The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1544538
MAY 2026 ❱ THE WOLVERINE 47 ❱ MICHIGAN FOOTBALL U -M's new defensive coor- dinator, Jay Hill, is spend- ing his first spring in Ann Ar- bor implementing a system that should be somewhat familiar to followers of both Kyle Whitting- ham and Utah, as well as those who've appreciated Michigan's recent title-winning success. Hill came over from BYU, but the origins of his scheme and defensive prowess trace back to the Whittingham family and the scheme the now-Michigan coach ran in the '90s at Utah. He played at Utah late in the decade and said the bones of the scheme are still the same. "Coach Whittingham and his dad were both coaches at the University of Utah, and it's something that they had devel- oped back when Coach Whitt's dad was an NFL defensive coor- dinator," Hill said. "And I'm one of the very few people who's ac- tually seen Coach Whittingham and how he called it. And I can tell you this, he was the best de- fensive coordinator or the best defensive mind I've seen. "We haven't tried to change it too much. Now, there are always tweaks and things that we're doing as college football evolves. I think we've evolved some things, but the roots and the bare bones of the defense go all the way back to those guys." Hill is expected to be multiple in his looks to emphasize versatility and un- predictability, but Michigan can only be dangerous if its players know the sys- tem. "The better we own it, the more we can do," Hill said. "It's always a fine line and you can outsmart yourself, so we've got to be careful with that as coaches. But I don't want to be so simple that the quarterbacks are getting ready to take the snap and they know exactly what we're in. We're going to change up the fronts. We're going to change up the coverages. We're going to change up the pressure looks that we're giving them. "The better we own it, the more we can do. I think that's the best way to answer it." Recently, Hill compared his defensive scheme to the look that Jesse Minter ran in Ann Arbor in 2023 after doing a bit of a deep dive into them during his time at BYU while scouting a common opponent. He continued to make that comparison in his media session. "I think that's a really good idea of what it looks like," Hill said. "But we want to be multiple in the fronts, three down and four down. We want to be multiple with our coverages, and we want to be multiple with our blitz pack- ages, man pressure, zone pressures, two-high pressures, three-high pres- sures. And like I say, the better we own it, the more we can do. It's not a grab bag. We're not just grabbing stuff out of a bag, but it's intentional, and we're calling things for a specific purpose. And done correctly, I think we can have a ton of success here with the caliber of players we have." Even with a system that might be familiar to Michigan fans and those who have followed the program in recent years, there is still reprogramming underway among those who played in Wink Martindale's defense last year. "From last year's team, just trying to understand the per- sonnel that was coming back," Hill said. "But I would say we resemble a lot more of that '23 team. We do run simulated pres- sures. We run all-out pressures. We run two-high pressures. We run one-high pressures, man pressures. You're going to see it coming from different direc- tions. I just don't want quarter- backs to ever just sit back and know exactly what's coming. So, we're going to give them a bunch of looks." Hill and Michigan are not out to be multiple in their fronts and coverages just to be different. Any sort of personnel grouping or look on the field has its rea- sons. "Everything we do is sound," Hill said. "We're not guessing. I'm not just throwing out, 'Hey, this front looks like something cool that we drew up on a napkin.' We're not doing that stuff. … It's sound. It's evenly spaced, but it's coming from different directions. And it's tough to pick up. "One of the blessings I had when I was an assistant coach, I got to coach six years on offense, and I got to know how we protected things, and I got to know how we tried to beat certain cov- erages or certain defenses. I know how we slid protections to pick up blitzes. Well, now I can take the flip of that and just try to beat the offensive mind on the other side of the ball. That has been a huge thing in my career, just knowing the offensive side of the ball and trying to create havoc." — Anthony Broome DEFENSIVE COORDINATOR JAY HILL BRINGS FAMILIAR SYSTEM TO U-M FOOTBALL Hill comes to Michigan from BYU, but he said there are similarities between his defensive approach and what was deployed by U-M in 2023. PHOTO COURTESY MICHIGAN FOOTBALL