To the finish line
Meet the man behind Wolverines’ strength in 2nd half of games all year U-M’s response to Smith gun charge: Where is that grace for others?
Since October, Michigan football has been described often as “workmanlike” by College Football Playoff selection committee chairman Boo Corrigan, following the release of each week’s rankings.
It is, at best, a backhanded complement.
The 13-person panel has seen a team that, in nine Big Ten games, trailed twice at halftime, with five other games tied or within a touchdown at the break. Never mind that the Wolverines won each of those games — seven by at least 13 points and six by at least three touchdowns — they weren’t doing it early enough in the eyes of those who mattered.
“I just want to know what their excuse is going to be now,” linebacker Michael Barrett said last Saturday, after Michigan finished a 45-23 trouncing at Ohio State. “They’ve given a lot of excuses about why we were the underdogs and this and that, but I mean, just turn on the tape.”
Michigan had just earned its second consecutive Big Ten championship game berth thanks to 28 second-half points, flipping a three-point deficit into a 22point blowout. What turned things around? A new plan on offense by co-coordinators Sherrone Moore and Matt Weiss? A scheme change on defense from co-coordinators Steve Clinksale and Jesse Minter?
No, the biggest difference for the Wolverines that afternoon in Columbus was much the same as the difference in their eight previous Big Ten games: A strength to overcome lesser foes and the conditioning to make it happen in the second half. And it comes from a Wolverine who’s not even eligible for the Broyles Award, the sport’s top honor for assistant
Mazi Smith had a gun. He didn’t have a permit to conceal it. In Michigan, that’s a felony. Smith was charged as such on Wednesday.
Yet Michigan football’s co-captain and star defensive lineman wasn’t suspended and will apparently play Saturday night in Indianapolis against Purdue for the Big Ten title.
It’s a bad look, no question.
It’s a worse look that his coach, Jim Harbaugh, and the school’s athletic director, Warde Manuel, each released statements in support of him without specifically mentioning the felony, or the fact that he was driving with a gun illegally.
Instead, they mentioned his character, that he isn’t a threat to the community, that he has deposited four years of goodwill in the bank, that they respect the judicial process, and they want it to play out.
“Mazi was honest, forthcoming and cooperative from the very beginning and is a tremendous young man. He is not and never has been considered a threat to the University or community,” Manuel said in a statement.
Smith’s “character,” Harbaugh said, “and the trust that he has earned over the past four years will continue to be considered throughout the process.”
In a vacuum, the coach and the AD showed grace, and that’s commendable: Smith does deserve the opportunity for the judicial system to play out; Smith’s
coaches: Ben Herbert, U-M’s director of strength and conditioning.
‘Just finish the game’
In the postgame news conference in Columbus, featuring a “Big Ten East Champions” Tshirt draped on the table in front of them, Barrett sat near Mike Sainristil — a former wide receiver converted to defensive back — who nodded along.
Pundits’ early description of Michigan as a second-half team had left Sainristil steaming. He didn’t agree with the implication that his team couldn’t put four quarters together.
But at the halftime of that regular-season finale, he had a change of heart. What he once perceived as a slight, he realized, had turned into the Wolverines’ calling card — the best finishing team in the country.
“Coach, right before we went out (for the third quarter), he said, ‘Let’s go finish his game,’” Sainristil said. “Second-half team. For the first time this year, I thought to myself, I was like, ‘Maybe we might be a second-half team. That’s fine. Just finish the game. That’s what we’ve been doing and we’re gonna continue doing that.’”
Indeed, U-M’s finish was the capper to a seven-game run in which the Wolverines outscored their foes, 157-20, after halftime. Only Illinois was able to score more than three points in the third or fourth quarters.
The work of Clinkscale and Minter was key, as their ability to adjust to opposing offenses quickly gave the Wolverines an edge few teams have. That’s one of the main reasons Minter is one of five Broyles Award finalists across the country.
But coach Jim Harbaugh — who said he has a number of staffers worthy of the award — tried to nominate a different member of his staff: Herbert, who isn’t eligible for the award.
“Never had a better hire than Ben Herbert,” Harbaugh said. “Tremendous development has taken place in our strength and conditioning program, I would also call that the center of player development.
“To me, Ben Herbert, X-factor in our entire football program.”
Herbert, who turned 43 on Wednesday, joined the program in January 2018, after five years with Arkansas. A star at Wisconsin from 1998-2001, he still holds the school record for most tackles for loss and sacks in a bowl game.
He’s a Big Ten bruiser at heart, with a fever for workouts not unlike many strength and conditioning coaches before him. But he’s young enough, malleable enough and intelligent enough to recognize the importance of finesse and uses different approaches to maximize his team’s talent.
“To me, it was a combination of, I’d never seen someone who was old-school strength coach and cutting-edge-scientific strength coach,” Harbaugh said. “You usually get one or the other. But he’s the absolute perfect blend.”
Senior defensive tackle Mazi Smith (who was charged with felony gun possession Wednesday but is still expected to play Saturday) is the shining example of the physical
transformation possible under Herbert. The 6foot-3, 337-pound lineman has asthma; when he arrived at Michigan, Harbaugh said, he could barely play three consecutive snaps. Last Saturday, he was in for a career-high 61 plays. A few days later, he was named to the All-Big Ten first team.
“Coach Herb is the reason I came here,” Smith said this week. “Before they got coach Herb here and the new strength staff, Michigan, to be honest with you, was lower on my list. When they hired him, I met him, and what he was about — I knew this was the place I had to come.”
‘Trust and you’ll see the improvement’
Early in Harbaugh’s tenure, he issued a yearly award for “Most Valuable Staff Member” — Herbert won it in his first year in Ann Arbor. Michigan’s offensive linemen, from transfer Olu Oluwatimi, to seniors Ryan Hayes and Trevor Keegan have all stated they can feel when their conditioning is breaking the other team.
But it doesn’t just happen. Oluwatimi said Herbert put him through multiple physical tests when he arrived on campus, then made
him focus on the areas where he was weakest.
Herbert’s message to Oluwatimi, according to the lineman: “You’re not going to be the best when you get here, but slowly trust and you’ll see the improvement.”
He called Herbert a “mad scientist” when it comes to physical training.
That started back in January, after Michigan’s loss to Georgia in last season’s CFP semifinals. It entailed early mornings and late nights, and extra work every day.
“Fourth-quarter finishers at the end of practice when guys are dog-tired,” Sainristil said this week. “One thing those finishers bring out is that team chemistry, where you might see one guy who might not be able to push through and you go and pick him up.
“That’s where that team bond forms and that’s what’s been helping us play together and play as one unit come these second halves of these games.”
Herbert has lived it and taught it to the 130 football players, scholarship or walk-on, who wear the maize and blue. They now live it, too.