Anywhere Drew Tate went, Shawn Crable was close behind.

In Saturday's 20-6 victory against Iowa, the linebacker was like Tate's shadow, who is widely thought of as one of the nation's grittiest and most talented quarterbacks.

Tate's reputation didn't scare Crable, though - he broke through the line time after time and continued bringing Tate to the ground.

Along with numerous knockdowns, Crable posted a career-high total of three sacks to go along with a forced fumble.

How did his coaches feel about Crable's seemingly dominant performance?

"He's coming along," first-year linebackers coach Steve Szabo said. "I thought he could have made some more plays tonight that he didn't make."

That's not exactly the ringing endorsement you would expect after playing the game of his life in front of millions on television.

But that's nothing new to Crable - his career at Michigan has been filled with tough love.

Wake up call

After suffering an injury before ever stepping onto the field his freshman year, the 6-foot-5 linebacker rarely played during his redshirt-freshman season, either.

He picked up just seven tackles in nine games that season. That's a sharp contrast from the 17 sacks he tallied his senior year of high school, when he garnered All-State honors at Washington High in Massillon, Ohio.

But Crable remained optimistic that his sophomore season would be different and that Michigan coach Lloyd Carr would be eager to work him into a more active role in the lineup.

So when Carr summoned Crable to his office at the beginning of that year, Crable almost rushed into the office in anticipation of what could result.

But instead of leaving with a smile and a starting job, Crable just received another wake-up call.

When Crable entered, Carr pulled a stack of papers out of his desk and set them out in front of his underachieving linebacker.

The documents ended up being transfer papers, and Carr offered to sign them for Crable on the spot.

Crable had never asked for a transfer, and was very surprised by his coach's actions.

"I looked at him like, 'Man, you're a jerk,' " remembers Crable. "He told me he thought I should transfer, because I wasn't doing anything."

Crable didn't know that this was a traditional motivational tactic Carr had pulled with many of his players.

"When you reach a point where a guy is not cooperating, and I tell them I'll help them transfer, I'm serious on one hand," Carr said. "The message I'm sending them is, 'Hey, you're not going to be successful here, because you won't do the things that you told me you would do when I recruited you.' "

Instead of accepting Carr's offer to transfer, Crable took Carr's challenge to heart and rededicated himself to football.

Before Michigan, things had always come easy to Crable, a four-star recruit and the No. 2-ranked linebacker coming out of high school. He realized after the meeting that he should turn his intensity up a couple notches.

"A lot of what he was saying (in that meeting) was true," Crable said. "If someone is telling you something you know, you can fight it or you can actually do something about it. I left that meeting wanting to do something about it."

After his meeting with Carr, Crable consulted Sam Sword, a former Michigan linebacker and a then-graduate assistant.

The conversation calmed Crable, as the straight-shooting Sword informed Crable that Carr had asked him to transfer when he played, too.

Crable appreciated Sword's honesty, both about the transfer situation and Crable's on-field performance.

"He'd tell you straight, tell you exactly what you needed to do and stuff like that," Crable said of Sword.

That brutally honest approach seems to be the common theme for the coaching staff when dealing with Crable.

Then-defensive coordinator Jim Herrmann followed Carr and Sword's lead with liberal criticism of Crable, who felt as if he should've started as both a freshman and sophomore. The two sat down midway through last season to address Crable's playing time, which had picked up from the previous year, but still wasn't where Crable felt he should be.

"He told me I needed to play harder and be better than everybody else on the field before I even get a chance to be on the field," Crable said of his conversation with Herrmann. "I thought maybe I wasn't getting a shot, or maybe it wasn't my time. I just needed to know.

"We talked about what I needed to work on just to get on the field. I think it helped me a lot. I took what he said and it got me on the field. That was the best part - he kept his word."

And Crable kept his, too.

He tallied 10 tackles, three sacks and a pair of pass break-ups in the season's final four games. Crable collected just two solo tackles in the seven games prior to his meeting with Herrmann.