Next Year's Schedule . . .

This schedule is nice as the Notre Dame, SDSU, and Northwestern games should still test Michigan in some shape and form.  MSU, Iowa, and Illinois on the road are winnable but as we saw this year, going on the road in conference can be tough (exhibit PSU and Purdue).  Leaves us the two tough tests at the end of the year in Nebraska and OSU.

Book it. 

But 5(!) home games in a row...It's tough for the people no longer living in AA

8 wins at least

Congrats to Mouton on a solid year for tackling. Tied for 20th in the nation with 111 total tackles. We all know he missed a FEW! But still...a good season for one of our seniors.

I think Demens will be vastly improved at MLB next season. He had some flashes of being a really good LB for us.

Everything else is a crapshoot. We don't have a FCS opponent, for one thing. The only way we get to 9 wins or more is via a massive improvement in defense and special teams, and I don't think that players maturing alone will get us that improvement. I don't even think a new DC alone will do it, but nobody knows if RR will be willing to jettison guys he brought with him from WVU.

Our improvement in 2010 came in the form of wins over Purdue and Illinois. 2011's improvement needs to come in the form of at least beating MSU and Iowa. We certainly cannot lose to Minnesota, especially at home. Northwestern?? Yeah, we need to clobber them... although every team in the B10 will tell you Northwestern is a trap game.

So that should make us 10-0 heading into the Nebraska game. I suppose I could see a loss against ND... they're a rival, and they've shown some scattered signs of improvement as the season moved along this year. And maybe a loss against NW.... like I said, perennial trap game. So at worst, 8-2.

As far as I'm concerned, if we lose to MSU and/or Iowa again, the program is not heading in the right direction.

Year 4, no more excuses. It has to be 10-2 or 9-3 at worst or the Rich Rod thing aint working. And no more losing to MSU. This is getting ridiculous. We're clearly not in the same league with OSU and Nebraska is good. Not a lot of wiggle room there.

My gut feeling is this schedule is tougher than it looks and UM is not quite over the hump yet. Sunny side is 8-4 with losses to MSU, Iowa, Nebraska and OSU.  NW will be tough and ND is due, so, it might be 7-5 again or worse if things really implode.  I just don't see the D improving fast enough for anything else. *sigh*

In case anyone cares, I did some rather basic analysis on Michigan performance year-over-year since 1990.  Based on this, I predicted 7 wins for us this year (7.3 wins is what the model churned out). 

Looking at it, you could cut the data a lot of ways.  To simplify it, however, the best improvement we can hope for is four wins.  This happened in 1997 and 2006. 

One good thing to note is that whenever Michigan DOES NOT lose a player to the first round of the NFL draft, team averages 1.6 more wins than the season before.  This alone would put us at a 8-10 win team next year.  For those who care, over the last twenty years, Michigan has only regressed once when not losing any 1st round talent (in 2000 they won 9 games after winning 10 in 1999). 

For those of you worried about Northwestern on the road,  just stop it already.   We should pound NW in to oblivion.  Could we lose? Sure we could lose, but the whining and teeth gnashing need to end.   We will be better.   I know the last couple of years have been tough on the confidence, but have you seen our offense?   Do you know we return every fucking meaningful player save S. Schilling and M. Webb?  Do you know the only player of note we lose on the defense is J. Mouton and that we drop in T. Woolfolk into the secondary? 

There is 0% chance this defense isn't better next year.   Have a little sack and look at that schedule and say to yourself, ya know we get a little luck and we should be 10-0 pretty easily.  Fuck these piece of shit teams in the Big Ten. We are Back!!. Start believing!

Just look at the trend (because all trends are fact).  3-9, 5-7, 7-5 in the regular season.  That means we WILL go 9-3 next year and 11-1 the following year.  In 2013, Michigan will be 13-(-1), the first team ever to pull that off.  

 and the other team Big Ten losses is why even if it's a one year go for broke type of outlook I don't want to fire RR yet. Next year is year 4 meaning (almost) eveybody is of his choosing and problems with depth/insufficient backups/coaching is on him. I don't want to throw away a good coach one year early b/c he met a great majority of our expectations this year in a slightly unsightly manner. Bowl win this year, add in the 2 win improvement we've seen each year RR has been here and I'll happily take a 9 or 10 win year to the bank in 2011.

Next years schedule looks to be shaping up well, at least early on.  I think Rodriguez is retained and one key reason is the 2011 roster:

will occur less and less as the QB and offense get better with age.  The defense and offense should improve as the team has overall over the three years.  The 2011 schedule sets up more favorably than the 2010 version. 

It makes no sense to me to not give Coach one more year at least. 

Your the opposing team.  You have to defend one of the premiere offenses in the league/conference.  The offense has added the deep threat to their arsenal along with a few new plays.

Next, you have to score against a defense who brings back just about everyone + a T-Wolf and a much improved underclass.  Depth and a season of experience on defense will be an improvement - no doubt about it!

We could run the table.  Depends on how healthy we are and how bad we want it.

As far as talent goes on defense, we need to replace Mouton's productivity and develop 2 underclassmen into decent disciplined players.  That's it!  I'd look to Carvin and Cam to have the jump with Avery close behind. You add Kovaks and Vinopal into the mix - done!

This is not that hard and we're not that far off. The Team needs to develop the attitude to win.  IMHO, that's the most important factor.

Don't forget about the (potential) Big Ten title game on December 3rd in Indianapolis. 

We have the potential to play 14 games next year if we win our division and play in a bowl.  

“The dark side clouds everything. Impossible to see the future is.”

""Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future."

Yoda to Luke, Star Wars

Something to remember while we discuss 2011 before 2010 is over......

that 2011 will have two Big Ten divisions.  Michigan only needs to have a better record than Minnesota, Northwestern, Iowa, MSU and Nebraska.  That will lead to a spot in the Big Ten Championship game.  It will be a bit different than it usually is.  No more 3-way ties for the title.  Taking a look at the championship games for 2010 you have:

• Auburn (8-0) vs. S. Carolina (5-3) SEC
• Florida St (6-2) vs. Va. Tech (8-0) ACC
• Oklahoma (6-2) vs. Nebraska (6-2) Big 12

So, basically, the top team will have to have at least 5 conference wins--perhaps even 6 wins to get to the championship game.  I'm assuming that Nebraska would be Michigan's biggest roadblock to winning the Big Ten (Bo) Division, so a win against Nebraska would be huge; So would a win against MSU.  And let's not start to talk about the meaning of the OSU game.

God damn it I get so angry every time I see Eastern on that schedule.

I'm happy to be a season ticket holder next year.  However, what happens to Rodriguez when we win the first 8 and lose the last 4?

most of our tough games get played at home

Normally, this would reassure me, but the way we've played at home lately, do we even have a homefield advantage anymore? 

Unfortunately in regards to your logic that the Senior Big 10 talent is graduating, other Big 10 teams have this crazy thing known as "depth." Depth ensures that a new crop of Seniors will have evolved from Juniors.

Our 19 year olds will not turn 22 between this season and next. I'm not being pessimistic I'm just saying that a mostly-sophomore defense is still going to make youthful mistakes