Can you talk about some of the positives you took away after watching the film?

“Well, you know, I think when you look at the football game and you say, ‘Okay, what were the things that we can take out of this game?’ I thought we were prepare to play. I talked to our guys about [how] the preparation was right. We were prepared. You look at the first drive, we move the ball down the field the first two drives and unfortunately were unable to convert but the preparation was right. We’ve talked a lot about what we’re doing to prepare for games and right now we’ve just got to play smarter, we’ve got to play more disciplined and we’ve got to execute better.”

What does this offense need to do to regain the consistency and solidity it had against Appalachian State and what did Notre Dame do to break down what you built up in the season opener?

“Well, I wouldn’t say that anything got broke down. The same thing I talked about a week ago; we’re still in the infancy stages. We’re still learning to play consistently and I’ll continue to hit on that because, like I said before, we play well in stretches and it showed in that game. You could see where we’d get movement, we’d create things, we’d move the ball and then we’d lack that consistency and that’s going to be a growth process and it’s something that we work every day in practice on and we continue to talk about it’s about eleven guys on every play doing the right thing. You just can’t play, when you play a quality opponent like Notre Dame- if it’s ten guys doing the right thing and one guy doing the wrong thing you’re doomed so we’ve got to get eleven guys on every play doing the right thing.”

Can you talk about what you’ve seen out of Devin Funchess in the first couple of games, but beyond that the production you’re expecting from those other guys when Devin gets the attention that he inevitably will.

“Sure. Devin’s done an outstanding job. I talked about that before. We moved him around and his ability to process the information, to move into the slot, to move back out by himself, then to have the tight end with him, that’s a lot of information. People don’t realize how difficult that is and that should tell you a little bit about his mental makeup and the other side of Devin Funchess, not just the athletic side that you see. He’s done an outstanding job with that.

“That being said, you could see in the game that there are other guys on this team that can make plays. Dennis Norfleet did a nice job for us, made some plays for us. Amara Darboh, Jehu Chesson. We’re still looking at some young guys to stand up and develop. Freddy Canteen, we’re trying to get Freddy going a little bit so we’re trying to not only let Devin do what Devin does but also develop that corps around him.”

[After THE JUMP: generating explosive plays, evaluating the offense’s progress, and a bunch of Devin Gardner questions]

Doug, when you go back and look at game film with Devin Gardner what’s the message to him and what are the teaching points there? What did you say to Devin, especially when things were going wrong?

“Well, the biggest thing is when you get in a game like that, and obviously the flow of the game never got where we wanted it, we never got the consistency and the flow. We’d get some good things started but then we’d have something that would set us back to get us behind the sticks, and we spent a lot of time talking to the whole offense about that. When you play a quality opponent you can’t play from behind the sticks. You’ve got to stay on schedule and when we got hurt was when we got behind the sticks.

“Devin obviously did some things that neither of us really wanted but that happens. It’s all about the process of learning, going through reads, going through progressions, what did you see, where do your eyes and feet need to be and he’s growing. We’re growing together. It’s the second game I’ve been with him. There’s things I need to do better, for sure.”

Were you concerned that Devin became frustrated when you didn’t get any points out of the first two drives and then as the game went on seemed to become more and more frustrated?

“I wouldn’t say concerned. I think that’s always something with a quarterback playing in that type of game when things don’t go the way you like them to. Like I said, we had a hard time establishing the offensive tempo that we wanted to establish. We couldn’t do that and therefore, the quarterback- you get behind the sticks, you get put in third and long situations and obviously we didn’t play as well as we needed to play on third downs. You put pressure on a quarterback and allow teams to blitz you and do the things they’re going to do when you get behind the chains. That’s not advantageous.”

Some of the pass pro[tection] problems- were those assignment issues or part of the growth you’re talking about?

“Well, we saw a lot of different blitzes. They did a nice job. They had a nice blitz package and I thought our guys really, we talked about it after the game, from an assignment standpoint did a really, really nice job. What you see is what you think is maybe a guy turning a guy loose. Well, that may be a shift where it’s this dangerous one or that dangerous one and he picked one or the other. Now, maybe we’d like him to pick the closest guy to the quarterback but as far as mental errors and busts there were not that many. We had a couple that we’ve got to get cleaned up but for the most part, as far as assignment-wise, it was pretty darn good. We need to be more stout, the quarterback has to be more decisive and part of that is you get into third-and-long in a game like that it makes it difficult. You’re on the road, it’s loud, you’re seeing lots of blitzes so that’s something that we can control through the process of first and second down and what we’re doing there.”

Two part question: first, against Notre Dame being your Michigan debut against a major opponent if you could reverse your role how would you grade your performance looking through the eyes of Michigan fans?

“Not very good. Obviously when you don’t score and you’re the offensive coordinator it’s not good. It’s been a lot of reflection. What could we have done differently and what should we have done differently. Obviously, we take big ownership in this and when you don’t score points it falls on everybody and you start with the offensive coordinator.”

Second part: it looked like a swing kind of over Dennis Norfleet’s head. It looked like a big play. He’s a guy who when he touches the ball can potentially score a touchdown. Are you excited about what you’re going to be able to do? Do you plan on working him more into the offense?

“Well, like I talked about we feel like we’ve got multiple guys that can do things and when you look back at the game what’s one of the things we didn’t do well, that I didn’t do well? We didn’t create enough explosive plays, plays that are a twelve yard run or a sixteen yard pass. We only had five explosives so it averaged out to about one every thirteen plays, something like that. That’s not good enough for us. When you can’t generate big plays that makes it difficult. That means you have to sustain long drives and that’s one of the things that we have to look at and how do we develop ways to get our guys in situations where they can create explosive plays.”

MGoQuestion: How would you evaluate the offense’s pre-snap communication on Saturday?

“I thought it was excellent.”

MGoWellAtLeastWeHaveThatGoingForUs

You mentioned Devin still growing. I think a lot of people have trouble embracing that because he’s a fifth year senior. What about Devin is still growing and why isn’t he more of a finished product at this point?

“Well, he’s in a new system. Second game in a new system.”

Did you ever think about Shane {Morris] at all in that game?

“I thought Shane had a great week of practice. And Shane has done an outstanding job. Said it before, we feel very comfortable with Shane playing. The way the game unfolded and the way the game played out, felt like it was the best thing to leave Devin in the game.”

You mentioned earlier that your offense was in the infancy stage right now. When do you expect that to progress? What’s the timeline there?

“I don’t think there is a timeline. We’ll go as fast as we can. You look at the big picture of things and you’re early in the season, you’re in week two and you go on the road and play a quality opponent and you find out a lot about yourself and you can some of the procedural things that we’ve got to clean up. We had the false start penalties within drives, and that’s what I talk about getting behind the sticks and those kind of things. Those are things we have to clean up.

“One of the other things we did, we went back and we looked at plays from the game and plays that we ran that were either the same exact play that we ran in one stage of the game that was successful and when we came back why wasn’t it successful the second time or what did we do differently or maybe it didn’t work the first time but it worked the second time because we executed properly. A lot of it is we’re running plays that our players, this is their second live game doing it. And we played a quality opponent.”

You talked about your need for explosive plays and your tight end Jake Butt is working his way back in and he’s one of those kind of players. Talk about where his ceiling is and what he brings when he’s fully ready to go.

“Jake, obviously, he gives you a dimension in the pass game. When you can get a tight end that can vertically stretch the field it helps the passing game tremendously. He’s coming off the ACL so obviously as he continues to get healthier and healthier we’ll continue  to implement him in our system.”