Opening statement:
I want to begin by congratulating Mr. (Troy) Nienberg. He has been admitted
to the Michigan Law School. And I want to congratulate John Fallon. You know
who John Fallon is? John Fallon is the new president at Eastern Michigan University.
John and I were fellow Mott interns in a Mott foundation program 30 some odd
years ago in Flint, Michigan. He’s just been named the president there
and I’m excited for him and I think they have a great man to run that
program. We’ve just completed the first phase of preparation for the 126th
team at Michigan. The winter conditioning, the weights, getting bigger, stronger
and better conditioned. That’s the objective of that phase. Now we go
into spring practice, which is my one of my favorite parts of the year because
it’s really a new team. That’s always an exciting time because we
have to find replacements for our guys that left and do the things that it takes
to put another team together. One of the problems we have probably more so than
any year than I can remember is we have a number of guys that will out of spring
practice. We have some that are limited. I think it speaks to the punishing
nature of this game, and certainly it’s one of the reasons you look at
the number of guys…the number of surgeries. I don’t think we’re
any different than anybody else, but you come off and you have that many injuries,
it speaks to the already extensive length of the season and the stress and all
the things that any intercollegiate athlete goes through. I think it’s
particularly true in football. The 12 games certainly is not in the best interest
of the guys who play the game. We go on to spring practice, we have 15 days,
and basically once we get onto the first weekend we will practice Tuesday, Thursday
and Saturdays. What we want to try to do there more than anything else is work
on the individual improvement of the players. If we can come out of there with
every guy improving then we will be a better football team. We want to get our
fundamentals and techniques that can help a guy be a better player. Then from
a team standpoint, we want to work on the team concept, which is really the
basis of Michigan football. We want to introduce our schemes at every phase
of the game and we’d like to increase the understanding of the principles
with which we will play football at Michigan
On the changing offenses:
“…The two back offenses have really, been replaced in terms of
the number of snaps. You just don’t see as many two back sets as you did,
and we’re still a team that believes very strongly in the two back offense…
even though we have changed dramatically over the last two of three seasons.
We’ve run more snaps from the one back than any other offensive set we
have because of the flexibility of that offense to create a lot more formations.
You've got five guys out, no one in the backfield but the quarterback…
you've got all the other sets, the motions. Defensive coaches are up against
so many of them. So we will take the things we have evaluated, every single
player, every phase of our game. We have set goals that we want to improve on
and accomplish during this spring practice, and see where we are and move from
there.”
On replacing David Baas, Braylon Edwards and Marlin Jackson:
“Well, I look at it as a position. You don’t replace a guy like
Braylon Edwards…you don’t replace a guy like David Baas overnight.
What you do is hope that as a group of receivers, our young guys will develop…our
young guys will come in and make great contributions. Then you hope that a guy
like Steve Breaston or Jason Avant will have their best years of football in
the fall, because they have a foundation. If they can stay healthy, they're
both outstanding football players. In the offensive line we’ve got a challenge
because we got Adam Kraus…he will be in the thick of what we are trying
to do up front either at center or at guard, and he’s out for the spring.
Jake Long is out for the spring. Leo Henige is out for the spring… which
really changes what we can do from a scrimmage stand point because we just don’t
have the numbers to do some of the things we would traditionally do in the spring.”
On quarterbacks taking snaps in the spring:
First of all it’s a great opportunity for Chad Henne to take a lot more
snaps than he normally would have. He’s still a very young quarterback,
so normally he would rotate in there half the time, or a little bit less. Here
he’s going to get a lot more snaps than he normally would get which will
certainly help his development. Matt Gutierrez, one of the things that we are
very happy for is his progress has really been excellent. He’s throwing
the football. He will take part in a lot of drills…a lot of the passing
drills so he’s going to get a lot more work than we would have anticipated
at the time of his surgery. He will not have any contact so that changes some
of the scrimmage situations. Jeff Kastl will get some and I will take some (laughing).
On new defensive line coach Steve Stripling:
Steve Stripling, I met him 20 some years ago he was coaching at Indiana at
the time for Bill Mallory, and of course Coach Mallory has close ties with this
program from his son’s and his relationship with Bo (Schembechler). I
met Steve a number of years ago, he has spent a lot of time in this conference
he coached a number of years at Minnesota for Glen Mason, he’s coached
at Michigan State for John L. Smith and so he’s been around. He’s
highly regarded and I feel very fortunate Steve wanted to come to Michigan and
exactly what we need up front because he brings an intensity that I think our
players will really benefit from.
On whether he prefers the 4-3:
Well I think he’s coached a lot of different sets. Of course I think he’s
had more experienced in the 4-3 but what you're teaching up front is techniques.
If you're a multiple front, which we have been, it’s not a drastic change.
What you want to be able to do, what you have to have be able to do today is
be flexible enough that you can get your best 11 on the field, and that changes
in the course of a season. We had a number of injuries a year ago. Situations
that one week would enable us to…we had to rely on one front maybe more
than another, and it’s the same with linebackers. So hopefully you have
enough flexibility where you can do different things and get the right people
on the field. I thinks that what we are trying to do.
On what they learned from using the 3-4 defense last season:
“Well I think we got some good things out of it. If you're doing both
it certainly possesses preparation problems for your opponent. From that standpoint,
it’s a great advantage. I think obviously the more you do, depending on
the experience of your players, it can create issues of knowing exactly what
to do. I think that’s one of the great challenges in coaching. You've
got to do enough…you’ve got to make enough changes on a week to
week basis, not only because of the problems your opponent gives you, but trying
to create problems for them. But the fine line is when you're doing too much.
It’s a fine line, it’s like winning and losing.
On defending the spread offense:
“First of all I think it’s extremely misunderstood by a number
of people. The great advantage of a spread offense is it allows you, for those
people who run it, great flexibility with their personnel. If you look in the
NFL you see they're all looking for quarterbacks because there aren’t
a lot of guys who are really gifted who are your prototype drop back quarterback
that throws the football. If you look at the NFL in the last ten years, you’ve
seen a dramatic change in the types of quarterbacks that are playing and are
having success in that league. When you consider the fact that there are 117
Division 1A schools that are playing football, and they can’t find enough
in the NFL with 32 teams, finding those guys is hard. The spread offense enables
a team to take advantage of the skills of, for example the quarterback. Those
schools who have guys that are really athletic, they can incorporate the quarterback
into the running game. Traditionally when you run a one back offense, you’ve
got one back that can carry the ball. In the spread offense where you have a
mobile quarterback, now you can block plays. You spread the defense out, but
you can block plays just like you would if you had two backs…and the quarterback
carries the football. Well that puts an enormous amount of pressure on a defense.
A lot of teams will use the quarterback depending on the defenses. They get
to run the option, so now you’re running an option team. The spread offense
in my judgement, has not changed football in terms of the throwing game. It
has changed football in terms of the running game. If you look at all the teams
that are running the spread offense, they’re all a little bit different.
Some are four wides with a quarterback and a tailback. Some are three wides
and a tight end. Some, they use pro personnel, two receivers, a tight end, two
backs, or a flanker, and one of the backs out. Every week when you play that
offense, it’s a different offense depending on what their personnel is.
So there are enormous issues out there for everybody.”
On Morgan Trent moving to cornerback:
Morgan Trent came into to see me and of course Morgan could very well be the
fastest player on our team. He sees an opportunity over there on defense at
cornerback. I think that’s probably it, in terms of changing position.
When I say position- offense to defense. Now we may move guys from guard to
center, center to tackle but I would say Morgan Trent is a significant change.