Michigan Football: Don Brown Ready To Take Defense To Another Level
Michigan defensive coordinator Don Brown led the U-M defense to new heights in 2016, and he’s hopeful to make it even better in 2017, even with a turnover in personnel. The Wolverines lose most of their starters on defense, but Brown has done more with less at Boston College and on his other stops.
The advantage this year, he noted, is that in addition to number of players with experience, he’s also got a group that knows the defense and what he’s trying to accomplish.
“Last year everybody was learning it,” he told The Huge Show’s Bill Simonson. “Now they know more of what we want to do, and we’ll get to it in the spring. I thought we did a great job as a defensive staff identifying what the players in that class could do well … what were the strengths. The defensive front was a strength, and they played extremely well. I thought they bonded with solid linebacker play — Ben Gedeon and Mike McCray became household names — Jabrill Peppers, that experiment ended up being positive for us, and the secondary was outstanding.
“Now what we’re trying to do moving forward is increase the complexity of looks, but keep it simple for our guys. Keep moving forward with the schemes and so forth we’re running, keep our guys playing fast and let the older guys be great role models for the young guys coming in. We’ve got to be careful how far left or right we want to go schematically, but we’ll have new patterns for our guys and some little wrinkles that should be easy for us, but harder on offenses we play.”
That’s a scary thought given how much havoc Brown’s defense caused last year. They were relentless from week one, the only way Brown knows how to play.
His philosophy fit perfectly with head coach Jim Harbaugh’s expectations. It led to the Wolverines leading the nation in total defense (261.8 yards per game), third down defense (21 percent) and passing yards allowed per game (142.5), finishing second in team pass efficiency defense (94.19) and scoring defense (14.1) and 15th in rushing defense (119.2 yards per game).
“Coach has a style he wants us to play. That’s my responsibility to make sure we’re playing that style,” Brown said. “He likes it aggressive; we keep it aggressive.
"The beauty is, that’s one of the great offensive minds in college football I’m working with. If there’s a particular blitz or question coverage wise, I can go to him and have a pretty good sounding board … ‘do this, don’t do that’ with a wrinkle. But he likes it aggressive, so we keep it aggressive.”
It won’t change, Brown noted, and though many predict the Wolverines to take a step back given their personnel losses, Brown has proven he reloads, not rebuilds … especially with the kind of talent he has to work with.
“Those guys coming back with experience — Devin Bush, McCray, Noah Furbush, Josh Metellus started at viper in the Florida State game,” he said. “We have a bunch of guys there, and that will make for an easier adjustment.”
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