Thank-You John Elway

Today’s post is brought to you by Circuit City. Thanks for tanking like crazy and folding like a little girl playing dodgeball to Best Buy. If it wasn’t for you I would have had to pay like twenty dollars more for another Playstation 3 controller. Friendly suggestion, go there, stuff is crazy cheap.

This post should be brought to you by John Elway because he is a lot of the reason why Michigan’s new defensive coordinator Greg Robinson has the pedigree he does.

Anyway, Greg Robinson is the new DC at Michigan and as I am sure most of you have heard, he just got fired from Syracuse; the same Syracuse who doesn’t have Donovan McNabb, Dwight Freeney, or Marvin Harrison anymore. That’s important because it was also the last time Syracuse had major recruits enrolling in their athletics department. Greg Robinson inherited a terrible situation at ‘Cuse and, for lack of a better explanation, didn’t make it better. Syracuse was his only real experience as a head coach and in this time he lost a recruit to Central Michigan and also made the best out of a defense which was astonishingly deprived of talent.

Other notes of accomplishment of Greg Robinson are that he was the defensive coordinator for the Denver Broncos for six years and won 2 Super Bowls with them. His defenses finished at or near the top ten in four of those years. After his tenure with Denver he took a job at Kansas City which I am sure he would like to forget. His defense at Kansas City finished near the basement of the NFL for all three years in which he was DC. It is my personal opinion that his performance there was not his fault at all. Kansas City put little to no money into their defense during the time he was there and they expected great things to happen. Sound familiar Lions fans? After being let go by the Chiefs he took a job being a DC for Mack Brown in Texas. That year the Longhorns finished with the best defense in the Big-12 and ended up beating Michigan in the Rose Bowl. Mack Brown loved him and so did his players. After a stellar year with Texas he took the Syracuse head coaching job which I know he regrets.

So now that Robinson’s background is out of the way, here is my opinion.

At first thought I hated the hire because he has a terrible track record as a recruiter and to me, recruiting is one of the most important aspects of college football. Upon further review I am talking myself into liking it more. Rich Rodriguez loves recruiting and so does most of his staff. Jay Hopson (Linebackers Coach) is a big time recruiter on the defensive side of the ball as well. Having Greg Robinson on staff who holds two Super Bowl rings brings instant credibility to the staff and Rich Rodriguez and his recruiting staff could really exploit that. Greg Robinson himself? Not so much. I like his credentials and I am assuming that he is good schematically (Rich Rod took a long time trying to find the best available person for the job) so I am hoping for good things for next year. But, its not like he is replacing greatness either. Scott Shafer didn’t exactly light the world on fire with his “worst defense at Michigan in forty years.”

All in all I seem to like him a lot when he has talent to work with and only has to worry about setting up a defensive scheme. If he has increased responsibility from that I will be legitimately worried, even more so if he actually has to hit the recruiting trail. That being said, walking into a family’s living room with the winged helmet in hand is vastly different from doing the same with a Syracuse helmet.

Always remember...“Those who stay WILL be champions!”