Michigan D.C. Mike Macdonald Gives Self-Evaluation Of His Play Calling

Michigan football defensive coordinator Mike Macdonald is just two games into his play-calling career, and for the most part, his group has performed at a high level. The Wolverines have allowed just 12 points per game, which ranks 18th in the nation, and have yielded 330 yards per contest.

Macdonald has been comfortable calling plays from the sideline and prides himself on preparation, with several players having said that he's known what play the opposing offense is going to run before the play develops on multiple occasions.

But he's the first to admit he has more to learn and can improve in a number of areas.

"There’s always room for improvement," he explained. "There are calls that we go back and say, I should’ve done this or should’ve done that, or we could’ve prepped this better or gone over this situation better with the guys.

"So that’s always a work in progress. It was that way in Baltimore. It’s that way in Georgia. That’s my philosophy — you’ve got to look at yourself, too, to make sure you can keep putting the guys in the best situation possible.

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"But it feels like practice. You go up there, identifying the situation and, for the most part, we talk about the situations that arise, and really just stick to the plan. It helps when you communicate with the guys what you’re going to call in certain situations, so then they’re anticipating you calling that. So it’s almost like, if you don’t call it, now you’re doing them a disservice. It’s nice to have figured it out before the situation actually comes up."

While it has played well to this point, the defense is still a "work in progress," Macdonald said. He already saw major strides from game one to game two, especially when it comes to intensity.

"We challenged them after the first game. We said, ‘Hey, is this what we envisioned as a defense, in terms of physicality, communication wise and all-out effort to the ball?’ And I think everybody, to a man, said no," Macdonald revealed. "Really, after this week, that’s what we want it to look like on tape, in terms of how fast we’re playing, so that’s definitely the standard that we want to live up to at this point. The expectation is to keep it going."

The sample size isn't significant yet, but as the season progresses, Macdonald will have to place an increased focus on self-scouting his defense's own tendencies so that the opposing offense doesn't know what's coming in a certain situation.

"It’s this way at every level, but they’re playing what they’ve seen on tape," Macdonald said. "So you have to understand how we’ve been playing and the things that they’re seeing and the mistakes that we’ve made, to try to really have a great grasp of how they’re going to attack you.

"Two games, it’s not a great sample size — same thing with Northern Illinois; they’re operating differently on a game-by-game basis than they did last year or the year before that. A lot of it is going to be identifying how the team is playing you during the game. I think we have enough in our tool bag, so to speak, so we can adjust on the fly. But we definitely need to be aware of that."

Northern Illinois head coach Thomas Hammock was the Ravens' running backs coach from 2014-18 and worked with Macdonald in Baltimore. Hammock said this week that he has a good knowledge of some of what Michigan likes to do, and countering that will be a challenge for Macdonald ... at least to a certain extent.

"I really respect Coach Hammock, and we spent a lot of time together in Baltimore," Macdonald said. "He definitely knows his stuff, and I really think he’s a great coach.

"He definitely knows the Baltimore scheme, but whether or not that’s what we’re running here … it’s a game-to-game basis."

Macdonald has been adamant about that last point, that his defense will look different from week to week, tailored to the challenges the opposing offense brings.

"It’s funny, we don’t go into the games with gigantic menus, but they’re definitely different," Macdonald said. "We want to stick to the stuff we can do well, and I think we’re still in the process of figuring that out. But it’s a different menu, for sure.

"There are some great offensive minds out there, that present you a lot of problems on a week-to-week basis, and you can put Northern Illinois right up there with the rest of them. It’ll be a good challenge for us."

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