Everything Michigan football DC Jesse Minter said about TCU, College Football Playoff
PARADISE VALLEY, Ariz. — The biggest task for Michigan football in the College Football Playoff semifinal in the Vrbo Fiesta Bowl is the defense finding a way to slow the TCU Horned Frog offense.
Led by quarterback Max Duggan, TCU has a variety of weapons — from wide receiver Quentin Johnston to running back Kendre Miller. This will be one of the top offenses the Wolverines have seen all year.
So how does defensive coordinator Jesse Minter see it?
Minter met with the media for 45 minutes on Wednesday and shared his thoughts on a variety of topics, from his transition from Vanderbilt to Ann Arbor, to specific players, to what he’s seen from TCU on tape. Here is everything he had to say.
What he's learned about the College Football Playoff experience
Oh, great experience. I think the guys have said it all week. Like, last year, there was a little bit of we won the Big Ten; We beat Ohio. This year, I think the mission has been clear from the beginning of where we wanted to go, how we wanted to get there. So it’s just been a focus on trying to get better each day trying to get better trying to be at our best at the right time. So we’re looking forward to a great challenge against TCU.
What he learned about the secondary against Ohio State and Purdue
That we have really good players. We’ve got to try to put them in position to be successful. We’ve got to limit explosive plays. I think going back the last two games, Ohio, there was an explosive play that hit us in the first half we’d have back and a couple others. Purdue was a little bit more dink and dunk and just matching up our fits and zone coverages.
So great learning experiences for our guys going into this type of offense. So much respect for TCU and the players they have — the quarterback they have, the coaches they have — and there’ll be a great challenge. Hopefully we’ve learned a lot about ourselves and been able to fix some issues that have popped up and looking forward to seeing how it looks on Saturday.
Thoughts on TCU QB Max Duggan
He’s a really, really good football player. Second in the Heisman. Desmond Howard — I was catching “SportsCenter” while I was working out. He called him the right-hand version of Tim Tebow, which was a pretty high, high remark.
So I do see that — he’s a guy that makes everybody around him better. He’s willing to do whatever it takes to move the ball to make plays. And so he puts his body on the line as a runner, quite often.
I think we see it every day. We go against J.J. McCarthy all the time in practice, as much good-on-good as we do is great work for this type of guy. We’ve seen a couple — certainly not the last two. The last two passers have been more sit-in-the-pocket type of guys, so a different test here. It’ll test our discipline as pass rushers, it will test our discipline in coverage to be able to stay in coverage when he extends plays, and so it’ll be a great test.
Mike Morris returning from injury
Yeah, Mike’s a great player. One of the first guys I met with when I got here, and he’s had such a tremendous year. So I mean, obviously very excited to see him back and see him back and full strength.
Coming in with the defense already installed
I think it was cool to walk in and there’d be a system in place as far as just overall terminology, how we set the front and how we do all the things. I think anytime you come in new you definitely have your own, have my own philosophy on how to do things, how to stop people, how to play certain coverages. And so certainly some things that we’ve tweaked, but, overall, it was great for the guys to have a baseline of the system and then just to kind of be able to come in and work off of that. Made it really feel like second year of the defense for these guys.
Michigan football's player development and why it's worked
Ben Herbert, Jim Harbaugh, the way we operate, the way that we work on football. I think to get good at football, you have to play football, you have to practice football. So we practice really hard in the spring and fall, when it’s not necessarily game on the line that week. We get a lot of reps. Our guys are always getting better at football. They work really hard in the offseason. It’s a really good mix of guys. Will Johnson’s a five-star, he comes in and plays as a freshman. Mike Morris is in his fourth year, Mikey Sainristl — these guys are in their fourth year and now they’re showing to be really, really high-end players.
And so I think No. 1, we don’t — you always want to recruit the best players you can but I also think fit and qualities that you think can develop. Not everybody’s developed in high school at the same rate. So I think when you recruit guys that have really good traits, really good qualities, the goal is that your players play like five-stars when they’re in college, regardless of how they played in high school. So I think we got a bunch of guys that play like they were higher recruits than they were and it’s a credit to Ben Herbert, Jim Harbaugh all the guys that have been here developing these guys.
On Mike Sainristl
Mikey is the epitome of how we play, the epitome of this program. Kind of a willingness to do whatever it takes for the team to be successful. I think that’s really where it started. It was like, hey, there’s an opening on defense. What do you think? And like didn’t bat an eye of wanting to take the challenge and moving over, replacing a first-round draft choice, nonetheless. And so I think that that mentality, that attitude, really just — that’s the whole program right now. And that’s everybody’s willing to do whatever it takes for us to be successful. And so seeing him move over, seeing his journey, I think back on the year and the plays that he’s made in critical moments. It’s incredible. It’s a movie script the way he’s played this year, so I’m excited to see him get a chance to do it again this Saturday.
Michigan's offensive line
I think our offensive line is just one that — really talented players that work really, really well together. So I think I’ve said this before: Sherrone Moore is the best offensive line coach in college football. And the way that he gets these guys to play as a unit, whether it’s same five guys we’ve had, we’ve had multiple lineups this year because of some injuries, and it’s been really cool to see just no drop-off like — guys start one week, not start the next week, different guys in there.
And then I also think how we practice and how we develop guys. The toughness is developed year round here, and how we go about our business, especially training camp, spring ball, the amount of physical football that we play — I said it earlier, like you get good at that by doing that. I think there’s a lot of people that want to be physical that want to talk about being physical. I don’t know that they’re willing to do that because they’re afraid of guys getting hurt or they’re afraid of this, that and the other and I think coach Harbaugh just stuck to his guns and said, ‘Look to be good at football, you got to practice football and football is played at a really, really high speed at a really physical nature.’ And that means you can do it every single day but the opportunities that we do (take) I think it develops that mentality and that toughness on our offensive line.
Thoughts on Ben Herbert
Yeah, he deserves as much credit for our successes, as anybody. Extremely valuable. I don’t give away his secrets but the proof is like — a lot of people say that. And then there’s places that where it’s backed up by, like you said, the O-lines that he’s produced, the D-lines that he’s produced, the second-half numbers, the fourth quarter numbers, that’s all starts with strength and conditioning.
So you can talk about halftime adjustments and all that, but ultimately it comes down to our guys are at their best later in the game. Playing 55-plus, 60-plus, 65. So that starts with Ben Herbert and a huge, huge piece of our success.
What's one of his secrets?
I think he’s such a perfect blend of old school, like can get in your face strength and conditioning, but very, very cutting edge, very scientific. Uses all the tools out there, willing to try new things, willing to adapt as time changes and there’s more stuff to use to measure things and different things like that. So really just a cool blend of old school and new school mindset.
On TCU's offense
Yeah, we’ve got to play really well. I think it’s an offense built on explosive plays, built on spreading you out and making you play. I think they’re really good in the run game. But I think that one of the unique things different than maybe what we’ve seen a lot this year is they spread you out to run the ball. So they run a lot of four open runs. And then they have these giant receivers on the outside that are really, really good, quarterback that gets them the ball.
So it’s a great challenge. We have to really do a good job of limiting explosive plays. It’s not — you can’t go back after the game and like, well, if we just wouldn’t have given up these three or four explosives — every single play in this game is critical. So whether it’s first-and-10, second-and-10, third-and-10, second-and-1 — every play, we won’t know till after the game what the key plays were in the game. And so playing each player is its own entity and doing our best to lock in and limiting the damage every single snap.
Max Duggan and the threat of his legs
Man, when you think of a dual threat, that’s who you think of. As a guy that — it’s not just the guys that run a bunch of design runs, it’s the guys that are really dangerous on called runs and called passes. So he can take a play that’s called a drop-back pass. It’s not there, he can extend the play. Now a guy can break off his route, he can hit the guy downfield, play can break down, he can take off and he can run 60 yards.
They can run a designed run against Oklahoma, he takes a zone-read 75 yards for a touchdown. So, he kind of has it all in that regard. Every play requires an extreme amount of discipline, extreme amount of physicality, extreme amount of everybody doing their job for us to contain him. He’s really good. You might not be able to contain him the whole game but we’ve got to limit the amount of damage that he’s able to do on those broken-down type of plays as well.
The Big 12 Championship game performance by Duggan
I’ve read a little bit about his story. Really cool, like, guys overcome a lot, just on and off the field. And so nothing really rattles him. And so I think he’s just got that innate ability, like, hey, look, he’s been through worse things than being down in a football game, and so that doesn’t bother him. And then this year, he’s proven time and time again, that they’ve had these third and fourth quarter comebacks that he’s capable of playing out his best and those moments and so just so much respect for that. Like I do think it’s an innate quality that certain guys have and certain guys don’t. And so it’s a tremendous challenge in the game, regardless of how the game is going, whether we’re ahead or whether we’re down. You can’t relax because he’s proven time and time again that he’s going to be at his best late in the game just like we hope to be at our best later and games. Will be a great challenge.
Is RJ Moten playing linebacker?
All year, RJ has played all over the defense for us. He repped at safety yesterday. He reps as a dime linebacker for us in certain packages. said it from the very first game on, he’s like a chess piece. So he’s a guy that we’re moving around. He’s providing us depth to a lot of different spots, and still capable of playing really all over the field. So we’re excited about his opportunity to play in this game.
Challenge of preparing for the TCU offense
Yeah, you try to just maybe look at elements that other teams have that maybe create their offense. And so maybe the run game, we’ve seen it from one team, maybe some of the passing game we’ve seen from another team, but try to just draw on different experiences.
And then at the same time, study their tape. You’ve got extra time to prepare for this type of game. So hopefully we’ve studied all the different things that they can do and also knowing that you got extra time they’re going to do stuff that they haven’t even put on tape yet. So it’s a training camp-mentality game for us in a sense that you can’t prepare for everything. They’re gonna have their gadget plays, their trick plays. There are new ways to create new formations to create certain matchups, certain routes, so we’ve got to do a really good job of just adjusting as the game goes on.
But it’s a tremendous offense. I think they’re fifth or sixth in the country in scoring and it’s as good of an offense as we’ve seen all year. Look forward to the challenge.
Eliminating chunk plays and TCU WR Quentin Johnston -- is his skill set different?
Yeah, it is. I’d say him and Marvin Harrison, I would say are probably like the two guys on the same wavelength. Both extremely good, both extremely productive, extremely explosive. He’s even a little bit bigger. And the thing that impresses me is not only he can go up and get the ball, but his run after catch ability, I think half his yards are after the catch, which is pretty impressive for a big guy.
So tremendous challenge, tremendous opportunity for our guys. We know they’re gonna take chances down the sideline, those are plays that we’ve seen all year, sometimes we’ve defended them well, sometimes we haven’t. So it’s a great challenge for us to, at times — maybe our guys are one-on-one and at times we’ve got to make sure we got people over the top and we’re protecting the root of the defense.
Junior Colson's emergence
Junior is a rockstar. So Junior, when I first took the job and was talking to Mike Macdonald, who was the DC last year, he was like, ‘Man, there was this freshman linebacker, Junior Colson,’ and it’s one of the first guys I got a chance to meet. He actually is from, ironically, as I was going through the transition of moving here, Junior lived less than five minutes from where I lived in Nashville. So even when I was back home a couple of times as I hadn’t moved my family yet, like we were able to hang out and kind of hit it off right away.
But he’s played really well. We asked him to do a whole lot in our defense as the mike linebacker. So a ton is on his plate. He’s a tremendous player. He’s got a really, really high ceiling. He’s gonna be able to play football for a long, long time. But he means the world in the middle of our defense.
Does he ever get down or frustrated? He's always smiling
I think one of his greatest qualities is his personality. He doesn’t get rattled. He doesn’t take himself too serious. Even though he wants to be really good. It’s kind of a unique quality, that nothing really bothers him. So especially in football where good plays can happen, bad plays can happen, gotta come back the next play now, all of a sudden. Like I always tell the guys, the next play’s the most important play and so if you have that mindset where you can brush it off and go the next play regardless, that’s a great quality to have in this sport. And so that’s definitely a quality that allows him to be a really good player.
On his adoptive family
It’s pretty cool, my kids look up to Junior, he does a great job with them. His his parents are great people, had a chance to meet them a few times. Came out like, he came over to our house and went swimming with our kids before even before we moved our family as I was just back visiting. So I already been up here for a while and then back into Nashville for a couple of weeks. So just tremendous and a great young man who — the type of guy you would want your family to end up with in that regard. So, great person.
Colson leading the team in tackles
I think any defense you would love to say that if you’re the mike linebacker, he’s gonna lead the team in tackles. You certainly don’t mind if it’s other positions as well, but I think this year, Junior, Mike Barrett, and then our two inside D-tackles — Mazi Smith and Kris Jenkins — those are our top tackles, which means the ball is not getting to the next level as much as it does sometimes. And so that’s a great trait. And those four guys right there have a huge piece in how we play defense this year.
His Baltimore Ravens influence
Yeah. I think Michigan and Baltimore is kind of synonymous with each other. We go hand in hand. So we watch their tape. They probably watch our tape. We talk a lot about some of the things that we’re doing, some of the things that they’re doing. So definitely, in that regard, also, like Wink Martindale, who’s now with the Giants, was a huge mentor of mine when I was there. So there’s a resource, different resources that I have throughout the league and try to always pick up new ideas and new ways to do things. And so yeah, there’s definitely a marriage there between the two Harbaughs in Michigan and Baltimore.
Any Michigan football players that would fit perfectly on the Ravens' defensive scheme?
Yeah, there’s about 25 guys that play for us that I could definitely see playing for Baltimore one day.
One word to describe Max Duggan
Elite. Yeah, I think he’s an elite player. I think he’s got the intangibles, a knack for making the plays at the key moments. A willingness to put his body on the line, for kind of a whatever-it-takes mentality. So a special player, special challenge for us. Tremendous opportunity for us to play against a player like that. And one we really look forward to.
If your defense needed a superpower to stop him, what would it be?
Superpower — I think like one of his biggest traits late in games is his work like he does not get tackled one-on-one in the open field. And so just an endless amount of tackling power would be really helpful in this game. He, late in the games, a linebacker comes up, he doesn’t get them down that he’s on to the safety. He doesn’t get them down and all of a sudden he’s 40 yards downfield. And so, I think our ability to get this guy on the ground, and those critical moments is probably gonna be the difference in the game.
The DBs said invisibility
Invisibility will be fantastic. So all that stuff would be great.
What does the defense's mentality need to be against him?
I think just every play being the most important play in the game and really understanding that the play is never over until either the ball is down or the guy’s on the ground because he has an innate ability to extend a play. You think you got him hemmed up. He gets out of there. Not only does he get out of there and run, he gets out of there and still throws the ball downfield. So a relentless, relentless mindset of finish every single snap at an elite level. like That’s what this game is going to come down to, finishing on a 50-50 ball down the sideline, finishing on a quarterback scramble, finishing in the run game. The ability to play down after down with that mindset is gonna be really important for us.
Why is the defense so good in the second half?
I think it goes to Ben Herbert, our strength and conditioning. I think we have really smart players on defense that we get a feel for maybe what — how they’re trying to attack us, maybe different than what they had shown on tape. We’re able to make some adjustments, but it’s a credit to the strength and conditioning. It’s a credit to the players. It’s a credit to the assistant coaches, being able to get their guys right.
If we are messing something up at halftime. Maybe we’ve got to tweak the game plan. It was a couple games, we were worried about one receiver and then another receiver started hurting us. So we maybe flipped the coverage toward a different guy. So just the ability by our players to handle that type of stuff has allowed us to play really well in the second half.
Similarities between TCU's WR corps and Ohio State
Yeah, I think both teams have elite receivers. And so I think like, sometimes in games like this, it’s a mentality that they’re gonna make some yards, and you got to really tighten down when the field shrinks, got to eliminate them from being able to score in one play, hit a chunk play because those are back breakers. And so it’s going to come down to our ability to limit the damage, fit up routes really well, know that they got multiple guys like they got, they got the big dog, they got another big dog on the other side, they got all this elite speed in the slot. They got tight ends that are underrated that make plays in their passing game. They got a running back that’s elite. So it’s probably as elite of a group of players skill-wise that we’ve seen. And so it’s going to come down to us just down after down, not giving up explosive plays, tackling really well. Keeping the quarterback in check and trying to make him uncomfortable trying to disguise coverages, try to do our best to slow him down.
How Mazi has handled his situation
Mazi is a great person. I think there was a slight hiccup, slight mistake on his part. He knows that, he’s owned it. It’s never been a huge factor for him. I don’t think it’s affected his preparation, his play. Coach Harbaugh has certainly helped with that and kind of got him with the right people and stuff like that. So I’m super proud of Mazi and how he’s been able to deal with a little bit of adversity, though it does speak to his personality — doesn’t get bothered by much.
What makes him a really good player as he’s able to go down after down and move on from bad plays and move on from good plays. And so he’s our guy in the middle. We love Mazi and I’m a super excited to watch him play this week.
Mazi being a captain
I have more so just felt from Mazi that he had to deal with it. I know what type of person he is, or guys in our locker room know what type of person he is. The coaching staff knows what type of person he is. So I don’t think on the inside it was ever a distraction at all.
Bend-don't-break defense
Sometimes that happens, sometimes you don’t want it to happen. Sometimes you’d rather stop them from the first three plays of the drive. But I also think it goes to just the mentality these guys have that like, ‘No, we’re never going to concede anything.’ So even if they do move the ball down there, they get down inside the 20, we’re not going to concede points and the guys have a relentless mindset to be really good and keep the points off the scoreboard.
I think it’s everybody on our defense has that mentality. It’s something we’ve talked about from the very beginning is playing great team defense, keeping teams out of the end zone. So yeah, sometimes they’re gonna make a play, sometimes they’re gonna hit a pass. get down the field. The Purdue game was a great — where we did not play great inside the between the 20s and our guys will probably tell you that right now if you asked them. But we really, really did a good job pulling up, got a couple of turnovers, kept them out of the end zone. And that was that’s what allowed us to sort of separate in the second half of that game as well.
So it’s a mindset. We certainly love to play better when they’re on the minus 10 and not let them go down the field. But also have — I think there’s too much respect for the game or respect for the opponent knowing that they’re gonna move the ball at times. So it’s not like you don’t get devastated when they hit a first down, you go to the next play. You play the next play. And I think that mindset’s really helped us carry over the last couple of games.
On Mike Morris
Yeah, Mike lived up to the hype. When I first met with Mike, nobody had higher expectations for Mike than Mike. And, I told him for the first time and Coach Harbaugh has told him we don’t need you to be Aidan Hutchinson. We don’t need you to be David Ojabo, but we need you to be Mike Morris, because you’re a really good player. You’re capable of being this type of player. And he really bought into that, he’s a great leader, first and foremost. He’s a great teammate. He cares about other people’s success as much as his own.
It’s been really cool to see other guys step up in the games that he’s missed. Braiden McGregor went out the in Ohio State game, had a tremendous game. Derrick Moore’s made some key plays for us. Jaylen Harrell, Eyabi. Taylor Upshaw’s probably played his best football in the last couple of games down the stretch.
So Mike is sort of the leader of that mentality in that room where we don’t really care who makes the play. Certainly love to have Mike back because he’s made his share of plays. I think at the start of the year, what he did last year is he gave Mike Macdonald a lot of flexibility because he can do so many different things. He can drop really well. He understands things. But as we evolved throughout the season, it was like, ‘You know what? Yeah, this guy is really good at all that stuff,’ but he’s an elite rusher himself, and so we need to create ways for him to rush and I think that as we maybe got through the first couple of games. Evolved into him being an elite rusher for us. We need to get him going as much as we can throughout the game.
Adding Josaiah Stewart and Ernest Hausmann via the transfer portal
I think it’s really good. I think that’s new age college football is that you’re able to add guys from the portal.
For us culture is so important. That fit is so important. Both guys, like, I mean Ernest Hausman, when he visited, you would have thought he’s already been here, like just his mentality, his approach. He’s got a very similar story of Junior Coulson and his upbringing and things like that. So they really hit it off. And so, you’re adding a player that — I don’t know what his ranking was in high school, but look, this is a guy that’s played Big Ten football now, had 10 tackles and a sack in our stadium against our offense. And so there’s tangible evidence of how he can play in our conference at our level. And so sometimes that over hoping a guy in high school, there’s a little bit more proof in that.
And same thing with Josaiah — just a guy that’s been ultra productive. Whatever level you play out when you have the production that he’s had, you can play and he knew Mikey really well and the recommendation. I think coach Harbaugh truly believes in our guys. And so when a guy says, ‘Hey, coach, I know this guy he will fit in here,’ that carries a lot of weight and then you’ve turned on the tape and the tape correlates to what you know we’re looking for at some of those positions. It was easy to add those two guys to the mix.
Has admissions become more lax?
Yeah, I really have no idea. I can’t speak to that. So glad we were able to get then in, however it worked. I’m glad we were able to get them in and sure — I think they’ve done a really good job adding the right pieces here. Olu was now like a blueprint for guys. That you can be a really good player somewhere. And then all of a sudden you go to a place and really, really up your stock, win the Rimington when the Outland, kind of a blueprint for guys that want to maybe try to take that next step in their career.
Was there skepticism before of the transfer portal?
I think the portal is really new. So I don’t know that there’s enough history to say one way or the other. I think that when a guy’s disgruntled and looking for an opportunity to maybe go create more value for himself, it’s great that he goes somewhere else and that’s college football now. So, I think you can either always adapt and evolve and try to keep up with what’s allowed and what the rules are. Or you can say, well, we never want to do this. And so I think a trademark of Jim Harbaugh was like, just every year trying to find a way to be better, try to find a way to improve and so, whatever that means, whatever the resources are, whatever the rules allow you, to try to maximize it and try to find the best way that we can get better. I think that’s what he’s doing by building his roster.
RJ Moten's versatility
He’s a jack of all trades. He’s got a body that you can play anywhere from safety, dime, linebacker, nickel. He’s played all those different spots for us this year, throughout the course of the year.
I think as a chess piece, when teams are throwing the ball more and spread out, he’s better closer to the line of scrimmage. But he’s also capable of playing back at safety and he’s done that all year for us. So he’s a guy that as you gain more time and prep between the last game and playoff game, you say, ‘OK where do we need depth? Where do we need to create value for guys?’ And his ability to play multiple positions has really upped his value throughout our defense.
Has he repped more at linebacker or at dime?
I’d say he’s done both pretty equally over the whole course of the year and continues to do that.
Again on the second half of games
I think it starts with our strength and conditioning. Ben Herbert and his staff, that do the tremendous job that they do. It speaks to them — really, really good players. We have really smart players we have that when we do need to make adjustments, we got really good assistant coaches, got really smart players that we can — there’s times where we can tweak a call at halftime or we can tweak a call in the second quarter that they’re able to pick that, pick up on that. That’s not always the case. You know, especially like somewhere where you’re new and your new defense or like young players — we got guys that now we’ve been through a lot together. So we’re able to make adjustments, stuff like that.
But ultimately, it just speaks to the guys we have, their mindset. Their ability to want to finish games really strong. It starts in the weight room and starts with coach Harbaugh and carries over to the players.
From the Georgia game to now
I think there’s always evolution this where the program went from 2020, 2021 and the goals of beat Ohio for the first time and winning the Big Ten. Sometimes, you hit that and you’re like wow, but you’ve done it and I don’t think anybody — I think the narrative of like, ‘Oh, they took the Georgia game lightly’ is nonsense. Like these guys are too competitive and they work too hard. But it also, anytime you lose, you learn and so we lost the game. A chance to learn and look back and say, OK maybe we were like, mentality-wise like we were really happy to be there.
Now it’s just been the approach all year of like, let’s take this thing as far as we can. And we have big, big goals and coach Harbaugh has mentioned our four goals. The fourth one is in front of us. But we have to take care of this game and that’s why it’s the most important thing on our minds. It’s all we’re focused on. We’re trying to avoid all distractions, all talk about anybody else and this opponent is too good. You have to respect the opponent, you have to respect the game. And if you don’t, that’s when things happen. So we’re just looking forward to the opportunity we have this week to try to put our best foot forward.
Interior linemen
I mean, our defense — I don’t know that there’s a position I value more than the inside guys on the D-line. They give you so much flexibility depending on their ability. So we have a really good interior D-line. Mazi Smith, Kris Jenkins, Mason Graham, Rayshaun Benny, Cam Goode, Kenneth Grant — all the guys that rotate in there for us. Mike Elston does a tremendous job. I think he’s the best D-line coach in college football. But their ability to not only like take on blocks but to get off blocks and make tackles. Kris and mozzie are third or fourth on our team in tackles, which is rare that for that position. So not only have they been allowed our linebackers to make a lot of plays, but they’ve made plays themselves. They allow you to sometimes to keep an extra safety out of the box out of the run. Especially a team like this where you got to try to keep a roof on the defense as much as possible with their big play ability. So nobody more valuable to us than our big guys in our program. I think our program is built on the line of scrimmage both on offense and defense and in that we know how valuable those guys are.
The defensive line rotation
I think when you play more people, everybody’s happier. The morale is higher. When you play the same 11 guys, OK, then the 13th guy, the 14th guy, they’re unhappy — the 18th guy, the 19th guy, they’re unhappy. And so, if guy’s good enough to play, then he plays for us. And I think we’ve played — I don’t know what the total number is. But in key moments this year, we probably played upward of 25-30 players on the whole unit, the whole unit, all the D-linemen that are capable of playing for us, get snaps, which is important in some games.
It’s more than others — like yeah, there’s a couple games where maybe Cam Goode didn’t get the amount of snaps he would have liked. But he knows that he’s ready. We know that he’s ready by the way he prepares and then it’s just like it’s that mentality. Like, I want Mazi to play as many snaps as Mazi can play. But I also know (Kenneth Grant) being fresh, might be better than Mazi is at (his) 50th snap of the game. And then when you can balance that out and find that good blend, everybody is better.
That’s that goes back to the second-half stuff. That’s why you’re good in the second half because guys are fresh, like we play so many guys. Guys stay fresh. So Braiden McGregor is a fresh rusher in the fourth quarter of the game where he might have played 10 or 15 snaps up to that point. Whereas a lot of teams, that’s the 50th, the 60th snap for that guy. And the game is on the line and they’re not rushing the way that they’re maybe capable of.
So yeah, it’s your position. We want to play as many guys as possible when you earn playing time at Michigan. So if you’re ready to play, you earn playing time, you get a chance to play and I think it just helps with morale and helps with the whole mentality of the group. It’s how we played all year. It’s fun to be around a group like that.
Has he reflected on the year yet?
I have not, no — it’s humbling. It’s just a tremendous opportunity. To me, it’s just like, I always just go back to you when you lose, you learn, like every experience helps prepare you for maybe what’s coming. So went through four years in Baltimore, decided to go out on a limb and go to Vandy, so much love and respect for that program and the opportunity that I had there. It was hard, people probably won’t believe me, but it was hard to leave there. Just because of relationships — you dive in, especially on the ground floor, trying to turn something around. You dive in with the coaches, you dive in with Clark Lea and the players there. And then Jim Harbaugh calls and yeah, it was humbling that he called and was new, was a great opportunity and then and then you look at it you’re like, ‘OK, it’s a great opportunity. Oh, by the way, yeah, we just had these three guys go in the first-round off the defense but other than that, this can be a great opportunity for you.’ So I think me and the guys here were a perfect blend of we have a huge chip on our shoulder. Maybe we’ve been doubted out at different times in our careers and we’ve thrived well together and just tried to build the best unit we can.
Did he think this defense would be this good?
I’d be lying if I didn’t have those expectations. Have very high expectations for any group, but then I think when I came here and went through spring practice and then you’re like okay, the O-line wins the Joe Moore award last year. Oh, we just added like the best center in college football to it. We got all these skill players. We got Blake Corum, we got Donovan Edwards, we got two quarterbacks in spring that were capable of leading this team to a championship.
So as we were defending them and going through that process, my expectations kept rising and I’m like, OK, we got a chance here. The program has been built along the line of scrimmage so you got people up front of putting together a stout run defense. With the coaches in place like coach Clink and coach Helow, coach Elston, Jay Harbaugh moving over to the defense, knew we had kind of the right ingredients and so just the longer I was here, and we were going through workouts and going through spring practice, I think when I left spring I had really high expectations.
On TCU battling in the second-half of games
I think it’s just a credit to them as they’ve got really good players. They’ve got really good coaches. So they figure things out as the game goes on. I think coach Riley does a great job calling plays. Coach Dykes, obviously his offensive background like they’ve got a great system that allows them to maybe tweak as the game goes on as well.
So maybe somebody’s playing them different than they thought, they’re able to tweak what they’re trying to do, how they try to attack people. And then you add in like that intangible piece of the quarterback and just his willingness to do whatever he can for the team and will the team to victory at times. I think for us it’s like how can we try to start off the game really well as best we can figure out what they’re trying to do to attack us, adjust, play a lot of players throughout the course of the game. So that it when it does come into the third and into the fourth quarter that we’re at our best and that’s our formula. I can’t speak to theirs but we look forward to the challenge on Saturday.
Mike Sainristil switching over from offense
Yeah, Mikey means everything. Just to me as a coach, as a leader of this group, the job that he’s done. I think at first, the No. 1 quality he brought over was leadership and we had lost everybody. We had lost Aidan and Josh Ross was a great leader, Brad Hawkins was a great leader. So there I think the leadership void was as big of a concern as anything. Moving Mikey over, dove right in in spring practice. Got better and better every single day in spring, picked up on the nuances of the position really well.
But it was the leadership and then it kind of like morphed into like yeah, he’s a good leader, but he’s also like a great player and just speaks to his ability. You can tell he played both ways in his high school career and probably had options at both going to college. But what he’s been able to do after playing receiver for three years, like you can write a movie about his time at Michigan and sort of his story. So he’s made, clutch play after clutch play for us in key moments and just tremendous player, tremendous teammate. Tremendous person. One of my favorite players on the team.
Favorite Mike Sainristil moment
Um, so just real quick, my favorite Mikey moment? Probably his leadership moment in going into the fourth quarter of the Ohio State game. He kind of pulled the defense up. It’s sort of gone viral I think since, but just kind of spoke to like, what are our big, long term goals are. Where we felt like that game was as we had a four-point lead going into the fourth quarter. The game was imbalanced and let’s put our mark on this thing and let’s put the hammer down. Let’s, without speaking about the other team, it was more about us and how we want to play in that fourth quarter. And that was probably — and then he went out, backed it up. So he said all that. And then he went out and made the biggest play of our season, keeping the tight end from catching the touchdown pass and forcing a field goal. So just a tremendous moment.
