97.1 McGuffdate

His Sparq rating was outrageous. Sad to hear about Grady though. He's been through 2 knee blowouts. I hope if he's done it's on his own terms, not as a sacrifice to the press. He holds a special place in my heart for breaking a long run in the Minnesota debacle in 2005, but instead of cutting around the last defender and scoring, he just lowered his shoulder and hammered him in the open field around the 30 yard line, basically tackling himself. I think Michigan turned the ball over or didn't score somehow on that drive.

 

Edit: Actually that wasn't against Minnesota.  Does anyone else know the run I'm referring to?  I believe it was Grady, might have been Hart, but they broke into the open field, and bowled a guy over around the opponents 35-45 rather than cut back around a block.  It drove me insane because we lost that game.  I think it was a 20-30 yard run.

Also, Marquis Slocum is, apparently, done at Michigan per Doug Karsch. I think we already new that a few weeks ago, though.

Since he arrived on campus, I've heard nothing but good things about him. He lives in the weight room. Fred Jackson loves him. If Carlos Brown is slow to recover, I could see McGuffie passing him on the depth chart to #2.

will be tried by McGuffie this year. I say he has about a 20% of it working and 80% of getting the shit knocked out of him. I'm also really looking forward to seeing what Terrance Robinson can do. I think I read somewhere that he may be a slot WR. I know the hype around Shaw & McGuffie is big, but I think everyone will know Robinson just as well when he gets his chances. His videos are just as amazing as the others and his size is perfect for RR to use.

Daniel L - it might have been ND that year. Hart got hurt in the first quarter (fucking luck of the Irish) and Grady went the rest of the way, and we lost after committing a million redzone turnovers.

I heard Chris balas of thewolverine.com on the huge show the other day saying the rumors were that he was going to stay on the team but that he would be suspended for half the season and meet w/ barwis EVERY morning

When did he arrive on campus?? I hope RR gives him a real chance this season! His acceleration is ubelievable... One thing that kind of bugs me about his detractors, is that they say he did nothing in the AA game down in San Antonio. If I'm not mistaken, wasn't he the most productive running back? The only back to actually 'break' a long gain? I know it was late in the game, but what does that matter. If it were easier, why didn't any other backs break long ones in the 4th quarter?

McGuffie was recovering from that ankle thing for basically the whole year. If he can stay healthy he'll be the next Reggie Bush. Can anyone explain the logic of Grady pleading not guilty to dui?

I believe the Grady run may have been in the 2005 NW game, IIRC he had a long run in that game. His long in that game was 18 yards, in the IU game that year he had a 32 yard run, so its probably from one of those 2. -------------------------- Please let us never speak of 2005 ND game again, the worst offensive game in the Henne/Hart era this side of 07 OSU.

Not to open a can of worms, but I suspect that a lot of McGuffie's critics really just can't picture a white running back being very good.

ANY REPORTS OF GRADY BEING KICKED OFF THE TEAM ARE FALSE. He's in Ann Arbor and dealing with his punishment as we speak. @Alabluema: If he pleads guilty the judge would be required to sentence him. By pleading "not guilty" he leaves his options open for a plea bargain (i.e. The DA says "ok, we'll knock the charges down in return for you doing _______") or perhaps a guilty plea before the trial. "guilty" now leaves him no options, and plea deals are extremely common with first time offenders (.281 not withstanding).

Thanks! Makes sense.

I believe that a lot of the skepticism surrounding McGuffie isn't so much about his ability or potential, rather a counter to the insane amount of hype surrounding him. This hype was primarily generated by his high light reel of hurdling high school players. My take on him is that he appears to have a great deal of potential, but his hurdling technique will likely get him killed against any quality D-1 defensive players. We have seen several recruiting videos of guys who can hit another gear and out run high school defenders (particularly since we are chasing electron/slot receiver types now), but how does that translate to BCS conference competition? I'm not saying he won't be the next Wheatley or Biakabutuka, but he may also turn out to be the next Grady (pre-DUI) who was unable to break into the starting line-up. And Grady came in with an enormous amount of hype as well. The color of his skin, while unusual for a highly touted RB, is irrelevant.

It is highly unlikely that any RB we recruit will have the level of success that either of these backs. Their inclusion in my comment was not to imply that a RB had to have that level of achievement to have their career be considered successful.

.281 is fantastic, and is now a goal of mine

i tried looking up the number of future D1 athletes he was hurdling/juking, i found at least 6 by searching through rivals, cross referencing kids from schools he played in the last two years. yeah, its not eleventy billion like he'll face in ann arbor, but whatever.

From the 2005 ND UFR "Grady's long run, the cutback here is inexplicable. If he just keeps going he'll get caught, but another 20-30 yards downfield. Paul and Breaston get good blocks to open it up." We turned the ball over on their 12 yard line about 10 plays later. Seriously the game from hell.

So he hurdled a few kids in his mixtape. Those were highlights from an entire season. Let's not make out like McGuffie runs around jumping in the air on every down. That may have generated a lot of hype amongst your average joe, but I guarantee scouts and coaches were VERY impressed by a hell of a lot of other things they saw in that mixtape. re: Grady I am from Grand Rapids and watched about a dozen of Kevin Grady's games at EGR. 1. Michigan HS football just isn't Texas HS football. 2. EGR has been a dominant program in Class B for a long time. Believe me when I say that Grady wasn't doing it all himself. His younger brother, Kelvin, averaged ~9 yards a carry as the featured back at EGR, and he weighed 155-160 pounds. 3. Kevin was always a workhorse type back with pretty good top end speed but not very quick feet. He was a big, strong kid who was able to dominate smaller kids in HS. I never understood why Grady was rated a 5-star back. I just didn't see it. I think much of it has to do with the fact that he was offered as a sophomore and committed during the first couple weeks of his junior year along with all of the hype surrounding him being an in-state kid. I still believe McGuffie is the number one incoming freshman prospect in the nation regardless of position (yes, this includes you, Terrelle Pryor) and that he will make an impact this season.

when we mention McGuffie and Grady in the same sentence: He had better stats in HS against much tougher competition. He also is faster, quicker, and stronger.  I also don't think you will find anyone who disagrees with the fact that he appears to have better vision and balance than Grady. He is now 6'1" and ~200 pounds. You've got to see that the upside here is HUGE.

My point was more that some guys have success that is inline with the hype: Wheatley, Henson, Woodson; others don't: Grady, Loeffler, Mundy, Clayton Richards, Justin Fargas (injury and USC). And I can think of two guys that were in the room when the Heisman was awarded that weren't highly recruited: Mike Hart and Desmond Howard; and another one guy that won the Biletnikoff and was drafted #3: Braylon. (The story that was portrayed by the MSM was that Desmond was only spotted when we went to scout Grbac.) I hope that he lives up to the hype. And the little snippet indicating that he is performing well at practice makes a positive outcome seem more likely. But I won't fall into the man-crush that the guy sitting two seats down from me at the Stadium has over a high school kid he has only seen on YouTube. If he comes out this fall and looks like Breaston did his redshirt freshman year, I will be a believer. And if we had landed Pryor, I think he would have wound up on the failed to meet expectations list. Strikes me as a mouth breather. I'd much rather have Newsome, a kid who is (hopefully) choosing Michigan based upon the football as well as the academics (impressed by the b-school as I recall).

I wouldn't read too much into the reasons kids give for their commitment. I think Marques Slocum said once that he wanted to enroll in the B-school. It's like these guys are given a script to read off of.

For those of you who haven't seen it- an interview with Sam where he sheds some light on the hurdling: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OtFr9EiP0o MCGUFFIE!

Frickin' IDIOTS!

loldongs