Mailbag question: Defense and Obi Ezeh

Mailbag question: Defense and Obi Ezeh

Did Obi Ezeh really have that bad of a day? He had 14 tackles and seemed to be around the ball?

Jonas Mouton had 7 tackles.

Also, in the same type of question Jordan Kovacs had 17 tackles against Michigan State, is he still not that good just because he is a walk-on?

Is this the players’ fault, coaches’ fault, recruiting fault? It seems like one thing we do is not have an actual middle linebacker or linebackers that played that position in high school. It seems like we have a fullback and a lot of former safeties playing the positions now.

Harry T.

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Thanks for the question.

We think the defense overall played a solid game against Michigan State. Were any of the players difference makers, probably not? This game was not lost by poor defensive effort.

Obi Ezeh and Jonas Mouton made tackles, but how many were at or behind the line of scrimmage? And did either make any plays in underneath coverage. You hardly ever see these two guys making plays and pushing the runner backs or receivers backwards. When they do make contact with a running back, it seems like it is always a few yards downfield and then the running back always seems to fall forward.

Michigan State 's tight ends also hurt Michigan in the first half and we believe in most cases the linebackers were responsible for coverage.

Also, on several of the MSU quarterback’s long runs it seemed like both linebackers were out of place, took bad angles, did not hustle and did not make a play. When the quarterback goes right up the middle the linebackers need to make a play.

Our bottom line, the Michigan defense gave the offense a shot to win and that is what we expect. Because we do not believe this defense is good enough to win games on its own.

This is not a 2002 Ohio State defense where they can win games on their own and just count on the offense not to screw things up or make mistakes.

This team needs the offense to score points and a lot of them. Not many would have thought this team could have lost the game if the defense only gave up 20 points in sixty minutes of football, especially when some of those points were made by mistakes by the offense with turnovers and a very failed fake punt.

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Written by CoachBt and ErocWolverine