Could Bill Martin Have Been Partially Right?

Stanford and MSU are winning playing man ball without recruiting elite talent.  Both recruit below Michigan's levels.  They have good (Stanford) to great defenses (MSU) and great (Stanford) to decent (MSU) OLs.  They coach their players up.  They coach to a system, and recruit to a system.  They dont get anything like what USC Bama OR Michigan gets.  They find a way rather than this constant excuse making.

RR "put up points" against bad to average defenses.  Every time his team's came up against a top 25 defense it was destroyed.   People seem to constantly forget that.A

At WVU he had a great QB and RB.  At UM he only had a very good QB, never an elite RB.  His offense is run based and needs both to really be elite.  He also played in a pathetic Big East.  Which the Big 10 has now become.  You get a lot of fool's gold racking up wins in these conferences - a lot of his Big East victories were against teams that would look silly in other conferences.  Very similar to what has happened in the Big 10 a decade later.

The one thing I give RR is he didnt get Hokes budget.  Hoke has had nearly limitless resources for assistances and coordinators.  RR was hamstrung.

But the way RR recruited in retrospect after a 2011 season he might have done very well in the walls would have caved in just the same due to the OL. And unless Brandon gave him Hoke's budget that caving in would have been combined with a bad defense.  2011s defense would not have been good for example so the BCS bowl would not have happened. 

Let's just stop with RR.  There are 100s of coaches in this nation.  RR didnt work out there.  So we dont always need to go back to him as a recourse.  He was the wrong hire.  Hoke is the wrong hire.  The next hire needs to be right.

Oh god, as little appetite as I have for dissecting the present state of Michigan football, I have even LESS interest in putting the past under a microscope, especially decisions that were been picked over endlessly on MGoBlog 

There's no arguing that Rich Rod teams could move the ball at will???? How do you forget so quickly? I certainly remember getting crushed by teams with sound defenses. Ohio State, Mississippi State, Michigan State etc.

Our offense crumbled against those teams and put up lots of points on weaker defensive teams. It's great to beat the weaker teams by a lot with an exciting offense, but I want a team that can compete with anyone.

I'm all for spread concepts but I don't agree that a completely spread offense is the way to succeed.

I see this as more of a "mental fortitude" issue. That term isn't quite right, but I don't know what else to call it. It seems like when things break down for this team (usually after the first quarter), we either have no plan, or we panic and can't implement the plan, or we panic and completely lose confidence. I don't know if it's because Devin becomes myopic or the players become disengaged from each other when things go south. But it seems like the resilience isn't there. Hoke can say all he wants about bouncing back and this team knows what it takes to win, but there is a resilience piece that's missing. 

thread about this...but man ball only works if you have a quarterback capable of taking advantage of passing opportunities.  I am just not a big fan of Gardner.  I know he has had big games in the past (against quality opponents as well), but he is just not mechanically sound and that leads to some bad throws and turnovers, then he starts to lose confidence it seems and decides to run at the first sign of pressure.

Look back at some of the past QBs (Brady, Navarre, Henne) who were statues, but they all threw the ball well.  I realize that the position has changed, but the QB still needs to be able to throw before simply being athletic.  Mariotta looks the part when he throws.  Golson looks like a QB on quick drops.  In my opinion, Gardner does not.  

At some point after he retired as HC Schembechler said that the most important decision that any UM athletic director will ever make is who they hire as head football coach.

Right now, It appears as though that Brandon biffed it. He hired a guy with a career losing record on the road, and that problem is rearing its very ugly head in Ann Arbor.

I think Bill Martin made the right call...

...of when to come about. Avast ye matey!

I'd  argue that Michigan does have allegedly elite talent on the offensive line.  The 2012 (Kalis 5*, Magnuson 4*, Williams 4*, Braden 3*, Bars 3*) and 2013 (Kugler 5*, Samuelson 4*, Dawson 4*, LTT 4*, Bosch 4* and Fox 4*) classes are right up there with anybody in the country....including Alabama and USC.  They are still a little on the young side but it's certainly not unheard of for 2nd and 3rd year players to be serviceable on the line.

As a I see it, we have two options:  1.  Wait until next year when this talent should be almost fully developed.  2.  Recognize that the coaching and/or scheme just won't get it done.

I don't necessarily have an opinion on the correct path.  I just think that enough talent is available in the program to score more than 0 points against ND. .

1) As others have said, RR's offense did not move the ball at will against competent defenses.

2) I believe Brian pointed out in a previous artilce that Hoke ran a different offensive system at Ball State and SDSU then pure "man-ball". Maybe once he got to Michigan he felt he could finally run the offense he always wanted to, or he felt he had to run "man-ball" because thats what Michigan wanted. Where his obsession came from I don't know, but I don't believe he has always been a "man-ball" coach.

3) As to the talent of pro-style teams, Alabama is in a class by itself, they have too much talent at this point. USC started a pair of true freshman guards, a couple true freshman receivers and were young and thin all over the place. If they can put together a functional offense/defense and Michigan can't, isn't that coaching? USC isn't hugely ahead of Michigan talent wise right now, and others have pointed out the other succesful pro-style teams with less talent than Michigan has.

4) Can we wait more than 1 bad game before we bash Nuss for being a terrible OC. His defense did not always bail him out at Bama, the defense was what cost Bama their bowl game against Oklahoma last year. He also had success as OC at Washington, so its not like the two years at Bama was the only success he has ever had. Is the the savior at OC? Maybe, maybe not, but questioning his ability this early is premature.

I don't think Martin wanted RR to help introduce spread concepts and put Michigan on the cutting edge offensively, I think he did it because RR was the best option that would actually take the job. Does Michigan need to open it up more offensively? It would probably help, but I think its a tad outlandish to claim Bill Martin was right all along with his strong desire to bring in a more spread oriented coach.

RR's offense in 2010, was pretty good. The offense was ranked #2 in FEI. Also, it wasnt just the Indiana's and Bowling Green's. The offense had 532 yds 28 points against ND (#27 defense), 522 yds 28 points against Iowa (#24), 442 yds and 28 points vs Wisconsin (#33), and finally the famous 676 yds 67 points vs Illinois (#22 defense). So while the offense struggled against MSU, OSU, and Purdue they did score points against above average defenses.

Now the defense stunk and so a lot of those yards and point didnt matter but another interesting thing is that in 2007, WVU's defense was ranked 8th according to FEI and in 2013 Arizona's D was ranked #19. Now if the 2010 team had a defense that was ranked #60, that would have been a 10 win season.

EDIT: In hindsight of course, it seems like the biggest mistake or missfortune for UM was not getting Jeff Casteel to come with RR to Michigan. West Virginia's degense was ranked in the top 35 from 2007-2011 and Arizona's defense has also improved under him.

We installed new systems on both side of the ball.  We just lost the 2nd game of the season.  Excuse me for not jumping off the ship even after that horrible game last night.