Don Brown comments on what went wrong this season
Here's the snippet about last season.
Your defenses have gotten better just about everywhere you’ve been. Until last season. What went wrong?
A: “With the pandemic, we lost a very important element of college football, and that’s spring practice. You’re learning a lot of technique and fundamentals. You’re also attacking the tackling phase, the turnover phase.
“We had an interesting team. We had a group of older guys, but we weren’t very deep. And then we didn’t have a very big junior or sophomore class, so then it became the true freshmen and the redshirt freshmen jumping into strategic roles.
“Now you’re practicing in June, and then the Big Ten decided to cancel the season. Then we lost a couple of key players on defense (to opt-outs). Then you kind of jumped back into practice when they OK’d the Big Ten season, and you had to get ready to play a game.
“The techniques and fundamentals, I could have done a better job in that area. (But) we gotta do the best we can. We ended up missing three weeks due to COVID. We had significant injuries. We were down to playing a walk-on ‘Mike’ (middle linebacker) and a walk-on safety, and they did a great job. But that just gives you the idea.”
January 14th, 2021 at 1:52 PM ^
Kinda glosses over the part about failing to recruit and retain defensive talent.
January 14th, 2021 at 1:56 PM ^
Did he drive Aubrey Solomon to the airport or something?
January 14th, 2021 at 2:03 PM ^
Can we please stop with the Solomon, he isn't very good.
January 14th, 2021 at 2:25 PM ^
Would he have been a better option than some of our rotational pieces? Would guess he’s better than some of those pieces...
January 14th, 2021 at 3:17 PM ^
Ben Mason was a rotational piece at one point. It's pretty obvious throwing bodies at the problem, didn't fix the problem. You need capable quality players, not rotational pieces.
January 14th, 2021 at 6:13 PM ^
I agree with you. If Solomon had stayed, we probably don’t have to find out how shitty Mason is as a DT. Solomon wasn’t good, but neither were any of the other options. I like a rotation with him and Hinton better than Hinton and anything UM rolled out there.
January 14th, 2021 at 6:46 PM ^
Jordan Glasgow was a short lived experience at DT.
January 14th, 2021 at 3:16 PM ^
He's more talented then air.
January 14th, 2021 at 2:06 PM ^
That's the look of a man saying, I don't work there anymore, so why in the fuck are you asking me about that team. Can we just move on.
January 14th, 2021 at 2:08 PM ^
I mean now he works at basically a d2 school that no one cares about so he will still get asked more about Michigan cause no one cares about Arizona going 5-7 every year
January 14th, 2021 at 3:05 PM ^
Totally disagree, the Pac-12 is the most wide-open of any conference every year (certainly more than the BIG, SEC, ACC).
If Jedd Fisch is the real deal (and I hope he is, from his pressers he seems like a genuinely thoughtful and open coach), then they'll be competitive, he himself is a QB-guy.
The common denominator of the failure of Harbaugh's tenure has been far more on the offense (specifically QB's), inability to run stalling drives, WR drops, and turnovers, not Brown's defense (which would show in consistent 55-48 shootouts which never happened, it was always the offense unable to drive/turning over and hanging the defense out to dry). This is the very first year Harbaugh played a QB he ACTUALLY recruited, and this is the end of year 6.
The recruiting holes on defense are real (and I don't feel like the massive DL transfers were fully explained), but that falls on the entire management of the team, and losing Mattison (and subsequently not finding an equivalent), and that still falls on Harbaugh.
this is michigan, for god sakes (lol)
January 14th, 2021 at 3:08 PM ^
Mattison left because he couldn't co-exist with Don Brown.
January 14th, 2021 at 3:13 PM ^
And who's the manager again?
You have to make sure your employees are happy, put out fires, and find replacements when employees leave.
Rap videos in yellow corvettes on the indoor practice field only go so far.
January 14th, 2021 at 3:23 PM ^
And they gave him more money, and they gave him Co-Coordinator next to his name, and they win the B1G every year, and that's what Mattison does.
January 14th, 2021 at 4:24 PM ^
Have we established this?
January 14th, 2021 at 4:32 PM ^
True, they couldn't co-exist but it is more complex than that in that it may have been about the total number of scholarships allowed by Jim to the defense and how many defensive tackles to offer. I can still imagine Mattison saying "I told you that wouldn't work against OSU" but who knows.
January 14th, 2021 at 7:39 PM ^
Didn't he recruit Brandon Peters?
January 15th, 2021 at 7:51 AM ^
can we not with the "harbaugh lost mattison" stuff? greg mattison is a lifelong job-hopper, usually lasting 3-4 years before going somewhere else. harbaugh had him for four - there's no way he'd still be here.
January 14th, 2021 at 3:15 PM ^
Weather is better
January 14th, 2021 at 6:19 PM ^
Have you ever lived there? I lived there for 3 years, and for me, it was only bearable for 6 weeks in the fall and 6 weeks in the spring. Either too hot or too cold the rest of the year.
January 14th, 2021 at 6:00 PM ^
Probably. But watch their defense be top 3 in the country.
Arizona loves Michigan sloppy seconds.
January 14th, 2021 at 4:03 PM ^
it's also the look of a man reading this board in response to a man wondering why the fuck he's being asked about that team.
January 14th, 2021 at 2:03 PM ^
Or the fact that every other B1G team also faced these same difficulties.
January 14th, 2021 at 2:12 PM ^
This.
January 14th, 2021 at 2:23 PM ^
You're right I totally remember every other Big Ten team losing their #1 corner to opt outs and then immediately losing both of their starting DEs as well as portions of the linebacking corps...
January 14th, 2021 at 2:54 PM ^
no, no other team experienced that exact sequence of events. but most teams (osu excepted because nothing bad ever happens to them) had significant opt outs as well. and they were ALL dealing with same lack of practice time that Brown is pointing to.
January 14th, 2021 at 3:10 PM ^
Yes, and the places where that happened -- a bunch of new young starters on defense and opt outs -- looked incredibly, outlier-level bad (PSU and MINN for instance).
January 14th, 2021 at 3:48 PM ^
We got rolled by PSU. And how about MSU?
January 14th, 2021 at 3:51 PM ^
We only gave up 27 points to each of those teams. Defense was bad but offense was the problem.
January 14th, 2021 at 7:45 PM ^
I mean, why would kids leave if they know they have a pretty good shot at the playoff. I know I wouldn't leave a situation like that! Would you?
January 14th, 2021 at 2:55 PM ^
Failure to properly recruit makes the losses of those players hurt a lot more than it should have. That failure is on Brown.
January 14th, 2021 at 2:29 PM ^
This is a bad take. Michigan was one of the youngest teams in the country, and lack of spring practice hurts a younger team significantly more.
January 14th, 2021 at 2:51 PM ^
....as did OSU, didn't seem to bother them too much. Too many apologists on this board that gloss over facts and want to find that one needle in the haystack and blame the entire season on that. We did not play any non-conference foes, just B1G, and we have never been this bad since what the 1940s??? Where was the recruiting to fill in the gaps and those who left early???
January 14th, 2021 at 5:02 PM ^
Yes, let's compare our situation the one in Columbus where they have a high 1st round draft pick at QB and made it to the national championship game this year. Totally fair comparison. Also, were not anywhere near as young as our team.
January 14th, 2021 at 5:58 PM ^
OSU had spring practice before the pandemic.
January 14th, 2021 at 3:15 PM ^
This is an excuse that a B1G bottom feeder could tell themselves to rationalize a bad year. Is this what we are now?
January 14th, 2021 at 3:18 PM ^
Exactly. It’s sparty hawt take bullshit.
January 14th, 2021 at 3:38 PM ^
Umm, yes. I guess the good news is we are now paying our coach in line with those teams.
January 14th, 2021 at 5:28 PM ^
Excuses are like assholes... everyone has... how does that go again?
January 14th, 2021 at 5:28 PM ^
Brown’s shitty recruiting is the the reason the team was so young and lots of schools, like all of them, missed spring ball
January 14th, 2021 at 2:53 PM ^
My man, this take totally ignores each state has its own regulations and COVID did not spread equally at every Big Ten university.
January 14th, 2021 at 2:09 PM ^
Kinda of also glosses over how he fails to make adjustments when he doesn’t have the talent. If you don’t have time to teach technique and your playing walk ons then don’t expect them to play man press coverage
January 14th, 2021 at 2:24 PM ^
He made adjustments! But first we had to spot the other team 21 points.
January 14th, 2021 at 2:32 PM ^
I'm not sure why people think it's easier to teach zone than man coverage. If anything, its the probably the opposite.
January 14th, 2021 at 2:36 PM ^
Exactly. Much more nuance.
Speaking of adjustments, remember when he got Mike McCray roasted when play after play he matched him up man to man on Saquon Barkley, then 2 years later did the same thing to Hawkins putting him on Hamler?
Fun times.
January 14th, 2021 at 2:36 PM ^
Apples and oranges.
January 14th, 2021 at 4:09 PM ^
You can't teach speed or length. Teaching something hard is easier than teaching something impossible.
January 14th, 2021 at 6:05 PM ^
It’s a lot easier to coach and cover up personnel weakness. Trying to cover someone man to man who is faster and a better athlete is not going to work no matter how much coaching you do. Zone defense is actually a much easier concept in just about any situation. Teaching man coverage is very difficult. Not sure why you think otherwise
January 15th, 2021 at 10:36 AM ^
While there is some technique teaching with man coverage, you need very specific traits to be good at it, regardless of how well those techniques are taught. Kids with tight hips, for instance, can be taught by the best man technique coach on the planet and it won't make a difference. As someone mentioned, having length and speed is important and can't be taught. Short space quickness and change of direction (which is tied to fluid hips) is vital. If you don't have those guys you can't run man with consistently good results.