ANN ARBOR – Michigan Wolverines defensive backs coach LaMar Morgan is among the position coaches on the roster who are working to squeeze the best possible version out of this group.

The young and relatively inexperienced group – both coaches and players at this level of football – has been drinking out of the firehose early on, especially after Michigan’s 31-12 loss to current No. 1 Texas a few weeks back.

With USC on the docket, Morgan would prefer to look forward, but he does see lessons that can be learned from what came previously.

“I like to talk about the opponent we’re playing, but I think when you mention Texas, I think what you see is you see a team where sometimes you watch on tape,  they’re really good, and then when they get there, you see they can spread the ball out to a lot of different guys,” Morgan said. “So you might not be accounting for the tight end as much or something like that, and then those guys have really good days. 

“I just think the execution and the detail of execution and what our players do really well is where we’re at, right? When you have a new staff, new players, it’s not the same crew… I think Sark said something about 46 of the players out of the 70 that got on the bus for [last year vs.] Alabama, whatever game, were the same guy. They were an older team. So for us, I think you just got to make sure you stay the course and continue to develop the guys, and I think you’ll start seeing guys’ improvement, and they’ll get better throughout the year. That’s my goal every game is can we get better each week, and hopefully by the end of the season you have a finished product, but I don’t want to peak too soon. I know everybody wants to, but we have to get better each week.

“That’s this league, right? You’re playing the best teams every year in conference, and then we had Texas out of conference. So I just think it just tells you what we believe of our players here, the challenge that our guys are up to, and I think as coaches we just got to continue to continue to put plans out there our guys can execute, and I think our players also know that they have to execute, and we have to coach better. This is a partnership, it’s not all on us. They’ll say it, and it’s not all on them. We’re in it together. We got their back, and they got ours. So that’s how I tell my guys each and every day. That’s the program here.”

Michigan is emphasizing a return to its pillars – block destruction, shocking effort, ball disruption and obnoxious communication – which were set over the last few years. Even with the switch to the Wink Martdinale era on defense, those have remained intact.

“The pillars are just the standard of where we play here.,” Morgan said. “I think every team has different ones, but I think a lot for us is pre-snap communication. You have to make sure everybody’s calm, everybody’s on the same page, right? I think the effort that we always talk about… you should turn the tape on, it should be a little scary. Like, man, those guys are getting after it. We need to get back to that all the time. I think there are flashes of it, but I think we have to do that all the time. I think that’s what good football looks like.

“We try to watch other teams, pro teams, other teams that maybe not done it, like non-conference teams that we see, and we just try to show them examples. I think kids learn by showing them examples of what they are doing and not doing. I think the more and more they see how it looks and feels, I think the better and better we’ll be on defense. But I know that’s probably a roundabout answer, but I think that’s kind of what we’ve been focusing on in our room.”

Saturday’s game against USC kicks off at 3:30 p.m. on CBS from Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor.

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