Michigan EDGEs not 'satisfied' with no-sack performance, 'hungry' heading into Week 2

The Michigan Wolverines football defense had an outstanding first performance of the season in a 30-3 win over East Carolina. The Pirates averaged only 4.3 yards per play and saw their only 3 points come as time expired after driving down against U-M’s backups.

Coordinator Jesse Minter‘s Michigan defense only allowed the Pirates to get into the red zone twice, notched 1 interception and allowed only 2 plays of 15-plus yards. Yet, there’s some frustration from a faction of his group — the edge rushers.

“As a defense, we had a really good day,” Michigan senior EDGE Braiden McGregor, who made his first career start and finished with 2 tackles and 1 quarterback hurry, said. “It’s the first game. You got a lot of stuff that you gotta work on as you keep going, but for the opening game and being able to start my first game, I was pretty happy with it. You kinda know what you’re getting with the first game with not [being] too sure what the other team is going to run, haven’t seen film on them as much, but I thought I did pretty well.”

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For just the third time since the beginning of last season, Michigan did not record a sack in a game. Minter, head coach Jim Harbaugh and others have said the Pirates got the ball out quickly, leading to the lack of sacks, and the numbers back up that claim. Eighteen of their 29 pass attempts came within 10 yards of the line of scrimmage. ECU quarterback Mason Garcia averaged 2.56 seconds per dropback and fellow signal-caller Alex Flinn took 2.51 seconds to throw, ranking 125th and 149th nationally among the hundreds of quarterbacks who played in FBS games in Week 1, per PFF. Michigan generated pressure on 23.4 percent of ECU’s drop-backs.

“Yeah, really frustrating,” McGregor said of when the opposition gets the ball out quickly. “But the thing with pass rush is that you can’t get frustrated with it, because you’re going to get a lot of pass-rush opportunities. You’re not gonna win them all. Half the time, the ball is gonna be out. But being able to disrupt the quarterback in any way — whether it be getting your hand up or just pushing the pocket, making him feel uncomfortable — at the end of the day, as long as they don’t complete the pass or get the first down, we did our job. So, it’s alright.”

At the same time, opportunities were missed, the Michigan EDGE said.

“We definitely weren’t satisfied with what we did as an edge rush unit,” McGregor said. “We think that we have the best room in the country, and going out there and not being able to put any sacks on the board was frustrating, but we’re gonna get back in the film room and take it day-by-day, keep getting better.

“I know everyone’s gonna be hungry this week to get some sacks. We’re all hungry. We all want sacks, we all want stats, we all want to eat. But at the end of the day, it was a good team win, good defens[ive performance]. We only gave up three points in the last second or whatever, so good team win.”

Michigan defensive line is building

Building cohesiveness among the entire Michigan defensive line is key, and it’s a work in progress, as McGregor expected it to be in the first game of the year.

“We did good,” he said of the Michigan defensive line overall. “We have a lot to work on, just like any first game. You go out there — it was my first time starting, and I’m out there next to [sophomore defensive tackle] Mason [Graham]. We gotta keep working on our chemistry. There’s a lot of chemistry stuff. I think we did pretty good, though.

“We got a lot to work on, but at the end of the day, as a D-line, as a whole, we all had the right mentality out, tried not to get too frustrated out there, tell each other what we see. Just being able to have the brotherhood with each other is going to help us as we go through this year.”

The Wolverines held ECU to just 235 total yards, including 103 on the ground. The Pirates averaged 4 yards per carry and had 5 negative plays.

Michigan rotated quite a bit at the EDGE spots, with four players who recorded 18 or more defensive snaps — McGregor (26), sophomore Derrick Moore (23), senior Jaylen Harrell (21) and junior Josaiah Stewart (18). While the coaching staff may still be trying to figure out what the best starting combination is, the rotation will continue.

“We love the rotation that we have, being able to go out there and give it your all for four or five snaps and then have another guy that’s just as capable come in and do the same,” McGregor explained. “It really helps. And then with the snap count, [it] keeps your body fresh, keeps you feeling good for the next week. With this new running clock, you don’t get many snaps for defense when we’ve got an offense that’s going on eight-, nine-minute drives. Definitely keeps you fresh and is going to help in the long run for the season.”