ANN ARBOR, Mich. — The often say that in the early stages of building a football team identity in camp (spring or fall) that the defense is far ahead of the offense. Considering the depth of the Michigan defense and some question marks on offense, it’s a reasonable expectation to expect that such a maxim would hold true this fall camp in Ann Arbor.
However, it sounds like the tide is changing, at least for one practice. Which is a positive sign.
Sixth-year safety Quinten Johnson has been a part of some of the best defenses in Michigan football history, and he’s seen some of the better offenses in his time, too. He says that, now that the teams have put the pads on, he was surprised to see the offense win against the defense as it had on Tuesday.
“We’ve seen them the whole practice,” Johnson said. “We do a lot of O vs. D. But yeah, yesterday, the first day of pads, they definitely caught a groove and it’s good to see. But at the end of the day, camp is offense vs. defense. Day by day, is who’s going to win, who’s not going to win.
“So we would say they won yesterday, which is good to see for when we go and put the pads on against somebody else, but as the defense, we want complete domination every day. So I’ll just leave it at that.”
Though he might not enjoy losing to the offense any given day at the moment, Johnson knows that the team is building towards being a cohesive, complementary unit. And for that to thrive, the quarterback has to be on point.
However, at this juncture, we have no idea who will be that man under center.
Johnson says that no matter who the Wolverines choose to lead the team offensively, the options available provide a lot of different areas of attack. And ultimately, that will make the team that much harder to prepare for, let alone beat.
“I mean, it’s a lot of versatility,” Johnson said. “We can get you can play big boy football and get in 12 with (Jack Tuttle) or (Davis) Warren, and really expand the field. We can get in 12 with Orji, expand the field, we can also run the ball. There’s so many different ways of offense we could play that the QBs present that it’s a lot of opportunity.”
This article originally appeared on Wolverines Wire: The Michigan football offense beat the defense on first day of padded practice, apparently
