Mailbag: Pressure On The D, Basketball Minutes, Losing To Rivals, The Process Revisited
Pressure shift.
Despite being passive, Michigan was 23rd in INTs last year [Eric Upchurch]
Since Hoke has taken over, it seems the expectation / criticism has been largely focused on the offense. Since rich rod left the defense in shambles, hoke & mattison seem to have taken a bend don't break approach and largely been given a pass while they accumulate talent and experience. With most of the experience and talent on the defensive side of the ball this year, does the pressure to get it done and carry the team to victory shift?
-Dan
I balk at the idea that someone needs to be "given a pass" after turning what was literally the worst defense in Michigan history into the #17 total defense in a year and improving to 13th the next year before dipping to 41st. FWIW, in yards per play terms the Mattison defenses are 46th, 25th, and 41st—a narrative of drastic improvement in year one, another step forward in year two, and then a step back.
I wish that step back hadn't happened, too, but the defense ended up collapsing once it was putting Richard Ash and Nose Tackle Jibreel Black on the field against the top rushing team in the country and then facing Tyler Lockett in a dismal who-cares bowl game they had approximately zero chance of winning once Gardner was ruled out.
Against the rest of the schedule, the defense was good enough to win. They could have carried Michigan to victories against Penn State (1.9 yards a rush, 6.8 per pass), Nebraska (under 300 yards total O), and maybe even MSU (16 points through 3 Q) if the offense was extant. People jumping on the D are a lot like people saying SHANE MORRIS COULD START YOU GUYS: they're letting the unprecedentedly terrible running game color their perceptions of the rest of the team.
That said, yes, last year's D was frustratingly passive and with Michigan returning almost everybody of note (departures from the two deep are limited to Black, the underutilized Quinton Washington, and both Gordons) it is time to take a step forward from passable to very good or great. The offense is not going to get where it needs to be in one year, so if Michigan wants to have the kind of season that makes people think Hoke should be back it's up to the defense to hulk up.
The rivals. We must beat them. Or not.
Brian,
Can you talk me into a scenario where Michigan loses to both at MSU and at OSU this year and we call the season a success?
-Craig
Let's step back for a second. There was a thread on the board about the recent Angelique Chengelis article in which she predicted a 10-2 record with losses to MSU and OSU. As always, the thread was split between people going "lol more like 2-10" and people responding to folks that say "I'll be happy with 9-3" with:
Is this what we are now? A program with fans that are "pleased" with mediocrity.
YES! YES, THIS IS WHAT WE ARE NOW. I mean… Michigan had that one 11-2 year that they acquired by shooting the moon six times. Aside from that, Michigan's gone 3-9, 5-7, 7-6, 8-5, and 7-6. And that last 7-6 doesn't really encompass the true face-crippling misery that was last season.
So, yeah, there are a ton of seasons that include road losses to the two teams that met in the B10 championship game last year that seem like a success. 10-2 is obvious. 9-3… sheeeeeeit, I would take any 9-3 record any way any how right now, no questions.
Would it suck to lose yet again to OSU and MSU? Yes! Yes, it would be a kick right in the plaster of Paris. But we're not in a place where we can turn up our nose at anything resembling a fun season. Just getting to a place where I can think "hey, this offensive line might be good next season" is a success. That necessarily comes with some wins, but except in pissy fan ways I'm not sweating who they come against.
Updated minutes for basketball.
It's go time for Derrick Walton [Bryan Fuller]
Brian,
Can I get a prediction on next year's starting five?
Thanks!
Troy
Cleveland, OH
Three and a half of the spots are pretty obvious. The three:
PG: Derrick Walton
SG: Caris LeVert
SF: Zak Irvin
The half:
C: Mark Donnal/Ricky Doyle
Michigan might be able to spare some minutes for Donnal at the 4 depending on how foul prone those gentlemen are. Freshmen bigs ten to be very foul prone, so… yeah.
Even PF is not that confusing: it'll be split between Kam Chatman and DJ Wilson. Chatman will also get minutes filling in for LeVert and Irvin; Spike will get 10-15 minutes; Bielfeldt will be in the 0-15 range depending on how the other guys perform and if he can actually hit some of those threes that Beilein says are unstoppable in practice.
My guess at the minute breakdown now:
PG: Walton (30) / Spike (10)
SG: LeVert (35) / MAAR (5)
SF: Irvin (30) / Chatman (10)
PF: Chatman (15) / Wilson (25)
C: Donnal (25) / Doyle (10) / Bielfeldt (5)
MAAR over Dawkins is just a guess. I do think it'll be one or the other by crunch time since Beilein favors short rotations. It is possible that one of the two redshirts.
That's very young and skinny up front—four freshman and Bielfeldt is your frontcourt—but I'd put Michigan's backcourt up against anyone in the conference no problem.
But what about The Process?
I've seen a few stories about how young Team 135 will be. They all highlight the small senior class, but never get into The Process's impact on the class. In my opinion, the 2011 recruiting class was a mess largely because Dave Brandon waited until January to fire Rich Rod (and then spent a couple of days actually firing him). By the time Hoke was hired, there wasn't much time to put together a class. In your opinion, how big of a factor was The Process on this year's senior class?
-Raphy
Don't forget the song-and-dance with the planes and four or five days spent in an apparent effort to throw people off the scent of the most Michigan Man choice available.
We'll never know for sure whether or not Rodriguez was a dead man walking going into the bowl game, but I've heard from multiple people on that disastrous trip that everyone thought he was. This led to a widespread breakdown in order and the performance-type substance Michigan put out there. If there was any chance he'd be back before it, there was zero after. Brandon didn't hang the man swiftly or extinguish the idea he'd be gone, so Michigan got a month and a half of limbo during which Blake Countess inexplicably signed up and nothing else happened in recruiting. Hoke walked into the following recruiting class:
- DEFENSE: DE Chris Rock, DE Brennen Beyer, CB Delonte Holowell, CB Blake Countess, CB Greg Brown, LB Desmond Morgan, LB Kellen Jones
- OFFENSE: OL Tony Posada, OL Jack Miller, OL Chris Bryant (Bryant did commit after Hoke was hired but had been favoring Michigan for months beforehand.)
To this he added in the two or three weeks available to him:
- DEFENSE: DE Frank Clark, DE Keith Heitzman, CB Tamani Carter, CB Raymon Taylor, LB Antonio Poole
- OFFENSE: TE Chris Barnett, RB Thomas Rawls, RB Justice Hayes, QB Russell Bellomy, K Matt Wile.
Both ends of that class are equally subpar. Hoke's ten late adds produced Taylor, Clark, and Wile. There's a possibility that Hayes or Heitzman will contribute at a decent level this year; that is meh.
Given what we've seen from Hoke since, especially before Michigan's offense descended into awful unwatchability, you have to figure he would have done much better with the extra five weeks. He almost certainly would have found a tackle to replace Jake Fisher—he may have in fact held on to Jake Fisher—and found a tight end who was capable of staying on a college campus for more than three weeks. They may have found a better fit at QB than Bellomy, whose main asset was his mobility. And they would have gotten a better idea about a few guys who weren't likely to stick—I'm thinking about Posada mostly, by the time signing day rolled around some people were skeptical about his commitment level—and grabbed a guy to fill out the OL numbers.
So… it was significant. There is a reason schools don't wait until January to throw guys overboard, and Michigan is suffering through that this year.
Don't be so sure... for psychologically, beating them by 70 pts this time, along with, say, beating msu in EL, could truly reset the entire thing It will have an effect if we beat them badly.. but if we don't, then thats a real problem.
When I said beating App State will change nothing, I meant it would change nothing for us, the fans. Certainly, if MIchigan goes out and blows these guys out of the stadium by 70, it will do a lot for their state of mind, but not because it allows them to crawl out from under the cloud of The Horror. None of these guys were around for that. But, it should exorcise some of the lack of confidence they may be carrying from stuggling against Akron or UConn last season. That's the barrier these guys need to push past. They'll feel pressure to win this game against App State, for sure, but The Horror is not their cross to bear.
My point before was, if we come out and blast these guys to kingdom come, are you really not going to care about 2007 anymore? I won't. I don't think anybody will. That's why scheduling this game in the first place is so damn silly.
And as for beating Sparty in EL, I agree, it's a big opportunity for us to quickly dash any level of self-esteem those guys may have acquired from last year's championship. We go in there and take them down, with them having to come back to Ann Arbor the following season, you deal a big psychological blow to all of Spartan Nation. Now you're poised to beat them 3 out of 4 years and the whole Dantonio has flipped the script narrative is torched. It's a tall order, but losing in East Lansing is far from a foregone conclusion.
that got us beat the first time around.
Our game is App State's first game in the FBS. This doubles the opportunity to make a statement, and they'll dedicate their summer to winning it - just like they did last time.
Meanwhile, back at the fort we'll fret about beating ND the following week and how to best line the OL up especially with Glasgow out. Do you think our guys will watch App State film in their spare time this summer or ND/MSU/OSU?
Want to bet App State will be watching Michigan and Alabama film all summer, and salivating at how they'll beat our OL?
I get sick of hearing Internet Tough Guy crap about how we're happy with mediocrity just because we're not pushing for Michigan to beat our rivals.
No, I'll be happy with 9-3 including losses to our rivals for two reasons:
1) It'll be progress, and at this point I'll take progress. If there is no progress then let's fire Hoke before he can say "toughness" in the next press conference, but only a blithering moron would fire a coach showing progress. You know, like The Process?
2) In case anyone hadn't noticed, our rivals are pretty darn good. Michigan State is coming off a Rose Bowl win, Ohio State went almost two years without a loss, Notre Dame went all the way to the national title game (even if they got the same curb-stomping as Michigan). Our performance in these games hasn't been too shabby, all things considered.
It'd be another story if these teams were struggling with mediocrity themselves. But the outrage over our ineptitude against our rivals is ignoring the Kraken in the mud puddle -- that our rivals happen to not only be the best they've been in years, but some of the best teams in the country.
Really? We're complaining our disaster of a 7-6 team can't beat the Rose Bowl champions? If anything, I'm shocked that we haven't gotten results like last season's Michigan State more often. These programs are at or near the tops of their respective games and we're struggling to beat Akron. I hate losing to our rivals (hell I hate losing peroid) but yes, THIS IS WHERE WE ARE AT. This expectation that a 7-6 team should be beating conference title contenders is stupid on top of retarded on top of a stinky diarrhea heap of dumb. Let's out-rush Purdue before we start talking about taking down the best teams in the country.
Some day we will be one of the best teams in the country, and our rivals will be looking up at us. But the only way we're going to get there is by making progress. No matter how incremental. And that starts with mediocrity because that's where we are.
When you come to be OK with losing to your rivals, they cease to be rivals. They just own you. That's one of the great things about a rivalry game. No matter how the teams are doing that year, either may win.
I don't think people are "okay" with losing to MSU and OSU; reading here, you'd think it was death. But acting like UM is at the same place they were in the late 90's/early 00's doesn't help anyone and creates the "program uncertainty" and toxic nature that hurt RR and could derail what Hoke is doing.
I'm just a grown-up who knows what to expect when a line of freshmen take on a line of elite veterans. If you expect the passion of a rivalry to overcome fundamental disparities in experience, development and technique, you might want to follow a different sport because this one is going to age you quickly.
That said, at least we now know that by the absolutist's definition, there's no such thing as a rivalry that isn't inherently disingenuous, because the sort of annual parity assumed here exists nowhere in reality for more than a decade at a time.
I don't think anybody is saying they are "OK" with losing to our rivals, but a 10-2 season would demonstrate progress and improvement that we shouldn't dismiss simply because the losses came against the teams that we can't bear to lose to the most.
Of course listening to the mouth-breathers over at the RCMB will be insufferable should Michigan lose again this year in East Lansing and suffering another loss to Ohio will be painful if we stumble in Columbus yet again, this November.
But if at the end of the season, Michigan and Hoke have finally shown signs of this program finally righting itself after a decade of foundering and we decide to torch the ship simply because our short term goals weren't met, then we're just being galactically stupid.
You're a righteous dude Ferris, and I agree with you 100%!
I HATE losing, especially to MSU and OSU! But, I understand why Michigan is playing catch-up to those two programs at the current time. I think many Michigan fans have stuck thier heads in the proverbial sand when it comes to understanding from whence our beloved football program has come.
IMO, there is nothing more frustrating that debating someone who wants the same thing you want -- in this case football success -- but who is unwilling to make the effort to understand the circumstances of the situation. Sadly, I fear that this short-sighted/instant gratification attitude has become epidemic within the "younger generations" (I'll be 41 in June). Strangely, the information that could effectuate a detailed understanding of the situation is infinitely more accessable now than it was back in "the day." Forturnately, Michigan's football program isn't being guided by members of the "now, now, now" generation(s), at least not yet.
I'll be 43 in June. That said, if the internet, MGoBlog and all the rest were around when I was 20, I imagine I would be just as impatient as some of the other posters on here. I was pretty passionate and impatient back then when I was watching Michigan lose to Notre Dame or get trucked by Florida State, I just didn't have the immediate outlet that students have today.
In my 4 years at Michigan, I saw the football team win 4 Big 10 titles and go to 3 Rose Bowls. We never lost to Ohio State once in my time as a student. Desmond Howard won the Heisman, and still I wanted more. Craved more. We'd go 10-2 and finish 5th in the country and you'd obsess about the 13 or 14 points you didn't get that kept you from finishing with a National Championship.
So I get the impatience around here....I get it.
I'm fine with 9-3; I'd be pretty happy.
I guess this is a benefit of living hundreds of miles away from Michigan; I almost never run into OSU or MSU fans, and those I do tend to be less, let's say, assholish compared to those closer to home. They're happy for their success, but outside of a bro-ish OSU fan on the train one day who wouldn't stop "singing" OSU's fight song, most fans are pretty cool and happy for their teams without being unbearable. All that said, UM isn't in a position to care about where they get their wins, and while it would be great against MSU and OSU in the long term keeping a consistent coaching staff and allowing the team to mature with consistency is way more important than beating a rival.
This was a GREAT mailbag!
- I'm really looking forward to the play of the defense this year. There should be improvement everywhere on the defense. But the huge improvement in the secondary will allow for more aggressive play elsewhere. The only thing I'm unsure of is defensive line play. If Pipkins is all the way back, and we stay pretty healthy, we could see massive positive change. I haven't seen much discussion, but I think we'll also see some improvement in special teams, including the play of Peppers.
- I am so on board with Brian's comments about "rivalry games" and what constitutes a successful year and internet tough guys. Michigan fans are very crabby and have an overactive sense of entitlement. It is madly frustrating, and out of touch with reality. Of course I want Michigan to beat MSU and Ohio, but first, are we improving? In a thread about this (comments on Angelique's 10-2 projection,) my opinion is that if Michigan plays hard consistently, against everyone, and ends up 10 - 2 or 9 - 3 or even 8 - 4, I can live with that. Settling for mediocrity would mean settling for 9 - 3 every year. I can live with 9 - 3 in 2014, and improving on that in 2015. This whole "unacceptable!" meme drives me absolutely crazy.
I think the caveat on point 2 also is that if we do wind up 9-3 or 8-4, how are we looking in the 3 or 4 we lose? Do we go to East Lansing and just get manhandled like last season or do we compete hard this time and just come up short for whatever reason? I can live with losing to a rival in a rebuilding season if we show signs that we're not losing ground to them. And let's be honest, if last season proved anything, if you have great defense, your offense can be pretty meh and you still have a chance to win a lot of games in the B1G.
A rational grasp of the "reality of the situation" is essential if progress is to be made. Following Michigan's NC in 1997 its own view of itself started to develop a fatal flaw -- it didn't realize that it caught lightening in a bottle in Woodson, and didn't think it needed to adapt. As a result, ten years later Michigan was embarassed at home two weeks in a row, went 3-9 in 2008, and its recruiting and development suffered significantly.
There is nothing wrong with seeing the reality of where the program is today -- we're rebuilding. Why is that so difficult to understand and accept?
I'll be good with a winning record where each win against some crappy team is not a close shave. Seven Akron style wins will not feel as good. Anything more than seven wins will be success on the order of 2011.
That's what colleges do.
Gallon was good, but honestly my feeling for him is more of a "he gave it all on the field" sense of gratitude than putting his play on a pedestal. He broke records because DG needed a go-to receiver because of terrible line play. Gallon carried us through games and was hella fun to watch and thus he's a lock for the Hall of Dragonchild's Favorite Wolverines, but not as some sort of supertalent that Michigan can't replace in some way. He's a mighty mite with obvious physical limitations that gets the absolute most of his ability by working his butt off. I honestly believe he'll have an NFL career, maybe with a ceiling like Troy Brown's, but the guys we got now aren't slouches either.
As for Lewan and Schofield, I actually don't expect much of a drop-off. There really isn't any way for a great offensive lineman to compensate for an overwhelmed teammate; line play is always about the weakest link. If your interior line is bad the defense will blitz the A-gaps all day; adding a TE on the outside isn't really going to help (even though that's exactly what Borges did). The same works in reverse. If a D-lineman can't beat a single block, the offense is going to single-block him and use the double on a dangerman.
My point is that the line play really can't get any worse because our NFL-caliber tackles were completely neutralized by midseason. Not that it was their fault, but if it makes zero difference whether they're there or not there, then why are we freaking out because they're not there?
9-3 might be "progress" but it's only "progress" from a low point that we shouldn't have been at in the first place. And with our cupcake schedule this year outside of the three tough road games, it's debateable whether 9-3 is much more than "above average". I have been trying to caution people against low expectations for a long time now. You should base your long term expectations on the advantages Michigan has in name recognition, resources, tradition, and history, and you should not base your expectations on how badly those advantages have been squandered recently by incompetent boobs. There is no legitimate reason for us to be MSU's bitch and to have lost 9 out of our last 10 to OSU, and there is no reason why a battered Penn State team should be competitive with us.
The worst part about this is that the next coach who wins more than 33% of his games against OSU or wins just one game in Columbus is going to be thought of as Jesus by Michigan fans who have permanently lowered their expectations so far that this will be considered "great". People will then overreact, and we will have a Charlie Weis type situation where a guy gets a huge extension because he only lost to USC by four points.
You are right that reality doesn't care how we got here, but reality cares what decisions we make next. In order to make good decisions down the road, we have to be appropriately disgusted at what a decade of poor leadership from a variety of individuals has done to our program, and not blithely accept our current condition as having been inevitable and unchangeable. I see this apathy/acceptance creeping in, and it worries me a lot. This is the kind of mindset that rewards moral victories and above average seasons with contract extensions (see: Charlie Weis at ND).
... largely because blaming people who aren't making decisions about the program anymore is a waste of time.
That said, I agree that we should not believe our current condition is unchangeable and sit down doing nothing other than whining "Woe is me". That's not what I'm seeing, though - I feel like the fanbase microcosm expressed in posts here is more "We should be great, and if we're not great right now imma gonna fire somebody!".
That last is much worse, because it leads to firing people just as they're turning things around (or before), which leads to more failure that needs to be turned around ... and that starts making our condition really hard to change, if not unchangeable.
In order to get where we want to be, we do need to understand where we are and why we're there. Specifically, is this something where being patient will actually work - waiting for the high-star recruits on the O-line to grow up and master enough technique? or is this something we need to be active about, firing our O-line coach and bringing in someone new? or do we need to get new players because, stars or not, these guys aren't going to get it?
If we know the reason, it's a lot easier to see the solution.
My opinion, fwiw, is that our high-star recruits will grow into their roles and our O-Line will get better if we don't overreact and botch their development. This is one area - although I disagree as to the weight it should be given - where I agree with the Borges hate; I think we would have done better to have stayed the course and let Kalis/Miller/Glasgow develop their technique/rapport in the middle even if Miller was a liability. (It's not clear to me how much Kalis' injury forced their hand anyway, and getting Bosch experience is a good thing now, so ...) Nuss will hopefully not make the same mistakes and be able to ride out the growing pains of our not-old-enough-to-drink-legally linemen.
Thus, painful as it may be, I think we should wait out the two years left on Hoke's contract. Nuss is not a viable head coaching candidate for 2015 unless the offense is really good next year, and if it is Hoke's likely not going anywhere; failing that or a home-run hire, I don't want to replace Hoke before he sees a senior class he recruited take the field.
I don't think that's so much settling for mediocrity as increasing the chances of mediocrity until 2015 in exchange for increased chances at greatness after that.
What natural advantages did Wisconsin and MSU have before they started grinding us into a fine paste on a regular basis? Is it as easy to win at Michigan as Texas, OSU, or Florida? Okay, no, but that's not who we have been losing to lately. We lost games last year to Nebraska, Iowa, Michigan State, Penn State, and Kansas State. What advantages do those programs have over us? Nebraska is basically Michigan with less favorable demographics. MSU has the same demographics, but poorer tradition and resources. Iowa and Kansas State have neither, and Penn State is down a whopping 20 schoarships. The only Big Ten programs with a natural long term advantage over Michigan are OSU and PSU because of demographics, and Penn State's will be in the toilet for at least another few years.
1. Not having a long advantage over us is not the same as us having a long-term advantage over them.
2. It doesn't take natural advantages to grind us into paste. It just takes a few colossal flops on our part.
I greatly fear that our rich history is not really useful to the football team's future prospects.
I think 10-2 is the cieling. I think 7-5 is pessimistically possible. I think 8-4 is realistic. I think 9-3 is optimistic.
The defense should be fine, but not quite good enough to make up for a non-existant running game (not sure if that will happen again yet or not). The offensive skill positions should be fine. This all really sits on the shoulders of the development of the o-line. My hunch is they still suck, but suck a little less. That still spells doom against teams with good defenses like OSU and MSU...aargh. OSU is gonna have a sick d-line. Bosa, Washington, and Spense are gonna hurt UM and Gardner and I'm not sure there's much we can do about that other than try to do the same against their offense. The only difference is their o-line although also young is still better than UM's and Braxton is a magician with the ball in his hands and is pretty much un-tackle-able. So, we won't do as much damage to them as they will to us...unfortunately. MSU will also continue to give us fits because our young line can't pick up blitzs yet.
So, for me personally I prefer to accept a less than desirable outcome upfront so that I don't get disapointed later. So, I'll assume they will go 7-5 and lose to all 3 rivals plus take your pick of 2 more. Anything more than that I can get excited. Barring absolutely no progress on either side of the ball I plan to be excited for 2015 which will also truely be Hoke's make or break year IMO.
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