Sorry, but Sam is a blowhard who can't say anything negative about the program.  His words should be taken with a grain of salt because of that.

Sam said a few things that made me smile because he's so comically predictable in his homerism.

He dropped the "it's only the third game" line. Apparently we should all be ignoring that so far the best we've seen from Michigan is a spotty performance against MTSU but we should believe that this isn't who the team actually is yet.

He really wanted to talk about how good Wisconsin is rather than how bad Michigan is.

He also thinks the team could get a lot better because they're not even doing the fundamentals well. So, in Sam's eyes, being terrible at even the most basic concepts is reason for a positive outlook.

I love Sam, but there are a few things I disagree with this week:

1. He keeps saying, "these things are fixable."  However, I believe most of our problems are NOT fixable.  Our D-line getting their shit pushed in by Wisconsin or any similar team is inevitable.  We lack size/strength in the middle, and we lack playmakers on the edge.  Shea's vision/ability to anticipate open receivers is likely not going to improve.  He is what he is.  These are two huge problems that are not going to be fixed and will prevent us from winning any significant games this year.

2. He recapped the Wisconsin game a couple times, and each time he mentioned Ronnie Bell's 68 yard reception he said "the defender had the angle on him, this wasn't a piano on the back situation."  Bullshit.  I paused my TV right after the play happened, and Bell had a two yard head start on the defender, who was coming from the middle of the field.  Bell was on the 48 yard line while the defender was on the 50.  He got chased down.  There was no damn angle.  Having an angle is when you're coming from the middle of the field but you at least have a distance advantage.

3. He loves saying "Michigan got off script because they got so far behind."  That's a cop out.  It was just a very poorly called game by Gattis.  Your "script" should be designed to score points.  There is no need to go "off script".  Definitely not in the first half, when there was plenty of time left in the game, even down 21-0.  And second half the game was basically over, so why not run what you feel has the best chance of scoring points?

Having vision might be innate, but nobody is born with the ability to throw a ball under duress and see everything.

QBs are taught to read coverage in a variety of different ways. Some determine Middle of Field Closed (MOFC-1 High safety) or Middle of Field Open (2-High safeties) and make their reads off of that. Some systems eliminate half the field pre-snap and then read one guy to go to Player A or Player B on that side of the field (a lot of 3 step stuff uses this). Some read space and ask their guys to go through true progressions--If Player A is covered from a guy to his right then the QB will progress to his right to find the next open man, read, etc. 

This should get drilled ad nauseum along with QB footwork and I imagine Michigan's coaches are doing this in some capacity.

I'm been as critical of Patterson as anyone, but he's getting too much blame for not seeing a guy away from his initial read because the cornerback happened to fall down. You know the guys who can visually see the field like that? NFL Hall of Famers. 

The Patterson issue is that he doesn't pull the trigger to throw the football when he should. He's waiting for a guy to be super open as opposed to slightly open. And with a WR corps that hasn't shown an ability to get super open, it's just a bad fit. It has happened since he's been here and at this point I don't think it's fixable (or worth the investment to fix it). He's a good game manager QB. He's probably not a guy who's going to win you a game where you need to throw it 40 times.

I cant remember the team but they've started to try to train with VR

You know what?  I saw what our coaches were made of after Indiana exposed our defense last season.  Adjust? or put your head in the sand and drive to Columbus? The result was a historic ass whipping by OSU who followed that blueprint perfectly.  

How would they respond in the bowl game?

Like shit, thats how.  Uninspired, unmotivated, quitters.  That's when I jumped off the Harbaugh train.

This season has started out almost exactly like last season ended, only this time with less overall talent and the deck chairs freshly shuffled. 

I love Michigan football, but I don't have much optimism for this season.

BPONE is the opposite of panic. BPONE is accepting the suck. Last stage of grief is acceptance/BPONE.

Everyone knows that technically we could suddenly drastically improve and go on to win the B1G Championship.

The issue is that, for painfully obvious reasons (current as well as historical trends), there's virtually zero reason to actually believe that such a turnaround will happen....ie. BPONE.

Losing by a lot to a team you shouldn't and losing and looking god-awful are very different things. Michigan hasn't looked like a team that knows what they're doing, and that's troubling because we have seen these players play well and do good things.

Yes, they can turn it around I'm not holding out much hope. This feels like a 7/8 win team, at best.

There's one big difference with Michigan, though. They have been pretty bad for like 6 games in a row now. Haven't covered the spread by at least 2 touchdowns in every one of those games. This is not just a weird one game blip.

I think it goes back to what Space Coyote said this week.. they should have added spread tweaks to the existing offense, not scrap it and start over. We're seeing the transition cost is far higher than we expected and one offseason was not nearly enough time to get even the basics installed.

You know tough times? Class of 2011, meaning my first game was App State. You may know tough times, but you merely adopted the times. My fandom was born in it, molded by it. 

I will be negative about the prospects of this season, while still loving this school, as this is all I have ever known, but for a few brief glimpses of good times.

His job is to be positive and I don't blame him; it's mostly access journalism for him at 24/7.

At the same time, the nihilist/ironic rueful laughing is equally infuriating.  Yes, the football team isn't winning as we wanted.  These were also the same people who LOUDLY complained about a need to change the offense, then LOUDLY lauded the hiring of a first-time OC and acted like installing a new offensive philosophy is the same as picking a new playbook in Madden.  It's tiring.

There are costs to everything, and this season may be one for Michigan trying to catch up to the elite teams offensively.  I still think they'll improve as the season progresses.

The dumpster-fire talk is a bit premature; it's been one game.  Does it portend a positive rest of the season? Nope.  But we've seen things click both at UM and elsewhere.

That's an ok response to the Army game, but the Wisconsin loss was historically bad. Being over-hyped doesn't counterbalance that ass-beating. Being over-hyped doesn't negate repeatedly failing the eye test either (fumbles, QB play, fumbles, defense out of position, fumbles, etc., fumbles).

Michigan lost somewhat annoyingly to ND to start last year and responded by winning 10 straight games, often blowing teams out.  So yeah, some recency bias of "punched in the face".