Michigan Football: Don Brown Says It’s ‘Pick Your Poison’ Against OSU
Michigan defensive coordinator Don Brown and his team controlled a good portion of last year’s game at Ohio State, but the challenge is ramped up this year.
Quarterback J.T. Barrett’s numbers have gone up dramatically, and the Buckeyes have added elite running back J.K. Dobbins to go with second-year back Mike Weber.
Barrett boasts a passer rating of 166.3, while Dobbins is averaging 7.3 yards per rush, already at 1,089 yards rushing this year.
“They’ve got good players … two really good running backs, their quarterback is a veteran guy that knows how to play this game, some explosive guys at the receiver position,” Brown said. “I think they’re improved in the offensive line. Tight end is solid.
“We’ve got a good offensive outfit to get ready for. They’re good. The bottom line is you’ve got to pick your poison, and you’ve got to stand for something. Some guys try to sit there and spread out and cover everything, and that’s one approach. Some people try to read and react, and that’s another approach. Obviously, we try to do it all, make it tough for them. That’s our goal.”
But you’ve got to stand for something, he reiterated.
“I can’t tell you what that is, but you’ve got to stand for something. You just can’t let them pick you apart and move you down the field,” he said. “That’s not going to happen, anyway.
“Our approach is always try to be on the aggressive side of things, but at the same time you’ve got to be intelligent with it.”
Slowing Barrett will be critical. He’s thrown for 2,698 yards and run for 605, accounting for 40 total touchdowns. Ohio State insiders say he’s playing with much more confidence this season, making throws he didn’t last year.
Brown, though, sees a similar guy to the one Michigan played last year, calling Barrett a “really good player.”
“He’s making good decisions, knows where to throw the ball, knows where to go in the run game … I wouldn’t say typical, because I think he’s an atypical dual threat guy,” Brown said. “His numbers certainly speak for themselves. The challenge is certainly there this week, for sure.”
Brown doesn’t have to tell his players about it, either. Many of them have yet to play in this rivalry, but some got their feet wet last year in a game they know they should have won … and many feel they did.
Brown said he didn’t do anything to get their attention early in the week.
“Yesterday might have been one of our best practices on the year,” he said. “That’s saying a lot for a young group, because you’re obviously on a bounce-back Tuesday [after a loss at Wisconsin]. Just to get that kind of energy makes you feel good about going to work.
“This is big. The guys know it’s big. I don’t know if they really need to hear that from me. We certainly look at some of those things in terms of schematically, so forth, what they did [last year], what we did, those kinds of things when you’re trying to analyze and move forward. But this game will stand for itself, and there are bunch of guys who can’t even relate to this game because they didn’t play in it.
“The nice thing is we’ve got a nucleus of guys who did play some in it, so you feel good about that part.”
NOTES
• Brown said he felt good about his defense coming out of spring, adding that the group has met his expectations.
“Going to meetings, the interaction, the things that were being discussed … you knew that the guys had an idea of what we were doing,” he said. “That’s a positive. Obviously, you’re paying attention all year of how you’re doing.
“The things for us that are always kind of important is you want to be pretty stingy in the run game. I think we’re sitting around 14th, 15th, somewhere around there,” he said. “Sometimes I hear the chatter about pass defense, and we’re giving up 144 passing yards a game, and the lowest competition percentage of any outfit in the country.
“You couple that with our TFL [tackles for loss] range, which is somewhere around minus-400 … you put all those things together, and that’s the piece that sometimes gets overlooked in our pie. All those things come into play to put together our bowl of soup.”
• The pass defense has come a long way, Brown added.
“When you go through that process and have a bunch of young guys learning on the job … I look at [corners] Lavert Hill, David Long. Last week Jaylen Kelly-Powell got his feet wet,” he said. “Unfortunately, he got beat on one play [for 51 yards on third down], but the bottom line is he came here to play that.
“Everybody knows what we’re going to play. You’ve got to be able to take that challenge and play on the island. He’ll be better for it. That's the beauty of it is I think our guys have been pretty in sync. We’re not perfect, but we’re doing a good job of getting better in technique and fundamentals every day.”
They’ll need to be at their best Saturday to beat the Buckeyes.
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