Everything Tony Alford said on Inside Michigan Football pre-Purdue

On how unique it is to have two running backs have 100-yard games together

Well, first of all, thanks for having me. It’s great to be with you. Yeah, it’s a great situation, right? It’s a great problem to have. We got two guys that are highly motivated players and really good players to help the football team and unselfish players. So it’s a good room.

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On what having a full running back room allows him to do as a run game coordinator

Yeah, I just think holistically as a staff, we understand that Justice, what he brings to the table, obviously some big play potential, right? Big runs, explosive runs. And so you’re able to kind of devise some things, like how do we really get guys out in space? And some things that he’s good at. And so yeah, we talk about those things, but it’s great to have him back.

On what it takes for a player like Jordan Marshall to get in space

Yeah, I think a lot of that is, and we talked about this back during training camp. I remember when people said, well, how different are they? They’re very similar. They have a lot of differences, mind you, but they are very similar in a lot of ways, as we talked about. Jordan is a rugged, rugged, between the tackles, beat you up, run through your face mask type of guy. Now, he does have the ability to make some guys miss in space and break some tackles.

So I think the differences are Justice is gonna shake a guy off of him, right? And make some moves and all those things and you’re not gonna get a clean shot on him. Whereas Justice, on the other hand, you’re gonna hit him. You’ll get a shot on him but it’s just a matter of getting him on the ground. And you better have a bunch of people around him because the first guy’s probably not gonna get him. So you better have numerous guys. And then people say like our special teams guy, JB, talks about getting in population around the ball. If you don’t, that’s where he’s gonna get big runs.

On whether there’s a ‘load management’ system with the running backs heading into games

Yeah, so to be honest with you, we don’t go into a game plan, formulating a game plan based on who’s in the game. Now there are certain plays, now I will not lie, there’s certain plays like, hey, we want Jordan in here on this particular play, or we want Justice on this play. Now we can do that by the personnel decisions that we make as far as how we call the personnel groupings, or I can just hear it and say, listen, I want him in on this particular play and that happened a couple of times.

I don’t know if you’re really watching, Jordan might be in the game, and all of a sudden, within a second, bang, I’m bringing another guy, and it’s just because of the play call, and there’s certain play calls that we want now. But we’re fortunate that we got two guys that can run the whole offense, and they can do everything pretty similar to one another. But load management is real, and how many carries and how many hits you’re gonna put on a guy, so you gotta be careful how you do that too.

On how he manages the relationship between Haynes and Marshall and how he’s seen it grow

They’re unbelievably close and very fortunate to have a room like that. All the guys are close where, and Jasper and Micah and all those guys are like the little brothers of the room with those guys. So very close room, they champion each other’s efforts.

They talk all the time about ball and about life, and they critique one another in a positive manner and positive constructive criticism, we say. But yeah, they’re great and they push each other too. And I go back to, I think it was Central Michigan when, I think I told the story to you before, in Central Michigan when, just an opportunity to go score a touchdown for like the one yard line, we’re at a TV timeout and he said, hey, put Jordan in, he needs to score, he hasn’t scored yet this year. I think that just speaks volumes of how the room works and how they pull from one another and push from one another, and they talk about that brotherhood in the room, and that’s real in our room.

On whether Haynes deserves more Heisman discussion

Well, I can’t speak on the Heisman and who should be in it, who should not. Listen, I just want to coach my guys, I’ll let the media, I’ll let you guys deal with that. But I will say this, that if there’s any award that’s out there for what they bring to a football team and how they play, obviously, I’m biased, he’s one of my guys, and I think he should be up in those conversations. But again, I’m not wrapped up into that, I just want them to play the best they can for our football team and for our offense and let the chips fall where they fall.

On the growth from the offensive line

Well, it does affect me. I think just the cohesiveness of the unit, and you played offense line at such a high level and as such a great player as yourself, you know having all five of those guys in unison at all times, you have people coming and going, that can kind of mess up some things. But I think they’re getting better, I really do, and they’re becoming more rugged and moving guys off the line of scrimmage better.

But I think they’re working, they know who’s by their side and who’s to the left of them, who’s to the right of them, and that helps, and the communication that they’re having has been great. I think Grant’s doing a really good job with that. So we’re getting better at the right time, we’re starting to build at the right time.

On how Haynes and Marshall have stepped up in pass pro

Yeah, I think what, honestly, that’s one of the things we talked about just yesterday. I think we have to get better. We’re not bad, but we got to get better, and a lot of that is just practice, and there’s a fine line, you talk about that load management, and there’s a fine line in practice.

How much physical things are you going to do as far as the hitting in practice? Because these guys, they get banged up, and so there’s a fine line there, and when you’re not doing it in practice, it’s not showing up in the game, or if you are doing it in practice, it does show up in the game. So there’s a fine line. I think last week, I think we could have been better, and so we’ve got to manage that a little bit this week to see how we can get that done without too many hits on the body as well.

On determining when to call a read-option or RPO play against certain defenses

Yeah, I think a lot of that’s just, especially working from outside in, how do we get the ball on the perimeter? Because that’s one thing we can, obviously, a lot of people are going to try to stack it up, stack the box, keep it inside the tackles. So, how can you get the ball on the perimeters is always the big one. And then what type of front are they running? Are they moving a lot? Are they slanting? Are they twisting? Are they angling? What are they doing?

So there’s a lot of that that goes into it, and then matchups, right? And they say, can we match up with certain players? And maybe it’s a three technique. Can we handle them in a zone scheme or not? Do we need to double them in gap scheme? And what do we need to do? So there’s a lot that goes into that, and it is a collaborative effort, however.

On accounting for the extra blocker on certain run plays

Yeah, and I think that’s when you start talking about equating the numbers, right? And okay, they’re in a two high, they’re in a single high. How are you equating numbers? How are you handling the guy you can’t block? Is it sometimes you just say, hey, Justice, Jordan, you got to go beat him. You got to go win.

Another time you say, okay, well, we’re going to read him, and we’re going to throw an RPO off of him. Another time we say, okay, well, the quarterback, you account for him. So there’s a multitude of ways to do it. And I don’t think there’s one defining way that still has to be this way. I think that’s the luxury of having a multiplicity in your offense where you can do a multitude of things. And I know when it first started, how do you block the five technique?

Remember some of the creatures that were running around in the SEC and in the Big 10? Aidan Hutchinson, how are you handling him? Do you want to put a tackle on him? Do you want to put a tight end on him? Do you want to just read him, where you don’t have to block him, and let him decide how it works out? So there’s a multitude of ways that you can do that. But it’s all about match-ups.

On what the best thing Michigan does when the run game is at its best

I think when we finally say we’re running downhill, but it’s not like that. When you’re just running downhill at guys, they’re going to pin your ears back, and we’re going to just go vertically downhill at them. I think that’s when we’re at our best. I think we have gotten better at the outside zone scheme, but I’m still a guy, I think we’re best when we know, hey, we’re running the ball downhill at you.

On what goes into ball-handling skills for a quarterback on keepers or fakes

Yeah, a lot of practice, and a lot of the quarterback, running back mesh. We put another body across from him, where there’s certain reads, okay, one time he’s pulling, another time he’s not. We talk in terms with the running back, we talk about soft pocket, where you can’t just clamp down on the ball when it’s there, you can’t take it, he’s got to be a field, is he going to press it into the stomach more, take the ball on field? So there’s a lot that goes into that, too. But it’s just time on task.

On whether it’s surprising Bryce Underwood is so advanced in the mesh game

Yeah, I mean, he’s been coached, obviously, before he got here, but the guy is so intentional and purposeful about his work, and the way he goes about his daily habits as far as preparing himself to play, it’s been amazing for an 18-year-old kid to do that. And so, obviously, very, very impressed with him, not just on the field, but off the field in his habits.

On Jasper Parker’s progress

Getting better every week, he’s getting better, and he’s improving. I think he’s becoming much more comfortable in his skin, if you will, much more comfortable within the confines of the details. So I think the last time we talked, we talked about just how detailed you have to be at this level of the game to play what we’d like to say is championship-level type football.

You have to be so detailed, which most high school kids, they haven’t had to do that at that level. And for that length of time. And so he’s really, really improving. You can see it, he’s becoming more comfortable. There’s not a whole lot of his wide eyes, and he’s looking all over the place. He’s kind of locked in on exactly what he should look at. And so very impressed with what he’s doing and how he’s coming along. And again, I said, I think the sky’s the limit for him, I think he’s gonna be a really, really good player for us.

On other players that would be forced into action if needed

Yeah, like I said, we just talked about Jasper, obviously. And then you have Bryson Kuzdzal. Once again, he’s improving. Micah Ka’apana’s now just starting to get back from his injury that he had. So hopefully he’ll have full clearance here in the next week or so. So those would be the next, I guess, three guys we talk about besides Jordan, of course.

But yeah, I’m excited about the kids in the room and where we’re headed. And we got a big one this week, gotta get prepared for.