Mailbag Question: Shafer's defense and what he might do against certain teams

Hey guys,

Do you think with Shafer's defense will we see a lot of blitzing or will it determine what team we will be playing?

Can you give me an idea like what kind of defense we will play against OSU and coverage’s along with if we will blitz a lot.

Also the same for teams like MSU, Purdue, ND, Utah. I guess all of them if you want to lump them in a certain category for like 3-4 teams and then another 3-4 teams, etc.

Thanks Tommy

------------------------------------------------------

Thanks for the question. Michigan is going to be a base 4-3 team against every opponent we play. Against a team like Illinois would not be surprised to see Michigan play their nickel defense a majority, if not all the time.

Other than that, Michigan, like most teams, will let personnel packages and down and distance determine whether they stay in base or play nickel or dime packages. Teams that Michigan will play mostly nickel against in our opinion include Purdue, Utah, Toledo, Northwestern, and Miami.

Rest of schedule, to include teams you listed, we think you will see Michigan playing combination of defenses as talked about above in this answer. During spring, the practices Michigan was blitzing a little over 90% of the time out of nickel. They included middle linebacker, nickel, and multiple will linebacker and sam linebacker blitz schemes.

Michigan also used a few defensive line stunts, including coordinating blitzes with angles and twists from Defensive linemen. Michigan did not blitz much out of base. In our opinion, this was scripted and part of the scrimmage plan.

In the end, how much Michigan blitzes will be determined by amount of pressure they can generate from front four. When in nickel, we doubt Michigan will rush only three any more than 10% of time

written by CoachBt and ErocWolverine

Thanks for stopping by http://gobluemichiganwolverine.blogspot.com/
If you have any questions please e-mail erocwolverine@gmail.com