Big Ten Coaches Talk Anonymously About Conference Foes for 2017
Athlon Sports just put out their annual anonymous comments from coaches article.
Some interesting things including my personal favorite:
"They want to outwork you. That was the whole satellite camp thing last offseason. He wanted to send a message to the SEC and other schools that he will outwork you to make up for any advantage you might have over Michigan.
August 1st, 2017 at 12:46 PM ^
Fun read, OP. Thanks for posting. There are some good quotes and cliches aplenty.
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Favorite cliches:
Iowa: "You play an Iowa team and they’re going to want to fight you, the offensive line and their defense especially." ARRRGGGHHHHH!
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Somewhat lame Michigan quotes:
"Let’s see how fast we notice (Jabrill) Peppers being gone." (Can't load a question much better than that ...)
"How much do they trust (quarterback) Wilton Speight? He loses a lot of his targets. Are they going to ask him to do more?” (Similar people would fret about "losing three All Big Ten offensive linemen.")
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Anchored in reality:
Nebraska: "That job is a lot worse than it was a few years ago, and no one in the administration seems to recognize it."
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Not anchored in reality:
MSU: "This is a team that should’ve been recruiting at the level of Michigan and Ohio State and didn’t, for whatever reason."
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Memories of RichRod-era idiocy:
Minnesota: "Can they run a pure spread option outdoors in Minnesota?"
with their recent success, they should have been able to turn it into better recruiting classes
they didn't
they failed
They actually were finally starting to get some highly-touted four-star recruits. It just turns out they were all actually villianous malcontents.
MSU's recruiting got a bump up. That's what should be expected. Five years of success doesn't turn schools into recruiting powerhouses. It didn't happen with TCU, Baylor, KSU, Wisconsin, etc.
By the same token, a few bad years and traditional powers can still recruit well. See Notre Dame, Texas, PSU, us.
MSU's recruiting situation reminds me a lot of our basketball situation from a few years back. Just fresh off a national title appearance, several conference titles and POTY awards. Recruiting should've skyrocketed, but we somehow failed to capitalize on it before we regressed back to the mean.
Lot of similarities with MSU. Regularly beating up on their biggest rival, winning conference titles, winning big bowl games and entering the national title conversation for the first time in half a century. But recruiting got only slightly better for them. Never a huge uptick that would've been expected from a guy who could beat Urban Meyer twice with 2 and 3 star leftovers.
Huge opportunity wasted, and it seems as though their window is now closed.
The Peppers question was already answered in the Orange Bowl, no?
Now, the question is do they replace him with someone who can get the job done without 'quite' his level of freakish athleticism? More scheming, less relying, I guess?
Glad we have Don Brown!
August 1st, 2017 at 12:48 PM ^
Best part of media days. This one and the anonymous player quotes about other teams.
August 1st, 2017 at 12:52 PM ^
"The Rose Bowl run didn’t surprise other coaches because James Franklin has been projecting that attitude and expectation since he got there. He’s got swagger, and he doesn’t care how that projects across the league. The energy he brings has been there, but they’ve had serious depth issues and had to make some crucial changes on offense."
Penn State kicked a field goal when down by 28 at the big house. After the game, Franklin said something to the effect of, "That's what happens when you play a top 5 team. Top 5 teams are a separate tier from everyone else."
Projecting that kind of attitude and expectations will only get you to #6.
And how about "Trace McSorley will be a Heisman candidate this year." Da fuck? Barkley, sure, but ol' Arm Punt?
Apparently he's going to complete 100% of the 50/50 balls this year.
You mean "again" this year!
Michigan 1997, what if Griese doesn't hit Tuman for the touchdown on 3rd down? Iowa then has the ball last in a tie game and perhaps wins.
But Griese DID hit Tuman on 3rd down. That's all that ultimately matters.
but I'm pretty sure his numbers (can't find them now, can't find the link) said PSU had slightly negative luck (in aggregate) in 2016.
Where did Penn State get so lucky? Penn State blew out some teams (Iowa, MSU, Purdue, Maryland) No luck there. Just a better team.
They won some close games, but those seemed to require overcoming bad luck. Beat Temple close, but outgained them and lost the turnover battle (-2). Beat Wisconsin close, but outgained them and lost the turnover battle (-2).
Beat Ohio State close, but OSU had more special teams luck than Penn State. OSU fans point out that PSU had two huge special teams plays. But, OSU had 3!! OSU blocked a Penn State field goal. Penn State fumbled a punt return, OSU recovered (led to OSU's first score.) Penn State snapped ball over punter's head, safety for OSU (2pts, plus extra possession.)
Penn State got outgained big time, but OSU didn't take advantage of 3 huge ST plays, winning turnover battle and way more possession time. Penn State took advantage of theirs.
but OSU had a 17% win probability in their game against Michigan State! 17%!
That game sort of gets lost a bit: while OSU was a bit misfortunate against PSU - Connelly's numbers argue that they lucked out themselves at a larger scale in BOTH of their regular season ending games.
OSU literally needed the dice to come up snake eyes. The dice cooperated.
https://www.footballstudyhall.com/pages/2016-ohio-state-advanced-statis…
His point is that PSU was very close to a fairly diastrous situation, maybe losing his team. The spread between that and where you ended up is enormous, and a bit driven by good luck.
If Michigan loses that game it may not win the nat'l championship, but it was still an excellent team. Not sure if you can say that about PSU last year. Which is the difference.
but it wasn't.
It's not hard to build a "bad-news" narrative for MOST teams. Even 1997 Michigan. Griese misses Tuman, Iowa kicks a FG at the end, 27-24 Hawkeyes. Maybe U-M also now loses to Ohio State. That was a close game against a very very good team, after all, and with a loss the "U-M snowball" isn't rolling with the same momentum. And now we have a 1997 Michigan team that, for a fifth consecutive season, hasn't won the B1G.
And now the narrative is: "That 5 year slump is something that hasn't happened in 34 years! 5 years without a conference championship should NEVER happen to Michigan. Lloyd Carr, are we sure that this guy knows what he's doing? Moeller at least went 3-for-5 in B1G titles during his AA stint. Why'd we hire a DC anyway instead of a proven Head Coach?!?!? Is this guy the best choice for our Head Coach?"
That narrative is not that far-fetched.
But, it's just an alternate history. And thus irrelevant. PSU did beat Minnesota, PSU did win the B1G title in 2016, and now Franklin has a notch on his resume. Michigan did beat Iowa, Michigan did beat OSU in 1997, Michigan did win the National Title in 1997, Lloyd's future in AA was secure and the team will be legendary among U-M fans forever.
That's a real stretch.
I think his larger point is that Franklin is being overrated nationally and by PSU fans for some really good fortune, and had that turned just a nudge the other way they'd have been running him out of town. Lose to Minny and OSU - the first being a 50-50 toss-up, the second you probably lose 95 times out of 100 - and the narrative on Franklin is light years different.
I agree with him and think PSU and Franklin will mean revert from last year.
It's not that much of a stretch. Lloyd didn't have a ton of rope. There was a fair amount of grumbling, and some empirical reasons for such. Michigan finished the 1996 season 1-3. Team made a ton of mistakes in each of the 3 losses (Purdue, PSU, Alabama), coupled with some bizarre coaching decisions (the infamous William Carr play). They, frankly, looked highly different vs. the typically well-oiled, disciplined, highly efficient U-M teams of the 80s (Bo) and early 90s (Mo).
As for PSU/OSU ... Bill Connelly had PSU as a 37% chance (given game statistics) to beat OSU. The 5% you say doesn't really jive with the numbers. FWIW, take out PSU losing 25 yards on a botched punt snap and PSU's shot-gun kneel-downs at the end, and PSU outgained OSU by ~0.5 yards per play for the game. It was a fortunate win, but the degree of fortune does seems to get exaggerated a bit by some.
That's interesting, I didn't realize Connelly had it that close. Didn't feel that way at all watching, but maybe that was skewed by their performance to that point. Meaning maybe the Michigan game and the close one against Minny made me think they were worse than they statistically were.
Nope, that's a reeaall strrreettcchh. That Michigan team was outstanding, and the snowball you consider is pretty out there.
it works every time.
Trace McSorley COULD be a Heisman candidate this year.
That statement is utterly meaningless, of course. Lots of things COULD happen.
I could double up [attractive famous actress] and [exotic supermodel] this year, but I probably wont. Because reasons.
I dont think McSorley will be a heisman candidate. But can we not do the thing where we assume Michigan's players will improve and assume other teams' players will not? Dont you think he'll at least get the arm punt approach under control?
and --- shoot --- as a PSU fan, I was ALSO making fun of it. It made no sense to me, and I thought Franklin put himself in danger of losing the team because he was quitting on them.
But --- for whatever reason --- he didn't lose the team. They still played hard the next week against Minnesota, they pulled the game out, and the snowball started rolling downhill from there.
Franklin's not an X and O guy. He's an energy and "swagger" guy --- his team won't always respond to that (the 2015 PSU team was a train wreck chemistry wise). But if/when they do, PSU will be a threat.
It was his comments after the game that stuck with me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VORvsT78c8
Starts by talking about how their defensive depth is thin.
Around 50 seconds in or so, starts talking about Michigan's positives.
At 1:52 he makes his ranked team comments. My only quesiton is, what good does that do?
I think this year will tell us a lot more about Franklin than last year. If he can do well with that target on his chest, he'll convince me. Until then, I remain sceptical.
The field goal thing was so that they could avoid being shut out. Nothing more, nothing less.
Honestly, I wish Brady Hoke would have done it against Notre Dame. The game was over, we were not going to win in any way shape or form (just like Penn State against us). You might as well not make things even worse by recording the first shut out against a key rival in decades.
I think the positive stuff, especially that first quote on the MSU board... I think that's Harbaugh, actually. Sounds exactly what like he'd say in a presser, and he doesn't seem like the type to say something anonymously that he wouldn't say out loud.
Which isn't to say that he seriously thinks he needs to watch out for him, if that's his quote.
BTW the quotes on Maryland suggest that insiders expect that program to rise. Which is a so-so development for us, a good development for the conference, and horrible news for MSU.
I feel like Maryland is going to struggle to rise above Arkansas or Ole Miss status in the current state of the East. You've got 3 powers playing at a high level. They'll be decent and will knock off one of the big boys every season but, they're going to struggle to do better than 7-2 in conference.
But yes, the rise of Maryland is terrible for MSU. Could quickly push them to fighting with Indiana for 5th in the East
I'd be surprised if Harbaugh participated in this. In fact I just assume these are mostly assistant coaches.
In reference to MSU:
"This is a team that should’ve been recruiting at the level of Michigan and Ohio State and didn’t, for whatever reason."
...and never really has, for reasons that are rather apparent.
Some tough truths in there about Nebraska, particularly about how that job is a lot worse now than it used to be.
Nebraska is a tough place to recruit kids to, and most kids these days don't know who the hell Tom Osborne is. But Nebraska can still be a great job and can get back to being a powerhouse. They have the money, the alums, the fan following. All they need, and what they haven't had in nearly 20 years, is the right coach.
A coach who can win will bring the recruits you need. And Nebraska has the infrastructure as a program to win at the highest level. Even though they haven't won big in a long time. Mike Riley is not the answer. He hasn't done a damn thing of true importance anywhere he's gone. But Nebraska has the cash for its next hire to go out and get the right guy.
I hope they do.
Much of the reason for Mike Riley getting hired at Nebraska was because he is the polar opposite of Bo Pelini as far as attitude and the way they carry themselves publicly. Nebraska's administration can not honestly believe that Mike Riely is the coach that will return them to the glory days. But, Mike Riely seems like a great human being while Bo Pelini is know for making a few "foot in mouth" type of comments.
Much like Brady Hoke was hired because he was a polar opposite of Rich Rod. He was a Michigan man who believed in the traditions and rivalries and ran a pro style offense. Hoke loves Michigan. There was always a sense the Rich Rod really didn't care about a lot of that. He acted like he was still in West Virginia.
Was Riely really the best canidate for the Nebraska job when he did nothing special at Oregon St? Was Hoke the best hire Michigan could have made when he had only around a .500 coaching record for his career? Obviously a lot of this is just my opinion here and this is a small sample size. Plus hind sight is 20/20. But when administrations make coaching hires purely based on emotions, I would guess that they typically turn out to be not great hires in the long run.
Firing a guy, and then thinking what will fix the problem is going out and getting the exact opposite kind of guy is, oftentimes, no better. In fact, sometimes it can be worse.
I'm from Tampa, and after the Bucs fired Gruden, they hired Raheem Morris, a guy who was clearly way in over his head as an NFL head coach. The players loved him, but by the end of his run there, the inmates were running the asylum. They fire him, and proceed to hire the exact opposite kind of coach: Greg Schiano, a man consistently walking around with a stick up his ass, who alienated himself from many of his players, from many of the coaches in the league, and like his predecessor, ran the team into the ground. He made them a laughingstock on and off the field.
Of course you can be an asshole and still stick around, but as long as you win (case in point: Nick Saban). But in addition to finding a winner, you need a man who has a healthy balance of both sides. Someone who can be an asshole when players get out of line, but also gentle enough so as to not alienate yourself from your team, your staff or your fanbase.
I don't think Pelini or Riley fit that style.
August 2nd, 2017 at 12:31 AM ^
Agree with Nebraska. If Husker fans think they should be NC contenders on a regular basis they are delusional, but I don't think it's too unrealistic that with the right coach they could get a program similiar to Wisky - contending for the West on a regular basis and for the most part a Top 20 team.
Bring back the steriods.
Otherwise, be happy with the occasional New Year's Day bowl game.
Oh how I love these anon quote articles thanks for sharing!