Don't Blame Rich Rodriguez for Our Defensive Woes...Yet

There's plenty of blame to go around right now for Michigan's defensive struggles. I'm really at a loss trying to figure out who to blame. You can blame Greg Robinson's system for being too confusing (and many players third defense in three years). You can blame Jay Hopson because two of our former starting LBs seem to be regressing as the year goes on. You can blame Tony Gibson for failing to develop players at safety who have not met expectations coming out of high school. You can blame Lloyd Carr and company for leaving the cupboard empty at safety (but not linebacker). Or you can blame Rich Rodriguez for everything since he's the head coach.

Here's what I think. One, I'm still very pleased with our offense, particularly given our youth and inexperience. Yes, it was horrible at Illinois (13 points) and against PSU (10 points), but every offense has its poorer days (especially one this young) and our offense has been pretty fantastic otherwise. The only other game under 28 points was at Iowa (20 points) when we turned the ball over five times! I think this is a credit to Rich Rodriguez and company for getting the players he needs and teaching them the system as quickly as possible. He's an offensive guru, spends most of his time working with the offense, and it has resulted in the Big Ten's best offense. That's impressive and a strong positive.

Two, but our defense is a mess. I give tremendous credit to our opponents who have figured out and honed in on our primary weaknesses at LB and Safety. Case and point was Purdue's play bringing Cortez Smith out of the backfield for a wide-open 54 yard TD pass. A brilliant play call that certainly had the Purdue coaches snickering at the Wolverines.

I'm not sure where to go from here. People calling for us to play Justin Turner are idiots. You don't burn a full season for 2 or 3 games of play. He won't solve all of our problems. Nor will putting Woolfolk back at safety, which would expose our weakness at corner on one side of the field.

The only way out is recruiting. We need kids at corner who can play next year so we can move Woolfolk back to safety. We need safeties who can play safety. And we need linebackers who can play linebacker. Achieve these goals (which it looks like we're on track to do for this year) and we'll be okay, but probably not for another two years until the players develop.

All of this leads to my final point. If you think getting rid of Rodriguez now will somehow magically improve our defense and magically make our LBs and Safeties better, you're nuts. It would be exactly the wrong call at this moment because blowing up the program a second time in three years would severely hamper our ability to recruit those two defensive positions. There's only one way out of this mess, and it's recruiting, recruiting, recruiting.