Is Alabama the best team you've seen play Michigan?
While trying to put Saturday into perspective, I've been trying to decide on/remember the best team that I've ever seen Michigan play. I'm not sure I've seen Michigan play a better team. The team that may have been superior was 1991 Florida State, who won 51-31 in the Big House against a Michigan team that would go to the Rose Bowl. USC was very good in '03 and '06, too, but I don't believe they were as good as Alabama or '91 FSU. I can't think of anyone else.
Have you seen Michigan play a better team? Does anyone remember the '68 Buckeyes?
September 4th, 2012 at 11:06 AM ^
ND, SoCarolina, Maryland in 85
ND, Oregon St, and FSU in 86
September 4th, 2012 at 10:10 AM ^
This is the biggest discrepancy between a Michigan team and an oppenent when it comes to talent, speed, strength, size and youth.
Other teams mentioned were extrememly talented and a case can be made for all of them but we were much more physical of a team.
Yes, FSU had stallions vs our plow horses but they didn't beat us up like Bama did.
September 4th, 2012 at 10:16 AM ^
Plus, we had a remote but possible chance of winning against FSU late in the game. Michigan was down 44-31 and driving for a TD when Grbac threw a pick 6. Now, dont get me wrong, we had to get the TD and then an onside kick and another TD all within a few minutes. But there was a chance. I didnt feel like we even had a chance against Alabama sometime fairly early in the game.
September 4th, 2012 at 10:24 AM ^
We were outclassed, but we could hang with them offensively. We just couldn't do anything with them defensively. They were clearly the better team, and they had to be good because that was a pretty good Michigan team, but I wouldn't rank that FSU team as one of the all time greats. They were only the second best team we played that year. (Though that Washington squad was the biggest mash-up of steroid heads and convicts we may have ever played).
September 4th, 2012 at 10:15 AM ^
At the top, I have to put the 1975-76 Oklahoma team that we played in the Orange Bowl. We were ranked #4 and OK was #2 at 10-1. Their defense was the best I have seen to this day. The Alabama team has more offensive weapons than did Oklahoma, but overall toughness goes to the old guys.
As a point of perspective, Michigan had 33 yards passing while Oklahoma had 66. Rick Leach was 2-16 passing and his two completions were for 17 and 16 yards. Apparently our passing philosophy hasn't changed in 40 years - chuck it up!
The Oklahoma Boomer Sooner chants were no where near as annoying as Roll Tide however.
September 4th, 2012 at 10:21 AM ^
I would give it to the 1923 Brooklyn College Dockmen. Thy would rip that leather helmet right off your face.
September 4th, 2012 at 10:28 AM ^
The question was regarding the best team you've seen Michigan play. I was in the band for the '76 Orange Bowl. I can't help it if you're 12 and the best team you've seen was Iowa last year.
September 4th, 2012 at 12:19 PM ^
Get that prostate checked out, not sure my lawn can take much more of your premature leaks.
September 4th, 2012 at 12:52 PM ^
As least he has been weaned.
September 4th, 2012 at 10:44 AM ^
Michigan was very good and got dominated by Oklahoma. There were 2-3 Selmon brothers on Oklahoma's D that went on to play in the NFL. The score did not indicate how a very good Michigan team was manhandled Oklahoma's D.
I've seen Michigan lose by more points but never shut down like this.
September 4th, 2012 at 10:51 AM ^
I thought I was going to be the only one to remember Oklahoma at the 76 Orange Bowl. Oklahoma's performance was as dominate as anything I can remember, and I think even more dominate than Alabama on Saturday (although it was close). The Selmon brothers totally shut down Michigan and its freshman quarterback, Rick Leach.
September 4th, 2012 at 4:54 PM ^
That OU squad was stacked and Swizter was rolling.
Worst beatdowns in sequence
I. Versus OU in the Orange Bowl
2. Versus Washington in the Rose Bowl
3. Versus Tennessee in the Citrus Bowl
4. Versus FSU at home
5. Versus Alabama at Jerry World
6. Versus Syracuse at home
7. Versus various USC teams at the Rose Bowl
September 4th, 2012 at 5:21 PM ^
That game was before my time, but the final score was 14-6 . . . was it really that bad? It seems that at least our defense came to play.
http://bentley.umich.edu/athdept/football/bowls/1976orng.htm
September 4th, 2012 at 11:39 PM ^
That Oklahoma team was stacked and we hung with them.Winning TD on reverse to Tinker Owens. Dan Jilek was there but missed and Owens was gone. Was there. What a great trip. Met Roger Szrafranski. Wish Elzinga could complete a pass. Saw a practice at Miami baseball field. Jim Betts was at the gate and let us in. We said "Jim Betts" and he welcomed us in. Gordie Bell couldn't throw a pass in practice so no surprise he threw pick in game . He threw TD in OSU game to Jim Smith that was total bad pass. Bo should have retired that play. Met Barry Switzer going through OK hotel. Mom loved him forever after that. "Oh there's my old friend Barry." Went to Joe's Stone Crab. Great OK team . Great bowl trip.
September 4th, 2012 at 10:12 AM ^
I've never personally seen the '91 FSU game, but it would be hard for me to imagine many teams being better, if any, than the one we faced on Saturday night. Every position on their team is packed with NFL talent. On a collegiate level, that was easily one of the most physical, brutal, punishing football teams I've ever seen play the game.
Don't want to imagine how bad it might have been if guys like Richardson, Barron, and Hightower all elected to return.
September 4th, 2012 at 10:13 AM ^
Others were USC in 07 and 04 Rose Bowls (06 and 03 seasons), Penn State in 94, FSU in 91, Washington in 92 Rose Bowl (91 season), Miami in 88.
It is hard to compare somewhat this early with Alabama because we really dont know how good Michigan is. But my guess is that Alabama is dominant like last year.
Florida State was probably the most shocking as our defense never let in points like that under Bo. Unfortunately it was the beginning of a 20+ year trend of our defense not being what it was (with a few exception years). People rationalize saying that college football is more wide open but I think the Bama's and the LSU's show you that defense can still reign supreme.
Hopefully we return to being a top defense under Hoke and Mattison.
September 4th, 2012 at 10:35 AM ^
Maybe we just suck. But from the eye test, they looked really good. But it goes to the problem people are having in this thread...are we talking biggest discrepancy between a Michigan team and someone else? (a great team vs. an 8-4 Michigan team might look better than a great team vs. a 10-2 Michigan team) Or just flat out the best team top to bottom?
Bama was good, and deserves to be on any list. But I don't think we're great, either. The best team I've ever sense was the '03 USC team. That team was at least close to this Bama team defensively (maybe better..they might have had more experience...could change by the end of the season), but lots better offensively. That team had 52 players get a cup of coffee in the NFL, and two heisman winners on it. And back up quarterbacks who were NFL starters. Reggie Bush, Shawn Cody, Keary Colbert, Matt Leinart, Mike Williams, etc, etc.
Alabama may have the line and running backs to match with that (as a group), but the QB and WR match up isn't close. That team was a great defensive team...and they were better on offense. It's just because we were darn good that it didn't look worse. We actually held them to the fewest points they scored after their opening game (which they shut out Auburn in, so they didn't need that many points). They did they annual blow one to Cal game, but that was the best team I've seen (us play).
September 4th, 2012 at 10:37 AM ^
91-FSU
91 -Washington
03- USC
Remember Bama hasnt been this BAMA for that long, they were sucking canal water after the 2000 season until Saban's 2nd year in 08. Ohio, USC, FSU, Oklahoma, all of the aformentioned programs have have multi-year periods where they were not world beaters. We'll be fine and we will get to the point where we can compete and win with any program in the Country very shortly.
Go Blue!
September 4th, 2012 at 10:44 AM ^
September 4th, 2012 at 10:45 AM ^
91 Washington in the rosebowl is the best imo.............(but I preface that one because Steve Everrit didn't play and that messed up our oline)
91 Fsu, remember Grbac had 2 int's returned for td's... that's at least a 14pt swing given to fsu..... their offense was no more unstoppable then ours was. They had a slightly better defense...and didn't Lance Dottin miss that game as well... I know Everitt played with a broken jaw which was amazing...
2000 Orange Bowl... that team was tough...one of the most physical games I remember..Brady/Terrell was the difference
03/06 usc, I thought were great but when their program immediatly took a drop off after balco got exposed through the Ting Brothers there....
September 4th, 2012 at 10:47 AM ^
September 4th, 2012 at 10:52 AM ^
Interesting take.
Terrible is sort of a snap judgment. Football being a game of resistance, you run into the Alabama offensive line and you could tend to look terrible. Many people say it could be the best ever in college football.
So the jury is out. Count me as worried for sure.
Offensive line will probably be fine. There are veterans and it's well coached. Losing Molk didn't help though.
September 4th, 2012 at 10:59 AM ^
September 4th, 2012 at 11:09 AM ^
Well lots of people are saying it could be. Look at the YPC stats of their last 3 teams. They are the running equivalent of what Texas Tech was to the passing game.
For guys like us, the discussion is pretty subjective. I'd probably go with a guy like Michigan's linebacker's coach who said prior to the game that they very well could be v. our opinion of what we think we are seeing.
The rest of the season will show us whether you are overreacting or not. That game was not a fair measure because of the experience and NFL level talent against them.
September 4th, 2012 at 10:56 AM ^
I dont think he has a crappy arm. He hit that long 70 yd pass to Gallon and it was mostly in the air. Even Musberger and Herbstriet said it was a great long throw. 50 or 60 yards in the air.
September 4th, 2012 at 11:03 AM ^
September 4th, 2012 at 11:06 AM ^
September 4th, 2012 at 10:47 AM ^
AppSt was pretty darn good. 2 blocks. Unheard of.
September 4th, 2012 at 11:07 AM ^
And don't forget that they were (2 time?) defending national champions too!
Also, I seem to recall thinking that the 2008 Toledo squad was a beast too.
September 4th, 2012 at 11:29 AM ^
I'm going to get negged for this, but I think App State has to be in the discussion if you're talking about single game performances. Bama performed as expected, while App State didn't just exceed expectations, it curbstomped them.
September 4th, 2012 at 3:27 PM ^
You're in the wrong discussion. This is about the BEST TEAM you've seen Michigan play.
Appy State doesn't come CLOSE to being even in the top tier of teams Michigan has played. Most of the buckeye teams from teh 90's are better, as are some of the 90's PSU teams, Oregon, Alabama, USC, FSU, Washington, maybe a couple of those nd teams...
September 4th, 2012 at 10:49 AM ^
Miami in 88 was amazing. Michigan played great that day and was a Rose Bowl winning team that season in it's own right.
That was a tweener year for Miami as they missed out on the National Title because of a very controversial 1 point loss at Notre Dame. That Miami team beat no. 1 Florida State by 30, No. 11 LSU by 40 in Baton Rouge, and No. 6 Nebraska by 20 in the Orange Bowl.
I thought the 2011 Michigan State Spartans also just on the basis of being the toughest in the history of the game maybe. No one's mentioned them.
September 4th, 2012 at 10:51 AM ^
September 4th, 2012 at 11:33 AM ^
Woody never overlooked Michigan. He was obsessed with them well before Bo got to Ann Arbor, and that wasn't going to change just because it was Bo's first year. 1969 was the result of bad passes and a couple of stupid fumbles.
September 4th, 2012 at 11:04 AM ^
Across-the-board talent and execution-wise, Albama is the best.
But they are not the best overall. With Alabama, we knew what we had to do to compete, we just could not do it with the players at hand.
The best teams that I've seen play Michigan were ones that not only outclassed us in talent and execution, but also outclassed us in scheme and coaching. In these games, we were completely flummoxed across the board:
- Washington 1991 season Rose Bowl. This was the worst I've ever seen, even worse than FSU that year. The Huskies employed a blitzing 1985-Chicago Bears defense that compeletely ovewhelmed us. We just did not know what to do. We had Grbac and Desmond but it still did not matter. Our response turned out to be the worst thing we could do - rather than spreading them out and hitting short passes and screens and draws, we bunched our O_line into extremely tight splits, making our QB and RB a static sitting duck target. By the third quarter, I just wanted it to be over.
- Oregon 2007. Another flummox. We already established against App State that we did not know how to defend the spread, now we had to do it against elite talent. We were chasing ghosts. The epitome of this was their sand-lot Statue of Liberty play, probably the most humilitating play I ever saw against Michigan.
- 1991 FSU. We had just beaten Notre Dame on Grbac-to-Howard on 4th and 1. We were riding high and ready for a shootout. We actually hung with them pretty well for the first half in a shoot out. But in the second half, they just kept coming. They passed over and around us, they ran through us, they fooled us with trick plays, over and over. We had never seen this kind of relentless onslaught before.
The key takeaway from these games, though, is that we learned from them. We beat Washington a year later in the Rose Bowl with a more dynamic offense. We used the Washington defense as one of our role models for our own 1997 defense. We beat Urban Meyer's and Tim Tebow's Florida spread team by utilizing a better contain defense and by taking the handcuffs off of our offense.
Blowouts are painful, but not permanent.
September 5th, 2012 at 12:00 AM ^
As someone who attended the FSU game and only watched the Washington game on TV, it's not exactly comparable, but I thought Washington was definitely the superior team (thought both were obviously excellent teams).
At least again FSU, Michigan could score. It was 25-23 at one point and it was a crazy game with scores happenening all sorts of ways. Against Washington, it seemed like our offense (which was/is the best UM offense in the last 40 years) could not do ANYTHING. Desmond Howard, who had been awesome all year, even against FSU, looked like he didn't deserve to be starting WR, let alone the Heisman winner.
It's one thing to lose, decisevely in the end, a shootout to FSU -- at least you can foolishly dream that if you didn't do a couple stupid things (e.g., 2 pick sixes) things might have gone your way. Against Washington, I had no illusions - they were just better. A lot better.
September 4th, 2012 at 11:03 AM ^
the season. Alabama could fall flat and lose a couple or they could run the table. Who knows 14 points might be the most Alabama gives up all year.
September 4th, 2012 at 11:06 AM ^
This Bama team probably is the best I've seen U of M play. The Texas and USC teams we played in the Rose Bowls in the early/mid 2000's were pretty good but not quite there, and I honestly wasn't too impressed with OSU's national championship team.
A surprise pick for a team that may have been better that I remember (I was only 6 when we played FSU, so I can't say I remember that) is Oregon in '07. Before they lost Dennis Dixon later in the season and nose dived, they were most likely on their way to a National Championship and a Heisman trophy winner. Only OSU held us to fewer points that year, but they only put up a 1/3 of the points that Oregon did against us. At the time the Ducks didn't seem that great because of how we had done the week before, but in retrospect after the decent season we ended up having, I was definitely impressed with that team when Dixon was at the helm.
September 4th, 2012 at 11:12 AM ^
...anybody was going to mention that Texas Rose Bowl team. I don't recall their record that year but Vince Young was a monster against us and went on to dominate the next season.
September 4th, 2012 at 12:12 PM ^
And only lost to the #2 team in the country, Oklahoma, that went on to play (and get destroyed by) USC in the national championship game. The fact that if our DBs hadn't trimmed their fingernails for that game we would have won says something about the talent on that team.
September 4th, 2012 at 12:43 PM ^
Wait, what do fingernails have to do with anything?
September 4th, 2012 at 12:51 PM ^
On their game winning field goal one of our DBs got a hand on the kick, but there wasn't enough contact to knock it away from the uprights...it just kinda wobbled in. If he had gotten a bit more of it the kick would have been blocked and we would have won. He just needed longer fingers.
September 4th, 2012 at 12:15 PM ^
Their only loss I believe was to Oklahoma earlier in the year. I don't recall the game very well, but I think it may have been a low scoring shutout. Anyways, since the Sooners went undefeated that year until the National championship game, I think it's safe to say that Texas team was pretty damn good. In retorspect, I'm not sure how we only lost by 1 on a last second field goal...
September 4th, 2012 at 11:10 AM ^
The 2004 Ohio team had something like five first-round NFL draft picks. That team also had two other guys that would get drafted the next year.
Was it the 2002 team that had 14 players drafted?
September 4th, 2012 at 11:12 AM ^
2012 Tide is the best I have seen. Reason being....they sign up their warm up games(app. st.) with MICHIGAN. I think we are a very good team, and will have a good season. Alabama didn't even use Lacy, who I think wins the Heisman, they played vanilla. Why gamble getting your best hurt when you have others that can "fill in". Seemed to me that this was just a practice game for them. That is why I think they will show in the future they are the best we have yet to see. Time will tell.
September 4th, 2012 at 11:13 AM ^
I'm 23, so yes. I thought of the 1991 FSU team that seems to have delivered a legendary ass-whooping, but I don't remember them, being 2 at the time. This might be the first time I have seen a good Michigan team (not the 2008 version) in a game where I can't rationalize a way it cold have been close (usually I can convince myself that if we got this call, and this bounce and one more block here, things could have turned out differently). I don't know if I've ever seen a top-25 defensive line get blown up all day like that.
September 4th, 2012 at 11:16 AM ^
Best defense I can remember going back to 1991, period.
The offense was great, but not historically great. Let's not forget 2007 Oregon, as hard as we've tried.
September 4th, 2012 at 11:23 AM ^
I think Oregon had a very good offense that year, but their offenses now seem better. I think we were extremely flat and showed no energy until it was too late. Hart showed great energy.
September 4th, 2012 at 11:23 AM ^
September 4th, 2012 at 11:25 AM ^