To Don Brown and Fort Members:
You have done a great job. I have not been this excited about our defense in the last 20 years. This year was the best defense since the 97 team that was national champs. You brought what we needed and lacked for many years--a defense that stopped the run, pressured the QBs and stuffed the receivers at the LOS. I will come back to the OSU game this year in a moment. I have watched all the Michigan games from 1969 to the present. Half of those home games I attrended in person. I played and coached football myself. You have our defense playing winning Michigan football.
This year at Ohio State was a clearly bad result. Here is what I think happened. We began the game very banged up and slowed down from key injuries. You were directing a defense on half of its normal abilities. Winovich, Bush, Gary, Uche, Solomon, Hudson, and Long were either out completely or their play seriously impaired by the end of the game. Those are most of our best guys. Don, you only had a half of a deck entering and finishing our Rivalry game/
Defense is a team game with each individual having to play a certain role, lane, alley, etc. If one or two links break down or leave the line up, it is next man up, in theory and design. But we all know that the quality of depth varies with position, experience and most of all--ablity to read a defense and secure the tackles or bring PBUs and picks. THE IMPACT OF KEY INJURIES IS NOT LINEAR, BUT RATHER MULTIPLIES WITH EACH STARTER INJURED OR MISSING IN ACTIION.
You are living in a great place, have a great set of assistants, have great players coming back and arriving in the future. They need you; we need you; and Michigan really needs you to lead the way on defense. YOU ARE A DUDE. PLEASE STAY.
You have done a great job. I have not been this excited about our defense in the last 20 years. This year was the best defense since the 97 team that was national champs. You brought what we needed and lacked for many years--a defense that stopped the run, pressured the QBs and stuffed the receivers at the LOS. I will come back to the OSU game this year in a moment. I have watched all the Michigan games from 1969 to the present. Half of those home games I attrended in person. I played and coached football myself. You have our defense playing winning Michigan football.
This year at Ohio State was a clearly bad result. Here is what I think happened. We began the game very banged up and slowed down from key injuries. You were directing a defense on half of its normal abilities. Winovich, Bush, Gary, Uche, Solomon, Hudson, and Long were either out completely or their play seriously impaired by the end of the game. Those are most of our best guys. Don, you only had a half of a deck entering and finishing our Rivalry game/
Defense is a team game with each individual having to play a certain role, lane, alley, etc. If one or two links break down or leave the line up, it is next man up, in theory and design. But we all know that the quality of depth varies with position, experience and most of all--ablity to read a defense and secure the tackles or bring PBUs and picks. THE IMPACT OF KEY INJURIES IS NOT LINEAR, BUT RATHER MULTIPLIES WITH EACH STARTER INJURED OR MISSING IN ACTIION.
You are living in a great place, have a great set of assistants, have great players coming back and arriving in the future. They need you; we need you; and Michigan really needs you to lead the way on defense. YOU ARE A DUDE. PLEASE STAY.
