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While there are unduly high expectations for the Michigan football offense with Josh Gattis in his second year as offensive coordinator and with Joe Milton as the presumed new starting quarterback, perhaps the biggest questions for these Wolverines are on the defensive side of the ball.
On it’s face, it seems absurd, as under Jim Harbaugh, the maize and blue have yet to finish worse than it did last season, fielding the No. 11 defense in the country by yards surrendered per game. However, with the No. 25 scoring defense, it was nearly 10 spots lower than we’ve seen in recent memory in Ann Arbor, as No. 16 was the worst we had witnessed before that (in 2018).
There are questions about who will line up in the secondary with Michigan having lost both Lavert Hill and Ambry Thomas this offseason, but junior defensive end Aidan Hutchinson is confident we’ll see something of a defensive resurgence this year.
He tells Jon Jansen on the In The Trenches podcast that the unit is playing faster than ever, putting knowledge, instincts, leadership and athletic ability all together now as the maize and blue prepares for the 2020 season.
“I think we have a lot of leaders on this defense,” Hutchinson said. “I think we’re really fast, really aggressive. Our knowledge as a defense as a whole is just really, really high. I’ve seen Cam and Josh run, I’ve seen Dax, Brad, Vince – I’ve seen all those guys. And I’ve seen the knowledge of the game, the speed we play it at is just pretty unparalleled.”
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That said, with padded practices having begun on Wednesday, the defense is counting down to Oct. 24, when it heads to Minneapolis to take on Minnesota for the season opener.
While Hutchinson is excited to be able to hit somebody for the first time since the Jan. 1 VRBO Citrus Bowl against Alabama, he’s already yearning to make plays against someone wearing a different uniform.
And he’s sure that fans will notice how ready to go this defense is come that first Big Ten football Saturday.
“Hitting in pads against your teammates, a couple of days of it is fun,” Hutchinson said. “But at the end of the day, those aren’t the guys you want to be hitting. It’s the Gophers you want to be hitting. Once we get out there, we have so much energy wound up from this past five months, six months – man, it’s gonna be fun to watch. Fun to watch us run out there and just play that Don Brown defense.”
No matter how good the Michigan defense looks to be in the early going, however, there will be a lot of discomfort until it takes place in the final regular season game against Ohio State.
Each of the last two years, the defense appeared to be hitting its stride with The Game forthcoming, only to get shellacked both years, having surrendered 62 points in 2018 and 56 in 2019.
Hutchinson has spent a lot of time watching film of the Wolverines’ miscues against the Buckeyes this offseason, but simultaneously, he says that the team cannot dwell on its shortcomings against its arch-rival.
“I watch that film a lot,” Hutchinson said. “We just gotta execute better. It’s tough. But all you can do is rebound. You can’t dwell on that. If you dwell on it, it’s just gonna stick on you and hold you down. But we’re all just ready to attack them this year and I can’t wait until we get to play them.”
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