Tag: Don Brown

Five things to know about UMass

Five things to know about Saturday’s opponent. Georgia plays UMass at 12:45 p.m. ET

UMass Minutemen is the Georgia Bulldogs’ opponent on Saturday. Not a lot of people know much about them. Here are a few things to know about the Minutemen.

Student Enrollment

UMass student enrollment is over 30,000. The Minutemen received over 50,000 undergraduate applicants this season while only accepting 5,300 applicants for first-year students.

Independent Conference

UMass’ first three seasons in the FBS was apart of the Mid-American Conference (MAC) before becoming an independent in 2015.

UMass just fired their coach

UMass fired their head coach Don Brown on Monday. Offensive coordinator Shane Montgomery will serve as UMass’s head coach following Brown’s dismissal.

UMass not been over .500 in over a decade

UMass has not been over .500 since Week 8 of the 2011 season. In their second best season, they went 4-8 in 2018 with wins over Duquesne, Charlotte, UConn, and Liberty.

Share a common opponent

Georgia Bulldogs linebacker Damon Wilson II tries to tackle Mississippi State Bulldogs quarterback Michael Van Buren Jr.. Dale Zanine-Imagn Images

Georgia and UMass share a common opponent this season which is Mississippi State Bulldogs. The Minutemen lost 45-20 in their game in Starksville. Georgia won their game 41-31 against the Bulldogs in Athens.

UMass fires head coach days before playing Georgia

UMass parts ways with its head coach before the Georgia game in what is not exactly ideal timing.

The University of Massachusetts has parted ways with head coach Don Brown ahead of their upcoming matchup against Georgia.

The Georgia Bulldogs kept their College Football Playoff hopes alive with a commanding 31-17 win over Tennessee in primetime last weekend, wrapping up their conference schedule. Now, they shift focus to a non-conference game against UMass. Offensive coordinator Shane Montgomery will serve as UMass’ offensive coordinator following Brown’s dismissal on Monday.

Don Brown began his coaching career in 1982 at Dartmouth and held various defensive coordinator roles at Northeast programs like Yale, Brown, and UMass, where he first joined in 1998. He became Northeastern’s head coach in 2000, staying until 2003, and later led UMass from 2004 to 2008. Brown also worked as a defensive coordinator at Maryland, UConn, Boston College, and Michigan before returning to UMass as head coach in 2022.

Despite an overall head coaching record of 101-71, UMass’s 2-8 start this season led to Brown’s dismissal during his second stint with the program. UMass has already faced two SEC opponents this year, Missouri and Mississippi State, and will now prepare to take on Georgia.

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The Minutemen are coming off a heartbreaking loss to Liberty, where they led 20-7 at halftime but ultimately lost in overtime. The program will also begin its search for a new head coach.

Wink Martindale: Michigan football not ‘going back to the old school Don Brown system’

Let’s put this narrative to rest. #GoBlue

One of the big narratives that Michigan football fans have openly discussed after Wink Martindale was hired to lead the Wolverines defense is what it will look like compared not only to the past three years but to the defenses of years past.

The aggressive, blitz-heavy coordinator has drawn a lot of comparisons to former defensive leader Don Brown — who was nicknamed Dr. Blitz during his time in Ann Arbor. But on a subscriber Q&A with Champions Circle members, Martindale stressed that there is no comparison between he and his distant predecessor.

“There’s a narrative out there right now, one of the things is — and I’m telling all the listeners: I don’t listen to radio, I don’t read articles or anything else — But there’s a narrative now that some people are afraid it’s going back to the old school Don Brown system,” Martindale said. “That’s not the case whatsoever. To me, that’s profiling just because I’m old and Brown’s old. You can you can’t put us together.”

So, what will it look like? In a lot of ways, it will look similar to what the defense looked like under Mike Macdonald and Jesse Minter — but Martindale will certainly put his spin on it.

Even so, Martindale will tinker, and he’s already doing so in his mind. Of course, he has to get used to the personnel, and he’ll get the best view once fall camp comes around.

“This is Michigan’s defense. This is Sherrone’s defense. And if you take one of those elements out next year, yeah, it’s still the same system,” Martindale said. “But there will still be another little personality thing to it. And it comes down to who’s calling the game, as well — which I’ll be calling the games.

“But yeah, the defense has so much flexibility. We haven’t even talked about the players yet. It has so much flexibility. It shows the personality of who’s coaching the defense, and we’re all coaching — this is a we thing, this isn’t an I thing. We’re all coaching it and I’m looking forward to this month being over with all the official visits and — alright, I’ll tell you, I’m looking forward to vacation weeks away, but also I’ll be continually thinking about different ways, different looks, different things that we can do.”

Former Michigan State football DL Tyson Watson commits to UMass

Tyson Watson is heading to UMass

Michigan State has seen their fair share of players hit the transfer portal, much like the rest of the country, and defensive lineman Tyson Watson was one of them. Watson was a 3-star prospect and a member of the 2021 recruiting class, Mel Tucker’s first at Michigan State. After his true freshman season, Watson made the decision to enter the transfer portal.

Watson has made the decision to transfer to the University of Massachusetts. Watson will be playing under new UMass head coach Don Brown, who Spartan fans know very well from his time as the University of Michigan’s defensive coordinator.

Watson, a Warren, Michigan native, will surely have some familiarity with Brown and his staff, making this a good landing spot for the former Spartan.

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Blitz-happy Wildcats could cause some problems for Oregon offense

Arizona blitzes most of the time when on defense, and that will create a unique challenge for the Ducks.

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For a team that’s rebuilding, the most difficult part is trying to figure out what kind of defense, or offense for that matter is best to run according to the personnel that is on the roster right now.

Arizona has decided the way to go is to blitz the quarterback. And if that doesn’t work, then blitz again.

After three games, quite literally, it’s been a hit-and-miss strategy for the Wildcats under first-year head coach Jedd Fisch and defensive coordinator Don Brown. Arizona knew exactly what it was getting in Brown as the long-time assistant coach has the moniker of “Dr. Blitz.”

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But the Wildcats are prone to giving up the big play. BYU scored a touchdown of 67 yards in the first game and then San Diego State found the end zone on plays of 55, 25, and 40 yards, all in the first half. All three opponents, including Northern Arizona, had their fair share of plays of 20 yards that were not scoring plays.

That’s the bad.

The good comes from ranking second in the Pac-12 with 21 tackles for loss, only behind Oregon State. Nose tackle Kyon Barrs, who leads the team with 3.5 tackles for loss, and cornerback Christian Roland-Wallace, who is considered to be a premier shutdown corner.

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The stats don’t bear it out (just one interception thus far) because opponents tend to throw on the other side of the field. In Arizona’s five games in 2020, he ranked third on the team in tackles and tied for the team lead in pass break-ups.

Oregon offensive coordinator Joe Moorhead says Roland-Wallace can cause havoc for an offense in multiple ways.

“His length and his physicality in the run game and at the line of scrimmage (make him a challenge),” he said. “He has very good short-distance quickness and the ability to redirect and the scheme that Coach Brown utilizes gives him a lot of opportunities to press at the line of scrimmage and challenge the receivers.”

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While opponents know the Wildcats will be blitzing, the difficult part, according to Oregon head coach Mario Cristobal is figuring out where it’s coming from and prepare for every possible scenario.

“The challenge this week is two personnel groupings that are very different in what they do out of them,” he said. “We have to be at our very best, got to study them thoroughly and got to have a good plan because they do affect the quarterback. They get a lot of penetration and create negative plays in the run game as well.”

As long as the Ducks get more explosion plays than negative ones, they should be just fine when the final horn sounds on this contest.

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Don Brown explains what went wrong for Michigan defense in 2020

The Michigan football defense went backward in 2020 and went from being one of the best defenses in the country to one of the worst.

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It had been a unit in decline since the Ohio State loss in 2018, but the 2019 Michigan defense was at least one of the best in the country, even if it had taken a step back.

2020 was another story.

Blowout losses were once relegated to the regular-season finale against the Buckeyes when Don Brown was leading the charge, but they became more commonplace. Losses to Wisconsin and Indiana saw a defense in disarray, and closer losses to Michigan State and Penn State — teams that were struggling offensively all season — were beyond problematic.

Now, Brown is out, but he’s landed a new role already. Leading the charge under former Michigan pass game coordinator Jedd Fisch — the new head coach at Arizona — Brown is tasked with revamping the Wildcats attack on that side of the ball. But, speaking to Tuscon.com, he looked back at what went wrong for the Wolverines defense in his final year in Ann Arbor.

“With the pandemic, we lost a very important element of college football, and that’s spring practice,” Brown said. “You’re learning a lot of technique and fundamentals. You’re also attacking the tackling phase, the turnover phase.

“We had an interesting team. We had a group of older guys, but we weren’t very deep. And then we didn’t have a very big junior or sophomore class, so then it became the true freshmen and the redshirt freshmen jumping into strategic roles.

“Now you’re practicing in June, and then the Big Ten decided to cancel the season. Then we lost a couple of key players on defense (to opt-outs). Then you kind of jumped back into practice when they OK’d the Big Ten season, and you had to get ready to play a game.”

He, of course, is speaking about senior cornerback Ambry Thomas, who opted out when the Big Ten pulled the plug initially on the season in August — though he was the only key player that opted out, as defensive end Kwity Paye, in particular, opted to play — though he lost some games due to injury.

While those are outside circumstances, he’s not absolving himself from failure, either. But, he still points to the personnel as being one of the key reasons why the defense struggled.

“The techniques and fundamentals, I could have done a better job in that area,” Brown said. “(But) we gotta do the best we can. We ended up missing three weeks due to COVID. We had significant injuries. We were down to playing a walk-on ‘Mike’ (middle linebacker) and a walk-on safety, and they did a great job. But that just gives you the idea.”

Michigan is expected to hire Mike Macdonald, the Baltimore Ravens linebackers coach, as its new defensive coordinator to replace Brown once the Ravens season has culminated.

Don Brown explains what went wrong for Michigan defense in 2020

The Michigan football defense went backward in 2020 and went from being one of the best defenses in the country to one of the worst.

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It had been a unit in decline since the Ohio State loss in 2018, but the 2019 Michigan defense was at least one of the best in the country, even if it had taken a step back.

2020 was another story.

Blowout losses were once relegated to the regular-season finale against the Buckeyes when Don Brown was leading the charge, but they became more commonplace. Losses to Wisconsin and Indiana saw a defense in disarray, and closer losses to Michigan State and Penn State — teams that struggled offensively all season — were beyond problematic.

Now, Brown is out, but he has landed a new role already. Leading the charge under former Michigan pass game coordinator Jedd Fisch — the new head coach at Arizona — Brown is tasked with revamping the Wildcats attack on that side of the ball. But, speaking to Tuscon.com, he looked back at what went wrong for the Wolverines defense in his final year in Ann Arbor.

“With the pandemic, we lost a very important element of college football, and that’s spring practice,” Brown said. “You’re learning a lot of technique and fundamentals. You’re also attacking the tackling phase, the turnover phase.

“We had an interesting team. We had a group of older guys, but we weren’t very deep. And then we didn’t have a very big junior or sophomore class, so then it became the true freshmen and the redshirt freshmen jumping into strategic roles.

“Now you’re practicing in June, and then the Big Ten decided to cancel the season. Then we lost a couple of key players on defense (to opt outs). Then you kind of jumped back into practice when they OK’d the Big Ten season, and you had to get ready to play a game.”

He, of course, is speaking about senior cornerback Ambry Thomas, who opted out when the Big Ten pulled the plug initially on the season in August — though he was the only key player that opted out, as defensive end Kwity Paye, in particular, opted to play — though he lost some games due to injury.

While those are outside circumstances, he’s not absolving himself from failure, either. But, he still points to the personnel as being one of the key reasons the defense struggled.

“The techniques and fundamentals, I could have done a better job in that area,” Brown said. “(But) we gotta do the best we can. We ended up missing three weeks due to COVID. We had significant injuries. We were down to playing a walk-on ‘Mike’ (middle linebacker) and a walk-on safety, and they did a great job. But that just gives you the idea.”

Michigan is expected to hire Mike Macdonald, the Baltimore Ravens linebackers coach, as its new defensive coordinator to replace Brown once the Ravens season has ended.

Don Brown lands new defensive coordinator job

It turns out that the embattled Michigan football DC won’t retire to Cape Cod after all, as Jedd Fisch orchestrates a reunion of sorts.

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For years, former Michigan football defensive coordinator Don Brown said that once his time in Ann Arbor had come to a conclusion that he would ‘go to the Cape Cod.’ Well, it turns out he’s not so ready to retire to his New England getaway.

With former Wolverines pass game coordinator Jedd Fisch taking over the Arizona Wildcats head coaching job, there’s a bit of maize and blue reunion in Tuscon, as the 2016 Michigan staff members find themselves running the show in the Pac-12 program. Fisch made it official as he hired Brown to run the Wildcats defense as their new defensive coordinator, The Athletic’s Bruce Feldman reported on Thursday morning.

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Before coming to Ann Arbor, Brown had the nation’s best defense at Boston College in 2015. He had no worse than the No. 11 defense while overseeing that side of the ball for the Wolverines until this past season, when the maize and blue finished with the No. 84 defense in the country — the worst season defensively since it finished at No. 110 in 2010, Rich Rodriguez’s final year as the head coach.

Brown isn’t the only former Wolverines coach landing in Tuscon. Former offensive analyst Jimmie Dougherty, who was most recently at Oregon, has been named the Wildcats pass game coordinator.

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Don Brown already nearing new defensive coordinator gig?

Per Football Scoop, it appears that two former Michigan football and Jim Harbaugh assistants will end up in the desert together.

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Could there be a Michigan football assistant reunion in the desert?

While many Wolverines fans had been yearning to move on from defensive coordinator Don Brown after a year-plus of decline on the defensive side of the ball, it turns out that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

Former Michigan pass game coordinator Jedd Fisch took over the head coaching vacancy with the Arizona Wildcats after having spent time in both the New England Patriots and Los Angeles Rams organizations. And as he looks to fill out his staff, he’s apparently targeting Brown to come Bear Down with him. The two were Wolverines coaches in 2016 together.

Per Football Scoop:

New Arizona coach Jedd Fisch told people during the hiring process that he believed he could assemble a first-rate staff for the Wildcats.

Consider this potential move a big one.

Fisch has been working on adding well-regarded defensive coordinator Don Brown as a centerpiece hire of Fisch’s new staff in the desert.

Considering this is Fisch’s first head coaching gig — he’s been an offensive coordinator at both the NFL and in college levels — it would be a solid move, and a decent landing spot for Brown. Nonetheless, while both coaches are plenty accomplished on their own, it would be interesting to see the two former Harbaugh assistants working together outside of Ann Arbor.

Rivals braintrust says Don Brown was not the problem in Ann Arbor

The Rivals braintrust disagrees with the dismissal of Michigan football’s 5-year defensive coordinator.

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It’s been a weird year, in multiple ways.

Not only with the country as a whole and college football at-large, but when it comes to reactions to things, it seems that everything is a bit topsy-turvy.

For instance: when Michigan football’s defense got decimated by the likes of Ohio State two years running, and the defense was an issue once again in Ann Arbor in 2020, many out there were saying Don Brown’s time with the Wolverines was limited. But, once the team dismissed him from his defensive coordinator post, there have been some opinions stating otherwise.

We here at WolverinesWire love Rivals.com’s Mike Farrell and Adam Gorney, but we don’t always agree with them. In their regular ‘Fact or Fiction’ column, the duo answered the question about whether or not Don Brown’s defense was the issue at Michigan, and both emphatically exclaimed no.

3. Don Brown was the problem at Michigan.

Farrell’s take: FICTION. I still blame the offense. It’s been boring and ineffective since Jim Harbaugh took over and the lack of consistency puts more pressure on the defense. Brown didn’t adapt his defense to personnel as much as people would have liked, but he is who he is. And so is Harbaugh. Look at the offense here.

Gorney’s take: FICTION. I broke down each of Michigan’s losses during Brown’s five years as defensive coordinator and I’ve come to the conclusion that he was absolutely not the problem in the Wolverines’ struggles but is now the fall guy for all of Michigan’s issues. There were 19 losses in Brown’s tenure with eight of them by a touchdown or less. In many others, Michigan’s offense could not get going and the Wolverines’ defense could only hold up so long.

This last season was a struggle though giving up 49 to a bad Wisconsin offense and losing to Michigan State was inexcusable. Brown is a fantastic football coach who could only do so much. The offense remains the issue in Ann Arbor without question.

I’d say this is incomplete. The defense had been trending downwards since that regular-season finale against the Buckeyes in 2018. It was still quite good against teams that weren’t of Michigan’s caliber in 2019 — it ranked No. 11 nationally that year — but this past season, as the defense allowed 35 points-per-game, it was clear that it was a big issue. And, to rebut Gorney’s point — while admitting yes, the offense needs to be better, hence the philosophy change in 2019 with Josh Gattis — how many games is it OK to spot the other team 20+ points over the course of multiple years? Because the 2019 Wisconsin game and (the first half of) the Penn State game was largely as much of a defensive debacle as

Was or has the offense been an issue as well? Absolutely. But, just because that side of the ball continues to be a work in progress doesn’t mean that the defense’s regression should get a pass.

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