, if the other assistants excel then it matters less whether MacDonald is a great recruiter. In the current era, though, I don't see any teams that are top level on a consistent basis without parallel performance in recruiting. And we all know about our geographical disadvantage.

I think our defense over-achieved this year and that coaching probably deserves a lot of the credit. We were middling at way too many positions -- corners, linebackers (because of inexperience), tackles -- when the year started to rank as high as we ended up. We were fortunate not to face good passing attacks early, and I'm amazed at how Gray and Turner improved by the end of the year. I assume Clinksdale gets credit for that. The other key was going with a scheme that leveraged our DEs as much as possible.

So yeah, I'd say MacDonald and defensive coaching were a major key to this year's success. Whether we can expect the same in coming years is a different question. Does anyone expect our DEs to be near as good next year? It wasn't just the sacks Hutch and Ojabo got, they both did other things that helped cover holes. On the other hand our tackles could improve if they stick around, our linebackers should be better, and we're getting some elite talent at corner. Maybe our defense will be good again, but it will probably require a different formula. And other teams now will start trying to devise ways to beat our defense.

I agree that Venables and MacDonald are both very good defensive coaches. I think great recruiting was one of the biggest reasons Venables achieved such sustained success and that it will be a key for MacDonald to do the same.

MacDonald is good for making in game adjustments. This past Saturday Iowa would have us out of position after its QB did a naked bootleg. After halftime, MacDonald had a LB or DB sitting on that bootleg and the TE was covered on the drag route.

Teams with equal talent though could easily take advantage of this aggressive approach or simply decide to take their chances beating the man coverage schemes on the outside (which many teams eventually did).

A great example of this was the Orange Bowl against Florida State.

FSU not only didn’t avoid Jourdan Lewis, they went after him for the game-winning TD. He was an outstanding CB, but to a team with talent, a 5-11 corner with less-than-amazing athleticism playing man is a matchup to attack.

Just hire the next upcoming assistant John Harbaugh points to. I am sure he knows who would be good in a few years. 

The good news is that even if he leaves, Jim knows what kind of defensive philosophy he should not go after, unless your talent level changes to Bama level.

Yeah he's a fast riser. Almost no doubt people will be making him offers this offseason already - both college and NFL. I am sure many many people have noticed how well he corralled OSU as a 34 year old. If we hold onto him for 3 years I'll be happy with that

I didn't realize he's an UGA alum till recently either. If he puts in another great performance in the semi-final his alma mater may take notice too

I remember having great talents here for the past 5 years and we did not see this kind of result. 

This is my (only) worry as well. Replacing two 1st round DEs, including one who had the greatest single season by a DE in Michigan history, and who single-handedly wrecked OSU's gameplan is a tall order. Hutchinson for us in 2021 was basically Ndamukong Suh in (2009?). I don't know that you can plan on being able to replicate that.

Yes but going into the season it was Hutchinson, Dax....and butt. We desperately hoped our defense wouldnt be god awful, we hoped for mediocre, we got a lot more than that.

I'm with you here. He was very good but not very adaptable. The McSorley, Barkley beat down we took against PSU whatever year that was showed how once you figured him out that was it. This is where MacDonald is different. But I'll help you carry that Don Brown flag. He delivered some master pieces. 

Dude also had a legit top 5 defense in 2017, and was NOT the problem in that game against OSU.

Agree and disagree. His defense wasn't the problem against JT Barrett in 2017, but once Barrett went down and was replaced by a RSFr. backup QB getting the first meaningful game snaps of his career, who torched our D by throwing easy crossing routes over and over again, that's all on Brown. We were up 9 points, in the second half, against OSU when Barrett went out; losing their starting QB should have been the nail in the coffin. The fact that Brown failed to make any meaningful adjustment whatsoever in that game, and then had no counter prepared the following year when OSU came out with the same damn gameplan that torched us the year before, is unbelievable.

Agreed. Don Brown was the reason Michigan even had a chance against OSU in 2016 and 2017. His defenses really found a way to take it to OSU the first two years he was here. Now unfortunately OSU adapted and found the way to beat him, and the guy may have been a one trick pony, but when his trick worked it was amongst the best in the business. 

I've got no ill feelings towards Brown. He did a lot of good things for Michigan, but it was clear that it was time for a change.

Logged in to make this point as well. After we lost Durkin after the 15 season Harbaugh needed a DC to neutralize Urban's OSU offense, and he found the man in Brown. We win the '16 and '17 games with just slightly better offense.

The issue of course is Day came and and made the necessary adjustments to face Brown's D, and we didn't adjust back until this offseason with bringing in McDonald.

Also, Clemson has not had to deal with another traditional power on a program re-defining 20 year hot streak like we have. Yeah, Jimbo had FSU rolling for a few years, but that's nothing compared to the run of success OSU has had.

Let's see how McDonald does against Day's inevitable retooling of their offense before we start comparing him to Venables. 

I'm going to sort of agree and sort of disagree here.

Brown produced excellent defenses here. And, as you said, the defenses were not the problem in 16 at all, most of 17 (the only exception being at PSU), or against Bama when we played them.

Recruiting was an issue. I also believe that Brown's defense was one of those schemes that works really well in college under certain circumstances, but has a flaw to it that is exploitable and can eventually run its course. The classic example of this is Chip Kelly's offense at Oregon, which was utterly dominant almost all of the time under Kelly and early Helfrich... and collapsed when exposed to elite DL play against Auburn, LSU, and Ohio State. In those games Oregon wasn't just outscored, they were mauled up front, and Oregon's uptempo zone read game simply didn't have the space to spring guys like LaMichael James into the spread-out defensive backfields that he feasted on against lesser teams. 

Well, we all know how Don Brown liked to run things: press-man, bring that viper close to the box, dominate the line of scrimmage, lock up the receivers. And it worked, usually. Teams just didn't have the time to pick it apart or the space to attack in urgent passing situations. Even when they could scheme guys open, the QB was crushed before they could get a pass off (I vividly remember this happening to McSorley when we played Penn State in 2018--KJ Hamler was sprung open on a *great* play early in the game and might have had a TD... but Trace McSorley was being devoured by Josh Uche before he could throw. We destroyed them). 

It was a very good college defense with a flaw. Because if the DL didn't get severe pressure and you had an athletic mismatch you could exploit in that man coverage (say, Saquon Barkley on Mike McCray, or Chris Olave on the decent but unspectacular Brandon Watson), you could torch him. 

And Brown's poor recruiting contributed to not having the guys to match up in those spots. The DL never quite got back to the 2016-17 level after Hurst left, and our DB recruiting cratered after we got Long and Hill and Thomas. So those mismatches were there to exploit.

**

Now, one other thing I'll say: I've become more convinced of this over time, but as much as we silo the different sides of the ball from each other, we've seen enough football to see teams that have certain characteristics on one side of the ball bleed over into the other side to think it's always a coincidence. The defense and offense on a team affect each other, and not just because of the score.

And Don Brown's defense had a very specific effect on Michigan's offense: They were experienced against man coverage, and had a hard time against zones. In fact, Jim Harbaugh said that specifically after Speight's two interceptions against Florida in 2017: Speight was used to practicing against man, where an overthrow falls harmlessly to the turf all the time. He got burned twice against Florida, and his downfield confidence evaporated.

It's not that Brown never played zone, but he wasn't good at coaching it. In the 2018 OSU game, Michigan actually did play some zone defenses, but they weren't well coached and Ohio State picked them apart easily, including at least one passing TD where we had a guy in zone coverage in the area watching helplessly as Ohio State picked it apart.

Mike Macdonald coaches multiple coverages, and coaches them well. So the zone defenses are better... and, I believe, the offense gets better at learning how to play against them. I was harshly critical of Harbaugh's QB coaching after Rudock, and it is indeed peculiar how rough QB development was for a stretch of time, but in retrospect I think I underrated how important it was that when Rudock got to Michigan, he already knew how to read zone defenses because he played at Iowa for one of the masters of the concept. 

Now, Cade and JJ are practicing against quality zones... and they are improving. Cade has shown noticeable growth picking apart zones this year, particularly against Michigan State and Penn State. 

I don't think it's a coincidence.

Brown was good, but flawed.