Why Michigan’s cornerbacks are much more comfortable with the new coaching staff

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — When Don Brown was Michigan football’s defensive coordinator, you knew what you were getting every single down: man coverage, with the corners left out on an island. That was all fine and well when he had a mixture of elite and experienced talent. In 2020, however, he had neither, and with the Big Ten schedule thrust upon the players at the outset of the season, it meant major trouble.

But that wasn’t the only reason things failed in the secondary.

There have been big changes with new defensive coordinator Mike Macdonald helming the defense. One of them being that the coverages are constantly mixing things up: man, zone, and pattern matching. On a down-to-down basis, opposing quarterbacks and receivers never quite know what they’re gonna get.

For cornerback Gemon Green, it’s exactly what he wanted, as offenses can’t just tee off on the secondary, hoping their man can beat the coverage one-on-one.

“We can disguise a little bit. It helps us as a player because we can kinda do (what they do) in the league,” Green said. “So it helps us look at it early on, while we’re in college. It took some pressure off us, like I said before in an early interview. But we still gotta play ball.”

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Green himself is feeling better and better on a weekly basis. Of corners in the Big Ten playing at least 20% of the time snap-wise, Green is ranked 14th in 2021 — up a few spots from 2020, when he was 17th, per PFF. Vincent Gray, on the other hand, rose from 32nd to 12th, according to the advanced analytics site.

It’s not just getting more experience, though that’s part of it. A big part is that he feels like his unit is more prepared on a weekly basis.

“My confidence is a lot better than last year playing throughout the first six games. ” Green said. “Last year, I was trying to get better — same as this year. I don’t know — I feel like we prepare better each week this year than we did last year. That’s probably it, pretty much — preparation.

“Yeah, experience — everything.”

But that’s not all — and this is the indictment.

For Green and the other players in the secondary, if there was something they didn’t know, or that they felt they weren’t good at, they feel like they weren’t getting the teaching last year. Essentially, the staff was saying ‘this is how we’re going to do it, so do it,’ without much of the ‘why’ involved, or any kind of adjustments. This year, however, Green says it’s the complete opposite, with the secondary getting to ask questions when they feel like they’re stuck in the mud.

“This year, just going back and forth — if we feel uncomfortable with something in a coverage or something, we come talk to the coaches,” Green said. “They’ll try to help us out. Last year, we didn’t do that, for real. We didn’t have one-on-one conversations for real, about the defense. It was always like, ‘Play this, do that.’ But this year, we do a lot of adjustments — even throughout the games. I feel like it’s a lot better, just adjusting and stuff.”

Overall, the new coaching staff with Macdonald and secondary coach Steve Clinkscale have been much more accommodating. Green says he feels much more comfortable going to the coaches this year, knowing that their door is always open.

“I feel like it’s more man-on-man this year,” Green said. “We get to have a full conversation with the coaches. I could just go have a full conversation with the coaches. I could just go into his office right now and sit there for like an hour and chop it up with him — about football, life. Last year, I didn’t kinda do that that much, but that was last year.”

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Ranking Big Ten quarterbacks by PFF passer grade through Week 7