rich eisen

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No mercy. I'm completely fine with John O'Korn throwing garbage-time bombs into the endzone with Michigan up multiple scores:

The @RunRalphieRun uniform combination is ... the exact same as it was on 9/24/94. #GoBuffs pic.twitter.com/fbyjoWX3P5

— Colorado Buffaloes (@cubuffs) September 12, 2016

This is poking the bear. Colorado, consider the bears poked.

Meanwhile, the bear. PFF's early-season take on Michigan is off-the-charts optimistic. Notes from a meaty piece:

• Michigan is their top defense so far. The competition has not been great, obviously.
• The OL is second(!) in pass protection.
• Kyle Kalis was one of PFF's worst returning guards nationally. (I wonder what PFF would have thought about Michigan's 2013 line if Kalis's shaky 2015 was that bad in their eyes.) He's up to seventh nationally(!!!) in their grading. That's sure to slide backwards as Michigan's schedule gets tougher, but as I mentioned UCF actually has a player or two on their DL. If Kalis manages to hang onto a top 30 spot it's time to buy Tim Drevno an above-ground outdoor pool.
• Newsome's been great as a pass protector and okay on the ground; I'm seeing more or less the same thing. Newsome's having some mental issues on plays to the edge and he has a tendency to pull so deep that he runs himself out of any chance to block someone.
• Speight is well ahead of Early Season Jake Rudock, which is 1) not a surprise and 2) faint praise. OTOH, PFF has him accurate on 28 of 36 opportunities from the last game and I think they're grading as harshly as possible there—I wouldn't knock Speight for that attempted dumpoff to Evans that Evans couldn't get out on, for one.
• Speight's efficiency has gone through the floor when he gets pressure.
• In a separate article on their top 25 they note that Ryan Glasgow has posted bonkers 86 and 84 grades so far; they rank Glasgow as one of their top five NFL draft risers: “Glasgow’s consistently defeated one-on one blocks, and opponents haven’t been able to move him off the line of scrimmage on double teams. In addition to his dominant run play, he’s averaging a pressure once every seven pass rushes, an impressive ratio for a nose tackle.”

All of that is very positive, especially Kalis. In the season preview I mentioned that he was the one returning player on the line who could take a major step forward. Early indications are that he has, and again since so many of his problems last year were mental the kind of improvements he's made are ones that translate to tougher competition.

I'm not sure there's much to read into Speight's issues against pressure yet. I'd expect that he remains iffy in that department because he's not that mobile; eight attempts is not a sample size worth getting exercised over.

I'm over it. I'm mostly over it. Speight on the fading days of the Hoke era:

"When I came in during the winter (of 2014) and redshirted that season, I didn't know what was going on that year and not many people did. It was kind of a messy year, it didn't end well at all," Speight says. "I just kind of skated through that year without much discipline (with) football. It was kind of a rude awakening when (the new staff) came.

"I realized I needed to change some things."

While he tried to soften it…

Speight wants to make it clear. Brady Hoke -- the coach who recruited him to Michigan -- and his staff gave him plenty of coaching in 2014. He says he just wasn't in the mood to listen.

…I mean come on. It wasn't just Speight who wasn't in the mood to listen. It was team-wide. A couple weeks ago Kalis said something wistful about how he wished that he'd had five years under Drevno instead of two.

I'm a little surprised that guys are throwing the old staff under the bus in press conferences, but also… not surprised. I was there, and bitter. I can't imagine how bitter I'd be about the Hoke chaos if it was eating through my eligibility with nothing to show for it.

Anyway, Speight's starting now and good at throwing balls.

ALSO IN WILTON SPEIGHT TALKING.

“There was one UCF player who was trying to talk smack at me, and I just started dying laughing, because we heard him from the huddle. And there were other times that we’d be up on the line of scrimmage and I’d think something was funny.”

Speculation on what this laughter-inducing smack was:

• "Got my crampons on, gonna scale your ass"
• "I am going to camp out halfway up your surface."
• "Ed Davis got a sixth year"
• "I may be the size of a flying squirrel but sir, I propose to embark on a climbing expedition lo these many months. And yea, I will harvest your acorns. Mark these words. Acorns. Harvested. Eventually."

Now in something other than Speight talking. Rich Eisen talking:

Full 5-minute @richeisen speech to @UMichFootball after last Friday's practice with @CoachJim4UM kneeling in awe. pic.twitter.com/2RovePxmuC

— Rich Eisen Show (@RichEisenShow) September 12, 2016

Injuries. As near as I can tell:

• Probably back Saturday: David Long.
• Could be back Saturday, could be another week or two. Taco Charlton, Jourdan Lewis. Lewis's injury was described by Harbaugh as a "muscle strain" unrelated to the issue that kept him out of the opener. He "did some things" and ran around on Monday. Charlton had a slight limp after getting his ankle rolled. Michigan could keep both guys on the bench in a game they expect to win.
• Definitely another few weeks: Bryan Mone.
• Unknown but doesn't look great: Noah Furbush and Drake Johnson. Radio silence on Furbush's issue probably isn't good. Johnson has similarly been out of uniform without much in the way of explanation.

Etc.: Ross Fulton on OSU's early offensive struggles against Tulsa: didn't want to get the QB hit and Tulsa banked on this. Won't apply for M. Chase Winovich on his first start. Matt Godin on his last go-around. NCAA removes events from North Carolina. Colorado plays fast and has a good secondary. When you have two quarterbacks and one of them is a Purdue transfer, you have zero quarterbacks. Possibly negative one quarterbacks. Urban Meyer on his brain and how he fixed it.

Harbaugh hanging out with Rich Eisen. 24 minutes:

Remarkable how much different Harbaugh is when he's talking with a person he's comfortable with.

Rashan hype. Jourdan Lewis is impressed:

“You should see Rashan move,” Lewis said this week. “He’s very, very light on his feet. He and (nose tackle) Bryan Mone, it’s crazy. You should see them on the ladder drills. Oh my goodness, it’s unbelievable. At that size, you can’t teach stuff like that. It’s mind-blowing.”

Mone is listed in the spring roster at 6-foot-4, 320 pounds, while Gary is 6-5 and pushing 300 pounds.

The ladder drill develops footwork and quickness.

“It’s about how clean you are, and they barely touch that ladder,” Lewis said. “They are really fast on the ladder, and it’s really crazy.”

Hooray for that. Also hooray for quotes in the offseason. What sorcery is this?

Zordich's impact. We heard a ton about Greg Jackson a year ago but no so much about Zordich. Lewis offers up some praise for Michigan's second-year DBs coach:

“When Coach Zordich got here, he really broke it down for us. We have to know every formation by name. He has specific names for formations and we’ve got to know them. That’s the standard. Technique always has to be precise, because that’s the difference between a pick and a reception. I had knowledge of the game and knew when I could do certain things. But when he came in and he showed us these different formations and tricks when you see different looks, it has really helped my game. He’s been a huge part of our development as players.”

Before Zordich and Jackson came in Michigan's DBs coaches were a linebackers coach and Mike Curt Mallory, who Michigan wanted to get rid of but Hoke held onto because he was excessively nice.

I have a lot of problems with you people. The Michigan Scout board recently had a kerfuffle about ranking in the aftermath of Dylan McCaffrey dropping out of their top 100 in aftermath of the Opening. I shrug at that, like, opinion, man. I think whoever doubts a guy with the last name McCaffrey playing quarterback for Jim Harbaugh is eventually going to look real dumb, but it's just one dude.

I do have a thing that bugs me about Scout's rankings.

That is a map of NFL players by home state. Scout's Midwest region consists of Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Kentucky. Collectively those states provide 260 NFL players, 16% of the league's total membership. While college rankings aren't direct NFL projections, all the sites admit that it plays a large role since they're so often judged on their ability to project guys to the league. Meanwhile football players are generally good or not good; serious disagreements between spread-heavy colleges and the pros are mostly limited to 5'10" quarterbacks and slot receivers. For the other 95% of players NFL counts are an excellent proxy for ideal recruiting rankings.

Scout has a top 300; by NFL reckoning this means that approximately 48 players in the Midwest should make that list. This no longer happens. You have to go back to 2014 to get a representative sample of 47 Scout 300 members from their Midwest region. Since there has been a steady and unexplained decline. There were 39 Midwest Scout 300 players in 2015, 38 in 2016, 29 in 2017, and 27 in their early 2018 rankings. Scout has made no effort to explain why they believe the number of future NFL players in the Midwest has dropped 50% in just four years. Talent fluctuates year to year but that's not a fluctuation—it's four straight years of decline, a severe one in 2017 and 2018.

And while I'm on the subject of recruiting ranking things that bug me. Most every year sees 3-6 kickers and punters drafted. The top end guys should get four stars.

Other adventures in Michigan's turnover luck last year. Per LSU blog And The Valley Shook, PBUs convert into interceptions at a relatively reliable rate:

Interception rate is a lot more steady. Last year, defenses intercepted 19.14% of the passes they defended. The average team defended 63.07 passes and had 12.07 picks. The 2014 rate was 21.44%, so we're looking at a fairly constant twenty percent rate. Still, we'll use the 2015 average rate of 19.44%.

Michigan had 55 PBUs a year ago and ten interceptions so that's very close to on point. It's really the lack of fumbles forced that made Michigan's defense lag TO expectations a year ago.

Rule changes. There aren't many new rules this year. You've probably heard about coach ejections being a thing now. They're probably not an actual thing, though:

The NCAA Football Rules Committee has brought football in line with other intercollegiate sports and increased the accountability a coach has in maintaining decorum. Just as with a player, a coach is now disqualified if he collects two unsportsmanlike conduct fouls during a game.

IIRC Bo Pelini did get hit with two unsportsmanlike flags in one game. That's the only instance I can remember in which this rule would actually get deployed. Even the infamous Will Muschamp rage only resulted in a single flag.

The other change of interest to Michigan fans is a clarification of the rules on sliding to the ground:

Rules-makers continue to expand the scope of targeting. Now they will protect any ball carrier who slides feet-first, giving sliding players the kind of protection they've had in the NFL, as some have advocated. If a defender makes "forcible contact" to the head or neck of a runner who has "given himself up," the defender will incur a 15-yard penalty for his team and be disqualified for at least the remainder of the game.

Jake Rudock took two or three nasty head shots on feet-first slides a year ago. Harbaugh actually changed the way he taught sliding as a result, with Rudock falling forward a couple of times in the bowl game. This year anyone blowing up a QB who's going to the ground will get booted, which kind of sucks for defenders expecting to tackle a ball-carrier instead of a guy sliding into second. No word on whether getting blocked into the QB after a play is still an ejection.

I call it trips TE. MMQB breaks down the "Y-iso" formation. Y-iso isolates your pass-catching tight end:

That's Greg Olsen to the bottom of the screen, and he'll catch that corner route for a big chunk as Richard Sherman bails for the inside slot receiver's deep route.

Y-iso snaps have doubled in the last four years of the NFL and with Jake Butt on the roster and Harbaugh's million NFL contacts, not least his brother, there's a good chance you see a significant dose of this in 2016. The rationale given for the formation certainly applies:

“If a team played man, your tight end is gonna get a safety or a linebacker on him and all the corners are gonna go over there and match up on the receivers,” Smith explains. “The tight end has to be talented enough to win that. That has to be a match up you want, depending on the team you’re playing. There’s probably not many of those match-ups that we don’t look at as favorable with Kelce. He’s that kind of player.”

The number of players with the speed to keep up with Butt and the frame to challenge him on balls up high is vanishingly small.

FWIW, I don't think Michigan lined up with the TE split out like this last year; when they ran this it was Butt in a three-point stance.

Mostly right but when you're wrong whoah buddy. ESPN publishes an "all-century" team that cops out on QB by listing Denard Robinson as an all-purpose player. It's mostly right, though it does that annoying thing where you list two running backs, no fullbacks, and two wide receivers. Also they list three corners and one safety. Marlin Jackson is one of those corners and he did play safety as a junior so whatever man. Errors as I see them:

• Bennie Joppru over Jake Butt. Joppru did have a big senior season; Butt just about matched it last year and is set to shatter the all-time TE receiving mark held by Jim Mandich.
• Gabe Watson over Mike Martin. I defend Watson endlessly to people disappointed in his two-time All Big Ten first team career, but Martin was far more impactful. Watson occupied guys; Martin blew through them.
• Shawn Crable over David Harris. Harris is an all-timer MLB. Crable's nutty 28.5 TFL season in 2007 was as a defensive end, and I'm still taking Woodley and Graham over him.
• Ernest Shazor over most Michigan safeties in the past 16 years. Big play factory largely responsible for Braylonfest having to be Braylonfest. Did murder that Purdue WR, then fell off a cliff. Prefer Jarrod Wilson.

Etc.: Feldman names Michigan the #4 secondary in the country; no anonymous coach quotes this time. CU athletes refer to their academic center as "the Plantation" and CU's president is talking about why they do this and how to address their grievances. New letter jackets for female letterwinners have gone out. Jibreel Black doing a ton of volunteer work. "The Ballad of the Sloop John Belein."

So that happened. This was a spoof off of Michael Irvin and Warren Sapp's "U Know It"—the U meaning what you think it means. Relevant information to recruits:

They also point out that Ohio State has never had a quarterback play in the Super Bowl. This got me wondering which schools produced the most SB starters. Results are in a Google Sheet.

The two tied at the top are Stanford (two Plunketts, five Elways) and Notre Dame (Montana's four, Theismann twice, and Daryle Lamonica). Brady now has Michigan at six, tied for second with "the Cradle of Quarterbacks" (Purdue, in that needs to be pointed out now). I didn't count schools that guys transferred from—if you do, Russell Wilson gives NC State two, Vince Ferragamo credits UCLA as well as Nebraska, Jeff Hostetler gives Penn State another, and Troy Aikman puts Oklahoma on the board—still no Bucks. All hail Touchdown Tom!

Filling the Class

This year's diary rock star alum96 kind of collated the knowns and unknowns and think we knowns and Sam Webb hinted at knowns regarding the 2015 class as Michigan races to fill at least six and maybe as many as 11 more spots. He's updated the diary so it's fresh, and also added a profile of Zach Gentry, who seems to be trending very blue.

Versus a Bivouac Wolverine? I've met a lot of different groups of Michigan fans, enough to start finding slight differences in what they like to talk about. Western Michigan fans have to deal with a greater number of Domers, East Coasters tend to care a lot more about Penn State, Southern transplants need constant ammunition against SEC der. Ohioans have a Bo-like loyalty that can only come from a fandom borne under siege. Ann Arborites don't need arguments for what's good about the program; they want to know what's wrong and how do we fix it right now!

In Metro Detroit we have to deal with Sparties. When I was growing up Michigan went to Rose Bowl after Rose Bowl, all the while going on about values and academics. From the perspective of the Perles-era Sparties, whose own program was basically a despicable version of Brady Hoke's, we were insufferable. The Spartan fanbase as a result got VERY sensitive to things like non-alum Michigan fans telling the old "they both got into Michigan State" joke and came up with "Walmart Wolverine."

No good Michigan fan uses that term. The whole concept is ridiculous: Across America, college football programs are the biggest sports team in the state and what outsiders identity it with. Nobody in Ohio would question if it's alright to root for the Bucks if you actually went to truck driving school. The Cornhuskers without the support of the entire state of Nebraska would be in the Mountain West. Notre Dame would have a national following of 150,000 lapse Catholics who came from money. The SEC would be in Division II. The only people who care if you went to the school whose colors you wear are either uber-pretentious, or more likely went to an "other" school that nobody would root for if they didn't have to.

Etc. National college hockey general update.

Best of the Board

CAN I GET A SHIRT IN HERE?

One of our constant complaints under Hoke was the number of redshirt opportunities he missed. Marley Nowell speculated whether Michigan might try to get some shirts on some guys (you don't have to be a freshman to redshirt). I think it's a good question, especially since Michigan could end up graduating more players than we can replace in a couple of years (the roster currently has 26 juniors).

Of course when you get into the candidates there's always reason not to. Gedeon, Canteen, Jenkins-Stone and Dymonte are already on the two-deep; Taco, Lewis and Cole, the running backs and Morris are already starting. That leaves Houma, DaMario, Ways, Watson, and Stribling. If the staff gets a late shirt on any of them it's at least a good sign that they value the future of the program. Doubt it happens.

WHO IS GOLDEN ARM?

A trip back through Bo's Lasting Lessons turned up Bo-bits on Brad Bates, Jim Hackett, Jerry Hanlon, and of course this about Jim Harbaugh:

Jim Harbaugh

"Jim ended up being twice as good, in my book, as the Golden Arm- Harbaugh was the Big Ten MVP his senior year, beating the other guy by a mile- and Jim's teammates liked him. Maybe Harbaugh didn't have half the arm of the Golden Boy, but he had twice the brains and ten times the heart. Give me those specs, anyday."

This sparked a long thread about who this "Golden Boy" was that Bo was talking about. Testaverde? Jeff George? A guy who was on that team said Jim Everitt.

ETC. Slate calls us nerdy. Gary Anderson was frustrated by core requirements. UNC players pushed into paper classes suing for the educations they were supposed to get. Jay Harbaugh asks Twitter if you can own a pet wolverine. Rosenberg gets fisked for inflating deflategate. Bubba Paris' heartfelt call to Michigan fans reposted from Facebook.

Your Moment of Zen:

I remember Charles.