Is this team still who we thought they would be?

Dongpunch'd.

(Yes, I used this on another thread -- just consider this to be the proper response to every post until sometime around Monday.)

Really because last I checked NW just beat Iowa, OSU lost to Purdue and Wisconsin had all it could handle with Indiana.

Yeah we have no chance in hell let's just hang it up.

We score roughly 30 points a game and the defense sucks because of attrition. WHat the hell do you want Rich to do?

http://mgoblog.com/diaries/decimated-defense-part-ii-statisticating

http://kecute.files.wordpress.com/2007/11/otter-beer.jpg

I think that so many of our problems come from being young, a lack of talent and not having a vocal leader. There is no way that before the season started anyone would guess that Kovacs would be a starter for the University of Michigan. This is not a shot at Kovacs in anyway, he does an admirable job but he just doesn't seem like he is a D-1 athlete so when he makes mistakes that some players could overcome with their athletic ability, he gets burned. Also, Mike Williams, although projected as a starter has struggled mightily. I think that some of his issues have to be blamed on the coaches but he has to take some accountability as well. When you are playing with 2 sub par safeties your entire defense will struggle. We cannot play as aggressive as GRob would like us too because we cannot bank on having a solid safety to stop the big play. It also seems like there is no vocal leader on the defense. In his interviews BG has stated that being a leader is not his natural role, but that he has worked at it because he knows the team needs one. Maybe this is why it seems like UM suffers with "momentum" shifts in game. Anyway, I definitely think that the coaches have to take responsibility for the way this team has played but their definitely have been tough circumstances for this team to overcome on the defensive side of the ball.

Our defense has been terrible (save for 1 or 2 teams) for the better part of a decade.

The streak continues...

But what I would like to know is what all of these "calm down this is what we expected" folks think at this point.

Have a tiny shred of patience. Yes, last year sucked. Yes, this year sucks now. Once we get to a point where we aren't remaking the entire offensive line mid-season, where we've had some time to fix our depth problems - which we obviously can't do mid-season - and for the freshmen and redshirted players to have another offseason to develop, things should hopefully be better next year.

But I sure as heck expected this team to not get crushed by Illinois and choke a game away against Purdue when they had a two touchdown lead at the half.

This is the Purdue team that beat Ohio State, and the Illinois team that has Juice Williams, who has a knack for ripping our defense to shreds. I don't think either of the losses should have been gigantic shocks.

I thought we'd be further along, too. I get that we're really short on players and didn't expect more than looking generally more competitive against the big boys and beating the small fry again. Sucks to still be having mental lapses and emotional collapses and total team fail, but them's the breaks.

Rodriguez absolutely needs to have a team that is solid fundamentally next year. If we must have a talent gap, then so be it. But a discipline and focus gap, that is something that is correctable. We've got to give him more time to see if that that "Hard Edge' will ever re-materialize.

As a fan, I hope they pull this thing together.

Next year is looking poor. The defense had a few glimmers of hope at linebacker I thought as Fitz and Leach both looked better than those they replaced. But let's be serious about our chances of improvement.

This offense is already very dangerous and can't make up for the terrible defense. Next season we will probably see a drop-off in the effectiveness of the D-Line without BG, a drop-off in our ability to cover (if that is possible, my brain won't let me imagine such horrors) with Warren probably going pro, hopefully slightly better linebacker play though we lose Stevie Brown, and the safties... don't even go there. Too much pain there.

So maybe Tate and Denard can take the offense to another level but the defense looks to fall off a cliff. There shouldn't even be a cliff there but somehow I suspect there is. No matter how great the offense manages to be, I don't see us winning more than around 6-7 games next year. And with how this season is rounding out, three straight losing seasons is a very real possibility.

Gag.

I don't see any way out of this mess. If we make no bowl game recruiting is going to take a major hit as well. I just can't believe how quickly this program went from being on the rise to being on the ropes. Somebody pinch me, I need to wake up from this nightmare.

The offense has been decent considering that the QB is a true freshman. You write that they don't always make the big play when the game is on the line, but even the best offenses don't do that. They move the ball far better than they did last year.

The defense has been worse than expected, but for the expected reasons. The new safeties have been totally inadequate and the linebackers have not improved. Unfortunately, we don't have a lot of options at those positions.

Basically, we're bad because a lot of areas that looked like potential problems before the season have been big problems.

with just a few more decent secondary players, Michigan would bet getting a passing grade and finish 7-5 easily this year.
I say this with confidence despite the black hole that is the Michigan LB corps.

There was offensive regression also, and the excuse has been injuries (Molk, Minor, Brown).

I was wrong to think the team would steadily improve as the season progressed in 2009. I thought the same back in 2008.
It never works out that way.

As far as 2010 goes, Michigan lost only two games decisively this year (Penn State and Illinois). The rest were close wins or close losses. That's typically a very good sign when your team is very young.

Michigan is an incredibly young and undermanned football team. There will be a lot of players coming back next year on both sides of the ball.

If Michigan goes 5-7, which it looks like they will, it'll be interesting to see how recruiting finishes up in February.

First, apologies for noticing your typo. It was the only amusing thing to happen today.

This is a bad team. No question about it. Good teams have bad games, and bad teams pull together a few good games. We've pulled together a few good games, but regressed toward the team's mean ability and talent level in the rest. Thus, we are probably headed toward 5-7.

I would like to believe we are better than last year, and I think the offense is, but the offense is only 1/3 of the team and the game. The other 2/3 does not look much improved. The defense just plain sucks, and Zoltan the Magnificent is the only bright spot on special teams.

My heart would like to believe that we can beat Wisconsin or Ohio State. But, my calm, rational mind looks at this team and says, "When pigs fly."

What worries me more than the rest of this year, is next season. Us, calm, rational types maintained (at one time) that by 2010, the team will have more experience, be more comfortable with the system, and possibly be challenging for a B10 title.

Take a look at the roster on defense and tell me that's realistic. Does anyone really believe that Kevin Leach, Ryan Van Bergen, and Jonas Mouton are going to be significantly better next year? At best, we're looking at a year in which the offense had better score a shit-load of points, because the defense won't be able to stop a skateboard with square wheels.

During his WTKA appearance on Monday, Brian talked about next year's defense, and how there is just not that much to get excited about. There won't be any much more depth that what we see right now, and much of the starting unit (BG notwithstanding) will be the same folks. Probably the same leaky sieve we have now, and possibly worse, if it can be believed.

Well, clearly, not at all.

There are some big questions ahead:

-Can we salvage the season by picking up a win over these last two games?

-If the defense next year looks just as bad as it does this year, what will Rodriguez do?

-Will Bouje continue to yell at anyone that doesn't shower praise on Rodriguez?

-What is the realistic win count next year before we can say Rodriguez is safe?

Who is hired as AD is probably the biggest question of all though. If Brandon gets hired, and Rodriguez has a less than stellar season next year, I don't think we can expect to have him back.

No. This is not a Dennis Green moment. They are worse than what we thought they would be. Toss away the Del State win which was meaningless and you are looking at the true state of the Michigan program.

-Can we salvage the season by picking up a win over these last two games?

Yes, but at the same time I don't know how realistic this really is.

-If the defense next year looks just as bad as it does this year, what will Rodriguez do?

Rodriguez will pack his bags because there's a good chance that he'll be gone. Sorry.

-Will Bouje continue to yell at anyone that doesn't shower praise on Rodriguez?

We'll see.

-What is the realistic win count next year before we can say Rodriguez is safe?

7-6 minimum. Going 6-6 and getting beat by Akron at the Pizza Pizza Bowl won't cut it.

Somehow we did manage to prevail against Notre Dame. We were in that one to the end. And then we stopped improving week by week. I don't know why. BTW, I have tried having clam thoughts but lose interest after several minutes. There are only so many repetitions of "filter feed...must...filter feed" I can endure. Perhaps I can get back into clam thinking when it's time to reproduce. Or not.

What do you want the "rational" people to say? Losing sucks. I'm not happy about it - nobody is. But what the fucking alternative? Rabble on a fucking message? Express my EXTREME DISAPPOITMENT in tiny little pixels? Jesus - the best thing that can happen is that Rodriguez succeeds. As a fan, I'm going to root for that, rather than play some stupid-ass game of one up-manship so you can claim some sort of bizarre satisfaction in seeing "the reasonable people" eat their hat. You people can sit here and speculate what future W/L records gets the man canned, but I'd rather shoot a nail gun through my scrotum. We're 5-5. I'm going to cheer for them next weekend. That's all I know.

Times like this make me wish my Michigan diploma was shipped with a complementary bottle of Maker's Mark this summer.

This is not my beautiful house!
This is not my beautiful wife!

true freshman quarterbacks and 4 walk-on equivalents on defense? Is that something that changed? What changes is how easily we're able to resolve those facts with our desire to think positively about the team.

I thought The Mighty Godriguez could win with INFERIOR TALENT?!

I though The Mighty Godriguez didn't give a fuck about starz and shit--his system just WORKS!

Man, enough excuse making for this guy. The program is in complete disarray. Remember when UM was 4-0? Well, la-de-frickin'-da--The MNighty Godriguez was THE coach and the players were finally listening to this staff! WOWIE!

Now, the excuses roll out and we need to be patient. Ha! Right--and now we are a joke.

And if there isn't much hope for the defense (not to mention the offense) next year--then this WAS a mistake!!!

Here's something interesting: I was listening to the game on XM radio, to the Purdue feed (Brandy and Beckman? I'd rather eat a big pile of poop, thank you). After the game a Purdue offensive lineman was interviewed and asked about his belief that Purdue would move the ball on UM in the second half.

His reply (paraphrased): We felt they were small and light [on defense] and we could just push them out of our way and we were right. They were too easy to move off the ball.

Also, the Purdue announcers were wondering why Rodriguez was taking time outs with four minutes to go, Purdue pinned deep in their own zone, and punting into the wind. Well, I was too.

Yada yada, give The Mighty Godriguez another year--I agree with that sentiment (sediment?LOLZ--TOo soon?). But if this team looks half as shitty next year, wow, it's time for TMG to go, go, go.

And don't call for assistant coaches to be fired. Who the fuck is gonna come here to replace anyone if they don't know whether they'll be back in 2011? Tough call.