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In new safeties coach Bob Shoop, Michigan didn’t just get a guy that has coordinated defenses at the top of college football, it also got someone who has a lot of familiarity with what the Wolverines are trying to do.
And that’s because, even before coaching, Shoop found himself gravitating towards Don Brown.
Shoop recently oversaw the No. 1 defense in the country, with 2018 Mississippi State beating out No. 2 Michigan under Don Brown once the postseason had concluded. But Shoop rose up through the coaching ranks working with defenses, with the mentality of ‘solve your problems with aggression.’ For him, that goes back to his time at Yale, when he was a player on offense getting to know a young defensive coordinator in a 32 year-old Brown.
“Without maybe even knowing it, because I was an offensive player and he was a defensive coach, he’s had such a great impact on my decision to pursue a career in coaching,” Shoop told Jon Jansen on the In the Trenches podcast. “My mindset as a defensive coach – for the last 12 years, I’ve been a defensive coordinator – and his in-your-face style of play and ‘solve your problems with aggression’ mentality is something I’ve really tried to impact upon the players that I’ve coached. I think the thing that’s cool about Coach Brown is that he can interact with players from all different backgrounds. Like I said, when I played for him in 1987, we were coaching at Yale. In 1989, he was coaching at Yale. In 2006, when we worked together, he was at UMass. And now, here at Michigan. He’s a really unique and special person who can communicate and motivate all types of different people, and I think that’s what makes him a special guy.”
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But the thing that Shoop really learned from Brown was how to be a teacher — not just a strategist.
Playing on offense while Brown coached defense wasn’t Shoop’s only experience working with the long-tenured DC. Shoop got his start in coaching as a graduate assistant at Yale in 1989, as Brown was still the defensive coordinator. But later, when Brown took over as the UMass head coach, Shoop came aboard to coach defensive backs for a year in 2006.
So while he has a litany of mentors in the defensive arena, he has spent time with Brown, enough to help inform his strategy, but also to see him in action working with players, and how well he achieves that.
“I think that’s a great observation because he gets a reputation as, not only a mad scientist, but he’s very passionate, he’s very loud – that’s how he is,” Shoop said. “But I think he’s in some ways underrated as a teacher. And when I knew him, he was coaching the secondary. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen someone coach the secondary as well as he does – the techniques, the fundamentals. And now that I’ve sat in a room with him the last month coaching the linebackers, just as a technician, coaching the steps, the footwork, the keys, the reads, all the stuff he teaches with the linebackers. And certainly there’s, like any expert in the field, he understands his scheme and he understands all the intricacies and all the details to be a championship caliber defense like no other.”