2 defensive TD's today

[jever4321]

UM had a total of 4 defensive TD's in Dick Rod's entire 3 year tenure.
Wow. Those were sorely missed.

 

[biggunsbob]

I know Very nice.. I was lucky enough to see one of RR 4 defensive TD's in the 27-25 win verses Wisconsin in that horrible 3-9 season... John Thompson 25 Yd Interception Return for a TD...
What is really nice were the nicely designed blitzes that got to the QB... Still Michigan has a lot to work on but these are just baby steps today...

 

[uofmpoweri]

Dickrod didn't have the personnel....wait a minute... he inherited a better defensive team than Hoke. Anyone that still defends RR is a drone for life.

This is usually where one of his supporters come in and start telling us how he was a defensive genius playing Uconn and company in the Big least.

 

[bamf16]

biggunsbob[/color]]I know Very nice.. I was lucky enough to see one of RR 4 defensive TD's in the 27-25 win verses Wisconsin in that horrible 3-9 season... John Thompson 25 Yd Interception Return for a TD...
What is really nice were the nicely designed blitzes that got to the QB... Still Michigan has a lot to work on but these are just baby steps today...

And that right there was the biggest difference between today and what we saw especially last year. Ideally, this defense would be able to occasionally get pressure from the DLine, but the personnel to do that typically requires 1-2 big dudes in the middle to eat up blockers (Haloti Ngata and Kelly Gregg in Baltimore) and free up the ends to bring the pressure. When they're able to do this, the blitz is much more effective b/c it's not expected and the blockers simply aren't there to pick it up.. I'm hopeful that when/if we see an interior line of Martin and Campbell (heck, even Washington or Ash) we'll see more pressure coming from guys like Roh, Van Bergen, & Black coming off the ends, and we won't feel the need to blitz on 2nd and 8 from our own 35 as we did midway through the 2nd quarter and give up a 15+ yard completion. Did see Campbell in more in the second half though.

We're running a defense this year that does not require the blitz as an essential element, yet well designed, well timed, and well executed blitzes worked wonders today. Last year we ran a defense that DID require the blitz as an essential element, and our coordinator had no track record of ever doing it before and wasn't able to magically learn. It was a combination of dumb hire and dumb handling by RR.

Before we all blow our loads, let's see what happens in the coming weeks. These two defensive TDs were HUGE, and we didn't see the big number of huge gashing plays against us, but I hope that along with appreciating the TDs we still do remember that for over half of the game (the part that was played) we struggled to get this WMU offense off the field.