Angelique Chengelis' predictions
Once again, they look terrible.
http://www.detnews.com/article/20090516/SPORTS0203/905160406/1132/sport…
FWIW, I think she's a little rosey on each. I think MSU also loses to Notre Dame and Iowa, making them 8-4.
I don't think UM beats Illinois, making us 6-6.
I agree. She says that MSU will win against Wisconsin. But then she says if they were @Wisconsin, it could be a different story. The thing is, MSU does play @ Wisconsin-they are not at home-which could be another L.
could be the undoing of both MSU and UM this year.
MSU's defense has a lot of LB stars, but their DL must be completely reconstructed. Secondary and LB corps is quite good however. Offensively, MSU should be OK with the two talented new QBs, and they have enough OL experience to grind it out with Jimmerson, Baker or Caper as the next "Ringer II". Other than defense, MSU's schedule is probably the toughest in the Big Ten this year, despite no OSU. That CMU game plus the road contests at ND, at Wiscy, at ILL and at Minny will be tougher than usual. 8-4-0 is more likely.
Michigan is probably going 6-6 and might be 5-7. 7-5-0 is too optimistic. This year I expect UM to lose some winnable games and win some unexpected mismatches. The "winnable road games" are at Wiscy, at ILL and at Iowa. If MSU is unbeaten heading into East Lansing, I like Michigan's chances of an upset there too.
ND, PSU and OSU could be big surprise games for UM played in the Big House.
Losing to ND 17-13 would be a win to our secondary, right now that score looks like a pipe dream.
A loss is never a win. There are no moral victories in Michigan football, especially against ND. Holding them to 17 points is solid, but we score 13 points against them I'll kick myself in the face.
You had better start stretching your hamstrings, friend.
Yuck, dude.
I am very concerned about what our defense is going to look like come this fall. Notre Dame's strength on offense is the deep ball and our biggest weakness could be our secondary.
3 TDs, 1st half. #11 Michigan 47, #2 ND 21.
I'd love to see that again, but, this isn't 2006.
but I was noting the parallelism between the two. Except that no one would overrate M this year.
I wanted to stop reading after MSu goes 10-2. Their offense was a one word answer and it rhymes with bringer. Also, it's apparent that every game is 17-13, 21-24, 17-14 etc. It's not like an offense could score more than 4 or 5 TDs in a Big Ten game. She is not on my Iowa hype bandwagon thingy which also disappointed me.
MSU's defense will be good this year. They have a good group of WRs and Cousins/Nichol will probably be an upgrade over Hoyer. 8 or 9 wins is not out of the realm of possibility for them.
I normally like Chengelis, but given that MSU has posted exactly one 10-win season in the past 20 years, I'm surprised she's going with that, especially given that they have to break in a new QB/RB. Their new QB may have more raw talent than Hoyer, but he'll probably make more costly mistakes, too. As for RB, it's unclear if they have a comparable back to Ringer in the pipeline.
OTOH, her prediction for us may pan out. We'll see.
Last year she said we would go 9-3 and we went 3-9. I know some people were saying we would win that many games but that was not realistic, even then(I thought they would go 7-5 last year). I don't think Cousins is as good as everyone is saying either. He didn't know what to do when he was under pressure. He would throw off his back foot, etc. Of course he has more experience now though.
Nichol will end up taking most of the snaps this year.
I guess because the B10 and especially M is down and Dantonio is a better coach that JLW and Bobby Williams,it makes sense, but time will tell if Sparty is the upper division team that the MSM wishes it to be.