Birk's Eye View: Emptying my notebook from the University of Michigan football team's media day

• Running backs coach Fred Jackson heaped praise on Michigan’s offensive line Sunday, saying the experienced unit should make life easier on his backs this year.

“It really got a lot better, and it’s going to make those guys a lot better," he said. "You got some guys up there who got very powerful. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that kind of improvement in strength in guys like that. It’s unbelievable to see them now as opposed to last fall when we started.”

Jackson’s comments echo what Rich Rodriguez said last month about the line being stronger, and therefore more confident, after an offseason with strength coach Mike Barwis.

“Doing 300 pounds on a power clean, that’s a football-related lift,” Rodriguez said at Big Ten media days. “We may have had two or three guys that can do that. We’ve probably got 30-some guys doing that now. So there is a huge difference.”

• This from quarterbacks coach Rod Smith, whose answer to a question about how prepared Michigan’s freshmen quarterbacks are for Big Ten action tells a deeper story: “(Defensive coordinator Greg) Robinson, he must have a playbook that’s 700 pages. I think they’ve seen more looks from him then what they saw all last year from Big Ten opponents. Now, does that equate into us playing better? No, I’m not saying that. I‘m just saying, what they do on defense over there, it gives our guys a lot of looks. It trains our guys, I’m hoping, for the season.”

Implied in those comments is that Robinson is doing more defensively than Scott Shafer did a season ago. With such a big playbook, it’s no wonder the offense is ahead of the defense right now. Expect the defense to trim its playbook over the next few days as some of the Western Michigan gameplan goes in.

• Rodriguez on Michigan’s linebackers: “We don’t have a lot of depth. That concerns me. Obi Ezeh has played a lot of football. Jonas Mouton I think has had a really good camp, has played pretty well. Now we have other guys. J.B. Fitzgerald is going to play, Kenny Demens is going to play. Moving Stevie Brown to where we did I think has been a good move for him and I expect a good year out of him. But our depth is almost all freshmen or redshirt freshmen and that makes me nervous.”

• True freshman Brendan Gibbons and fifth-year senior Jason Olesnavage are neck and neck for the starting kicking job. “That competition is kind of like quarterback, it’ll be ongoing,” Rodriguez said. “And that’s one in particular we may not know until game time.”

• Denard Robinson is undergoing some mechanical changes in his throwing motion, but he disputed the notion he's not much of a passer. “I’ll show you different when you see me start or whatever, you see us playing," he said.

• Finally, Tate Forcier on people who say you can’t win with a freshman quarterback: “That bothers me because a lot of freshmen have been successful. Colt McCoy, Chad Henne when he was a freshman. Even if we didn’t have that good of a season last year, a lot of people don’t know the work that our team has put in. I think we’re going to be pretty good.”