Michigan TEs coach Steve Casula defends OC Kirk Campbell: 'We're all responsible for how we perform'
ANN ARBOR – The Michigan Wolverines offense has had almost as rough a season as one could imagine during its 5-4 campaign, and offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach Kirk Campbell has had to shoulder the vast majority of that blame.
Tight ends coach Steve Casula is helming a position group that has arguably the team’s best, most consistent player in tight end Colston Loveland but knows that everyone could be doing more to pull their weight as the Wolverines look to finish strong.
“You always want more, whether it’s rushing passing total offense,” Casula told the media on Wednesday afternoon. “Of course, you’re always searching for more. But the biggest thing we’re searching for is winning. Winning the next game and doing whatever we need to do offensively to accomplish that.”
Critcism is part of the profession, and everyone in the building knows that. Casula has been on staffs before at Michigan where former coordinators Josh Gattis and Don Brown have taken a lot of shots from fans and media. That doesn’t mean it’s easy to stomach, especially in a year like this.
“I think it’s something that’s hard to go through, regardless of the level or the place that you coach,” Casula said. You know, I was here when it was tough or Josh Gattis, for Coach Brown. It was tough for me at the University of Massachusetts. It was tough for me at Ferris State when we didn’t play well.
“There’s nobody that wants us to perform better than [Campbell]. There might be people that want us to perform at a high level as much as Coach Campbell, but there’s nobody that wants that more than him. He’s organized, he’s detailed. He certainly isn’t retreating. We very much aren’t in a finger pointing operation. We’re all responsible for how we perform on offense. I know our players would stand here and tell you the same thing.
“It’s about the team, the team, the team. I’ve gone through it at a different placewhen it wasn’t going well. I’ve watched some of my closest friends and mentors go through it. I’m watching it happen right now. But w e all understand what’s at stake, what the expectation is, what the standard is here, and it’s something we’re working toward each day.”
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Michigan’s offensive success moving forward, if it is able to find any, is contingent on winning on earlier downs. Casula knows that’s a place the team can improve.
“The statistics are pretty staggering when you have a successful play on first down, what that set of downs ends up looking like, or when you have an explosive play on first or second down, what the drive ultimately ends up looking like. So that’s an area that we’re super focused on. We did not perform at our standard level in that respect.”
“If there was one single defined answer, we’d fix that, right? There’s a lot of context to it. It’s looking at the opponent we’re going against, having our best plays and our best players always involved in those moments. There’s a level of execution for sure, getting ourselves prepared to deal with all the different looks we’re going to see, looking inward at our self-scout about what we’ve done in those circumstances.
“So w”We’re to that point in the season where you’ve got to be thoughtful and look at all of it. And you don’t want to look at so much, you see nothing. You have to like focus on some specific areas, but that’s what we’re working really hard to do this week.”
