Rittenberg: Why Brady Hoke needs to win in Year 1
I thought this was a good read. Might bring some people back down to Earth and lead to some good discussion.
Link: http://espn.go.com/blog/bigten/post/_/id/29455/why-brady-hoke-needs-to-win-in-year-1
Brandon will be patient with Hoke. He hired Hoke, after all. And Michigan doesn't want to start shuffling through coaches every few seasons.
But there's a need to show significant progress in Year 1. Here's why: the schedule in Year 2. It's brutal.
will adopt enough of the spread look to allow Denard to be successful this season with a basic passing game, bootlegs and spread option looks. DG will be a more than capable backup. The real question to me is what happens the following year. Will it be more of the same? If we pick up Gunner Kiel, the answer is unclear. If not, then I'd guess there will be some very serious competition between DG and Denard. That competition will be largely based on how prolific the offense is this year. To add some more fuel, I think our chances with Kiel are substantial if Denard does not light the world on fire this year with his drop back passing. That's probably a fair expectation based on what we've seen thus far.
Mattison in particular will have a couple of years of recruiting success living on past accomplishments with the Ravens and Ray Lewis, but without winning, recruiting will become a tough sell. If reasonable success can be had for a couple of years, and I see that as nine wins, this year's class and hopefully next year's recruits will be in the system and the D should be solid.
One thing that would be a huge help would be to get a good number of the 2012 recruits to start next January. As we have found out painfully, it typically takes a couple of years to get recruits physically and mentally ready to play.
Okay, I'm concerned that our offensive production may drop off some, but I'm clinging to the thought that in this fall practice Denard will get it together and set the tone for the non-conference games. Most of us were pleasantly surprised to see Denard sky rocket into the outer orbit last season, not just play well - he exploded. Okay, Denard is in a new system this year, of course the strategy is going to be to run plays he's familiar with while blending in new plays from the Borges playbook. Fear of Denard's running ability will set up mid range passes like last year. Now if Denard's accuracy in the long ball has improved - then boom! To the moon Alice. I am still a Denard Day Dream Believer until proven otherwise. Also, the HBM coaching triumverate is going to bring only good things to AA, in my humble opinion. Hopefully we will win at least 9 games this season before a decent bowl win to top it off. Go Blue.
I agree. Denard will step up like he always does. I think he will excel in this offense. He certainly has done so on my ps3.
Because losing sucks.