Quick warm tummy rub from 11Warriors

Just read a wrap up from the Bama perspective.  A pretty good breakdown of what happened.  Mostly fair, except for a preposterous comment regarding Corum vs Bama RBs.  Corum may not be called upon to be a receiver out of the backfield but he had 2 damaging receptions yesterday.  
 

-Alabama never got consistent edge pressure, and was erratic at stopping the Michigan running game despite RB Blake Corum clearly not being a runner as dynamic as any of Alabama’s four backs. 

 https://news.tidefans.com/2024/01/01/offense-absent-defense-fades-late-in-rose-bowl-loss/

I’ll read it to mean that the team’s greatest strength is that it has no true weakness, and I agree with the spirit of that.

However, “just sort of good” understates it significantly. Multiple position units are elite. Maybe o-tackle is just sort of good. Maybe receivers are just sort of good. Every other unit is somewhere between very good and best in country.

That's a take based on experience from the last 10-15 years where 1-3 teams were, every year, WAY better than everyone else. Likely because they were better at paying players and getting away with it.

That sort of disparity didn't exist in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, at least as consistently as it did recently. There was no Alabama-type dynasty back then.

When you are “sort of good” at everything, the opposition has no obvious weakness to exploit.  As opposed to having a mediocre offensive line than can be exploited to thwart your running game and control your passing game.  Even when you have 5 star receivers stacked one upon another.  Get it?

Well being "sort of good" at everything means your team has no large weakness to exploit.  Likewise, Michigan forces the issue on other team's weaknesses and disrupts their gameplans. It's not a coincidence that we stymied Bama more than any other team offensively.  Sure, our offense doesn't look very sexy at times but we can go to the air or run if need be.

The flexibility to adjust, on both ends, is what allows us to match up well and have the ability to win like we have been

Nah. It was all Stalions. We just keep getting lucky, despite the mastermind being gone. 

Well, we just "sort of" won the rose Bowl,  So there's that.

They are obsessed with Connor Stalions. 

In times like this 11 W is an unfailing source of delicious 5-star schadenfreude.  I know I’m better off not reading it, and I should be better than that, but it’s just too tempting sometimes.  

I just watched several short clips of Alabama fans in various venues reacting to the final play of the game. Some are sorta hilarious:

https://x.com/allbluedotfans/status/1742290488114172179?s=20

(I used to be able to embed twitter posts, but for some reason I'm no longer able to....)

Sorry but not sorry. It's a rival's BS take. We have:

- Elite QB. He doesn't have volume... but he has skills, moxy, intelligence. That fade away throw off his back foot .... wow.

- Elite RB.

- Some elite OL. Possibly not the entire unit, but some of them.

- Elite DL. Book it.

- Elite CB.  Mike might not for certain be NFL-elite, but we'll find out... but he is college-elite. (Like OSU persisted for years with college-elite QBs who were def not NFL-elite. Maybe string has been broken by last one or two.)

- Elite safety.

- Elite coaching, for sure.

I mean, "good units plus elite DL" sounds like Penn State.  We are so much more than that.

Screw their fanbase! Many of them on EW think we should have been banned from the B1G championship and CFP. Its just incredulous to me that a team should be penalized before an investigation is even concluded or released. They do NOT think UM should have due process at all in this case and in fact think the NCAA is dragging their feet, the same entity that took what 3-4 years to investigate UNC and Kansas a few years back can magically have an investigation into Signgate concluded in a matter of weeks? This isn't your run of the mill TV crime show Buckeye nation. But then again their hatred for Michigan knows no boundaries from all the names they call us so not to actually say the word Michigan, to striking the letter M from their vocabulary to outright doing whatever they can to push the narrative of the sign stealing scandal that they are very much elbow deep in as well. 

Not long ago I thought MSU was the most hateful fanbase, and that Michigan and OSU had a respectful rivalry. But no, the last couple of months have certainly shown otherwise. I will never give that program any respect that I would ever show them before, I lived there during the 90's and into the early Urban years and I always showed their fans respect. So glad I moved out of the Worst State in the US.

Don’t they basically just have elite WR and meh everything else?

That’s the kind of take you’d expect from dweebs who have no awareness of what it actually takes to win at football

While it's nice that they acknowledge that our d-line is the best in college football, the fact that they say every other facet is just "sort of good" is laughable given that a) Will Johnson shut down their generational talent WR until he got hurt and also shut down Bama's WRs, b) our coaching staff continually out-coaches them and just outcoached one of the greatest coaches of all time, and c) Zak Zinter, Blake Corum, and Mike Sainristil were named All-Americans this year.

Seems like we have a least a few facets of our team that are WELL above average.

Our d-line is pretty absurd. Especially in the middle and now the edges are cooking. 

Fuck ohio!

Whether or not we are "sort of good" at this position group or that is beside the real point, which is that this team (coaches, staff, and players) has a level of mental strength unseen in perhaps any team in history.

Team 144 has handled monumental distractions, basically right from the beginning of the season onward, and has ascended to the highest levels of the sport. No team in history has been put through the mental and emotional wringer -- on purpose, in a calculated and orchestrated way -- in this manner and still managed to best every team in its path. 

Media scrutiny? No problem

Suspend coaches? No problem

Injuries at key positions? No problem

Orchestrated PR campaign with myriad distractions? No problem

Suspend coach 4.7 seconds before game-time? No problem

Team given most difficult matchup in playoff? No problem

Nope, this team has handled it all. "Sort of good"? More like "Best ever......"

The best DL is a great compliment but "sorta good" at almost everywhere else is a huge insult to the rest lf the team.

While I somewhat get the take, the UM defense had something like 14 players make all Big Ten.   That has to be a record.

sort of similar to the Clarett Luckeyes who won a National Championship too... they weren't particularly good at anything except winning.

I don't care what other people's takes are...just win and the narratives change.

3 straight beatdowns, beating Bama to go to the national title game, but yeah, they're sort of good. 

A thing a like and think I understand:

The team has this central sort of love going on that makes me think their culture is at least generally against emphasizing the pain and downfalls of their rivals, akin to Ted Lasso’s Schadenfreude Free Zones, limiting their focus to tasks-at-hand and celebrations-of-each-other. It’s super admirable, understandable as good for the team, and damned hard to do.

But I’m just a fan—fully free to make every unhealthy decision I choose!

Why do we care what they think? They are nothing to us. We are an obsession to them. Fuck 'em

A cringe half-compliment by someone who can’t get out of their own way to form a realistic judgement. This “sort of” crap is just “envy” spelled differently.

We have elite coaches who developed an elite team. We are so good in fact that we can adapt to play against a variety of schemes and show teams a variety of styles and perform well. ELITE in playing football, maybe not elite in recruiting rankings and draft rankings. A wet dream for most.

We’re not James Bond. We’re McGyver in a fancy suit driving an Aston.