Michigan Football: Wolverines still need to fix pass defense

Michigan football fans are talking about the lack of a passing game against Washington, but the pass defense also needs to be fixed. 

Michigan football came into the game against Washington under the lights last Saturday with a specific game plan and it executed it.

It wasn’t perfect, frankly, no performances really are perfect (there’s always something to work on) but it was more than enough to collect a dominating victory over Washington in primetime.

Now, Michigan football can fine-tune some things over the next few weeks to get ready to play Wisconsin. One of those things was and still is, arguably, the biggest weakness on the team.

Michigan’s secondary needs to keep improving

Lost in all of the positives of the victory over Washington on Saturday were some of the same issues that keep coming up seemingly every week no matter the opponent: Michigan’s secondary is still getting exposed.

Michigan’s secondary played a great game against Washington for the most part, but they still have an annoying tendency to give up a huge chunk play here or there to inferior opponents.

Now, I never expect Michigan to just never allow yards at all (that’s impossible) but the Wolverines need to play the ball in the air better than they have been playing it so far.

It’s only been two games, but I’ve noticed a pattern starting to occur every few deep shots that an opponent takes.

I don’t know if it’s scheme-related or just the player’s preference, but Michigan’s defenders seem to like to play off on their opponent giving them a cushion for easy yardage over the middle in man coverage a lot more often than I would like.

I would like for Michigan’s defenders to start trying to be more aggressive at the line of scrimmage. Being aggressive doesn’t mean being overbearing and impeding the route-runner, accruing a penalty, but it still means playing more physically.

That’s what some of Michigan’s best DBs did during the earlier part of Jim Harbaugh’s tenure with guys like Channing Stribling, David Long, Jordan Lewis, Lavert Hill, etc.

Also, Michigan’s defenders don’t always play the ball when it’s in the air. I’ve noticed cornerback Gemon Green doing this the most. He sticks with his man for the most part, but that doesn’t do anything if he doesn’t know where the ball is.

Gemon still allows those 50/50 balls up for grabs more than he should because he fails to locate the ball before it’s in the hands of the opposing receiver.

All of these things can be cleaned up with more repetition, but Michigan should be making a habit of trying to do these same things in practice to force the DBs to get better at defending it.

It’s only going to get harder after Northern Illinois comes to town this weekend.

Teams know that Michigan’s secondary is probably the biggest weakness on the team so they will try to keep exploiting Wolverines as much as they can.

The good thing for Michigan football though is, besides Wisconsin, it doesn’t really play a good or even decent QB and an offense who might present challenges to them in the secondary until Week 9 against Indiana with Michael Penix Jr.

Yes, Penix is usually inaccurate, but when he’s playing well (like last year against us) he’s hard to stop.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. Besides Wisconsin, all the other teams leading up to the Week 9 game will try to expose Michigan’s secondary, but their QB play and their offense with their receivers won’t strike fear into Michigan’s secondary like Michael Penix Jr. can.

Unfortunately, Week 9 is also the beginning of a stretch of four straight games where Michigan has to play decent to really good QBs and/or WRs with Indiana, Penn State, Maryland, and Ohio State all having capable QBs that can expose Michigan’s secondary.

Overall, Michigan still has (if they can get by Wisconsin somehow) a solid 6-7 weeks to get the secondary right before the string of good QB/WR play comes.

The Wolverines just need to show improvement every game. They need to play the ball better at the point of attack, trusting their technique, turning their heads in time to locate the ball for a PBU, and they need to create some turnovers in the secondary.

If Michigan’s secondary doesn’t improve on some of these things rather quickly, it will keep getting shredded week-by-week. The pass rush can’t always get home, so it will be up to the secondary to show that they can step up as well.