Previously in 2021: The Story. Podcast 13.0A. Podcast 13.0B. Podcast 13.0C. 5Q5A Offense: 2021. Last year: 5Q5A Defense: 2020. Defensive End. Defensive Tackle. Linebacker. Cornerback. Safety. Special Teams.

As with the offense, we are going from saddest question towards hope.

1. Do they give up 100 to Ohio State?

Not a great matchup [Bryan Fuller]

The standard has been set: If Ryan Day’s offense can’t score 100 on Michigan’s defense this year with the kind of talent they’ve acquired, he is a failure and Ohio State must jettison all of their coaches and start over. Can the Wolverines do anything to make sure that happens?

We had an entire article in HTTV about the ways Ohio State, Alabama, and Clemson have broken the game. I could show you all the data to demonstrate that those schools’ advantages are well beyond anything even in the top-heavy history of college football. It’s certainly not fun. And the people in charge aren’t even smart enough to understand it’s a problem. Michigan could “sell its soul” to be like Ohio State and it wouldn’t change the math. Kirby Smart’s Georgia is in the running for the scuzziest program in the history of the game, recruits like bonkers in the best place to do it, and even they haven’t broken through.

But we don’t really need to overcome the systemic rot of a thoroughly broken institution. We need to win a college football game. Which is way, way more doable. Last year’s Buckeyes beat IU by a touchdown, and they were in a dogfight with Northwestern until turnover luck turned both games. Penn State played them close in 2019. The year before that Ohio State got boat-raced by Purdue, barely beat Penn State and Nebraska, and needed a guy named Piggy to miss an open receiver in the endzone to not surrender the Big Ten East title to Michigan a week before The Game. The last time they visited Ann Arbor, Michigan had the ball down 2 scores with 12 minutes to go and the blocking to make it 1 score. Also JK Dobbins dribbled the ball. College football games are dumb, and Ohio State has been riding a wave of good fortune as effectual as the bad luck that’s plagued Harbaugh. We reject this because human brains would rather shape information into nonsense than accept the existence of no sense. But luck is just luck.

And here comes my one crazy statement: I think Mike Macdonald probably gives Michigan a better chance of winning a dumb football game against Ohio State than Don Brown, or at least Macdonald’s philosophy does, because it ratchets up the degree to which the result is determined by luck. I don’t believe Michigan upgraded DCs—Brown deserved his fate but he’s still a coaching legend while Macdonald is a first-time coordinator. Don Brown’s system made the ultimate sense: I dare you to beat my players at something hard. Most college teams didn’t have the talent to do that to Michigan’s talent and that led to elite performances. But even at BC, when the talent ledger angled enough the other way, Brown’s defenses got rolled.

Offenses are at such an advantage these days (for regulatory as well as schematic reasons) that anybody’s defense can get shredded no matter the talent. The smart coaches long ago learned to shift their understanding of the game from a military perspective of winning field position to the basketball paradigm of winning possessions.

Macdonald’s philosophy—or at least the Grantham/Ravens ideas he comes from—is more of a gamble. I dare you to find where I left the weak spot…NOPE NOT THERE!

Ohio State with Justin Fields could break those traps on the regular, but Ohio State with CJ Stroud? It could work. A lot of young NFL quarterbacks threw mistakes into the amorphous fronts that the Ravens showed. And this has nothing to do with the front; the way they play zone is to risk having guys out of position by having fast defensive backs get to places they weren’t supposed to threaten by alignment.

They can probably get away with that with Dax Hill.

Chris Olave and Garrett Wilson and the other mercenaries who can’t name a non-athlete graduate of the university they’re loosely affiliated with will get theirs. They're extremely talented, well-coached, hyper-football-focused players who are better than our players. In 2019 Ohio State scored a TD on 8/11 non-garbage drives against Michigan. If you can get that down to 5/11 by putting more of the game the outcome of dice rolls, do you care that those five came on coverage busts instead of a dusted cornerback? This is how Indiana approached it as well, and with even luck they win a title. If you want a nonsensical result, ratchet up the nonsense. The worst that can happen is you still lose 98-39, which isn’t going to cut it for Ryan Day.

That’s all I’ve got.

[After THE JUMP: More dumb football.]

2. How do you run a 5-2 in 2021?

Going outside. [Patrick Barron]

You make the whole thing out of Aidan Hutchinson. Michigan had two unsolvable problems under Don Brown: DT and CB. They’re addressing the first by hoping three defensive linemen can stop the bleeding inside. Even when Michigan had their defensive ends last year they were forcing Hutchinson and Paye to play more B-gaps—a “soft” edge—in order to spill the play outside where their athletes could rally.

This is the first play of last year, but it might have stood for the last two years. Kemp gets blown out, Hutchinson starts from the edge and two-gaps a guy to stuff it.

That’s the kind of thing we had to do in order to stop inside running. Eventually you just say “hell let’s put another guy in there” and live without a linebacker. That frees up Hutchinson to harden the edge, and if they want to try to get around him because he’s not a linebacker, Red says good luck.

What they’re giving up is the Viper, who related to the tight end, whom they’ll chip with the OLB and cover with a safety, as most teams do, or an ILB, as the Ravens often did. Okay, your eyes are welcome to roll as Michigan tries to convert its front into the Baltimore Ravens once again. The Ravens are a very unique team. Allow me to pull out my BEEF CHART from HTTV:

I haven’t updated the weights from the new rosters but if you saw “Juggernaut” flanked by a 336-pound guy and Chris Wormley, and those guys flanked by 265- and 275-pound defensive ends, you start to get what we mean by Line Beef.

The point of that beef is to shut off the interior gaps, period. You would have to be insane, or Woody Hayes (the same thing), and have a fullback to even attempt it. The line is there to eat the offensive line, leaving the linebackers and secondary free to react and get to the ball. What most teams do to beat this is try to run around it, but that takes a TE winning a strength contest. The frontside OLB has some LB in him, but 6’3”/248 OLB Jarvis Jones’s first job here is put up a roadblock:

OLB on the folded ribbon at the bottom

They make it work in the NFL for two reasons. One is they threw cap space into defensive backs who can cover anybody in man. In this they’re no different than Brown, who liked to trust his DBs in man with help inside, have five guys rushing the quarterback, and usually brought the fifth from the linebacker level, ultimately creating a lighter 5-2. Brown’s run defense worked best when he had Hurst and Glasgow at DT, and Winovich and Peppers/Hudson setting an edge to force the ball back inside, with a linebacker ghosting for cutback lanes. It stopped working when he no longer had the DTs to stand up to brute force inside, and when he used the DEs to fix that he bent the rest of his run defense out of shape.

Brown knew this and tried to play small man 3-4. Here’s last year’s 5-2 with Hutchinson and Josh Ross(!) as the OLBs and Paye as the playside DT:

You want Hawkins to set the edge better (he wouldn’t have gotten held if he didn’t come down too far inside) but he’s in tough because there’s not enough meat in Ross and Paye to stand up to the beef.

Adding a nose guard is functionally the same as flinging an extra LB at the line of scrimmage, except a tank isn’t getting lost or ejected, and the tanks next to him aren’t either. The key to playing this way is no different than Brown’s fronts. And like Brown’s fronts when they worked, the key was setting a hard edge. This is also how the Ravens play:

Watch Judon on far left taking on two TEs to close the front door before McPhee slams the back door.

The job of that “OLB” is hard. They have to be strong enough to beat back blocks, agile enough to fight through them, and fast enough to close down the edge. Ironically this is the way opponents forced Don Brown’s defenses to play, because they did not have the right beef for it. This was a play made by Aidan Hutchinson playing the equivalent of Chris Wormley’s job in the BEEF CHART:

The guy playing the role of 2021 Aidan Hutchinson here is Michael Barrett. He has the D gap between the TE that Hutchinson ruined and the TE on the edge.

Here’s another play with Hutchinson lined up inside, but standing up(!) outside of him is his doppelganger Kwity Paye standing up as an “OLB” might in a 3-4:

The early spreads were so effective because all those slow, fullback-eating 4-3 linebackers couldn’t keep up with slot receivers and quarterbacks. Today everyone runs base nickel out there, and Brown liked them even smaller. It was a good idea, but it was also liable to getting beefcaked. Wisconsin took this to the extreme:

That play happens because Dax Hill ends up being the force guy and he is taken for a ride into Brad Hawkins by a fullback. Brown dared you to win matchups, and each week opponents gamed up ways to make those matchups physical. The Don Brown response would be to fling the little bodies upfield and cave the line. Vilain didn’t cave the line, Dax didn’t fling, and Brown is gone.

Wisconsin themselves showed how to make this easier on themselves by widening the front, asking the guy in Vilain’s role to be a hard edge instead of an inside-out pusher. The cornerback sets the edge here but the OLB #41 eats a double of Eubanks and Charbonnet to hold the line.

Brian said on the podcast that guy is a linebacker (it’s 6’2”/240 Noah Burks). While correct, that’s not a linebacker play. It’s an end’s play. His job is to be the wall that stops the run from getting outside.

Naturally you might ask what happens when the offense goes back to a spread and punishes those DEs for being not linebackers. The answer is Michigan changes personnel to a Nickel. Or a 5-1-5. Or a 3-2-6. They could very well start against WMU with the same personnel (minus Kwity) that they did last year. The 5-2 isn’t an answer to spread football. It’s the answer to the answer to spread defense.

3. When can I open my eyes again when a QB drops back and isn’t immediately pressured?

Come back Jourdan [Eric Upchurch]

Next year. This year, well, we don’t know what the heck kind of coverage it’s going to be. Probably a lot more of a base Cover 2 than they were previously, and a mix of Cov1 and Cov3 as their changeup, but really: I do not know. The program has made sure the insiders don’t see anything of value. The coaches are mum, even in private, even after Linguist was replaced with Clinkscale. Conflicting practice reports only tell us they won’t just be one thing.

It doesn’t matter however because there is no such thing as zone defense if the offense is running vertical routes at all of them. Any team can draw up a receiver versus a deep corner and his sideline buddy, because that sort of play is supposed to be a big advantage for the offense. So we’re back to whether Michigan can find two corners who can handle that, and going from there.

I think Gemon Green is fine, borderline good. There’s a Green-hatin fan out there whom we’re arguing with in our heads who’s probably just the ref who let this atrocious OPI go. After Gray got beat a few times Green was glued to Rashod Bateman and shut him down. Here I point out that Green’s effectiveness went beyond the cornerbackin’ parts of cornerbacking. This was A+ safety work, waiting out a loooooong mesh point to get back the TE seam Minnesota was trying to open up, and almost get a pick.

Ricky White Day indeed kicked off with Green getting beat, but he also got back in phase and had his hand on the ball. If this isn’t so well thrown he knocks it loose.

His other contributions to THAT were getting too grabby on a corner route, looking back too early on a rare Lombardi miss, and overreacting to the fade and giving up a dig. Later in the season Green was victimized like everybody else by the switch to zone, which he continued to play like man.

#22 CB at the bottom

This was a play people put on Ross because he was the only guy on screen, and because we’re so used to Cover 1 that not covering the RB feels like an LB issue. In a Cover 2 the CB has to get off his guy when he leaves the zone, and crash back down on the flat. Those are not “you don’t have it” bad plays, and he cleaned them up as he got more comfortable. PFF confirmed my assertion on the podcast that he was, by results, a top-five CB in the Big Ten.

The question then is can they find anybody who can cover a damn fade on the other side. There’s no way to know that from reports of DJ Turner II passing Vincent Gray, because they can’t exactly hype Gray after last season. It’s plausible. There’s nothing about Turner’s play when he got in last year that suggests he’s the solution. He was not available for MSU, which was the best news of the offseason because otherwise we would have to explain why he was behind Jalen Perry. The first thing Turner did when he got on the field was put his arm around a Wisconsin WR when he didn’t need to.

That guy then grabbed Turner’s helmet and tackled him but that call always goes to the offense. That was all we charted of him last year. I wrote this guy’s Hello post and have read Brian’s recruiting profile (YMRMFSPA Brandon Watson) of him six times. He wants to play press man cornerback, he had a 4.6 forty, he’s heady, and he had “change of direction” listed as a thing to work on.

There has also been little to no word about the guys down the depth chart except George Johnson III, the converted QB who should still be a year away. Mighty mite Andre Seldon? Nothing. Four-star Darion Green-Warren? Nada. True freshman Ja’Den McBurrows: nothing from the program, a sliver “I like him a lot” from one of the people I talk to. Former slot Eamonn Dennis got a mention in spring. The talk is all Green on one side and DJ Turner passing Vincent Gray.

My pet theory--and this is a very Michigan Fan from the 1990s theory--is that good offensive teams don't exploit their advantages on fly routes enough because they're inherently low-percentage completions. Teams with slow corners have kiting it on OC cowardice; teams with a major talent advantage want to press that advantage slowly and inexorably, not play the odds over too few trials. Since Michigan's slow CBs were exposed against MSU, and since few teams believe they have a talent advantage over Michigan up front even when they absolutely do, it's open season until a hunter dies. At least we've been practicing it a lot.

4. Why are there walk-ons all over my two-deep?

Because we good. [Patrick Barron]

We heard about quite a few of them this offseason, so I figured we should go over each and they might mean for the defense in order of how likely they are to play.

DT JESS SPEIGHT – 6’5”/310 has played in 14 games and started one—the Citrus Bowl versus Alabama. At that point he was a recently converted OL playing because Kemp was injured. Brian didn’t UFR that one, and I only went back to do the offense so we don’t have numbers for how that went, but it went. He got in last year against Wisconsin at nose and came in for two half positives that equaled a +1/-0 day. There is video of this:

Speight might start over Hinton, which would mean sad things for our latest 5-star DT from Georgia. More likely Speight is rotating with Hinton and Jeter as the fourth DT (with Mazi), and that would really be fine. The guys it affects are Julius Welschof, who’s got to learn the game all over again now, Kris Jenkins, who was a year away by our most optimistic prognoses, and like, true freshmen. Speight was ahead of all of those guys—except maybe Juice—last year and the year before, if they were even on campus. Two years after starting and mostly surviving against Alabama, Speight could very well be an unspectacular role player who does a very important thing for the defense very well. Verdict: Good for Speight, unless he starts over Hinton.

S CADE KOLESAR –  6’0”/196. The son of Johnny Kolesar, grandson of Bill, and grandnephew of Robert, Caden played for Cleveland power Lakewood St. Edwards and was a freshman here in 2019. He went to the regional opening and put up a 4.61 forty, 4.18 (elite) shuttle, and 32.7 vertical. Not coming from nowhere either—he was mentioned as soon as he hit campus by Harbaugh as a special teams contributor, and has been on the field in that role. Now entering his third season, he’s getting talked up as being “on the two-deep” and multiple times observers told me Cade intercepted a pass in fall, the latest with an athletic stab off a tipped McNamara post. Kolesar’s wingspan isn’t great, but that burst and agility could be lethal in a Cover 2 system, and he’s a Kolesar.

“On the two-deep” doesn’t necessarily mean what you think it does. RJ Moten is listed as a starter because he’s the safety in their nickel sets (with Dax the nickel), so Kolesar is at best equal with Makari Paige behind Moten, Hawkins, and Hill. That means he’s ahead of Jordan Morant, who just had the screw removed from his ankle and is probably going to redshirt, Rod Moore, who’s a true freshman already creating buzz, and Jalen Perry, who was moved to safety because CB didn’t work out. Nobody’s arc is damaged by this, and—once again—He’s a KOLESAR. Verdict: Good for Kolesar. Might be a Glasgow.

DT ELIJAH PIERRE – 6’1/272. This is the one Brian got all upset about on the podcast even though Pierre has been here for a year. He’s the guy who replaced Mo Hurst as Xaverian Brothers’ DT. Pierre played 18 games for Brown as a nose tackle and grad transferred here as a potential depth DT because we were going into the season very thin. He didn’t see the field last year. The first I heard of him since his transfer was when he was down 20 pounds on the new roster. Then Alex surprised me this weekend with mention of Pierre on the two-deep. That 272 scares me but when I talked to a Xaverian staffer about Pierre she was all about him as a Rob Renes sort who gets under you and wrecks stuff. It’s possible he’s there to do some of that 45-degree buck 43 stuff that modern Rutgers picked up from Schembechler’s lines. Or it could mean one of the guys passed by Speight—probably Jenkins—is behind Pierre. Verdict: Worrisome for DT depth this year, e.g Welschof. He may also get passed before he sees the field.

DT JOEY GEORGE – 6’5/270. Was getting some spring talk along with Speight, but he lost weight in the offseason, and he hasn’t been heard from in fall camp. Verdict: Good for Pierre.

5. Well?

The lack of athleticism, barring a freshman popping from obscurity, at cornerback means they can’t do most of the cool stuff the Ravens did with their Amoeba defense. They will move guys around to create tough reads for opposing quarterbacks, and that should lead to a few more sacks and interceptions that halt drives, and a few more big plays as well. If the three DTs can’t plug up the interior things could go off the rails. If the second cornerback isn’t any better than last year, things could go off the rails. If they can’t find a coverage that they feel comfortable in again, things are likely to go off the rails. Best case scenario, it’s 2011, when Michigan’s weird looks and bags of tricks and fumble luck covered up for some severe deficiencies. That defense was coached by a much more experienced former Ravens DC, but it also didn’t have anything like Dax Hill or Aidan Hutchinson to cause their own unsolvable problems.

BETTER

• Hutchinson >>> One game of Hutchinson
• Ron Bellamy >>> MIA Bob Shoop
• Weaponized Dax Hill >> Will Somebody Please Coach Dax Hill
• Mazi/Jeter/Hinton/Speight > those guys a year ago
• Josh Ross > Josh Ross trying to fix everyone else’s problems
• Weird scheme > Everyone knows what’s coming
• Sophomore RJ Moten > freshman Makari Paige
• A New Season > How the last one felt by the end.

SAME

• Gemon Green == Gemon Green
• Brad Hawkins == Brad Hawkins/Hunter Reynolds
• The 2nd CB == Never Forget II

WORSE

• Non-Hutchinson OLBs << Kwity Paye+Those guys a year ago.
• First-time DC << Don Brown
• Learning a new complex system << Continuity in the system they were recruited for
• Jordan Whittley/Walk-ons << Carlo Kemp
• Blockers getting to LBs when NG’s tired < Blockers getting on Michael Barrett
• Nikhai Hill-Green < McGrone

LAST YEAR’S STUPID PREDICTIONS

Again, I’m grading lightly because they’re not my predictions.

Hutchinson is an All-American (-ish, COVID makes things weird) and is projected as a first round pick.

He was a terror, and projected as a first round pick before his injury so like yesterday’s Ben Mason prediction I have to count this even though Michigan benefited the absolute minimal amount from it.

Michigan finds one functional defensive tackle in addition to Kemp and things become less horrible there; depth remains a big problem. Hinton is the guy who emerges after a few games.

Both were pretty bad in the early part of the season, hovering above zero for Wisconsin and MSU. There was the moment when Hinton posted a +9/-2.5 against Rutgers. Jeter posted a +7/-0 in the same game. Rutgers had a bad OL, but they both were in the positive again against Indiana. Welschof emerged as a situational guy, and Speight got in a little and was functionally unspectacular. No point; things were not as dire there as in 2019, but that’s because Michigan wasted much of the few healthy games they got out of Paye and Hutchinson covering for the interior, and the LBs kept giving up the edge because they were trying to help as well.

McGrone isn't able to hit Bush numbers because of the DL situation but does round into a reasonable facsimile and All Big Ten player. He also has the option to leave for the draft.

Half a point because he was a 5th rounder, but he was nothing like Bush or an All Big Ten player. He was frustrating but okay to our charting, but quite miserable (58.9 grade) to PFF.

Makari Paige emerges into the nickelback by midseason. (IE, he comes in on passing downs; Hill will play over the slot.)

Point because he was the nickelback in the first game, though Reynolds took over when Hawkins was hurt.

Your second cornerback is Gemon Green. He's very spotty early and rounds into passable.

Point! He was spotty and rounded into passable. Not fair to him that he had to be the first cornerback.

Michigan is again a very good defense against everyone except the top end, but can't do much to slow OSU. Again, SP+ is going to be wonky but they stay about where they were last year (11th).

Nope!

THIS YEAR’S STUPID PREDICTIONS

• Hutchinson draws a ton of offensive attention or they run away from him. We are banging on the table for him to be an All-American, and feel only somewhat vindicated when he’s a first round pick.
• Safety blitzes are back for the first time since Kovacs, and Dax Hill finally gets to do some cool stuff. He finishes the season with 4+ sacks.
• DJ Turner II isn’t the answer either, and Vincent Gray reclaims a starting job at some point in the season. CB remains a trouble spot all year; Ja’Den McBurrows sees the field before the 2020 freshmen.
• Jess Speight plays almost as much as Jeter and Hinton, and this is because Speight can play. All three grade out well in UFR.
• Backup nose is a problem, and a pretty big one because Mazi Smith needs to rotate. They try a lot of guys there. Jordan Whittley is not the answer, but he’s part of the goal line unit and is an absolute unit. It ends up being one of the DTs and this is not ideal.
• Michigan uses a lot of weird personnel packages. One has lots of linebackers and we name it. They spend more time in a nickel than their 5-2.
• They use multiple coverages but base out of two-high (Cov2/Quarters).
• Nikhai Hill-Green sticks at WLB and figures into our future plans. Junior Colson is rotating with the starters by the end of the year, but has some major freshman moments.
• Michigan is significantly better but not good, finishing around 40th in SP+. This includes a much improved performance against Wisconsin. Ohio State scores fewer than 100.