How Much More Zone Coverage Will Michigan Play Under Macdonald, Linguist?
Last season, the Michigan football defense was the worst it had been since 2010, the last year of the Rich Rodriguez era, with the Wolverines finishing 84th nationally in total defense, giving up 429.3 yards per game, after three straight years of finishing in the top 11.
After the 2-4 season, Michigan's first losing campaign since 2014, was over, head coach Jim Harbaugh revamped his staff. That process began with the firing of defensive coordinator Don Brown, and ended with four new assistant coaches joining the program on the defensive side of the ball (six in total). Mike Macdonald, who was previously the linebackers coach for the Baltimore Ravens, will lead the defense, while Maurice Linguist, who coached cornerbacks for the Dallas Cowboys, will be his co-coordinator, spearheading the efforts in the secondary.
Under Brown, the Maize and Blue ran a defense predicated primarily on bringing blitzes from anywhere on any play, while leaving its secondary in man coverage. That sounds great in theory, and it was great at times throughout Brown's five years in Ann Arbor, but opposing offenses were able to exploit it more and more by the year, culminating in what was a disastrous season altogether in 2020.
The question when it comes to the new defensive staff is: To what degree will they change what Brown did?
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It's clear that adjustments — to put it mildly — needed to be made. Macdonald knows it, and so does Linguist. But, in an interview with FiveThirtyEight released this week, Linguist revealed that they have been careful and calculated with their approach, knowing that change for the sake of change isn't the way to go.
“The easiest thing to do when you walk into a new job situation is to say OK, everything you guys did was wrong and everything I tell you is right and we need to blow up everything that you did,” he said. “I think that’s not the most efficient approach sometimes.”
When Macdonald first spoke with reporters after being hired, he was understandably tight-lipped, not wanting to give any information opponents could use against them in their preparation. But he was adamant on one thing in particular — that the Wolverines will be 'multiple' in their approach. That means different fronts — odd and even — different coverages — man and zone — and different disguises.
While Brown and Co. mixed all of those things up while they were running the show, especially the last two seasons, their identity as a highly-aggressive, man-to-man defense stayed the same.
“They had a system down that they felt strong about and playing a lot more man-oriented, and that’s definitely going to be a part of what we do,” Linguist said. “But there are layers to having a great defense and just the perspective that we’re going to be bringing in ... you don’t have to just live in one thing to be successful.”
Michigan, which has allowed arch rival Ohio State to burn it with its high-level offense in the last several meetings, knows it has to have the answers against elite offenses that it was without in the later stages of the Brown era. Macdonald and Linguist are in the process of developing those plans now, all while they just installed the defensive scheme over the course of the spring.
“At the end of the day, you’re asking yourself, are we putting the kids in the best position to be successful?” Linguist said. “Are we asking guys to do things that they’re capable of doing? And then do we have answers for whatever the situation that may arise? So that’s kinda the perspective that you approach anything that you do — we just happen to be doing it with football.“
Time will tell if they will push the right buttons.
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