Former Michigan football staffer Connor Stalions joined the “Bussin’ With The Boys” podcast on Tuesday to discuss his role in the Michigan sign-stealing scandal.

Stalions, speaking to show hosts with Will Compton and Taylor Lewan, was also asked about his Michigan Manifesto and how he got into deciphering signals as a student coach for Navy football. He also talked about Ohio State football and fired back at former Buckeyes tight end and current Houston Texan Cade Stover.

“It started at Navy. I asked, ‘What do I do on gameday?’ I forget who it was, but one of the coaches said, ‘Well, I don’t know. Let me look into it, but I remember last year we had a guy — he just graduated — who tried deciphering the opponent’s signals in-game,’” Stalions said. “I knew nothing about it. I never did that in high school. I was like, ‘I don’t know. OK.’ But I went in with a blank sheet of paper, a clipboard and a pen. Our first game was Ohio State. That was the birth.”

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Connor Stalions said it took three drives to figure out Ohio State’s signals

In his first gameday with Navy on Aug. 31, 2014, the Midshipmen played Ohio State. Though the Buckeyes won the game 34-17, Stalions said it did not take him long to figure out the play calling for Ohio State. He said it took all of three drives to recognize what was going to be called.

“I don’t remember exactly the plays,” Stalions said. “I think they ran power a lot. It’s been a lot of games since then. I just remember getting their offensive signals pretty early and not knowing what to do with the information. I would just yell it out. There wasn’t a structure. No one knew who I was. I’m two weeks into being a student coach. They don’t know who I am. The OC knew who I was, but he was up in the booth, and the director of football ops knew who I was, but that was pretty much it — and the players.

“So I’m just yelling, ‘Power left! Power left!’ And it would be power left. You just got to have a knack for it, but it’s not rocket science. It’s just signals.”

Connor Stalions responds to Cade Stover’s criticism

In September, Houston Texans tight end and former Ohio State star Cade Stover spoke to reporters about his debut. However, he was also asked about the Netflix documentary, “Untold: Sign Stealer” about the Michigan sign-stealing scandal. Stover told reporters he did not need to watch the documentary as he lived through it.

Stover expressed dismay that Michigan could predict a play Ohio State would run in a formation it had never used in a game. When asked about Stover’s comments, Stalions responded that he did not remember exactly what the formation used. But he picked up on context clues.

“Here’s the thing: Ohio State had like eight signalers all year, something like that,” Stalions said. “Everyone signals the formation. Mistake No. 1. Mistake No. 2: They never changed who their live signaler was the entire season.”

Compton and Lewan had the producers pull up the exact play and discuss it with Stalions while watching it.

“Slot Y-Y, they motioned into Slot Y-Y,” Stalions said as they rewatched the play. “They signaled their signal for Slot Y-Y formation, and then the guy who was live the entire season signaled Y then delay. Am I supposed to see that and be, ‘Oh, I don’t know what this is.’ I said, ‘This has got to be a Y-delay screen.”

Stalions was quickly identified as a central figure when news of Michigan’s sign-stealing scandal broke, and subsequently resigned from his position in early November 2023. The Wolverines went on to complete an unbeaten, 15-0 season in 2023, including a 30-24 win vs. Ohio State.

The Buckeyes will rematch against the Wolverines on Saturday, Nov. 30 in Ohio Stadium.

Michigan held a three-point lead heading into the fourth quarter at Washington on Saturday, but the Wolverines were outscored 13-0 in the final frame and dropped their second game this season.

In wake of Michigan’s defeat, Fox Sports’ college football analyst Joel Klatt ripped the Wolverines’ for their poor execution and scheme in the fourth quarter and explained what went wrong for U-M on his podcast, The Joel Klatt Show.

“The fourth quarter starts, and Michigan reverts to a version of Michigan that, quite frankly, I haven’t seen for the last three years.” Klatt said. “It was a team that was undisciplined, they were not fundamentally sound, the structures and the schematics were bad and the decision-making was bad. It was all bad in the fourth quarter.”

Klatt specifically broke down one fourth quarter defensive play, in which Michigan rushed with six defenders and left five players in coverage against four Washington receivers. The problem was, the Wolverines’ pre-snap alignment was wrong, and Michigan was in zone coverage with the five non-blitzing defenders. Klatt explained what went wrong on the play, which can be viewed below:

“The defense lines up, and before the snap of the football, I pause the film and I’m like, ‘Well, that’s wrong.’ They have a single-high safety, they have two corners and then they have three linebackers and one of the linebackers is walked out towards the single receiver, towards the wide side of the field…So, I’m looking at this and I’m like, well this isn’t very good, because now all they have is one corner and kind of a linebacker over [Washington’s] three-receiver structure. And then they blitz! Six guys!

“The two linebackers that were lined up inside, and the four down lineman, all blitz…and there is a supprt player walked out to the field, [nickelback Zeke Berry], with no one to defend. And there’s only two players that are possible left to defend the three-receiver side. And they just have a nice completion there because they can’t get to the quarterback in time, and he just throws it over there because no one’s defending him.

“One, you can’t play zone if you’re going to blitz six guys. You better be in man-to-man defense, and you have two players over three? It blew my mind. Maybe it’s just a missed assignment, but that’s not a structure you can win with.”

While that is just an example of one play, it’s representative of many of the schematic and execution errors that Michigan has suffered from this season, particularly in the fourth quarter. Klatt pointed out that the Wolverines have surrendered 63 points in the final frame this season, the sixth-most in all of college football. This comes one year after Michigan allowed just 47 points total in the fourth quarter in 15 games last season.

“I’ve told you before, this Michigan team does not have a margin for error,” Klatt said. “So they’ve got to play sound, everything. They’ve got to do…everything right. You’ve got to play with great technique, you’ve got to play with great game-management, decision-making, fundamentals. And all of that fell apart in the fourth quarter. If you turn the football over and you lose the field position battle as a Michigan team, you will lose the game, and they did. They gave up two short fields in the fourth quarter, and gave up 10 points because of it, and they walked into that fourth quarter with a 17-14 lead. You can’t win like that.

“When you walk through the film and you watch that, here’s what you see: You see a team that, structurally, on some of these defensive blitzes is not sound…After one of the turnovers, they lose the edge on defense [resulting in a long run]. You run a bad route on the interception, Colston Loveland is drifting down the field, and I’m like, none of this is right. Bad structures, bad fundamentals, bad decisions, all of it bad. That’s why they got beat in the fourth quarter. They don’t have a good enough team to do that.

“Last year, that team was insanely detailed, insanely fundamentally sound and they had J.J. McCarthy to bail them out on third down when needed. And they had Roman Wilson and some wide receivers that could actually go get it, which is another big third down thing. This team doesn’t have that, so they better be buttoned up, and they weren’t, and they got beat.”

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