100% worst month ever

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I'm taking down the office now. [Fuller]

Open letters to people who don't read them isn't exactly productive, but it's useful in a snowflakey kind of way. The MGoPostal service delivered a few of note: JeepinBen gives the next coach the correct answers to the Michigan questions. A guy emailed Schlissel our complaint list about Dave Brandon. A wealthy alum says to Schlissel or whoever that hubris is the problem.

You can read a form reply from the president's office here. Brandon at least had the courtesy to provide a personal response to a lady canceling her long-held season tickets [UPDATED: this was apparently sent last December].

How to have a happy life. A few diarists looked a the qualities that seem to lead to success in a head coaching change. That first is a look at the coaching histories of Michigan, OSU, Bama, ND and USC with particular attention paid to whether guys with connections to the university had more success (they didn't).

The second starts by making a comparison of Bo to Stoops and goes on to sort out some common threads in other coaching changes. He came upon the same thing I did when trying to identify common threads in successful transitions: whatever side of the ball you don't know, just keep the coordinator from the old regime.

I would have been dead set against it at the time but in retrospect RR perhaps could have saved himself a lot of problems with the old guard by retaining Ron English. Or that could have led to an even bigger explosion when he fired English instead of Shafer for not running a 3-3-5 or getting along with Gibson. But imagine Michigan right now if Hoke had retained Calvin Magee, which we were VERY MUCH hoping for.

[After the jump, profiles of guys for Hoke's job; why head trauma is a thing and wasn't before]

nuss 9-15

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In hindsight, and this has nothing to do with an injury, should Devin Gardner have played earlier in the game on Saturday based on how Shane was playing?

“No.”

And why not?

“Well, I think you’ve got to give a guy an opportunity to play. Shane prepared very well. We talked about it for several weeks, you know, his preparation leading up to the game. He deserved that opportunity to play and we were going to let him play.”

 

Doug, what was your perspective on the Shane Morris hit that’s kind of been a question after he had the hit to the head? It looked like you kind of saw him struggling on the field. What were you saying to him and what was your take on this?

“Well, I didn’t see the hit. You can’t see- everything was lost in the field of play and the guys upstairs, you know, it was third down and it was an incompletion so I was thinking- well, they say, ‘We got a roughing penalty. We’re up.’ And I’m like, ‘Okay.’ So the first thing is okay, what are we doing now? It’s first-and-10 from a playcaller’s standpoint, and then I look up and I see Shane limping. ‘Are you okay? Are you okay?’ and he waved me off, [saying] ‘I’m fine.’ Okay. I didn’t know at that extent what had happened, really. You don’t really know because you couldn’t see from our vision on the field and Shane’s a tough, tough guy, man.”

Did you talk to him when he came off the field, and what was sort of his state of mind and clarity at that point?

“I don’t really recall having a conversation other than ‘Are you okay?’ and then you’ve got the flow of the game and everything else that was going on.”

 

Coach, is it going to be difficult for either quarterback or whatever quarterback you have in there until this offensive takes a few more steps forward in terms of pass protection and things like that?

“We’re all disappointed in our performance. We needed to perform better. We needed to play better. We needed to coach better. That’s across the board, not one position. Like I said, we’ve got to coach better and we’ve got to play better. We’ve got a lot of work to do, obviously. The only thing we can do is go back to the practice field. We went and put some pads on yesterday and worked on some things, worked on some fundamental things to try and get better at every position.”

 

Do you know who will be the starter next weekend?

“We’ll go through the week and we’ll evaluate it.”

Is it a question of- if Shane were 100% and nothing had happened injury-wise would that still be the case this week, or…?

“We’re going to challenge and compete at every position, like we say every week and see where we’re at and evaluate every guy. We’ve talked about it numerous times, [we] want to create competition at every position. Both Shane and Devin have done some really good things and we look forward to watching them compete and allow each other to be pushed and get better.”

With how, from our perspective- with how long it took for the final decision to made going into last week’s game…first of all, when was that decision made that Shane was going to be the starter?

“Well, I don’t think that when that decision’s made is really relevant. What’s relevant is that our players are pushing each other every day to get better and that we’re putting the best players at each position out there every Saturday.”

[More on Shane Morris and the hit after THE JUMP]

 

hoke 9-15

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Opening remarks:

“Number one, thanks for coming. I know there's been a lot of talk, a lot of speculation, a lot of rumors, innuendo, whatever on what happened and what's going on with Shane.

Obviously I can tell you from my perspective of being on the sideline what I know and I'm going to touch [on] some of those things a little bit, but at the same time I think there's other experts that will also have a statement and an opinion.

I'm a football coach. Some of you don't think we’re doing that very well but that's what I do. I don't make decisions who plays, who doesn't play as far as when there's injuries and particularly if there was any head trauma or head injuries. And for those of you who know or don't know I would never put a kid in that situation. Never have and never will because you get into this to coach kids, believe me. And that's what this game is all about, and helping those guys in a lot of different ways. So we are not going to– as a staff I can assure you that's never going to happen.

“The one thing I can tell you is during the process of… let me share this first. Number one, we practiced yesterday. We practiced last night and Shane Morris would have practiced were it not for a high ankle sprain, and that's one reason I'm telling you that is because that's what I've been told and a high ankle sprain, they have a new word for it that I can't really pronounce but he would have practiced if it wasn't for that.

During the course of the game when Devin lost– and I think that's where the critical junction is for some of you, but the…Devin's helmet comes off and my intention is to go out and I get the referee’s attention who I think, by the way, is one of the better referees in this league, and I want to buy him back with a timeout. That, and when I say that- and I've talked to the Big Ten about this, I've talked to Bill Carollo last night about this, I was told I couldn't buy him back and I said, ‘Yeah, I can buy him back,’ so him and I had a little bit of a discussion because you can buy back in because of the helmet, not because of any injury but because of the helmet coming off.

Well, the linesman comes up and him and I, I say ‘I want to buy him back,’ and the referee says you can't do that’ and the miscommunication or whatever it might be, the head linesman says, ‘Yes, you can’ and so by that time Shane’s on the field taking one more snap, handing the ball off, [and] Devin gets his helmet back on. That's how that sequence went.

What I can tell you is we would never, ever put a guy on the field when there's a possibility of head trauma and we won't do that. Guys play beat up every day. If they’re not beat up a little bit, they’re never 100%, then we need to – then they’re not doing much. Guys also have nicks and bumps and bruises and strains and everything else. I can also tell you that football is a sport where guys have got to be highly competitive and they are highly competitive because they love to play the game and they love to compete and that's just part of their DNA. And I think it's different, obviously, than a lot of other things and professions and those things.

“Let me finish with we've got to do a better job of playing football, coaching football and being a team. We get to go to Rutgers this week and we’re excited about that. Had a good practice last night. Focused on the fundamentals and the techniques that you need to have and that is what this game is. We played a little bit- and I know Jack Miller said this after the game, offensively we played a little bit of 10 man football and you can't do that. Every guy has a responsibility. Every guy has to do their job.

“Defensively, I think the disappointing thing is our tackling and leveraging the ball. I don't think and we don't think we did a good enough job there and that was addressed last night and will be addressed throughout the week. We’re excited about going to Rutgers. These are the two schools, besides the Ivy League schools, playing football. I think the history of those two schools playing football besides the Ivies, so that's exciting and it'll be a new environment so we’re excited to get on the road.”

[Much more after THE JUMP]