Lloyd Carr

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This is a project I had wanted to do for some time but just couldn’t find the time. However, today is Wednesday the Tigers aren’t in the playoffs and for some reason we don’t have football 7 days a week yet…. Anyway, It’s a study of Lloyd Carr and Rich Rodriguez’s records versus Top25 teams as both a Ranked and Unranked team. I simply wanted to compare numbers. I didn’t seek to make a claim for RR or for LC based on these numbers. So what follows is this study and some things that I learned in the process which was fascinating to me.

Let’s begin:

Year	Record v top25	UR v top25
1995	3-3	0-0
1996	2-3	0-0
1997	7-0	0-0
1998	3-3	0-0
1999	5-1	0-0
2000	4-2	0-0
2001	2-2	0-0
2002	3-3	0-0
2003	5-3	0-0
2004	2-1	0-0
2005	3-2	2-0
2006	2-2	0-0
2007	3-2	3-0
Career	Record v top25	UR v top25
	44-27	5-0

Clearly, Lloyd had a tremendous (thanks Lloyd) record against the top 25. A .619 winning percentage.

Year	Record v top25	UR v top25
2001	0-3	0-3
2002	2-3	1-3
2003	2-3	2-2
2004	1-2	0-1
2005	2-1	1-1
2006	2-1	0-0
2007	4-1	0-0
2008	1-2	1-2
2009	1-0	1-0
Career	Record v top25	UR v top25
	15-16	6-12

Rich Rod doesn’t have a great record against the top 25 both as ranked and unranked. .483 winning percentage. Not terrible as a ranked opponent but pretty marginal as an unranked. It would be interesting to see what the average winning percentage is in each situation but I can’t say that I’m motivated enough to figure that out and I don’t know if there’s an easy way to figure that out.

Interesting stuff that I learned:

1. Michigan played SEVEN ranked opponents in the 1997 National Championship season. (well, co-national champ, really).

2. Nebraska only beat 4 ranked teams that year.

3. Lloyd had an impressive record when unranked versus the top 25.

4. In 2003, when Michigan may have had a case for the MNC if not for the turd they laid against USC, they played EIGHT ranked teams in a thirteen game schedule…that’s impressive.

5. The Big Ten is really, really down right now.

EDIT: No idea what that crap is at the top, I don't see it in the editor screen...Do not let it detract from my research, kthx.

1) My previous post was not intended to be a Lloyd bashing (I have done enough of that for 10 lifetimes), but instead a response to those likening this loss to those of the LC era. My point is simply this is not of the same mold. There are many ways to lose, and many ways to get out-coached, but this year's version of UM-MSU was not a case of the significantly more talented and experienced team allowing the game to stay close and finding a way to lose (as was often the case with LC). UM got outplayed at the line of scrimmage and deserved to lose. My argument has always been that Lloyd had stacked teams and they played mediocre football. This year's version of UM is indeed a mediocre team, so to expect greatness is premature. 
2) LC was a solid coach for the first part of his tenure. Things really changed for the worse after the 2000 Orange bowl. The only big win after that game was 2003 OSU. Yes, Lloyd was consistent and a good man. But given all the NFL talent he recruited (and look at their impact in the league...Brady, Woodley, Jackson, Edwards, Breaston, etc), to only have 1 BCS bowl victory is an underachievement. IMO, in his last few years he held down the fort, but never reinforced it, and the game was beginning to pass him by.  Point being....please let's not go down the path of every time we lose a game we compare it to the LC era.....We are not a top 10 team yet, let alone a top 10 team losing to unranked opponents.
3) The defensive recruiting comment is the most interesting response I have seen. I totally agree, that RR needs to do more to bring in big time recruits on that side of the ball. Is Greg Robinson the right man for this job?....I have no idea, but it is clear that RR has pretty much entrusted him with this unit, so he can focus on the offense. Getting speed and talent at skill positions on offense will not be a problem given the fun and gun system RR is installing. But to really compete at the BCS level we need speed on defense. "SEC speed" is a myth when looking at skill position players (recievers / RBs are fast at all big-time programs in the country). Where this argument has some validity is at the D-lines and LBs, where they really are faster in the south.....(Play football year round.) Skill position players in the north often run track in HS, so are not as much at a disadvantage when compared to their peers in the south. Point being....ahs22 raises a great concern, are we recruiting enough talent on defense?  I think if we can pull of some of the fours star talent still on the board we will be ok  We have a lot of defensive recruits still around with at least medium interest in UM......Cullen Christian, Dior Mathis, Olaniyan, Bryant, Furman, Ifill, etc....Come on Down!!!! 

I have been seeing some ridiculous commentary here....Even comparing today's coaching to some of the painful losses endured in the later years of the Lloyd Carr Era.

First, relax.....This is a young team on or ahead of schedule. 

Now to address the most idiotic, reactionary comparison I have seen on the boards today. 

This was NOT Lloyd Carr mentality....Not every loss is due to poor coaching, and even if poor coaching is involved (as could be argued on some RR calls today) not all poor coaching is of the same genre.  Further, one call, or one game does not a trend make.

The LC - RR divergence, for anyone stupid enough to not see it yet.....

Lloyd wasted talent all day and played to keep it close. This game today was a case of getting dominated at the line of scrimmage and not being able to get the spread run going......which is a huge part of the offense. That is what opens up the 7 yard outs on the rollout...IE, Tate has the option of handing off, running, throwing a quick out, or rolling out and throwing down field. When the run is not going and not a viable option, it puts a lot of pressure on the qb, and really destroys the flow of the offense. Tate played great considering.

Lloyd Carr mediocre mentality occurred when we were clearly the superior team and would blow it by playing not to lose....We would out gain our opponents in yardage, have fewer turnovers, would have superior talent all over the field....but somehow the games were always too close at the end when playing the NWs or Illinois of the world under LC. In many ways today was the opposite of Lloyd Card mentality....we were in a game we had no business of winning, taking it to overtime miraculously. This is NOT a national championship caliber team yet. Talent and experience is not there yet. If anything, they are overachieving considering all the freshmen and sophomores starting. When RR squanders talent like Tom Brady, A-Train, David Terrell, Marquise Walker, Chris Perry, Marlin Jackson, Braylon Edwards, Chad Henne, Leon Hall, Alan Branch, Lamarr Woodley, Larry Foote, Steve Breaston, Mario Manningham, Jake Long, etc, etc, etc..... and only manages to win 1 BCS game with such talent (Orange Bowl) then I will start bitching about RR. 1997 bought Lloyd a lot of leeway, but no doubt nobody did less with more talent than Lloyd in his final five years.

This game was nothing of that sort. Sparty actually completely outplayed Michigan and won because of it. They deserved the win....Had we pulled it off it would have been a stolen victory, which while I would love, would still not prove that we had "arrived." We are simply making progress.

Have some perspective people. Its a team with two freshmen qbs starting their first road game, against a rival none the less. Given that they came back and found something in the fourth quarter, and Tate continues to prove how clutch he is, this team is moving in the right direction. We are very thin at many positions on defense as well. Another year, a couple more recruiting classes to fit RR's schemes, (and please God, some first rate corners, safeties, and D-Line and LB recruits) and we will be a machine. Baby steps.

I have been attending Michigan football games since I was 8 years old, starting with Michigan's 49-7 demolition of Northwestern to open the 1979 season.  In what has got to be one of the most embarrassing personal reveals ever, I missed Anthony Carter's miracle catch at the end of the Indiana game that year because I was forced to go see Fantasia with my cousins from Canada.  I think we can all agree that Canadians and Walt Disney are simply not conducive to football.

The purpose of the intro is to give some background into How I Became Deeply Steeped In the Coaching Philosophy of Bo Schembechler and His Progeny.  Between 1979 and RichRod, I have only had three coaches to watch: Bo, Mo, and Llo.  Gary Moeller and Lloyd Carr were both former assistants and, from my perspective, had similar coaching philosophies, as one might expect.  In short, you can view 1979-2007 as a fairly monolithic period from the standpoint of Michigan coaching philosophy.

The arrival of Coach Rodriguez has thus been equal parts jarring and exciting.  During the EMU game, there were a couple moments that made me reflect on the differences.  I record them here.

Before we start, a couple of bona fides: I am a big RichRod fan, believe he was a great hire, and have no general complaints.  I am the type of Michigan fan who thought (a) we would be 5-7 this year and (b) expected to be very happy with that so long as the directional arrow was pointed in the right direction from a quality and improvement standpoint.  I am thus candidly shocked and awed that we are 3-0 and look as good as we do.  And yes, I am also enough of a happy horseshit type of guy that I occasionally wonder where we will be ranked going into the Penn State game if somehow we beat both MSU and Iowa. 

So, two big differences I see between Coach Rodriguez and his Schembechler ancestors.

1.  Rule #1: Don't start practicing for next week until the opponent in front of you is dead.  Late in the first half against EMU, Michigan was starting to roll in the running game and was up 24-10.  It was clear that you could hand off to Brown or Shaw seven times in a row and score.  EMU just didn't have the horses.  I think if Bo/Mo/Lo were coaching, they would have done just that -- hand off to Carlos or Mike or whomever and run left, center, right until the score was 45-10 and there were seven minutes to go in the 4th quarter.  RichRod did something that is very different, in my view, than what Bo would have done: he put DRob in to get him some reps for the specific purpose of practicing his passing.  I was not concerned to see DRob per se -- I understand the philosophy behind the rotation of him and Forcier.  But the fact that they put him to start working on his passing when we were only up by two scores and it was still the first half troubled me.  In Bo's day, my feeling is that we killed our opponents dead and THEN started working on things for next week.  To me, this felt a bit premature and I was nervous about it.  Obviously, the final score of the game did not bear out the concern.  But I was not happy to be only up seven at half against a spirited opponent, and felt like this is an area where RichRod could adopt some additional conservatism in the Bo/Mo/Lo style.  We have a lot of developing to do, especially with DRob.  I get that.  But we need to make sure the game is in hand before we start screwing around, and this one wasn't.

2.  Offensive versus Defensive Coordinators.  It is interesting to note that Bo, Mo, and Lo were all principally defensive-minded guys.  Moeller actually had the unusual distinction of serving as both an offensive and defensive coordinator, but he was a linebacker as a player and a defensive coordinator first.  I think this dramatically impacted Michigan's philosophy in ways that are well known to readers of Mgoblog.  Michigan was big on getting leads, and then sitting on them by running out the clock.  With Rodriguez, a marked change in the offense is that if we get the ball on our 30 with 57 seconds left in the half, there is no question we will try to get points.  RichRod is always looking to score.  Under the Bo and Progeny years, there was no question that we would run into the line three times and go to the half.

There is a flip-side to this that I am a little worried about.  It strikes me that some offensive gurus who become head coaches spend their coaching lives fascinated by the concept of offense -- and basically outsource the defense to the defensive coordinator.  RichRod makes me nervous in this respect.  It is odd to think about the fact that Michigan's defense this year and last are just absolutely terrible.  I cannot remember worse linebacking in the last 30 years.  What is really odd about all this is that it is the offense that was completely new (and had the corresponding mis-match in personnel) and was cited as the reason to be patient with RichRod.  There was no real reason, other than English leaving, to think that the defense would be anything other than a Michigan defense.  (I know, we had significant graduation after the 2006 season -- my point is, there wasn't any special reason to envision that we would completely fall off the map defensively.)  I have moments where I worry that while he is fascinated by the spread n shread, that RichRod just doesn't get defense and relies on others to do it for him.

So -- a new era under RichRod is continuing to develop more and more.  The excitement of our quick strike offense is new to Michigan fans -- for years, it has been the type of thing we feared, not one we thought we might one day employ.  But the aggressiveness can overlook some of the benefits of the conservatism that was so deeply engrained in Bo -- a conservatism that in the end, I would argue, served him well in terms of reliably turning out winning seasons.  (Many would argue with me and say Bo's conservatism is why he was abysmal in bowl games.)  And there is a real concern on my part that the defense's problems are more institutional than one would first think -- something I never would expect to say about the Big Blue.

I've heard reports that Lloyd looked really angry headed out of the Big House on Saturday.

Why might a man who witnessed such a TREMENDOUS victory by the program he devoted most of his life to sport such a sour look immediately after the game?

Some say it is because he wants Rich Rod to fail and beating ND does not = fail. To me this sounds highly unlikely. He wants RR to fail so desperately that he takes no enjoyment from a Michigan victory over Notre Dame? That is not the way of a Michigan Man!

Who knows why a man sports an angry look at such a seemingly inopportune moment. Could be any number of reasons. (Maybe Ms. Harris asked him why Coach Weis didn't use his two timeouts at the end of the game?) Does anyone have any insight on this? If not, how about a couple of made-up reasons using the word tremendous?

EDIT: I don't think Carr was angry b/c Michigan won, whether he likes RR or not, I'm sure he always roots for a Michigan victory. However, since the rumor is out there, I wondered if anyone had any inside knowledge.

The Michigan Man does exist despite what drivel you may have recently read; He's just not what everybody thinks he is. ‘They’ think a Michigan Man is some kind of prototype forged in the mold Bo Schembechler. Bo’s famous quote seared into the public perception an awesome and  tenacious image that resonated within the Michigan community and throughout the sports world to this very day, a generation later; the very definition of a meme. As the man who coined the phrase and undoubtedly a Michigan Man himself, he himself is said image.

 A closer Look at the context of the quote reveals the true definition of Michigan Men. Bill Frieder accepts a job elsewhere and leaves Michigan behind. As soon as that agreement was made, it was determined that Frieder was not a Michigan Man. At that moment he was no longer the right man to lead Michigan.

So, the definition of a Michigan Man is simple: He who is unequivocally devoted to Michigan.  A Michigan Man stands for what he believes is right and has the grace to acknowledge and correct his errors.  A Michigan Man loves Michigan and represents her with courage, valor, and passion; to his grave. A Michigan Man respects his adversary but will never fear him.

Unfortunately, many within the Michigan community do not understand this simple definition. This is not to say that they do not love Michigan, but they fail to see what it was about Bo that made him a Michigan Man. Gerald Ford. Bob Ufer. Those who stayed in ’69. Gary Moeller. Tshimanga Biakabutuka. Lloyd Carr. Tom Brady. Brian Cook.  This list never ends.

Bo and Lloyd were clear-cut Michigan Men but they do not encompass all Michigan Men. What I saw on August 31 was stark contrast to what I would expect to see from any of the afore mentioned men, but make no mistake…I saw a Michigan Man.

What we’re dealing with in this episode of evolution is the unknown. It is scary to not know what to expect and it’s OK to be critical of what you see. But it’s not OK to reject someone because you don’t understand him and are so attached to the mystique of what has come before that you won’t take the time to get to know him.  That’s not Michigan.

Do  you love a mystique or do you love Michigan?