rich rodriguez maybe isn't in the past after all

[Disclaimer: We wrote these yesterday before the Jerry Kill news, when open head coaching jobs were a lot more fun to talk about.]

RR to da U?

The Question:

Choose the best plausible fit for five open FBS head coaching jobs.

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The Responses:

Mathlete:

SOUTH CAROLINA: Mack Brown. Fits the aging former National Championship winning coach profile. Gets Mack Brown off of my TV.

MARYLAND:

USC: Todd Graham [Insert Dream Job joke here]. Seems like he's been at Arizona State forever in Graham years. Actually could be the right mix of personality for the Trojans.

ILLINOIS: Brady Hoke. From the school that brought back Ron Zook, why wouldn't they bring back Hoke. It would stick it to their arch-rival Michigan. Hoke would be a good fit for the recruiting base, doesn't have a documented issue with the color orange and his track record looks pretty good by Illinois standards.

MIAMI: Jim Tressel. When Miami has built their best teams, they've been built around loading up on talent with little regard for the NCAA. Tressel seems like the perfect fit.

[After the jump: more bad ideas, and some that are too good]

Peter Frampton:Michigan's offense::Let's stop this analogy right now.

It's nearing Thanksgiving; which means it's time to make pie! Who likes pie? Everyone likes pie! Unless it's a "why our offense sucks so much" pie. Alas, you have all been sampling lots of "Why our offense sucks so much" pie these last few weeks, and we've identified most of the ingredients in this suck pie. What we haven't done yet is say how much any one ingredient is contributing relative to any other. This seems important.

So, I'm going to give you a list of identified ingredients in this suck pie, and you're going to tell me--pie chart like (i.e. adds up to 100%)--how much each suck factor, in your estimated opinion, has gone into our pie:

1. Fans demand Michigan Manliness. Thus putting the previous regime on not-firm ground and necessitating another transition and talk of MANBALL for stupid political reasons. Rosenberg/Snyder go here.
2. Rich Rod! One OL in 2010 and his own suck pie of defense that necessitated another transition. GERG goes here. Zero RS juniors goes here.
3. The Process. Which helped doom the 2011 offensive line class. "Just two OL, both of them fliers, in two classes!" goes here. "None of our tight ends are old enough to buy beer!" goes here. "We're stuck running high school blocking schemes because interior OL are too young!" goes here.
   

   If you believe this is a result of Nebraska's defense having a sudden aneurism of competence (hence all the blood), please answer #10 "Universe" on your cards. [Fuller]

4. Hoke demands MANBALL! Only if you think there's an executive order from Hoke that forced Borges to use more "big"--ie TEs and FBs instead of WRs--formations and man-blocking.
5. Borges can't cook fusion cuisine. Incoherent playcalling and gameplanning, players constantly put in bad positions and asked to do more than their skills suggest they're good at. RPS minuses go here.
6. Dithered on MANBALL transition for Denard. Spent 2011 and 2012 trying to be all things; decision not to sacrifice those years to transition is costing us in 2013. "Older guys can't MANBALL" goes here.
7. Dithering in 2013. Personnel switches, gimmick offenses, acts of desperation burned practice time, retarded player development, and contributed to snowballing effect. "Tackle over" goes here.
8. Funk/OL and execution. Offensive linemen not doing the things that should reasonably be expected of them given their talent/experience levels. "Schofield is missing slide protections" goes here.
9. Ferrigno/Jackson and execution. Backs and tight ends who can't block or run routes (if you think this is just on them being too young, that goes elsewhere; if you think Funchess ought to be able to crack down and Toussaint get under a guy by now it goes here)
10. Bloodymindedness of Universe. IE anything else: Spain, Monkey Rodeo, MSU broke Devin, opponents are just that good, etc.

[After the jump, the lede, buried]

Incompetence on a level that Michigan unlocked against Michigan State and Nebraska cannot be achieved by one man or even one team (MSU is good at defense, and hey, Nebraska did some good things). There's still the possibility that Borges and his charges  are sabotaging themselves, but since that's impossible to prove let's permit that they do in fact wish to progress the ball forward, and parse out how much responsibility lies in the various inadvertent factors.

I thought I'd take us back through a timeline of the events that led to the state of the offensive roster, picking up blame on the way.

I wish we could blame this whole thing on the old coach. Wouldn't it be the most ironic thing if the great guru of offense was really at fault for Michigan's offensive woes? There are really three things I think we can lay at his feet, in order of importance:

1. Hired DCs he couldn't work with and made them run defenses they didn't understand, thus dooming Michigan to another coaching transition.
2. Recruited just one OL in the 2010 class.
3. Didn't recruit a single tight end or fullback, nor a running back who can block except Smith, whom he didn't redshirt.
   

   Michigan's 2009-2011 tight end recruits.

Tight End, Briefly

We've had #1 out, and #3 is debatable: Y U NO RECRUIT THE BREAD AND BUTTER OF BORGES'S OFFENSE, GUY WHO INVENTED THE OFFENSE THAT MADE BORGES'S OFFENSE OBSOLETE? I can't blame him for skipping fullbacks or running backs who can block since he had a track record of developing fullbacks from the walk-on program, while his backs, e.g. Toussaint, were recruited to operate in space. I wish he'd redshirted Vincent Smith, or gotten a medical for him.

But I do think he could have seen the need for tight ends even before the abilities of Koger and Webb opened his eyes to that. Rodriguez ignored the position for two years, and when he started looking again it was for the 2011 class that was devastated by Rosenberg and The Process: Hoke and Borges went on the hunt for last-minute TEs in 2011 and came back with Chris Barnett, a vagabond of the type that Michigan typically stays away from. Barnett transferred almost right away; I put that on having just a few weeks.

Tight end is another position that typically requires a lot of development, but Michigan knew by mid-2011 that its 2013 starters would be, at most, true sophomores, and knew a year later that neither of their 2012 recruits were much for blocking. At this point any sane human would not have made the ability of their tight ends to block a key component of their offense.

Offensive Line, Longly

Rodriguez put all of his eggs in the 2011 OL recruiting basket, and Michigan ended up with all their eggs in a project recruit's basket.

As for the OL, the failure to recruit just one offensive lineman in 2010 is the centerpiece of modern bitching. Is that fair? Here's a line from Brian in Mike Schofield's recruiting post, dated June 2009:

"Michigan didn't need a huge offensive line class one year after taking six big uglies and graduating zero, but you never want fewer than three and you always want quality."

So yes it is established MGoPrecedent that fewer than three OL in a class no matter how much meat you have stacked for the meat god is not cutting it.

Offensive line recruiting happens a bit earlier than most other positions. Since they're unlikely to be starting for several years (even redshirt freshmen are pretty rare) OL recruits rightly look for coaching stability more than early opportunity. The 2009 class was narrowing down their lists before the 2008 season, and so on. With that said here's a timeline of Michigan offensive line recruiting:

2009 (recruited in early 2008): Tackles Taylor Lewan and Michael Schofield, and guard Quinton Washington. This despite a huge/mixed haul from 2008, when RR added Barnum and Omameh to Carr's class of O'Neill, Mealer, Wermers and Khoury. For the record O'Neill left the team in June 2009, and Wermers was gone in July (though his World of Warcraft account was presumably active), so the coaches wouldn't have adjusted to either of those departures at that time. Meat for 2013 Meat God: three redshirt seniors, one a potential Jake Long 2.0, can't do more because there's still six guys from the previous class.

[Fail leaps atop fail, after the jump]

Basically the coaches have put guys who couldn't possibly succeed in a position to fail even harder. [Fuller]

Hey, UFRs are coming out today and tomorrow, but we can get most of the sad clown out now. Sad clowns: Brian, Bryan, Brett, Brandon, Brace, and Brseth. What I asked:

The worst part of it is…

Coach Brown: Man, what a loaded question. I think the worst part of it is, that we don’t know what the worst part of it is. Right now Michigan is 6-2 with a loss to Penn State that I don’t think they should have. The Michigan State loss was painful, but expected. That being said, there seems to be a list of issues that are present each week, with a few new ones popping up occasionally too.

Early on Devin was the interception king, while last week he played like he was so scared to turn the ball over that it might as well have been glued to his hand.

The offensive line has been different so many times I don’t even know who is playing what position anymore. Even the All-American left tackle has been moved around. The youth is inexperienced but talented, but so far has been pretty lack luster. Derrick Green is averaging around 3 ypc. Dymonte Thomas was thought to be all-world but he can’t get on the field. Channing Stribling has been there, but not quite. Kyle Bosch unfortunately has had to play. Shane Morris trips over yard lines. Jake Butt is being asked to do a TON. Jourdan Lewis shows signs of being the next Raymon Taylor. Brian, is he good or aren’t we sure yet?

Does the inverted veer have a counter in this offense? Does the coaches know what a counter is? [Upchurch]

Granted a lot of stuff sucked against Michigan State and those memories are at the forefront right now, but a lot of these things have shown up in every game this season. Inconsistent line play and positioning, ball security issues with Devin, no running game whatsoever, game-plans that seem to be constructed as the coaches walk onto the field.

I’m not even going to try and address the coaching issues that seem to be unidentifiable, but are definitely present. Is it Hoke’s leadership? Is it Borges’s predictability and lack of creativity? Is it Funk not knowing what to do with young linemen? Is it Mallory purposely teaching DB’s not to look back for the ball? Is it Mattison being too NFL-like that he won’t blitz when a blitz seems to be an obvious choice?

I know these guys have been football brains for many, many more years that I have been and on a level I can’t even comprehend, but at some point shouldn’t those brains be able to get things get fixed? I’d love to be a fly on the wall in the war room to see and hear what the coaches talk about. They have to know these concerns right? And if so, where are the adjustments or the explanations for why things are happening the way that they are.

Michigan is 6-2 and could potentially go 9-3, while 8-4 is probably more likely, with 6-6 being….dammit, a very real possibility. There is a laundry list of issues with some being more glaring than others. Some things are controllable and some things are not. This team can’t get older and more experienced overnight.

I don’t have fool-proof answers and I don’t know exactly why these issues seem to be unaddressed, but one thing is clear, Team 134 isn’t that good. Facts are facts. What happens this year and next will be telling for the future of the entire staff and the direction of Michigan football.

[Jump. Or small hop if your ribs are still healing. Try not to step on the dead dove.]