Our defense is absolutely horrid. We have the worst defense I've observed since the early 1960's. We have 2 walk-ons starting (Kovacs and Leach), and 4 walk-ons in the defensive two deep (Heinager, Simmons). I have nothing against walk-ons, and I think it is great that they are contributing; however, we lack talent on defense. When Rich Rodriquez took over the Michigan football program in December, 2007, he had a critically important decision to make in a conference that plays "power football" and defense always has been the top most priority for teams to be successful and win championships. The question: Does he retain Ron English as defensive coordinator? Everyone knows the answer, he rejected English and he went to Louisville as their defensive coordinator, and is now the Head Coach at Eastern Michigan University. Coach Rod chose to hire Steve Shafer who did a fabulous job at Syracuse University in 2009, but he left Michigan as being blamed for our football program's demise and was forced to sign a separation agreement calling for his silence and no disparaging remarks. Coach Shafer was Coach Rod's final coaching staff hire on January 11, 2008

Now, we have hired Greg Robinson and a permanently installed a 3-4 defense. Now I can tell you that I like Greg Robinson, and I believe he is a good defensive coach that can help turn around our defense; however, even he has complained publicly about the emphasis being placed on defense with significantly fewer scholarships being allocated to the defensive side of the program. When Greg Robinson arrived, one of the first things he observed and has emphasized is tackling because he saw a team that was poor in tackling as all Michigan fans have observed. Our tackling wasn't perfect in 2009, we continue to miss way too many tackles; however, if one is honest, one could see improvement in tackling in 2009 from the 2008 team. I think Greg Robinson is doing the best he can with the personnel he inherited, Coach Rod's recruiting priorities as well as the defensive coaching staff he is working with (Coach Tall, Coach Hopson and Coach Gibson). Two of the three were candidates for the defensive coordinator position previously. It is too bad he was unable to convince one of his "inner circle" to make the move to Michigan, West Virginia defensive coordinator, Jeff Casteel, is a solid defensive coordinator.

All this being said, the record speaks for itself, 3 defensive coordinators in 3 years and one of the worst defenses nationally in the past two seasons. The blame and accountability for this falls directly to Coach Rod for poor decision making and poor emphasis and prioritization in recruiting, coaching, scheme, strategies, game planning and adjustments.

Please ask yourself these questions and answer honestly:

How many Big Ten teams play a 3-4 defense? (Answer: We are the only team of 11 teams).

How many defensive players have honestly improved in the past two seasons under Coach Rodriquez and staff? (Answers will vary, but not many)

Follow up question to that, did our defensive coaches help to improve our top players, Brandon Graham and Donovan Warren, bringing them to a "new" or next level? (Answers will vary, but many players are not coming to Michigan because the Rodriquez staff isn't sending as many players to the NFL)

We will not return to be an elite Big Ten or national power until we prioritize and emphasize defense again at Michigan, and prepare 24/7/365 for Ohio State like they prepare for us. Jim Tressel has been successful against us because he prioritizes and emphasizes defense and does something every week to prepare for Michigan because he knows it is the most important game on their schedule.

How many defensive backs have improved under Coach Gibson? My opinion is that J.T. Floyd, Michael Williams, Troy Woolfolk and others have not improved much and the lack of adequate coaching has been a problem. We constantly see our defensive backs and safeties with significant space while covering opposing wide receivers, and a lack success with press, man coverage. Even worse, we don't seem to call press coverage on defense from our coaching staff which displays a lack of coaching confidence in our player.

Let me cite a specific player, Brandon Smith. He came to Michigan after being recruited by Coach Carr and staff to be the next Strong Safety. In the Michigan Spring Scrimmage 2009 after a redshirt year in 2008 to learn the new defensive system, he was moved to Inside Linebacker. The coaches lost confidence in him at Safety and chose to change his position to linebacker rather than coaching him to the "next level" at the safety position; now he is back permanently at the safety position. Rumors on December 6 are now that Brandon Smith will transfer, sit out 2010, and have two years of eligibility for another football program where he'll have a better opportunity for his talent to be utilized.

I contend that this is an example of problematic coaching under Coach Rod, and one reason why we are floundering defensively. Of course, we haven't had a chance to see J.T. Turner, Vladimir Emilien, Thomas Gordon, and little of Teric Jones, but the defensive backfield has been poor under Coach Gibson over the past two seasons which tells me and should tell others that he is not what the program needs to develop our players. When we look to our previous coaches like Vance Bedford, Teryl Austin and Ron English, we definitely see a downgrade in coaching performance with our defensive backs.

How many linebackers have improved under Coach Hopson? My opinion is that Obi Ezeh, Jonas Mouton, Kenny Demens, Brandon Herron and others have not improved much and the lack of adequate coaching has been a problem. The move of Stevie Brown to linebacker has had its merits, but also its problems. He did lead the defense in tackles and was good on run support; however, he gave up many big plays and was picked on by many teams in the red zone for his weakness on pass coverage. Kevin Leach did improve, and has been a pleasant surprise; however, we haven't seen many other linebackers due to redshirt: Brandin Hawthorne, Isaiah Bell and little of Mike Jones except on kickoff coverage. None of our linebackers even made honorable mention All-Big Ten in 2009. Obi Ezeh made honorable mention All-Big 10 in 2008, but is not even starting at the end of 2009; that is definitely a step backwards. When we look to our previous linebacker coaches like Steve Szabo and Jim Herrman, we definitely see a downgrade in coaching performance with our linebacking. Coach Hobson didn't do a great job in recruiting, and hasn't brought us many recruits compared to other assistant coaches on the team.

Coach Hopson Off to Memphis as Defensive Coordinator

I don't think Bruce Tall has done a bad job given the fact that we've changed from a 4-3 scheme to a 3-4 scheme, that is a 25% loss of defensive linemen. I think we've seen improvement in all three linemen this year: Brandon Graham, Mike Martin and Ryan VanBergen. We see improvement in Will Heinager, Renaldo Sagesse, Will Campbell and Greg Banks. Coach Tall was only left with 8 scholarship defensive linemen to coach along with 4 walk-ons. One of those 7 was redshirted, Anthony Lolata, and he was almost moved to linebacker. The biggest problem currently on our defensive line is scheme, and the lack of size after changing this scheme. Ryan VanBergen is only 270 lbs. and he regularly sees 320-300 lbs. right tackles in the Big Ten facing him weekly. Our problems on the defensive line are historical, and I've even devoted an entire web page to the issue. We will not get the nation's best defensive linemen unless we change our scheme and priorites.

Offense

Now, let's look at the Offensive Coaches. My opinion is that Greg Frey is a good offensive line coach. One can see development and improvement of players over the last two years. Our net rushing offense was ranked 31st in the nation and 4th in the conference this year, and we'd have done much better were it not for the injuries to Brandon Minor and Carlos Brown. Our offensive linemen: Dave Molk, Steve Schilling, Dave Moosman, Perry Dorenstein, Mark Huyge and Patrick Omameh have all improved this year. We don't know much about the backups like John Ferrara, Elliott Mealer, Ricky Barnum, Rocko Khoury and redshirts Taylor Lewan, Mike Schofield and Quinton Washington; however, we can see that Coach Rod will keep significantly less offensive linemen than Coach Carr. Coach Rod emphasizes bulking up on wide receivers, running backs and quarterbacks and not offensive linemen like Coach Carr did. It was not unusual for us to have 20 of our 85 scholarships devoted to offensive linemen under Coach Carr.

Our wide receivers coach, Tony Dews, is a good recruiter, but he is not getting the job done in developing our wide receivers. Greg Mathews, Daryl Stonum, Martavious Odoms, LaTerryal Savoy, Kelvin Grady, etc. are not running good routes, do not improvise well, do not block well and are guilty of many drops. None of our receivers have made even honorable mention All-Big 10 in the past two seasons. It looks like Roy Roundtree may develop into a gamer, but apparently we are looking to recruiting to fix this position problem and have recruited 6 new wide receivers for 2010 while redshirting Cameron Gordon, Je'Ron Stokes and Jeremy Gallon. Erik Campbell was a far, far superior coach and Coach Rod chose to let him go to bring in one of his "inner circle" in Coach Dews. Coach Campbell did a super job at Iowa this year.

Our quarterbacks coach, Rod Smith, has done a decent job with the quarterbacks; it is not his fault they continue to turnover the ball so many times. Forcier accounted for 15 turnovers this season, 5 in the Ohio State game. Denard Robinson accounted for 7 turnovers, and as a team we had 28 turnovers; one of the worst in the nation and definitely the worst in the Big Ten. Last year, Steven Threet had 10 turnovers, Nick Sheridan had 4 and Martavious Odoms had 5 while the team had a total of 30. In 2007, Ryan Mallett had 9, Chad Henne had 10 and the team total was 25.

Our offensive coordinator and tight ends coach is Calvin Magee; our tight ends have not been impressive and have had many drops. Magee and Coach Rod run the offense, call offensive plays, schemes, plan and adapt game stategies and neither are doing a good job in my opinion. We have been the worst team in the conference and one of the worst teams in the nation in turnover margin over the past two seasons. We do not "take care of the football" as Coach Rod likes to say. Those of us who went through the Bo Schembecher era know that Bo would not tolerate this. People would simply not play if they turned the ball over. It is no mistake that Ohio State leads the conference in turnover margin, and no mistake that they've won the Big Ten title for the past 5 years as a result of stout defense and best turnover margin in the conference. They force turnovers and do not make mistakes, and that is why they prevail. Coach Rod wants to "play fast" and emphasize tempo and speed of the game while sacrificing ball control and minimizing mistakes. It is pretty obvious that both Coach Rod and Coach Magee want a quick strike offense capable of scoring on each and every possession. They discount power football and time of possession as a way of the past, but their way isn't working at Michigan. A spread offense only works when you truly spread out your opponent's defense and run them around so much that they are out of condition to compete in the 4th quarter with the game possibly being on the line or they are so far behind by the 4th quarter that they are now competing against your reserves. This is not happening at Michigan. Other teams are well prepared for our spread offense, schemes and game plans, and they are containing us with a 4-3 defense, can you believe it?

Questions: Is the Michigan "spread offense" really working? Is our offense really spreading out defenses? Is our offense difficult to prepare for and/or adjust to?

Special Teams

Of course, we don't have a designated special teams coach like most Division I teams do so there isn't much to analyze here other than the fact that special teams don't seem to be emphasized much by Coach Rod. We were blessed to have a great punter and net punting game due to All-American Zoltan Mesko and Bryan Wright has been a good kickoff returner; both these players were recruited by Coach Carr and staff. After a terrible first season on special teams in 2008 with fumbles and turnovers galore, we did improve some in 2009 on special teams; however, we are nowhere near the level of Ohio State, Iowa and other solid special teams. Our flyers need to improve significantly as well as our kickoff coverage. Hopefully, Brendan Gibbons will be a solid placekicker for 2010.

Summary

One of the things that has made the Michigan football program an elite program is an elite coaching staff over the years. Coach Schembechler and his staffs did not have a "weak link." It has been true under Coach Moeller and Coach Carr. We simply do not have this under Coach Rod. I'm sorry to be so critical, but to me the facts are clear. Coach Rod would never fire anyone in his "inner circle" to make the Michigan football program better. This "inner circle" has not proven to be Michigan Men yet. Wither Michigan Football Tradition?

Depth Chart for 2009 Michigan Football