Answer the Wisc. Offense debate for yourself: UM v. Wisc. on BTN now
I'd love to watch it, but I'm scheduled for a waterboarding at noon, and after that I'm planning to spend the rest of the day pulling out my beard hairs one at a time.
I defintely prefer the power rushing attack, but just because the spread didn't fully develop for us doesn't mean it is a terrible offense.
Not many here think it was a terrible offense or anything close to it. The recent chatter comes from Brian treating it so preciously and with extremely favorable bias, to the point where he pounds his chest about offensive accomplishments in games where we weren't really producing until it was out of reach and then going on auto-excuse for ALL shortcomings with "Well, you know, we had an underclassman quarterback, man."
Sounds fun, but I think I would rather watch games in which we don't get our ass handed to us.
They ran at us straight up the middle 24 times in a row and we couldn't stop it.
Sure, their offense was good, but this was mostly due to our epic FAIL of a defense.
To be fair, it wasn't just our defense who couldn't stop them for a damn. And our defense was (apparently) better than Indiana's.
The debate is a reference to Brian's two "No no, you don't understand. Our offense last year was a monster and the Wisconsin game enhances the proof of this" posts.
I watched up until the missed FG. I can't relive that nightmare anymore.
Spielman may be a buckeye but he is one of the most entertaining and knowledgeable color men in the business. Hope he does the OSU game this year so he can show how to be a good loser.
Is it really painful? I never get this. People say "Nooooo, I can't waaaatch" like it's a family member being murdered. It's a football game.
for sharing that.
All part of a new series: Ugliest Games in Big 10 History. Next week, Michigan vs Michigan State 2002. Stay tuned for our special marathon, "Each of Northwestern's 34 Straight Losses From 1979-82 in 60 Minutes: Per Game."
Brian mumbling "ignore scoring, only focus on yardage being one standard deviation above the mean" vs. Everyone else on the planet thinking he can't see the forest from the trees now constitutes a debate? Wow.
Quite a few people agree with Brian. Being down by 9 with most of the 2nd half left does not equal us getting demolished.
Umm, yes it does. Because most of the game was spent by us being down more than 20.
...because of the defense
No, it was because of both sides of the ball (and special teams can't be overlooked either). Every time Wisconsin scored, our offense got the ball back. In order for Wisconsin to build that lead, they had to stop our offense, which they did all first half. Otherwise we would have kept on tying the game.
We had 5 possessions in the first half. 1 missed field goal. 1 we got back with 30 seconds to play in the half at our own 15 yard line. So you are basically saying our offense was awful because they didn't convert on three 1st half possessions. Some of the best offenses in the nation were shut down 3 times in the first half. Those same teams were probably not down by 24 at the half. It wasn't the offense, it was the defense.
The 93 rose bowl for an occasion just like this.
Only down 9 with 9min left in the third...we have a chance!
Damn, we need Stonum this year. He was the man in this game. Great catches.
Roundtree and Hemingway are actually better route runners and more instinctive players. If they can get their issues with drops straightened out, we won't miss Stonum that much.
Offense was fine. Defense was just turrible. Hurts to watch, but it can only get better, right?
An offense that scores zero points in a half is not fine. Thanks to our complete failure to show up in the first half, in all three phases of the game, we faced a deficit (24-0) larger than any we've overcome in school history.
That 2nd round draft pick by the Chargers still has me scratching my head.
Maybe the Chargers don't use defensive schemes that use "containment"
I couldn't really bear to watch, but I did just catch the last series. The field and the uniforms looked really pretty in the late fall sunshine. That was the only thing good about it.
Please, Lord, let this season be much better.
Brian taught me that you can't watch that game without a graphing calculator handy.
I mean, yes, you "saw" the game. But did you really SEE it?
You must be stupid if you don't agree with me. Stop using your feelings to judge what you saw.
Got a pie chart for that opinion? No? Then I'm not listening. Sorry.
In 2007 Michigan had a team loaded with offensive talent. Hart, Henne, Manningham, Arrington, Long, they were stacked. Michigan scored 21 points against Wisconsin that year in a loss gaining 320 yards total.
Last years team scored 28 points against Wisconsin and gained 442 total yards.
In both games the defense was horrible and cost Michigan the game.
Hart and Henne didn't play that game. DeBord was still employed as our offensive coordinator. And Michigan essentially treated it as an exhibition game since they needed to beat OSU so badly and a loss wouldn't affect their Rose Bowl scenario.
So what is your point exactly?
Yes, completely ignore the catastrophic injuries to Henne and Hart in 2007, and ignore 2010's points coming almost entirely once Wisconsin stopped giving anything approaching max effort. Ridiculous.
If I remember correctly the 2007 Wisco game was the 2nd to last game of the regular season, and was not as important as the final game vs OSU in terms of winning the b10 and going to the Rose bowl. A win vs. Wisco and a loss vs OSU would have been the same as a loss and a loss (cap 1 bowl, due to the terrible non-conference performance at large BCS was out of the picture). As such, if my memory serves me, Henne and Hart played very limited roles in that game. So the list of 2007 offensive talent at our disposal in 2007 doesn't reflect what was actually on the field against Wisconsin.
Mallet (another NFL draftee) threw 3 TD's against Wisconsin that game. He threw two picks but Henne threw one himself that game. Hart didn't play but the rest of the offense did. While one could make the case that Michigan was saving things for OSU the following week that would fall flat a bit. Michigan scored 3 points the following week against OSU in which Henne and Hart played the entire game. They must not have saved much...
Most definitely did not play the entire game the next week. I was sitting in section 11 and remember Henne making multiple trips to the locker room during the game.
Henne was 11/34 in the OSU game. Hart had 18 carries for 44 yards. The defense played one of their best games all year against OSU and the offense sucked.
Henne and Hart weren't even close to being healthy that day. Their horrifically low production should make that clear. They saw the field for one reason: they were seniors against OSU.
It was more the weather and Ohio State not trying to throw the ball that made the defense look good that day.
Any time a 'back runs for well over 200 yards and by his 35th carry is wearing YOU down, it's not a strong performance.
Henne was 11/34 in the OSU game. Hart had 18 carries for 44 yards. The defense played one of their best games all year against OSU and the offense sucked.
Please don't use the fact that Ryan Mallett is an NFL draftee as a point of favor with him. There's a big difference between what a guy does his freshman year and what he does after 3-4 years of development.
Second, you can't heal season long injuries in a week or so. It was a long shot that they would be healthy by OSU, but one that they had to take if they wanted to win the Big Ten Title
Almost like Denard being a first year starter? One that was hurt numerous times throughout the year? Combine with Shaw being hurt? In fact Shaw didn't play in the Wisconsin game...
That is a valid excuse right? Or is a double standard being used?
In 2010, Denard Robinson was a sophomore and a regular starter. Ryan Mallett in 2007 was a true freshman backup who was pressed into service when Henne went down. A more apt comparison would be Mallett 2007 : Denard 2009. Both were dreadfully inaccurate passers as freshmen.
It's true that we weren't entirely healthy for UW last year, but Denard almost certainly was healthier than Henne at the end of 2007, and I don't think Shaw (who has never rushed for more than 400 yards in a season) can be compared to Mike Hart, our school's all-time leading rusher, in importance.
But anyway, if you want to argue that the Wisconsin game, alone, can't be used as a condemnation of last year's offense, I don't disagree. I don't think single games can be used to prove a point. My issue with last year's offense was that in every week from MSU onward (save Illinois), the offense was shut down for long stretches and did most of its scoring in desperation time. One week can be a fluke. Seven times in eight games? Not so much.
So you don't want to use one game to prove a point, right? Why don't we look at the whole season then, because with all of that talent on the 07 team, they had to have had a better offense as we all know the 2010 offense was shut down way too much.
2007 Michigan Offense:
7 wins
26.1 points per game (9th in B10)
373.5 yards per game (10th in B10)
2489 passing yards (8th in B10)
1993 rushing yards (6th in B10)
2010 Michigan Offense:
34.3 points per game (3rd in B10)
500.9 yards per game (1st in B10)
2998 passing yards (2nd in B10)
3013 rushing yards (2nd in B10)
And before you decide to tell me how often Henne and Hart were injured or the level of competition, remember that people bitch all day about RichRod running Denard too much because he didn't make it all the way through many games. And remember, for every time the 2010 team put up 42 against UMass, 65 against bowling green, and 67 against Illinois , the 2007 team put up 38 against a shitty ND team, put up 32 against Appy State and lost, put up 33 against EMU, and put up 48 against purdue. So for as much as you want to hate last year's offense, they played a similar schedule and vastly outperformed the 07 offense that had 5 players drafted into the NFL. Oh, and both teams won 7 games. I don't know why we started comparing the 07 offense to last year's anyway.
I agree with you, but we won 8 in 07, plus the bowl win against Florida.
For some reason I thought we won 7 in 07. We definitely won 9. Maybe I was counting the Appy State and Oregon losses as 2 each.
I honestly don't know the answer to this question, but a proper comparison would be to look at the number of yards/points per possession, when the team was within 10 points (arbitrary but you get my point) of their opponent. The big criticism of the 2010 team was that they put up those stats in meaningless situations.
This argument has gotten to a point that I don't understand. What are you trying to prove? That the 2010 offense was better than the 2007 offense? Who cares? I mean why does that matter at all? Are you assuming that Hoke wants to revert directly to the 2007 offense?
I didn't bring up the 07 offense. It was brought up and then it was compared to the 2010 offense. Either way, my point was that our offense in 2010 was better than any offense we have seen for a very long time and was at the top of the B10 in most categories. So for all the bitching about when we scored against good opponents, we played pretty much the same schedule as every year and outperformed all of those offenses. It really isn't that tough to see that this offense was good. For everyone saying we padded our stats with big scores against Illinois (who was a bowl eligible team) and bowling green, I was pointing to years in which our offense padded stats against a 3 win ND and a shitty purdue by scoring nearly 90 points against the 2 of them. I guess if you want to look at individual games and say "see, against Wisconsin we didn't score in the first half" you can. But considering we played the exact same schedule as every other year, why not just look at overall numbers, in which we had a very, very good offense. If your point is that we struggled against better defenses, then I would say "no shit....most good defenses tend to be, you know, good."