'Big emphasis' on this area for Michigan football defense heading into Indiana
Michigan Wolverines football‘s defense played a good game overall against Iowa, holding the Hawkeyes to 14 points, including seven that came with eight seconds remaining in an already-settled contest. But there is plenty to clean up, as head coach Jim Harbaugh noted postgame.
One of those areas is the pass defense. Uncharacteristically, Iowa quarterback Spencer Petras threw for 246 yards — the third-highest total of his career — while completing 21 of his 31 pass attempts with 1 touchdown.
The Michigan linebackers weren’t good enough in coverage, though they weren’t the only ones at fault. Sophomore Junior Colson allowed 6 catches for 84 yards on 6 targets, according to Pro Football Focus (PFF). Graduate Michael Barrett allowed 1 catch for 8 yards on 2 targets.
“There’s always [room for] improvement for everything,” Michigan linebackers coach George Helow said Wednesday. “We went into the game last week wanting to take away the run, and that’s what we did. There were a couple of things that we could do better in the pass game. Definitely a big emphasis for us, we’re working on it. The things that are broke, we’re gonna fix. Expect better stuff in the pass game.”
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A lot of the Hawkeyes’ success came on play action, where Petras went 7-for-7 for 80 yards (11.4 yards per attempt) and picked up 4 first downs.
Harbaugh has touted his team’s “run wall” this season — and that was effective against the Hawkeyes, allowing just 35 rushing yards to a team that prides itself on running the ball. But that also left the Michigan defense a bit susceptible against play-action passes.
“When you play the run hard and teams give you play actions and boot plays and play the run, play the run, play the run, then, boom, it’s a pass play. There’s some technique things that need to be cleaned up there. They got us on a couple. We’ll get it corrected.”
Michigan will have to against an Indiana team that runs play action on 31.2 percent of its passing plays. The Hoosiers have scored 6 of their 8 passing touchdowns using the concept.
Linebackers have a tough job when it comes to coverage. Not only do they have to play the run, as Helow mentioned, and get back in coverage when a pass comes, they’re also guarding different body types on a play-to-play basis. Running backs, fullbacks (in the case of Iowa, tight ends, and even sometimes (rarely) slot or wide receivers all fall under the purview of the Michigan linebackers at different times.
When we say they’re ‘in the core,’ they’re attached to the alignment. When they’re out of the core, that’s more nickels and corners and safeties have to do that. Space is the enemy of defense, and the faster you close and the [better] angles that you take to the ball, the better you’ll be able to be in coverage. We want to close space as fast as possible.
“The other thing is the practice and the preparation from week to week and knowing what routes they’re going to run, how they’re going to run them and play with the proper leverage.”
Helow has confidence that coordinator Jesse Minter and the Michigan defensive staff will make the proper adjustments.
“Jesse’s done a great job,” Helow said. “Don’t have enough positive things to say about him. The biggest thing is staff chemistry. Nothing is ever perfect — it’s not ever going to be perfect. When you have good staff chemistry — because I’ve seen it go both ways on different teams than I’ve been part of … if something is not working, if something didn’t work as you drew it up on the greaseboard, something needs to be coached better, you get back into the room and say, hey, how are we going to fix this? What do we need to do? What are the changes we need to make and you do it. That’s something that this staff is doing and will continue to do.”
