Defense; UA, P12, UM

[UMforever]

Just got done reviewing all the defensive stats for Umich for the past year along with reading various player interviews.

As I posted here before I am a RR supporter who is an alumni of UM and wish he was still there.

UM's defense went from #110 to #17. The various departed players have all basically said that they learned more this year than the precious 3 years combined.
Here are some of the quotes( I am paraphrasing); "The defensive line coaches really didn't teach us much. we would line up and choose any gap we wanted. There was no direction given as to which gap we should hit and/or why", " we did not learn any technique. Not sure if if the coaches didn't know or if the forgot to teach us"," It seemed like the defense was an after thought and we were basically there to help the offense practice.", "I learned more this year than all my previous years combined."

Casteel being here should help but I started thinking; how is it that there was such a turnaround with basically the same players at UM? (sans 2 true freshman who saw significant playing time) Are the D position coaches just bad? The fact that most of them worked for years with Casteel make me wonder how good they actually are and if Casteel will really help. Was the whole problem Greg Robinson? I have read 3 and out and it does not really touch on this issue.

Will the 3/3/5 work in the P12? I do not know a lot about the P12 but from what I do know it seems that defense is not as tough as in the B10 and the offensive play style is a bit more wide open.

I think this is RR's last chance to show he can be a complete coach. The d at WVU was generally good stat wise but the BEast is not the B10 or P12. There is basically no defense played in the BEast.

Anyone have any thought or insights? ( I know there were a few threads about this before but now that spring practice is over there is not much to talk about. I also didn't see any of the UA spring practice videos or read many articles.)

[Salty]

Casteel is the iron fist of doom.

[CalStateTempe]

3 and out.

[UMforever]

Originally Posted by CalStateTempe

3 and out.

I mentioned in my post that I have read it.

[MojoJojo3155]

UMforever, can you post a link to these interviews?

The only Defensive staff member from UM is Tony Gibson(Safties). There is probably a reason for that and a reason why Rich Rod was so determined to get Casteel here.
If you want to look at stats and interviews of former players, you should be looking at West Virginia. Because all the other defensive coaches came with Casteel from West Virginia.
BTW a Jeff Casteel and Bill Kirelawich coached West Virginia Defensive End (Bruce Irvine) was just selected in the first round of the 2012 NFL Draft.

[uacats]

I worried about West Virginia. The Big East is a distant sixth in sending guys to the league. Boston College, Miami and Va Tech all bolted for a reason - Big East was well documented on this board that it should'nt even have a BCS berth.

[Gladiator Cat]

Originally Posted by UMforever

Will the 3/3/5 work in the P12? I do not know a lot about the P12 but from what I do know it seems that defense is not as tough as in the B10 and the offensive play style is a bit more wide open.

I think this is RR's last chance to show he can be a complete coach. The d at WVU was generally good stat wise but the BEast is not the B10 or P12. There is basically no defense played in the BEast.

UM forever,

I think one can come to a realistic answer without a whole lot of trouble. I suspect Rich Rod and the staff are going to get a rude awakening or a new perspective just like every other coach with an inflated ego that come's to this conference and think they know what they're in for.........the chip on the proverbial shoulder gets quickly knocked off.

I basically think you have to throw out all the previous defensive numbers from RR's previous teams and start from scratch. The PAC-12 and it superb blend of good defensive units and super high octane offensive schemes from top to bottom is going to present some serious growing pain's for the first few years.

I certainly do not know what RR thinks personally but I don't think he or most new coaches really understand that everyone in this conference is fast, athletic and strong with cutting edge schemes.

I only say that because most new coaches that come to the PAC fully admit later on that they underestimated the quality of the conference coming in.

I'll go on record and say that right now in the PAC-12, we probably have the best collection of head coaches in the nation, outside of the SEC. Certainly in the top 3 nationally.

This conference is simply loaded.

I suspect that your not going to see many smile's on the face of Jeff Casteel for the first few season's. I'm positive RR will put points on the board but the D is going to have some painful day's, unfortunately. But by all accounts this is a good staff and they will win at a good clip once the system is in place.

GC

[Reydituto]

Michigan: No Casteel. No Kirlavich. (that's coaching for the entire front 7). Gregg Williams and his merry band of idiots.

UA: Casteel, Kirlav. David Lockwood. No Williams.

Not sure the 3-3-5 will be effective until Casteel recruits more of what he wants, and even then I think running teams like USC and Stanford will always give it problems, while Cal (usually adept at running the ball with a solid OL) and Oregon (speed and more speed) are problematic as well. I do think UA will do well sooner against pass-first teams though.

[UMforever]

Originally Posted by Reydituto

Not sure the 3-3-5 will be effective until Casteel recruits more of what he wants,

How does the UA defense look? Are they built more for power running?

[scumdevils86]

ANYTHING will be better than our defense last year.

[Reydituto]

Originally Posted by UMforever

How does the UA defense look? Are they built more for power running?

Hard to say really, since a.) they were awful all of last year, b.) they were vanilla in the spring, not a lot of blitzing which is where the 3-3-5 pays off, c.) Adam Hall got re-injured and most were expecting big things from him, d.) UA is still thin at LB and DE, and e.) the secondary still has to shake out.

There's enough athleticism to make the defense work OK this year, but overall the coaches think the returning defensive personnel are much slower than what they like for this scheme, which to me does not bode well. Which is probably why I keep hearing many of the incoming FR will get a chance to break the two-deep and otherwise play on ST.

[Gladiator Cat]

Originally Posted by UMforever

How does the UA defense look? Are they built more for power running?

UMforever,

I know you were asking Rey, but if you were to ask 50 people on this board that same question you'll probably get 50 different answers.

Our teams in general have not been good against quality power running teams nor very good against teams that utilize fast high quality receivers or mobile QB's.

We had a "bend-but-don't-break" type of defense that has been bent and broken more often than not and appropriately ranked in the lower percentile nationally as you might suspect. More opposing players have been made AA when playing against our defense than any other team I know. I'm talking huge career days.

To put it in simple to understand terms, if you were to take the top three teams of USC, Oregon and Stanford over the last few years, not one of our Arizona starter's.........outside of maybe Juron Criner would make the starting depth chart of either of those other school's.

Make no mistake, we have a few nice players but in general this team is WAY DOWN on talent and depth. Rich Rod and Jeff Casteel have their work cut out for them for sure.

[Martavious22]

One of the biggest problems at Michigan was the position coaches on the defensive side. That issue seems to have been rectified, but now they're looking at 3-4 years of low talent.

[Gladiator Cat]

Originally Posted by Martavious22

One of the biggest problems at Michigan was the position coaches on the defensive side. That issue seems to have been rectified, but now they're looking at 3-4 years of low talent.

Martavious22, would you be kind enough to elaborate on the 3-4 years of low talent comment.

I assume you are referring to players already holding scholies? And not future recruiting classes.

[Reydituto]

Originally Posted by Martavious22

One of the biggest problems at Michigan was the position coaches on the defensive side. That issue seems to have been rectified, but now they're looking at 3-4 years of low talent.

Offensive talent is there to score a lot of points. Need to find a QB after this season.

Defensive personnel will be "low" for 2 seasons tops. 3 RR/Casteel recruiting classes, plus the FR/RS FR/SO from Stoops' last two classes who will have had time to retrain and relearn, and UA should have enough ammunition to execute the scheme like the coaches want. Whether the scheme in general fares well against Pac-12 offenses remains to be seen.