injuries

ulnar nerve; Vote_Crisler_1937 wanted me to make him look cool

An MGoUser with a college sports history who had a similar injury to the one Denard had emailed to give some perspective on what he's dealing with at the moment. It's below.

-----------------------------------

Brian,

I am wondering about how Denard's nerve injury has affected his passing the last couple years.

Some background with my experience with the injury:

After 4 seasons of B1G baseball I had an ulnar nerve translation surgery.  Until I had that surgery I had very extreme and unpredictable pain in my throwing elbow.  There were days I could go 5 innings against Iowa, and days where after 9 pitches against MSU I hit two guys in the back because I suddenly had no ability to control the ball, eventually being unable to grip it, feeling constant shocks in my fingers and my forearm muscles compressing my bones like a trash compactor.

Some days I could not sit without biting my lip in a car or movie theatre because gently setting my elbow on the armrests was too intense so I imagine slamming it on the turf would have ruined my day as well.  After the surgery, (16 week recovery so not an option for Denard) all of that was gone and my arm felt virgin again.  literally, the first time I threw off a mound my accuracy was the greatest it had ever been and I hadn't thrown a pitch in 16 weeks!  This injury is a chronic overuse injury that started early in my freshman year and became unbearable my senior year.

So my thought is that perhaps this injury is not at all new, and during the times it is really hurting Denard, again, times that are not so predictable, I would bet that it greatly hampers his ability to throw a football with accuracy. To the extent that the coaches are aware of it this can certainly change play-calling.  Perhaps some of his arm-punts or Tacopants slings are a result of him feeling that familiar SHOCK as he releases the football.  Though I guess I have never seen him rub his arm so then again maybe not.

Your thoughts?
Vote_Crisler_1937

----------------------------------------

I'm pretty sure this is a newly developed thing with Denard since if he'd had something similar last year, Michigan would have put him under the knife in the offseason.

I don't think it's affected his play much. When Denard has armpunted this year it hasn't been much of a surprise. When he's stepped into his throws they've been accurate. When he's gone all woogly not so much.

potentially relevant if M does make the B10CG

Hail Mattison. Tube sock brigade == ND's line in the eyes of a guy who might know, Purdue OC Gary Nord:

Gold and Black: Are you having trouble with your offensive front, and is that affecting your run game?

Nord: "No, I think the offensive line played the best game they've played this year, I really do. They probably protected better than they've ever protected. I think Michigan's defensive line was probably as good as any that we've played. They were very good. They held Notre Dame to about the same number of yards we had and they had five turnovers on them. They played two of the better teams in the country in Alabama and Notre Dame, those two, so their stats were screwed up a little bit going in, but watching them man-for-man and for the four-down guys and two linebackers, they're as good as there is in the country."

Coachspeak? Never. Gary Nord speaks the gospel truth at all times thanks to an ancient curse passed down from Nord father to Nord son that turns them into a walrus if they ever say anything other than the unvarnished facts of a matter.

Danny Hope has it too, and fell from the straight and narrow.

That's so Weis. I mean, seriously.

The US government needs to disguise Weis as an Iranian ayatollah and send him into deep cover. Within weeks the country will collapse in the world's most disorganized civil war.

Yeah, I know about Somalia. I stand by what I said.

Next up: the University of Phoenix Phoenixes. TOC does a thing where they deploy Bradley-Terry ratings for college football* in the service of predicting things. They've got a margin-aware version, too. The West is a sack of cats with Michigan a tiny favorite thanks to not having a conference loss yet; the by-far top two teams in the East are the ineligible ones. BIG TENNNNNN.

Michigan's opponent this weekend… eh… not so good.

Blowout of the Week (Illinois Division): Illinois @ Michigan

Not only has Illinois only won one game against 1-A competition (Western Michigan), last week's 17-point loss to Wisconsin was their closest loss. This will not end well. Michigan is an 80% favorite according to the basic method, 93% (17 points) according to margin-aware.

The Illini have a one in 70,100 chance of winning out, though.

Over at A Lion Eye they're trying to figure out how on earth you fire Ron Zook and get a lot worse:

Our last four losses by 17 or more under Zook:

11/26/11: Minnesota 27, Illinois 7
11/12/11: Michigan 31, Illinois 14
10/16/10: Michigan State 26, Illinois 6
10/03/09: Penn State 35, Illinois 17

So if you’re scoring at home, that’s four 17+ point losses in the last five weeks for Illinois.  And before this season, four 17+ point losses in the last 35 games.  You know what, let’s make this one hurt a little more.  2006 through 2011.  Six seasons, eight losses by 17 points or more.  This season, four of our six games were losses by 17 points or more.

Illinois's run game has fallen off a cliff you already thought it had fallen off, dropping from 11th in 2010 to 41st in 2011 to 94th(!) this year, 94th when three of their opponents have been WMU, Charleston Southern, and Louisiana Tech. Every La Tech opponent has rushed for more yards against the Bulldogs than Illinois.

BONUS: after collecting 41 sacks a year ago, Illinois has nine in six games this time out. They returned everyone but Mercilus. They're 109th at sacks allowed. Illinois: not good.

*[college hockey fans may know this as KRACH]

Another tough injury for State. Dion Sims missed most of the Indiana game with an ankle injury. He's day-to-day-ish:

"I don't know that he'll make it this week," Dantonio said of Sims, "but he may make it next week. We'll have to see how he responds in the next couple days, really."

This week is Iowa, next week Michigan. Sims is MSU's leading receiver with 313 yards, though if you give Aaron Burbridge a minute he'll eclipse that.

Sims's backup is a redshirt freshman, FWIW. If Sims misses the Michigan game the main benefit seems to be a lack of the multi-TE sets State used to spring Ed Baker to a big day last year.

Also in injuryland, OSU MLB Etienne Sabino is out four weeks with a bone fracture in his leg. That prognosis should have him back on the field for Michigan, but seriously you can come back from this sort of thing in four weeks?

Senior linebacker Etienne Sabino has a broken right fibula and will miss at least three weeks, possibly more, for the Ohio State football team.

Sabino was injured in the first half of Saturday’s 63-38 win over Nebraska. He had surgery on Sunday to implant a steel plate into his leg.

Maybe:

“He talked to the team afterwards, and it was an emotional moment,” Meyer said. “The best case is three weeks. The worst case is longer. We hope to get him back.”

I am terrified of football players. Sabino's replacement is true freshman Joshua Perry, but OSU spends a lot of time in a nickel package that he won't feature in.

Willis Ward to be honored. All it took was action from the state legislature:

Oct. 20 (UM vs. MSU) is Willis Ward Day in Michigan. Athletic Department spokesperson said Michigan plans to recognize Willis on that day.

I've always loved "recognize" as a thing that is done by official-type people. "Oh, hey… you're Willis Ward, aren't you? Rad. I suppose this IS a plaque with you on it!"

Yost to host. Hockey drops the puck tonight in an exhibition against Windsor; Yost Built previews the D and goalies. I agree with him that splitting Moffie and Bennett across two pairings makes sense. Something like…

• Trouba-Merrill
• Bennett-Clare
• Moffie-Chiasson

…gives you offensive firepower at all times and a defensive guy who will cover up for the offensive guy when he lets his freak flag fly. I'll also be watching to see what kind of progress Brennan Serville can make. He was pretty bad last year but also very young; he could make a big step forward.

Red says Rutledge, Racine, and Janecyk will all play a period so hopefully that means Rutledge's eye thing is healed is ready to go for the real season opener on… Thursday? Guh.

Someone's got to do something about hockey scheduling. There's a game at Yost on February first this year. You know when the next one is? March. I assume this is just the CCHA screwing with Michigan because it can; hopefully next year they'll be able to move more home games into the back half of the schedule.

BONUS SCHEDULING TIP: The Big Ten should seek out opportunities to have rival weekends where, say, Minnesota football and hockey come to town at the same time. The travel equation changes dramatically when you get a hockey series on top of your football game.

Compher so pretty. JT Compher had another career lined up if hockey didn't work out:

"When I was younger I did toddler modeling and I was on the front of a catalog," Compher told NHL.com. "I got to keep the red scooter that I was modeling. That was pretty cool."

Compher said he can't remember what company the catalog was from, only that he was 3 or 4 years old at the time and got a pretty cool new toy out of the deal.

Okay, okay, this happened. Stop emailing me about it plz:

As I said on the twitter, my favorite part is that he appears to have misspelled his own damn name in his twitter handle.

Etc.: Ramroth Finnegan! I bet he ends up at Cincinnati. Illinois CB Terry Hawthorne was taken off in an ambulance last week but may return Saturday. Weinreb on Penn State remembering this football thing. Tim Hardaway expectation tracker. More numbers displaying that Illinois is bad yo. Denard throws are key.

New Yost. Looks nice…

…but is set to further erode the atmosphere in the stadium as the first three rows of the student section have been excised for additional handicap seating. I guess it's inevitable that would eat out a chunk of the students because money is the primary motivator for the department, but that continues a long tradition of crapping on the student section without offering anything in return that started with the terribly-designed (and perpetually half-empty) club seat overhang that eliminated the last four rows on that side of the arena and made a further four or five partially obstructed when you stand, as students do. With every renovation the capacity gets smaller and the prices go up.

Meanwhile, this is not a good idea:

On the bright side, it appears that opposing parents are sitting next to us this year. [insert evil laugh here]

Maybe the student section has mellowed enough in the past five years to make this workable but the last time this happened, hockey parents moving into the students to find who was talking about their boy were an annual occurrence. Michigan's asking for it.

Descent into Captain Queeg-dom: 75% complete. Mark Dantonio's presided over two mass player brawls, picked multiple players up from jail to drive them to practice, seen William Gholston treat Denard Robinson's head like a beer with a twist-off cap and punch Taylor Lewan without lifting a finger (the Big Ten levied the suspension, remember), had a public hissy fit after last week's EMU game, and he's just getting started.

As I was checking out the Brayfriend Experience in Athens, Michigan State was playing Ohio State in East Lansing. A film kerfuffle and eye-gouging incident have obscured the true WTF moment from that game:

via cjzero

Will Gholston laid motionless on top of Braxton Miller for a good 30 seconds after that hit, wobbled off the field, and then returned. The sideline reporter dutifully related that Gholston "had the wind knocked out of him."

That's appalling. Anyone who hits the video above can see the ref tapping Gholston in the back to get up; he does not get up. He's just taken a vicious helmet-to-helmet hit and lays there for 30 seconds. Does it matter if he's actually unconscious or just incapable of moving for 30 seconds? No. That guy is done for the day, unless you're Dantonio. The blatant lie about what happened to him is just the cherry on top.

I guess it's nice that Dantonio has the same disregard for the safety of his own players as he does for his opponents, though. (Remember who was Robert Reynolds's DC: Dantonio.) He's got that going for him.

I assume this will once and for all end the bible-thumping, square-jawed discipline dean media meme, right?

BONUS: hey, guess what everyone who said words to the effect of "good" in the thread on this on the board got? Banned.

In other MSU news. Their OL took another hit when starting center Travis Jackson went out for the year against OSU. They inserted journeyman senior Ethan Ruhland at center after the injury and are rolling with a redshirt freshman at LG; Blake Treadwell has been bouncing in and out of the lineup with injury. If Michigan had suffered the injuries they have already we'd be sitting here in sackcloth and ashes—okay, more sackcloth and ashes—gibbering.

OSU's Jordan Hall tore his PCL and is doubtful for next week but apparently will be "evaluated on a week to week basis."

Uniforms. No Z. We'll see how the motion shortz go with these things but these actually look pretty slick from the rear:

This will all be ruined by Muff the Magic Block M on the front, I know.

UPDATE: front. I like 'em.

Why are we stopping this again? Michigan-ND kills, man:

That was an NBC record. Surely NBC is pissed off that Stanford for some reason is taking the place of M-ND and that Purdue and Duke and Wake Forest are hitting up Irish schedules now.

Maisel also points out that this is all Texas's fault.

If only anyone had paid any attention last year. Gholston a draft faller:

William Gholston*/DE/Michigan State: Gholston failed to impress during the Spartans' devastating conference defeat at the hands of Ohio State. Though he continued to play despite being injured in the first half, Gholston provided no impact and was minimally productive. In five games this season, he has posted just a single sack.

I thought they were nice. I may have been wrong.

Yeah, but have they had two people on Survivor? Georgia has. I saw it on their jumbotron.

Etc.: Google docs spreadsheet with Michigan hockey TV appearances from the HSR. Things that should have been at the estate sale that wasn't.

Official release:

Michigan football senior/junior defensive lineman Nathan Brink (Holland, Mich./Holland Christian) suffered an undisclosed injury during practice last week and will be out indefinitely. Brink has appeared in all four games this season and has two tackles, including 1.5 stops for losses

I take that to mean his season's over since The Fort doesn't release any injury information it absolutely doesn't have to. If they're telling people it's because they know word will get out anyway once Brink is spotted on crutches or whatever walking around campus or on gameday.

Brink's not a huge loss but Michigan's thin DL just got thinner. This means more playing time for Keith Heitzman and… well, Keith Heitzman. Also Jibreel Black, who will probably take some of the snaps Brink was getting as a rotation 3-tech.

UPDATE: Heritage Newspaper is saying it's a neck injury, so Brink will transfer to MSU and play next weekend because he's just had the wind knocked out of him.

AnnArbor.com

A source close to the team has told me Blake Countess has torn ligaments in his knee and is done for the year.

Countess will get a medical redshirt and be a redshirt sophomore next year; in his stead, Michigan has some hard choices. Courtney Avery was not up to the task on the outside against Alabama. Raymon Taylor and Terry Richardson also got in there, though in the part of the game in which Alabama was just running out the clock. This might mean we see a lot more of Jarrod Wilson in the nickel package. Last night he came in and Michigan moved Thomas Gordon down to the nickelback spot.

Also, hurray!