Michigan Wolverines football senior linebacker Josh Uche was a significant part of last year’s defensive success, leading the club with seven sacks.
He has just one through three games in 2019, however, and wasn’t able to enjoy much success on Saturday against a Wisconsin front that yielded just one sack and two tackles for loss.
The defense put on arguably its most pitiful performance under fourth-year defensive coordinator Don Brown, allowing 359 yards on the ground and 487 total yards to the Badgers.
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“We have to execute our jobs and our assignments at high higher, and just come together,” Uche explained tonight. “Our jobs as players is to execute to the best of our abilities.
“It boils down to executing and doing our jobs with extreme detail and focus. That’s what it came down to [today in practice], and we came out with extreme focus and extreme physicality.”
Uche was asked to expand a bit on what this evening’s practice was like, and he had no problem going into specific detail about how the session went and how fired up his teammates were.
“It was amped up,” he exclaimed. “We were ready to go and hit people, and it got real physical today. We blew some steam off and hit each other, and just had a great practice.
“They’re all physical, but we made it an emphasis today to make this a really good practice. We have to stack up another good one tomorrow and keep building and working.
“We’re a family, and we have to believe and trust in each other. We have to have the utmost faith that we’ll bounce back from this — if you don’t have faith, then what do you have?
“With the way we practiced today and the fire we had coming out, we’re ready to get that bad taste out of our mouths.
“You have to respond to adversity; everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth, like Mike Tyson said. We got punched in the mouth — what are we going to do about it?
“Are we going to lay down? No. I'm going to get up and keep fighting and keep swinging — that’s what this team is going to do.
“Winning cures everything. Coach [Jim] Harbaugh just said winning cures more illnesses than penicillin. If he says it, why not believe him?”
Uche was also asked if the team’s three captains — senior left guard Ben Bredeson, senior viper Khaleke Hudson and senior defensive tackle Carlo Kemp — have stepped up and become more vocal in the wake of Saturday’s disaster, and the pass-rushing extraordinaire revealed they have, along with plenty of others.
“All the captains, leaders and seniors are being very vocal and keeping the energy up,” Uche noted. “Everyone is chiming in, and it’s not a single person’s effort.
“You don’t even have to be a senior, so everybody is stepping up and keeping the morale and the energy up. This is a team, not an individual thing.”
Notes
• Consistency is an aspect that has plagued the U-M defense so far this season, and Uche was asked to give his take on how he thinks the unit can start being more effective on a more consistent basis.
“We have to get teams into third downs and into passing situations, like third and longs," he revealed. "That opens up a lot of the things we do, but we first have to get them to that point.”
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