ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Michigan football’s special teams have been a huge boon for years, and that continued on Saturday against Maryland. Due to Terps returner Tai Felton bobbling the initial kickoff, the Wolverines recovered and had what’s likely their fastest-ever score to start a game, with it only taking eight-total seconds.
On Saturday, the maize and blue special teams, as well as secondary, will have a different challenge, as they travel to Kinnick Stadium to face Iowa.
Wednesday, Michigan special teams coordinator and safeties coach Jay Harbaugh met with the media to discuss his units and preview the upcoming matchup vs. the Hawkeyes. Here is everything he had to say.
How do you get players to take pride in special teams?
I’m not certain that you really need to do a whole lot of things differently here, just because the guys are the type of players that take a lot of pride in what they do. Whether it be offense, defense, or their schoolwork, or the weight room, the kind of players that we have in this program just have a really high internal drive to be great. So it makes it really easy to put them in new roles, or ask them to do new things and have them embrace them.
Has he had players before who weren’t willing to do that?
Yeah, I think there’s a balance, and everybody wants to play offense and defense. And most guys are really excited to play special teams. And in addition to that, and I think occasionally when you see a guy who’s like, maybe not super pumped about it, it’s more because they maybe don’t understand it, or they’ve never done it. So there’s obviously some apprehension about doing something you’ve never done before. So I think once guys realize, ‘Hey, Ok, this is just like offense and defense. This is very similar to technique-wise,’ or once they grasp, like, ‘Man, this is really fun being on the field for a game-changing play,’ that kind…
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