Michigan Football: Studs and duds against Western Michigan

Daxton Hill

The third-year Safety was all over the field on Saturday in what was, perhaps, his best performance in a Maize and Blue uniform.

Hill ended the day with 6 tackles and 1 pass breakup, and he looked like a former 5-star prospect.

Hill had multiple plays where he fought off a blocking receiver to make a stop on a screen pass behind the line of scrimmage.

If Hill and Brad Hawkins can live up to their potential and play with the decisiveness and speed with which they played on Saturday, the backend of Mike Macdonald’s defense should be one of the best in the Big Ten this season.

The Coaching Staff

Our final “Stud(s)” will be the Michigan football coaching staff as a whole.

What were your thoughts after Western Michigan’s first offensive drive?

“Oh boy, same old defense! We can’t even stop Western, how can we keep up with the big boys in our conference?”

Yeah, after that drive the Broncos didn’t score again until the 3:30 mark in the 4th quarter.

The point is, Mike Macdonald made key adjustments — something that the previous defensive coordinator struggled mightily with — to the Western Michigan passing attack and shut them down from then on.

Offensively, Josh Gattis deployed some creativity that we had not seen from him in his first two seasons at the helm.

Check out this end around to Sophomore AJ Henning.

https://twitter.com/BigTenNetwork/status/1434218963299278849

That kid is a gamebreaker and Josh Gattis is finally putting his players in positions of strength to exploit their matchups. Kudos.