What Steve Clinkscale said about Michigan football DBs going into Week 8
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Though there are aspects to the Michigan football defense that remain a work in progress, the Wolverines have improved tremendously across the board.
In particular, the defensive pass game is so much better, and after six games (the total amount of games played last year), the secondary is giving up just 190.7 yards per game compared to 250.5 a year ago. That’s not only a 60-yard difference, but it’s the difference between being the No. 22 pass defense and No. 90, as it was a year ago.
Still, there are a lot of things that Michigan defensive pass game coordinator Steve Clinkscale wants to improve upon. He shared more about the secondary — the corners, safeties and nickels — what he’s seen and what he’d like to see.
Here’s everything he said on Wednesday as Michigan prepares for Northwestern.
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How did the DBs come back after the bye week?
“They actually came back pretty hungry. The first couple practices were pretty good. They’re communicating pretty well, they’re practicing hard. Really, I think the reps really helped them and they look like we’ve expected them to and will continue to trend that way.”
How does he evaluate the corners through six games?
“I think they need to make more plays out there, but I think we just need to let the game come to us. We’re doing a lot of different coverages, so they’re not as isolated as much as they have been. So teaching them the concepts, the formations, the concepts, our concepts, what we’re trying to get done, is really the biggest learning curve. I feel like we’re starting to trend to them learning that a little bit better.
“But I like for us to continue to be aggressive. I feel like we’re making tackles better, OK? I think we need to stop letting the ball go over our head at times. And then have better eyes. I think across the board, from the nickel, to the safeties, to the corners — when I’m in that meeting room and I’m coaching them up, it’s eyes. I stand on the offensive side and watch their eyes all the time, because we’ve gotta make sure we’re looking at the right thing. And if this keeps going, we keep pressuring people, or playing coverage and giving different looks, they’re gonna try to do different things to create easy, like a gimmick play or something. Kinda like what we had at Nebraska, a couple of those plays, you could see our eye discipline isn’t what it needs to be.”
Why do the players feel more comfortable going to the coaches?
“Really, just being myself. I played the game, I respect the game, I respect the coach-player relationship. There are times when you come close to that line as a coach and you get on them really hard and you’ve gotta understand, too, in this day and age, these young men weren’t always coached like that at times. So you’ve gotta find a balance, per player. But as a group, I coach them hard, but I also love them up. We do a lot of things together, we’re a tight unit. They know I just want the best for them. They know I want them to live out their dreams. They know I want them to accomplish what they want to here, but it’s not just gonna happen because you wanna do it. You’ve gotta put in the work, you’ve gotta execute your assignment. There’s a lot that comes with it. Doing things well on and off the field.
“And then having the ability to come in, sit down, and talk to me when you’re just not feeling it today. They go through it, players go through it. My previous players, current players. I talk to my guys in the NFL, I talk to the guys I’ve coached, I talk to my guys here. At the end of the day, you’ve gotta build that relationship so that they can feel that they can call on you to give them that incentive to get through that day, win the moment. I take pride in that, but that’s really just myself. Kinda been like that my whole life.”
How much has the front seven helped the back end?
“First of all, listen: they always talk about recruiting, recruiting, recruiting. If you ever look at who I recruit and when I recruit them, I’m going after linemen! The first — offensive and defensive — it starts there. Now, the DBs have the same type of job the O-line has, we’ve gotta protect the end zone, they protect the quarterback. But if you don’t have guys up front that can pressure and stop the run — and now, don’t get it twisted: the DBs help on the run, too, now. We’re in fits — corner, safety, nickel — everybody has their job to do, linebackers as well. But if you’re not working together, if you’re not married up, if we’re not complementing one another, they may have good pressure, but our coverage stinks, they’re gonna complete the ball. We may have great coverage, but if they don’t contain the quarterback, they get a first down. We’ve gotta kind of marry it up.
“One thing I told the players yesterday, for the first time in a really, really long time — I’m not even sure I remember when; maybe ever — we’re not in there pointing fingers. There’s nobody saying, ‘C’mon DBs! C’mon line! C’mon linebackers!’ Somebody gets beat for a touchdown, everybody comes to the sideline, we fix it, we don’t let it happen again. Somebody gets beat at practice, we fix it, we don’t let it happen again. They are a unit. They meet together on their own as a unit more than any other group I’ve been around. I think they’re taking pride, and they’re understanding, when they’re together watching film, they’re understanding what their buddy is trying to do so that that way they can complement one another.”
How much has the learning curve been accelerated since the starters have stayed healthy?
“I think that’s an advantage, of course, but throughout practice, as a coach, as I said before when I was out here, we’ve gotta throw the guys in that mix so they learn to be comfortable with other people, as well, because you never know what happens in a game, so you always try to prepare for a different circumstance. But that really helps. That chemistry helps. Working together helps. Sometimes taking one guy out and putting someone else in also helps the chemistry, because now the guys who are used to one person making all the checks and calls, he’s not in there anymore, somebody else has to do that. And that’s how you develop safeties, that’s how you develop nickels and corners. You teach them the game, you teach them how to work with one another. You don’t sit there and yell and scream at them all the time — I kinda do that from time to time. But you have to get them to understand that we all work together.
“The corners should be able to line up and go play safety. The safeties should be able to line up and go play nickel, or even linebacker, the way this defense is built. They all have to be cohesive and know the checks. We have to know, when we make a check up front, the corners need to know what the outside backers are checking, so depending on what our coverage rotation may be, or our assignment, because everything is not cookie-cutter, play cover 3, play cover 4. We’ve got a lot of different checks and things we have to do.”
Which of the young guys have positioned themselves to be the next man up?
“Well, I think McBurrows is definitely coming along. He makes a lot of plays in practice and just want to continue to build him up and also continue to help him continue to do well on and off the field, as well. Because a lot of times, the freshmen, if you start to get a little success, you start to slack in certain areas. He’s doing a really good job of just keep working everything in a positive light. He’s doing a good job of taking notes, he’s trying to learn, execute his assignments, and continually getting better and better. But he’s one that stands out.
“Of course, Rod Moore is continuing to do a good job. Gotta get him more different things — special teams, he’s working hard in the secondary. I keep seeing Caden and Makari keep progressing every week. Like I said, we’ll get them out there if it’s a matter of the trust factor, doing well in their assignments in practice, if we feel comfortable with them.”
His personal adjustment
“It’s like I’ve known these guys. I walked in, the players, the coaches — it’s just like when I left the previous place, I felt welcomed there. I felt I knew the guys, the chemistry. I brought in a lot of those players. I didn’t bring in these guys here, however, very cohesive. So it just (snaps). There was never a lull in there where I kinda gotta work on this relationship because he doesn’t trust me or like me, all this stuff. No, we went right to it. It started well and it’s continued to go well.”
How hard is it to coach holding penalties out of guys?
“Well, that’s a natural instinct. Whenever somebody runs away from you, everybody out here is gonna grab them. I know we get, ‘Oh, man! What are they doing?’ Well, they’re not trying to grab, OK? I continue to try to work their hands lower. Lower your hands are, the less you’re gonna grab. You grab up top, that’s holding. If your hands are low and you get a little jersey, a lot of times they’ll come up to you and say, ‘Hey, don’t do that.’ But get their hands low.
“The reason I like to get their hands low is because now it tells them to run. The big thing with all we’re doing, you can’t be handsy. Your feet and your hands help you on the line, after that, you have to run. If you continue to put your hands on a receiver down the field, you’re gonna hold him, because you’re creating separation and he’s gonna break that route off or accelerate better on the ball than you do, because he does it all day in practice. Now you’re gonna hold. We’re just gonna continue to keep working on it.
“We show it on film, when we get it, we address it. I’m one of those coaches, I address it again immediately, and they’ll watch it again on practice. This is why you’re doing it in practice, why you’re doing it in a game. And we keep working on it. And you can tell in practice, you can see that they’re trying really not to grab up high, their eyes are staying better on the hips. I tell them all the time, that’ll help them, too, with their eye discipline — another factor as well.”
Does he want more turnoverrs?
“Yes, I definitely want more takeaways from — you guys keep saying corners, but defensive backs. We’ve had plenty of opportunities. If we hadn’t dropped as many as we have, of course we’ve been working that jugs machine every single day, but when we get that opportunity, we want to continue to capitalize on that. And force the quarterbacks to make tougher throws. There’s some times that I feel there’s a little too much space between the defensive back, the defender and the receiver, because their eyes are staring at the quarterback and not the man, and we want to continue to work on that.
“That stuff, wherever I’ve been, it’s always been a factor. You gotta get disciplined guys, get them to be disciplined and execute their assignments.”
On the players offering input
“Like I said earlier, when you’ve played the position, sometimes you hear people talk about things you could do or should do, and they’ve never been in that position. I’ve been in that position. Maybe not at this level, but I’ve been in that position. I’ve lost games, I’ve won games, I’ve made big plays, I should’ve made plays, I’ve missed tackles, I made big tackles. So I understand what they’re going through, and if they see things a little different based on the concepts of how we coached it that week, because they’re doing it a little different offensively, then we want them to play how they see it, because then they can apply it. We just give them toolboxes. Whether it’s split safeties or the middle’s closed, they have a toolbox they can use. They can reach in and use those based on the formation, based on the situation. However they see it in that situation, we allow them to work together, and there’s times we’ll go, ‘No, I don’t see it like that, don’t do that.’ But there are other times where we’ll go, ‘OK, I see it how you see it,’ we’ll draw it up and all get on the same page.
“That’s what I tell them. A lot of times, when you have eye discipline, you can come to the sideline and tell me what happened. If I ask you what happened and you can’t tell me, it’s because you were looking at the quarterback the whole time and not the tight end or the No. 2 receiver or the No. 1.”
Does that create more ownership for the players?
“I believe it does, I hope it does, because this is their defense. Coaches, we come and go. This is their defense, they need to take pride in this. There’s stuff they’ll be talking about for the next four years or life. I think it does, and I hope it does, as well.”
His reaction to Dax Hill's taunting penalty at Nebraska
“I don’t think I can really say what I was thinking or what I was saying! But that’s not how we wanna play. We’re not gonna — I think in the heat of the battle, last play, who’s to say I wouldn’t have did it. But we don’t wanna do that. To give a situation, a chance for them to — we actually, Gemon gave a gesture during that same drive towards their sideline after he made a big tackle. We have to eliminate those things. We watch it every week when we teach the game. There’s people every week, they make penalties that aren’t earned — that’s the best way I can put it. Not smart penalties. We don’t wanna put ourselves in that position because we’re taunting or how you put it, or we’re just excited and it looks like we’re standing over a guy. We don’t want to give, penalize the team or possibly lose the game as an outcome because of that. I wasn’t happy with that at all.
“Dax is, he’s a pretty innocent guy, so I don’t think he really meant it as taunting, but he was excited because that was a receiver we wanted to stop all game now. I think he had less than 40 yards receiving — we focused on him throughout the week. So it was pretty exciting for him to make that play at the end.”
Can he see Hassan Haskins as a linebacker?
“I like seeing him score touchdowns! Yeah, of course. That position, they’re a lot of very instinctual. Sometimes they make plays you don’t expect them to make. Very athletic, strong, he’s powerful. You can definitely see that he has great linebacker instincts and skill set. But like I said, I like seeing him score touchdowns!
“When we’re on that sideline and we need a long drive, it’s good to see those guys pound that rock and do what they need to do offensively.”
Was Nebraska in an illegal formation and was that the reason for the TD?
“Yeah, the unbalanced formation? They didn’t have enough guys on the line. However, we’ve practiced that and we should have better eyes on that. He inserted in, made it a little more difficult than we wanted to see. But we definitely have worked on that.
“No, it was just the coverage we were in and kind of your eyes. When they go unbalanced like that, sometimes they put you into conflict of protecting the weak-side run and also that’s why they pop-pass you to the field, because you get caught between two worlds. We definitely worked on that as a result.”
That should have been a flag, right?
“Yeah, it wasn’t and we learned from it. Like we tell the kids, we don’t flinch. I’m having a great time, and yes, there’s difficult adversity, there’s things we got challenged (on), there’s things they do against you, but if we’re gonna ask them not to flinch, then we can’t flinch. What can we do about it after they put it on the scoreboard. They wouldn’t change it, so OK, next play. We got an opportunity at the end of the game to win the game and we did what we were supposed to do for our team.”
Who has challenged the secondary the most thus far this season?
“Probably Nebraska, with their perimeter runs and their passes off of it and their gimmick passes. I think they stressed the secondary and the linebackers a lot. Put a lot of guys into one-on-one situations. And you’ve gotta have great eye control, so probably Nebraska, to be honest with you.”
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