Maybe he should just replace his avatar with this.

I'm not sure I see the connection between size and likelihood of tearing an ACL. I agree about McGuffie, he probably wasn't physically prepared for Big 10 football and he got knocked around and suffered multiple concussions. His size, or lack thereof, was probably a significant factor. V Smith's injury, a torn ACL, has absolutely nothing to do with his size. Even if there is some correlation between lack of size and certain types of injuries, it wouldn't apply to a torn ACL, IME.

I agree somewhat with the sentiment, but remember that its not like the defense has been lights-out for the past few years. We keep talking about how bad the defense is and how they are losing their best players, but they were one of the worst defenses in the country the past two years. They were 81st this year and 87th the year before. Sure, losing Graham will be a major hole, but it's not like Brown was a revelation as a LB or that Warren was a major contributor the second half of the season. Brown was competent as a LB, and after No Stevie! that might be a major improvement, but objectively it wasn't as big of an improvement as people seem to think. As for Warren, he was a top DB for the first half of the year, but he started to fall off badly toward the end of the year, and maybe his ceiling is a bit lower than everyone figured after taking over against weaker teams like Indiana and non-ND OOC teams. I guess my point is that the offense should improve if for no other reason than the fact the starting QBs will not be freshmen, and the offensive line and WRs should improve somewhat with more experience/talent. The defense will be a work in progress, but I just can't see them being that much worse. They'll patchwork together a defensive line, pray the LBs figure out how to tackle in space, and deal with a shoddy secondary. Maybe 9 wins is a stretch, but 8-5 with a bowl win is certainly not out of the realm of possibility. ND will likely be in flux with a new coach and most of their offense leaves (as everyone expects) and their defense continues to be about as bad as UM's. Indiana will be tough, but I also think they played a great game against a UM team that was riding a little high on itself after beating ND and EMU. BGSU and UMass should be wins. UConn might be looking for a new coach (there have been rumblings Edsall might wind up in Kansas or Cincy if Kelly leaves), so who knows how that will play out. MSU and Iowa at home will certainly be more winnable than on the road, and PSU and Illinois will be replacing QBs that have tormented UM over the years. Purdue will be using another first-year signal-caller. Wiscy and OSU will be tough again, but that shouldn't surprise anyone. Maybe it is just me, but I see 6-7 wins on the board right now, and depending on how the team does in recruiting and who they have filling the gaps of the departing players, even 8-9 wins is not crazy. I know people are down about this program right now, and people will argue that they could easily have gone 3-9 again this year. At the same time, though, they were a couple of bounces from going 7-5 or even 8-4. Stuff like that happens all the time, and the same travails and upheavel UM is going through is also happening to many of their upcoming opponents.