While growing up, my dad was a high school basketball coach and one of his favorite sayings when watching a game was, “Never trust a fast a start.” In basketball, a fast start often leads to complacency, lackluster defense and most importantly, poor shot selection due to over-confidence from the early success.  For Michigan football this year, a fast start has meant a loss of perspective on what a quality season would like this year.

 

August 2009

 

The season was right around the corner and everyone was excited to put the taste of last year behind us.  We had a couple of new quarterbacks that we were excited to see, but knew that they were just true freshman.  We had seen the numbers on what a Rodriguez team does in year 2, but we also knew how far away from good this team was last year. 

 

In the off-season I had been toying around with a pre-season predictor.  It was based on my unit rankings from the previous year and used returning starts data as well as previous years recruiting rankings to build a projection for the coming season.  Each team got a final rating and those ratings were compared with the schedule to see how many games I thought each would win.  Here is what that looked like for the Big 10 this season:

 

Team	W	L	B10 W	B10 L
Ohio State	10.1	1.9	6.9	1.1
Penn State	9.5	2.5	5.8	2.2
Illinois	8.7	3.3	5.4	2.6
Iowa	8.3	3.7	5.1	2.9
Wisconsin	6.4	5.6	3.4	4.6
Northwestern	6.4	5.6	3.2	4.8
Minnesota	6.3	5.7	3.6	4.4
Michigan State	6.0	6.0	3.5	4.5
Michigan	6.0	6.0	3.2	4.8
Purdue	4.2	7.8	2.5	5.5
Indiana	2.8	9.2	1.4	6.6

 

 

Obviously, it got a couple of things wrong.  It didn’t have a Zook factor and overrated Illinois. Iowa and Wisconsin have squeaked out a few more wins than I expected, but looking back , this is going to turn out to be within a game or so of most teams in the Big 10. 

 

Michigan sits at 6-6 on the season.  In general, I would say that this projection was on the low but reasonable side of those who followed Michigan closely.  From what I read, 6-7 wins was the general consensus on where Michigan would finish up 2009.

 

October 2009

 

Michigan sits at 4-0 after a perfect September.  Thrilling wins over Notre Dame and Indiana were coupled with comfortable showing against Michigan directionals.  Tate Forcier was the toast of Ann Arbor and Denard Robinson was lightning in a bottle.  Sure there were some questions, the defense didn’t always look that dominant and the offense struggled at times, but hey we were 4-0. 

 

Even my rankings were drinking the kool-aid.  Now based solely on in season results, Michigan had jumped up:

 

Team	W	L
Iowa	10.9	1.1
Michigan	10.1	1.9
Penn State	8.9	3.1
Ohio State	8.2	3.8
Wisconsin	7.5	4.5
Indiana	6.3	5.7
Minnesota	6.8	5.3
Michigan State	5.6	6.4
Purdue	5.2	6.8
Northwestern	3.8	8.2
Illinois	2.5	9.5

 

The interesting this here is that the projected standings for the preseason look better now than the September final projections look, based on actual games played! 

 

But Michigan hot start had everything re-thinking there preseason expectations.  Now 7-5 went from best-case scenario to worst-case and a 9 or 10 win season seemed a possibility.  The fast start had blown the expectations out of the water. 

 

Present Day

 

No team has been beaten down by the false hopes of a fast start this year like the Michigan Wolverines.  

 

Team	W	L	Total Change
Iowa	10.0	2.0	-1.0
Penn State	9.7	2.3	1.0
Ohio State	9.4	2.6	1.2
Wisconsin	9.4	2.7	1.8
Northwestern	6.6	5.4	3.5
Michigan State	5.8	6.2	0.2
Minnesota	6.3	5.7	-0.5
Michigan	5.6	6.4	-4.3
Purdue	5.0	7.0	-0.1
Indiana	4.4	7.6	-1.9
Illinois	3.8	8.2	1.3

 

 

The Michigan State loss dropped the best-case scenario down rather quickly and the Illinois mess finished it off.  But look were the team is now sitting, flirting right around 6 wins, exactly where we started the season.

 

I understand this has been a needlessly complex look at what we all know, but I believe the reminder of where we started the season is critically important.  It can be argued that Michigan has shown flashes of greatness on offense and is possibly ahead of schedule.  Likewise, it would be tough to argue that we are were we hoped to be on the defensive side of the ball, the reasons for which have been covered in tremendous depth here at mgoblog.

 

If we lose to both Wisconsin and Ohio State, 5 wins with only a single win in the Big 10 would clearly be the bottom end of expectations coming into the season.  However, a single pickup in the final 2 puts us at 6-6 and right were a lot of thought we would be coming in.  

 

The let-down from the fast start has been painful, but let’s not let it sidetrack us from the greater picture which is a program that a lot of house cleaning to do and is completely rid of the ugly yet.