Everything Michigan DL coach Lou Esposito said during his pre-Oklahoma press conference

On whether Damon Payne’s performance was a surprise to him

I don’t, it wasn’t a surprise to me. I think, you know, guys perform at different levels, right? Like in practice, you want to mimic their game as much as you can. And I think he’s done that. The last week of practice, he was really on, played really well. I think he’s done a great job of getting himself in shape. And, you know, it’s funny, we talked this week because we’re playing, obviously, Oklahoma. They played him last year when he was at Alabama. And there’s a couple clips of him on tape. And I said, man, you look different. And he goes, coach, we run a lot more here. We work out differently. Like, I feel way better. So I think that was a big part of going into it. And first time playing at home for him, a lot of emotion. He said it four or five times during the game. Like, there’s really 110,000 people here, coach. Like, playing in a home crowd for the first time in a while was big for him. So I thought there was a lot of factors that went into it. But he did a great job. He’s worked his tail off to get to where he is right now. We just got to keep raising the level, raising the level, raising the level. What we’ll do with all our guys.

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On how he’s determining who starts on the inside

I mean, the biggest is whoever practices better. It’s a different deal than last year. Obviously, you had two great players, right? Some of the guys that were in the room here were here last year. The gap between one and six isn’t as big. So guys that practice better do things right. That fit the scheme of what we’re going to do that week. Game plan-wise, those will probably be the guys that roll out there first. But, I mean, you look at a guy like Enow. Enow took the second-most snaps of the interior guys. So just because you don’t roll out there the first snap, that doesn’t mean you’re not going to play the most. So we’re going to go with the guys that are hot. We’re going to go with the guys that are playing well. And we’re going to go with the guys that are doing the things that we need in our scheme to be good.

On whether he’s found players are accepting of rotation

Oh, yeah. Competition breeds success. Iron sharpens iron. That’s part of the reason why you come to Michigan. It’s why you play in games like this, like two great blue-blood programs that have foundations of great offensive lines, great defensive lines. They’re going to compete against each other. That’s why you come to a place like this.

On who graded out the highest against New Mexico

Damon Payne graded out really good. The other guy that graded out well was Trey Pierce. The guys all graded out well. Those were the two highest grades in the room. They did a great job. Trey Pierce is another one that’s, if you look, changed his body. He’s done a great job understanding our scheme, and he’s really starting to play free. I think sometimes when guys are younger, they want to do everything the coach says. They become very robotic. Trey Pierce is not robotic anymore. He’s out there making plays. You see he’s kind of becoming his own player, which is great to see. We need all our guys to do that, and it’s been really good, within the framework of the defense that we’re doing, which has been really, really good to see for those guys.

On what the responsibilities are for his group within the defense

I think the biggest thing for us, it doesn’t really change. We’ve got to create knockback. You’ve got to play with your hands. You’ve got to do a good job with your feet and change the line of scrimmage and build that run wall. For us, there’s really not that much difference. In our scheme, that’s what we do. That’s what we’re asked to do, so it’s been really good for us.

On what he’ll be able to glean from his group on the road against Oklahoma

The biggest thing is you’re going to see an offensive line that’s really good from Oklahoma competing against a defensive front that’s really good from the University of Michigan. I think the biggest thing that we have to do is we have to consistently talk about technique. You talk all the time about when things go wrong. There’s going to be a point in the game on Saturday where something happens that either we didn’t plan for, it didn’t work the way we thought it was going to work. What do you do? You fall back on your training, and your training is your technique, and that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to fall back on our training, and we’ve got to keep hounding to our guys about technique, technique, technique, because there’s going to be something that they do Saturday that they haven’t shown, that they didn’t show last week.

On his reaction to New Mexico’s trick play

I mean, it was an interesting play for sure. I mean, I didn’t realize it until after you watch it. They planned to bounce it off the ground when they rolled it through the center because, I mean, it was interesting. I’ll leave it at that. I don’t want to say any bad words, so I’ll say interesting.

On whether he was pleased with how much presser his group was creating

Yeah, I mean, Cam Brandt had four or five hits. Nate Marshall had three or four hits. Trey Pierce had a hit on the first drive of the game. So, again, I feel like for us, those guys are going to do a great job, and I feel like pressure comes from everybody doing the right thing, right? We don’t put our guys in situations where you have to do this. Like, play within the framework. This call works for this. This call works for that, right? Run, pass. And I think that’s what Wink does a great job of. He does an unbelievable job of playing packages and putting people in spots that they can do things really, really well.

On preparing for John Mateer

He’s tough, man. He’s good. He’s really good. I think the biggest thing is it’s got to be all hands on deck, all eyes on him. Like, that’s the biggest thing. Like, he’s got to be a focal point of what we do every single play. And I think when you do that and you have a group that understands that, good things happen. It’s a lot like when we went and played Alabama with the quarterback that they had. It’s going to be a group effort. One guy can’t do it by himself. Like, I think you talk about different schemes and people doing different stuff to stop him. You have to stop him within the framework. When you start inventing things, that’s when you get in trouble. So we’re going to stop him within the framework of what we do. I think if everyone does their job, we’ll be successful because there’s not a defense that we run that’s unsound. So it’ll be exciting for us. He’s a really, really good player. That’s why he was the number one transfer in the portal this year. And they’ve loaded up. They have the number one transfer portal quarterback. They’ve got the number one transfer portal running back. They have great offensive linemen. They have good receivers. So it’s going to be a good challenge for us.

On what he saw from Nate Marshall

I mean, he is, from the day he got here, you know, he didn’t come in the spring. He came at the beginning of the summer. So he’s been really good. He’s just getting his body right. And I think, you know, Coach Phee’s been doing a good job with him, getting him right in the playbook. I think the sky’s the limit for him. He’s just going to keep getting better and better and better, along with a lot of our young guys who did a great job this past Saturday. So we need more of it. They’ve got to get better. You know, the more good players you have, the better shot you are, the better shot you have of winning games. So that’s what we’re going to do.

On whether Mateer reminds him of any QB he’s seen

I mean, a little bit like the kid from Alabama. I think he throws it a little bit better than that guy. I don’t know if he’s flat out as fast. I mean, he’s a typical – like, he’s probably the shortstop of the high school, point guard of the high school, quarterback of the high school. Like, he is just an unbelievable player. And you go back and you watch him. Even when they had Cam Ward when he was at Washington State, I mean, he’s coming in to run the football. So you watch him. When he runs the ball, he’s like a running back. He’s not like a quarterback. Most quarterbacks, when they run the ball, run unique. And they don’t like to get hit. He enjoys some of that contact. So it’s our job to kind of help him with that.

On whether he caught himself watching Bryce Underwood instead of the iPads

No. Well, I tried to keep our guys from watching him. But, you know, everybody did. And you could see it. I’ve watched a ton of him. I’ve watched every single day from the minute that kid has been on here. He’s made one throw where you’re just like, did you just see that? So it was pretty cool. And, again, he’s one of the most humble football players I’ve ever met in my life. So I was excited to watch him go play. But I did not watch that first series.

On the excitement in the room and the difficulty facing an offensive line that has changed things around

Yeah, I mean, I feel like we’re super excited to go play Oklahoma, right? It’s the next game. It’s a big game because it’s the next one. There’s all the pageantry that goes with it. It’s a blue-blood program. The excitement about going to play Oklahoma, I mean, I think a lot of teams, you watch us last year, I’ve never been part of a defense that faced more screens than we did last year. And I think that’s what you see when you have good fronts, when you have teams that do the things we do on defense. I think that’s what you’re going to see. So I think we’ll see that all year. But super excited. About as far as the O-line goes, I mean, they have great players. Their offensive line is deep. Every kid seems like a five-star recruit. So for us in the breakdown phase, I mean, you listen, you watch, you see. I mean, they rolled in six, seven, eight guys, and they’re talking about playing two more. So it’s a challenge for us. That’s where I think when there’s that unknown, you fall back on your training, right? Like you fall back on what you’ve done. And you play with good technique no matter who they put out there. And you play within the framework of the defense, and you run to the ball, and you play with our pillars, you know, your effort, your angles, your block destruction, your communication, your ball disruption. So, like, you do that stuff, it’s going to put us in the best spot to win. And that’s what we’re going to try to do.

On holding things back from week one to week two

We don’t know. We didn’t hold anything back. Like, for us, we went, I mean, the more game reps you get at running your system, the better off you’re going to be no matter who you’re playing. And, again, like I’ve always said my whole entire career, it’s like, you know, 25 practice reps is like one game rep. So, we’re going to run what we run. Coach Wink is great at that. He was very, very clear with what our vision was. So, we didn’t hold anything back. What you saw is what you’re going to get. And that’s, you know, not everybody does that. I get it. And Oklahoma might not have done that, and they’re talking about different guys playing now, and they held some guys out. So, we’ll see. It’ll be a great challenge for us.

On preparing for Oklahoma’s RBs and what stands out

All of them. I mean, they run hard. They were physical at the point of attack. I don’t know if the run game was an emphasis for them the entire game last week. I think they were, you know, they have really, really good running backs. And then the Ott kid, I mean, you just put the tape on from the year before. He’s electric. That’s why he was the number one running back in the transfer portal. So, you bring in the number one quarterback in the transfer portal, you bring in the number one running back in the transfer portal, those guys are going to be point of emphasis guys for them. And we expect to see the best of those guys come Saturday.

On what Pernell McPhee brings to the program

Unbelievable energy. He’s always got a good smile on his face. He’s like a fire plug energy-wise. And then with the knowledge that he has from playing in the NFL so long, when he can relay that to the guys, it really helps those guys out. And I think he’s done a great job with those guys.

On the edges that graded out the best and what stood out to him

Cam Brandt graded out the highest. I think those guys did a great job. They played hard. They were physical. They set the edge. They won a bunch of one-on-one pass rushes. They hit the quarterback a bunch. I think when the quarterback gets rid of the ball fast or they’re running screens, sometimes it’s hard to get to those guys. So we talk about affecting the quarterback. I mean, we hit the quarterback over 20 times, and I think that’s what you want. You want that guy coming off the ground every play. Whether it’s a sack, whether it’s a quarterback hit, whether it’s a hurry, you want him coming off the ground. And I think that’s a good thing, what those guys did a great job of the entire night, which was really good for us.

On whether Underwood’s scrambling abilities have been a challenge for his group

He has, but it’s like for us in practice, you don’t go near the quarterback. So that’s not really something they would do against us. Maybe they would do it versus scouts and everything, but we haven’t seen it. Bryce isn’t a big runner. He’s not a big runner. He can throw it really, really good. Now, is he athletic? Yeah, he’s athletic, but that’s not the plan for those guys. They’re going to throw him because his arm is generational, and the way he throws it, that’s what they’re going to do with him.

On whether he’s kept tabs on Mason Graham

Oh, yeah. He was at the game on Saturday. I saw him at the game. It was his birthday yesterday, so I wished him a happy birthday. But, yeah, he’s been good.

On whether Graham can be successful in the Browns’ system with a different body composition

You know, they play a different scheme than we do. So, like, what they want to do, they want to gap and attack and get up the field, so it’s a little bit different for him. But he’s a great player. He’ll be fine. He’ll be good wherever he goes.

On Derrick Moore’s performance against New Mexico

Yeah, Derrick played well. He was physical at the point of attack. Got a little banged up, but he played really well for us. I’m excited to watch him play this week. It’ll be – I think it’ll be fun for us. If you watch Derrick, when Derrick’s going, everybody’s going. It’s really good.