What will a Mike Elston-coached Michigan DL look like? It starts with family, effort and attitude
Head coach Jim Harbaugh and the Michigan Wolverines have been praised across the college football world for hitting a home run in hiring Mike Elston from Notre Dame as its defensive line coach to replace Shaun Nua, who left for USC after three seasons in Ann Arbor.
A former Wolverine player (1993-96) staffer (1997-2000), Elston understands Michigan and has already hit the ground running, connecting with current players and recruits in his first week.
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He places a strong importance on building a family-like community within his defensive line room, saying he’ll take players out for meals, have them over to his house and even invite them to attend church with he and his family. He’s in a trust-building phase.
“I had to wait until I really became official, so I reached out to all of them,” Elston said on the In The Trenches with host Jon Jansen. “They all worked out today at some point. So I popped down or they popped up to the office, and most of us sat down for five to 15 minutes. If they were busy with their schedule, I popped down to the weight room and chatted there.
“Just one-on-one right now, getting to build the relationships. A lot of it is foundational right now — them getting to know me. I recruited some of the guys at Notre Dame, so there’s already a foundation.
“And I’ve got to earn their trust, and it’s not going to happen overnight. I plan on coaching them hard, so there needs to be a great relationship there so they can trust me. I’m excited to show them that; I’m excited to be around them in spring camp coming up.”
Elston is also in the process of building a rapport with defensive coordinator Mike Macdonald, co-defensive coordinator and defensive backs coach Steve Clinkscale and the rest of the Michigan staff.
“I’m not an ego guy; I come into this thing with an open mind of, listen, it’s Mike’s defense, they’ve had great success and I’m excited to learn new stuff,” Elston said. “I’ve been through a lot of transition while I was at Notre Dame — a lot of different defensive coordinators — and have done it a lot of different ways. At some point along the way, I’ve had to implement similar things that Mike is doing right now at Michigan.
“Now, it’s just a matter of getting that lingo, that nomenclature, the language of the football team and relearning it. There are things that I call techniques that I’ve called them for many, many years, and I’ll change it to whatever Mike wants to change it to if it makes sense for the players to learn it that way, the way they’ve already learned it.
“But we’re not going to reinvent football. They just went to the playoffs by playing great defense. It’ll be a little bit of give and take here and there based on nomenclature and terminology, but I’ll conform to whatever they want taught — technique and scheme.”
Jansen asked what an Elston-coached defensive line will look like, and the new Michigan assistant laid out some of his vision.
“They’re going to be physical,” he began. “You’re going to see great block construction for the run, you’re going to see a vertical pass rush. Great effort and attitude to the football when the ball is either thrown or run.
“The physicality is going to be No. 1. Great effort. You’re going to see us flying to the ball, you’re going to see 11 of those winged helmets — four of them up front, sometimes five defensive linemen on the field.
“You’re going to see them flying to the football with great effort and attitude, and pass rush. One thing that they did a great job of a year ago, obviously with those first-round draft picks, was great pass rush. We need to be able to do that at all four positions. We need to create that. You’re going to see great pass rush and leverage and level rushes to the quarterback.”
