Mark Dantonio

A buddy sent this to me today. Pretty funny video of a mock group text with B1G Ten Coaches. Happy Friday!

I hope this embed works, if not, find the link at the end.

Link:

https://www.facebook.com/TheTabMichigan/videos/1136175833162203/

LIke him or not, Mark Dantonio is a great football coach. This season has not been kind to his Spartans, and I am pretty sure he is going to second-guess this last one in late October 2016 the rest of his professional life.

A few decisions will haunt him like forever:

1. Why didn't I start Brian in the first place?

2. Why didn't I just run LJ throughout the game, instead of giving snaps to Holmes?

3. 4th down, goal lines, I should, I mean SHOULD, take the field goals!!! Damn it!!!

4. What in my Dinosaur brain was I thinking about getting those 2 pts? Seriously Mark, pride before the fall? 

On a side note, Harbaugh and gang will take pride in winning in East Lansing, and learn what we need to correct in particular late Q4. 

Discuss.

Next week is setting up to be a really BIG game for us.

1000 upvotes to the person that posts Dantonio's postgame presser... delicious.

"We've always taken a systematic approach to recruiting, we try not to have too much 'flair'..... um....(breaks into smile)  I guess he's (Ric Flair's) down there,.... I don't know what to say, it just sort of slipped..."

Not a huge deal (maybe just an unintentional pun more than anything else), but seems to me that when asked about MSU's approach to recruiting, Dantonio inadvertently says "flair", makes the connection to SOTS in his mind, and then laughs out loud.  At least he shows a sense of humor to laugh at his unintentional advertisement for UM.

Because of SOTS, *everyone* is thinking about UM, even MSU.  MSU's head coach is supposed to be talking about MSU, but he instead reminds people about UM.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVkg1j2qdGc

(around 2:20)

A couple of days ago I compiled Hoke's win-loss record, looking specifically at road v. home v. neutral site and the differences between the Vegas line and the actual win differential. I was curious, though -- and maybe this was prompted by a comment I saw somewhere -- how other successful coaches at our rivals had fared recently. That is, was Hoke's downward trend normal? Abnormal? Is there, in fact, a normal?

Here are the results (click to embiggen):

Some notes:

• Hoke is most like Meyer: a string of victories at the start with a slow (inevitable) decline, although Meyer was able to string together an amazing 24-0 start at Ohio State.
• Kelly and Dantonio are more similar: a difficult first year followed by a fairly consistent improvement in overall record.
• Rodriguez is a real outlier: he never really got about .500, so never showed the overall improvement that Kelly and Dantonio did.

Hoke's downward slide looks ominous. What if we look on the brighter side, however, and project a 9-3 season, with losses to Michigan State and Ohio State but victories against the rest of the schedule? We get something like this (I'm not projecting the other coaches' records here):

That looks significantly better: essentially Hoke would be neck-and-neck with Kelly at the end of his year four, with a better overall record than Danotio's first four years. That's not bad.

Even if we project an 8-4 season this year -- say we lose to Penn State under the lights -- the overall record ain't too shabby:

The question, then, may be: is Hoke better than a .700 career coach? The difference between .700 and .750 is pretty palpable. Lloyd's career record was .753, Moeller's was .758, Bo's was .796 (at Michigan only for the latter two coaches). The scene of college football is significantly different now than it was in the 1970s and 1980s, but it's probably fair to say that Michigan fans and alumni reasonably expect to win 3 out of every 4 games, even if we were never happy with Lloyd or Moeller's tendency to drop the occasional game to undermatched opponents (a loss at home to an unranked Illinois in 1993, my first year at Michigan, still stings a bit).

There's no doubt that the end of last year and this year is a bit of a trough for Michigan football: we're rebuliding, not reloading, despite the addition of Peppers. At least that has to be the positive take, anyway; the negative take would be that in the coming years the slide continues, and Hoke's line on the graph above will cross Dantonio's in 2015.

My overall take is more positive than I thought it would be when I started: if Hoke can hold serve this year with a 9-3 record and continue to bring in top talent, then there is a good case to be made that things will rebound. If those things happen, then on paper Hoke and Kelly look awfully similar, and I think that we probably think that whatever Kelly's many faults, he's got Notre Dame football on the right track in terms of the on-the-field performance.

Yet as I type those sentences about Michigan they seem awfully optimistic... far more optimistic than I currently feel.

EDIT: Per the suggestion by LandonC in the comments below, here is Hoke's ten year  game rolling win percentage vs. Kelly's, Dantonio's, and RR's:

After watching the Spartans play this evening, I had the strange feeling that I had seen this team before but I could not quite place where.  The game, which had about 22 punts , was not  "must see TV" by any means but it did have a purpose for many conference opponents fans.  What are we going to have to deal with...?  

From what I was able to see, the Spartans have still got a decent defensive unit.  They seem very opportunistic in trying to force turnovers and getting after the QB.  The offense was atrocious and Mr. Dantonio will be in the hospital if this happens against the Irish when they play here pretty soon.  Between Maxwell and the other QB that played, I do not know if they can honestly say that they have a shot at winning against he top tier conference teams!  O'Connor the kid from my town in Ohio (Lima) did not play.  I thought that I had heard that he was doing well in camp but maybe Dantonio thought he should continue to hide in the weeds a little longer with that one.

I know that I should wait a few games before getting too excited thinking that we will go in to East Lansing and smack them around for 4 qtrs but I cannot help it.  I sure as heck better watch us play tomorrow before writing that check but that team that I thought I had seen before was in that same stadium but it was coached by John L. Smith then...

Their defense did have some spectacular plays one of which will easily be compared to Charles Woodson's leaping, one handed, masterpiece...though the degree of difficulty on his was exponentially higher since he was near the sideline.  There are not many teams that can win with depending primarily on their defense.  Since we have seen Indiana and Minnesota both display the ability to score points so far, is there anybody out there beside me that thinks that Mark Dantonio should be glad that he did not open with either of them?

Your thoughts please...

This is to all of you that had negative responses about a Sparty thread.  This was intended for light discussion.  It was not an exhaustive study on the teams capabilities or dissertation on how much they hate us.  If you didn't want to read it, the solution was very simple.  I have no love for fellow Michigan fans that feel the need to nit pick the other posts because they are so enlightened.  I am a casual reader of many of your posts...this is not that serious folks.  Life is short, calm the heck down!