Michigan, Northwestern show defense isn't dead in era of high-octane offenses

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Joe Bolden is a starting middle linebacker for the University of Michigan. Prior to that, he played the same position at Cincinnati's Colerain High School, an Ohio powerhouse where his dad was the athletic director and his uncle the head coach. There are assorted brothers and cousins who are, have, or will play the game, at least at Colerain, if not beyond.

This is an old-school football family – Jim Harbaugh is already predicting Bolden will be a "heck of a coach" when the 6-3, 235-pounder is done playing.

For Bolden though, linebacker, particularly the smash-mouth variety that's made him the Wolverines' leading tackler this season, is more than just a position. It is who he is … in mind, body and spirit. Which is why it's a challenge to watch college football these days – the era of the spread offense.

"Personally, I've always been raised that defense, running the ball wins games for you," Bolden said. "It's really painful to watch teams put 60, 70 points on the board each week. In my opinion, that's not football. That's a basketball score. That isn't how football is supposed to be. … It pains me to see people put that many points on the board … you see teams just slinging it all over the place."

On Saturday, the focus of the college football world returns to a familiar environ (Michigan Stadium) but for an increasingly rare reason: a likely smash-mouth, defense-first contest with actual playoff implications here in the days of, well, "slinging it all over the place."

Northwestern (5-0) arrives with the nation's No. 1 scoring defense, just seven points allowed per game. It's fresh off a 27-0 shutout of Minnesota and opponents are averaging just 247 yards a game.

By way of comparison – this may be painful, for some – Baylor scored 49 points and gained 499 yards in the first half against Texas Tech on Saturday.

Michigan (4-1) is ranked No. 2 in scoring defense, officially allowing just 7.6 points and 184 yards a game. The defense has actually yielded just 6.2 points a game (Utah scored on a pick-six). It shut out not just Maryland last week, but BYU the week before and yielded points in just two of the past 17 quarters.

Reports of the death of defense are greatly exaggerated, at least here in the Midwest.

So get ready for a clash of the unapologetic throwbacks, home to the kind of philosophies that would make Bo Schembechler proud.

"Our goal is for them to get no yards on every play, or negative yards," nose tackle Ryan Glasgow said. "If they get yards, it's a failure for us."

"If they don't get any yards on offense," Bolden added, "then they don't score any points. You can't win a game if you don't score any points."

The defensive stats go even deeper for each team. Michigan is allowing just a 19 percent conversion rate on third downs. Northwestern is allowing 20. (They rank 1-2 in the nation in that, too.) The Wildcats have forced 10 turnovers and recorded nine sacks. The Wolverines are at 7 and 11 respectively.

Neither team has faced one of those wide-open Big 12 offenses, but both boast impressive early season résumés – Northwestern is comically under-ranked at 13th (it should be in the top five). So far, no one has moved the ball very far against either of them.

Perhaps none of this is a surprise.

Northwestern is coached by Pat Fitzgerald, who as a bruising linebacker led the program to a revitalization in the mid-1990s and has stamped his attitude all over the place in his 10 seasons at the helm in Evanston. Harbaugh may have been a quarterback at Michigan, and the NFL, but he's the rebirth of Schembechler when it comes to almost everything else.

"It's Big Ten football," Fitzgerald said.

The two didn't play against each other – at age 51, Harbaugh is 11 years older than Fitzgerald – but they ran into each other on the recruiting trail when Harbaugh was at Stanford and the impression was immediate.

"Sized him up and said this guy is a fine, fine coach and great competitor," Harbaugh said.

"Jim's a tough guy and you can see his personality is all over this football team," Fitzgerald said.

The philosophy behind the defensive dominance is rooted in the same place. First off, it's a priority for the program; great defensive players are recruited and then allocated to that side of the ball. Second, fundamentals and micro-competitive instincts are pounded home on a daily basis.

"Every guy is trying to win their individual matchup on every play," Michigan's Glasgow said. "And if you don't do that, you are hurting your defense and hurting the guy next to you. If all 11 guys are doing that, then shutouts are a byproduct."

"The whole defense holds ourselves accountable," Northwestern cornerback Nick VanHoose said, "We think we can be the best and we should be the best."

Bolden, for one, believes that defense wins championships. It might. What it doesn't do is get a lot of media attention or hype or excitement. Saturday may be a game of three-and-outs, of battles along the line, of slowly imposing your will on the other guy.

Michigan won last year's game 10-9. It was a game that featured just 520 total yards and untold brutality, although Fitzgerald believes his guys got the worst of it.

"They kicked our ass," Fitzgerald said. "It's like 'Tommy Boy.' Not here or here, there are marks all over the place."

Harbaugh joked that the defenses wouldn't actually be facing each other on the field. For player safety sake, that may be a good idea.

"Football is supposed to be run downhill, at one another," Bolden said.

"You have to win it in the trenches," Fitzgerald said.

If nothing else, that is how games have been won around here for a long time, and, no matter the offensive flavors of the month, perhaps a long time still to come.

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