ANN ARBOR, Mich. — No one was particularly surprised that Michigan football struggled offensively against Texas after seeing the Wolverines working in new personnel in Week 1. But the big surprise was how much the defense took a step back.
Though the entire defensive coaching staff had moved on to the NFL after the 2023 season, Michigan hired the architect of the scheme, Wink Martindale, to replace his acolyte Jesse Minter. Behind him, every assistant coach was a defensive coordinator at some point at the college level. So it was surprising to see the defense struggle to adjust when Texas found ways to poke holes in what the Wolverines were doing.
However, nickelback Zeke Berry says that Martindale wasn’t fazed by the loss and that he, along with the rest of the team, moves on.
“Everybody’s been having the same attitude towards what happened,” Berry said. “I mean, we’re gonna leave it in the past. A loss is a loss, but now we’re just going on to Arkansas State.”
But what was Martindale’s message to the defense after giving up 31 points to the Longhorns? After all, it could have been much worse, but Texas quit pressing once it had built what appeared to be an insurmountable lead.
“Just make sure that we play with the pillars that we do every day in practice and on game days,” Berry said. “It’s play with effort, block destruction, just things like that. Make sure we play how we play all the time.”
One of the four pillars of the Michigan football defense is ‘obnoxious communication’ but the Wolverines seemed constantly out of position, which didn’t help that the lack of fundamentals in tackling also came into play in Week 2.
But Berry says that they were still communicating, it’s just that everything didn’t work out.
“Not really. I mean, I feel in the field that we talked as much as we can,” Berry said. “Whenever we seen things that was out in the ordinary that we saw on film and stuff like that. But I feel like we did a good part.”