Mailbag question: WOW our defense is bad
WOW is our defense this bad or did the offense not help the defense (like last year).
Seems like we are giving up a lot of yards this year and yesterday we gave up some big plays, a lot of points, and also seems like bad tackling and bad pursuit angles has returned?
Any thoughts? I know you guys have tried to warn people about this defense.
Gregory G.
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Thanks for the question.
The defense has played about like we expected. They have shown some improvement under Coach Robinson's guidance. The UM defense is just not as talented or as deep as necessary to be more than average.
This is why we have been hounding the efforts of getting more talent on the defensive side of the ball for almost two years now. We started that debate during the 2008 spring clinic we attended, when so many people were telling us we were wrong and were (even as a collection of ardent life-long UM football supporters) haters. Now everybody is saying, "we need defensive recruits," now.
Still all of us (readers and contributors) must give some props. Even with the big plays and the glut of yardage given up, the defense essentially won the game by holding the Hoosiers to field goals after sudden changes of possession and Michigan punts caused by the Michigan offense. The resulting damage control was the key to Michigan 's victory. And given one last opportunity to score Indiana was stopped by the defense again.
People will complain about the yards given up along with the amount of points scored by Indiana. But the defense for the most part except for Boo Boo's long pass play and the long run, where the defense was not set and not in the right spots, played fairly well.
Look at it this way the defense held Indiana to a lot of field goals attempts (the kicker was 4-5) and the result could have easily been touchdowns, especially with some of those turnovers the offense had that resulted in a very short field. But the defense played tough when it needed to and helped Michigan get the win.
In our opinion the offense looked more out of sink then the defense did Saturday, and at times it seemed like the offense went away from what was working.
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Written by CoachBt and ErocWolverine
I totally agree with you assessment of the defense. I'm glad you're not just blindly stating that the defense sucks like many writers and commenters out there.
ReplyDeleteDoes our defense need more talent and improvement? Yes. Is it better than last year? Yes. But having said this, you recognize the often-missed positives of the defense thus far: they've bent, but not broken. They do manage to get important stops here and there. They did shore up in the red zone against Indiana.
And finally, thus far, they've contained the other team's offense better than their defense has contained ours -- which is ultimately the bottom line, ugly or not.
Keep up the good analysis.