(This is a repost, the first topic vanished.)
Before Spring practice I was not enthused. Then (name redacted) left to join his BABY brother, and I was even less 'thused' I was thinking 6-6, maybe even 5-7 or 4-8 if we catch a couple of injuries. I was worried about bowl streaks, and non-losing season streaks, and spartans having another excuse to riot.
Then I started watching old WVU games. And I thought, OMG PAT WHITE and STEVE SLATON are the R0X0RS! We've got a comparable slaton coming in mcguffie, and some combination of brown, minor, horn, and shaw should make RB the team's strength. Unfortunately, we have nothing close to a pat white. At least not this year.
So I was getting more depressed. But then I started watching games from before the pat white era. Before miami and va tech had left the big least. And you know what I realized? Rich Rod is a pretty darn good coach.
I saw an offensive system that was creative, deceptive, and designed to mess with opposing player's heads. I also saw relative no-names busting 60 yard runs behind the blocking of absolute no-names and i thought, barwis is a god.
(Mike Barwis. All your recruits are belong to him. Mike Barwis)
So now I'm starting to feel pretty good about the upcoming season. I don't pretend to have any BCS dreams, but a winning record and a new year's day bowl are not out of the question.
So here's the breakdown. (% chance michigan wins)
1. Utah 75%
2. Miami Ohio 95%
3. at Notre Dame 90%
4. Wisconsin 45%
5. Illinois 45%
6. Toledo 100%
7. at Penn State 55%
8. Michigan State 60%
9. at Purdue 80%
10. at Minnesota 95%
11. Northwestern 75%
12. Ohio State 5%
Best case scenario is that, with a little luck, we go into the penn state game 6-0, the world is in love with rich rod, we unexpectedly cream the nittany pickers (because WE OWN, PENN STATE), and cruise to a nail biting loss to osu. 11-1 and in the rose bowl. (yeah right)
Worst case, all the QB's suck, the O-line sucks, and we can't stop the spread. We stumble to 5 losses in conference and even trip over our own feet against utah, making it 6-6 and barely eking out a bowl bid, which we lose for the first losing season in some 4 decades.
Most likely, we'll end up around 8-4 losing one we shouldn't and wining one we shouldn't. We end up in the citrus or alamo bowl and everyone is like, 'just wait till next year!!!' (funny, the more things change, the more they stay the same)
So that's my prediction a solid 8-4 and the sky's the limit for the future.
What do you think?
I see us with 5 solid W's (a relative term following the Horror) -- Miami, Toledo, Purdue, Minnesota, Northwestern.
I see us winning 3 of 5 against Utah, ND, Illinois, PSU, MSU.
I don't see us beating Wisonsin or OSU.
Throw in a loss in a game that we probably should have won and there is a 7-5 season. In a completely disassociated, logical view, that would not be that terrible of an outcome. Will I be happy at the time of those losses, of course not. But if we can keep our streaks alive, I think that it will be a relatively successful season.
Is there a chance that we do better, yeah there is. We still have skilled, if untested athletes, with improved coaching and conditioning, we may be pleasantly surprised. We get Wisco at home. I could see us getting to 9 wins if we really things go extrememly well.
One thing that does give me some hope, is that we will be a faster team than most anyone else in the conference. We may have the ability to hit some homeruns and score when we had been slowed down for long stretches of games.
Go Blue!! Viva La Revolucion!!
www.wolverineliberationarmy.com