OSU

[ed: bump.]

Seeing as we just had the annual heights and weights delivered to our doorstep with nary an emotion beyond “these large men either got slightly larger or slightly smaller, and that is good”, there really isn’t much else going on until the season starts.  Sure, there was the BBQ and a couple of commitments, but I’d be surprised if much else happened until a couple of days before The Horror II – Horror-ier comes into our lives at the end of August.  So yeah, figured I’d dust off this diary and expound a bit on the UM sports landscape, the upcoming football season, college sports in general, and a couple of other topics. 
 

Best:  Are You Ready for Some Football!

So it’s been over 8 months since UM last played a down of football (and, frankly, many more months since those downs felt meaningful).  I know a great deal has gone on both locally and nationally to put a dour tone on the upcoming season, but I’m just excited for the sport to return and for my fall weekends to have a bit more entertainment.  Living in NY but being a Lions fan, I’m forced to watch the Jets and Giants try to out-dryhump doorknobs for 3 hours most weeks, and can usually only catch games with teams I care about on postage stamp-sized feeds from random “sports” sites hosted in countries Russia hasn’t realized they might want to take back yet.  But basically every Saturday from August until November I know that I can turn on the television and find some channel with Michigan on it, and for a couple of hours I can be unabashedly zealous over something pretty inconsequential but still incredibly endearing to my heart.  That’s why I love the fall, and why I love having Michigan football back in my life.

[After the JUMP: lots more things that are either the best or the worst.]

The defenses are yelling spoon!

And the offenses are the little guy pleading "Not in the face! Not in the face!"

This was a fun game to watch if you don't like either of the teams.  Both teams have pretty good defenses and horrible, horrible offenses.  MSU's only threat is B.J. Cunningham and OSU's passing offense is reminiscent of 2008 Michigan (The wonderful Threet/Sheridan days).  Both teams have major issues with their offensive lines. MSU's problems can be explained by a lack of experienced personnel, but this is a little surprising for OSU.

Luke Fickell will not be the head coach of OSU next year.  The only question is whether or not his replacement gets hired before the end of the season.  

Balls were slippery...

But before we get too giddy here, it should be noted that there was a misty rain and the ball was wet, so that accounts for a tiny bit of the Herpy-derpy-ness.  Like this:

The punter actually recovered the ball and got off one of his ugly-ass rugby kicks.

Here's Stanton Nichols Cousins doing his best Tommy Rees impression. 

MSU on D:

When you don't respect the other team's passing, you can walk up your safeties and do a lot of run blitzing. 

On this play, the short side safety walks up before the snap even though 2nd and 9 is often a passing down.

The flanker comes in motion which makes the other safety tip off that he's in cover 1.  The CB is playing run support all the way. The safety is blitzing the C gap.

The OSU TE is oblivious to the blitz and 76 (the RT) is doubling down the DT for some reason. Notice how the MSU MLB is completely free to clean up the place. OSU's O-line had trouble getting to the LBs all day long. I don't know if they've had a major philosophy change, but it looks like their linemen are not getting the right assignments on the zone blocking scheme.