Borges Gets Contract, Raise
congrats gorgeous
650K seems about right. Congrats sir.
especially since he never proved that he could call anything offensively to combat pressure last year. Hopefully that isn't an issue again this year.
You have a statistical analysis or a chart to back up this assertion? Inquiring minds want to know......Not enough bubble screens?
April 17th, 2012 at 11:12 AM ^
Yeah, $650 is WAY too much. I mean it's not like the guy has 20+ years of experience coordinating offenses across the country. And it's not like he had massive success in a major conference like the SEC. I bet he was never even the OC of a team that finished with a perfect record in the SEC averaging over 40 ppg.
And just look at his performance at Michigan. Totally unable to adjust his style of coaching to the incongruous personnel that he inherited. The way he forced Denard into an ill fitting pro style offense with his "my way or the highway" attitude really set our program back.
/s
Gracias for an alternate link, rather give annarbor.com page hits than the freep.
AnnArbor.com isn't much better. They basically just troll for comments with inflammatory articles/headlines.
April 16th, 2012 at 10:55 PM ^
I'll take misleading headlines and unoriginal content over active sabotage of the program and outright lies any day.
Great to see that Brandon is truly commited to paying top dollar for great coordinators. Whenever our next assistant leaves, I have no doubt that we will be able to lure in a top coach to replace him.
April 16th, 2012 at 10:19 PM ^
Any increase to a ticket that makes the Massachusetts game $70 is allowed to be bitched about.
April 16th, 2012 at 10:39 PM ^
Simple solution: voice your dissatisfaction by not going to that game. Or scalp the ticket for $30 like everyone else.
Also, a serious question: Would you rather have ticket prices to the better games jacked up and ticket prices to lesser games lessened, or have it the way it is now? We both know that the athletic department isn't going to lower overall prices after spending around $300 million on the stadium in the past few years and paying top dollar for our head coach and his assistants.
That's good money, and he deserves it. Michigan should pay their coaches well. No school will pay Borges enough more than that as an OC for him to leave, and he's not much of a HC candidate at this point in his career. Hell, the schools who would look at him as a HC don't pay much more than that.
pressers. Talk about a tough act to follow.
Good move by Dave Brandon. Al Borges will be 57 years old this year and this should keep him around until he retires.
Not every day you see an OC get a raise for making the offense worse.
/TRUTH'd
/SACRILICIOUS
You realize the offense actually scrored more pts per game (33.3 vs. 32.8) last year than they did the year before. You know, points, those things really do come in handy if you want to do things like win games and such
/really hoping there was some sarcasm in there that i'm missing
We played a MUCH easier schedule last year. Playing at home is a big difference in college football, brohammer.
RR >>> Gorgeous Al.
/Hoke uber alles, etc.
How as Richrod's offense in year one? How was Al's offense in year one? Ok
Insert Threet/Sheridan caveat, but at least Borges had the sense to utilize the pieces he was given and run a spread-type offense
It's not just Threet/Sheridan caveat. It's "every fucking one else on the fucking field" caveat.
Can you name a single offensive position for which we were better off personnel-wise in 2008 than in 2011?
April 16th, 2012 at 10:04 PM ^
Yep, freshmen do become seniors eventually. It's this weird thing called time. You can only go forward and normally when football players go from 17 to 21 they get stronger and better in games. It's tough to grasp.
April 16th, 2012 at 10:29 PM ^
Of course, part of the reason we had to start a freshman at QB in 2008 was because the guy who was supposed to be our starter (Mallett) got into a pissing match with Rodriguez and transferred.
Three years later, we could have had to start another redshirt frosh QB (Gardner) if the returning starter had transferred (as he was rumored to be considering), but the staff was successful in getting him, and just about everyone else, to stay put. They deserve some credit for that.
April 16th, 2012 at 11:00 PM ^
Mallett never even talked to RR face to face. He was leaving before RR ever stepped foot in AA. Mallett and Carr didn't get along and Mallett was leaving no matter what.
April 16th, 2012 at 11:01 PM ^
But I think he was sort of agreeing with you.
April 16th, 2012 at 11:10 PM ^
I think you may be correct. Fuck. Apologies to that guy for being smart when I thought he was being dumb...
April 16th, 2012 at 11:56 PM ^
April 16th, 2012 at 11:42 PM ^
number of returning starters on offense
2008 = 2
2011 = 8
RR was hired to run the spread, for better or worse. It was going to be a difficult transition that took some time. To delay it would have set the team back in 2009 and 2010. Sheridan was probably best suited for the spread anyway, only Threet was truly a poor fit.
Would the spread n shred have gone much better that year if we had somehow returned Henne, Hart, and a few more O-linemen? Probably some, but it wasn't going to rule. Richrod was live and die by the spread.
My point is that I think Borges has been a vastly better OC at Michigan because he has adapted to what he has in place, not what he wishes was in place. I'm sure he could've run Vincent Smith Iso's for 1 yard all year enroute to 18 points a game but he didn't. He spread it out, and we were good and we'll run the pro-style stuff when we get more pro-style players because Al Borges is smart and he deserves some cash
April 17th, 2012 at 10:29 AM ^
If RR was brought in and had Henne, Hart, et al returning and forced an ill-suited offense on them, you would have a valid criticism. You would have actually been comparing apples to apples.
April 17th, 2012 at 12:30 PM ^
My point is, I don't know why Richrod gets a pass because he was a 100%-spread-guy. Clearly we were going to be pretty bad in 2008 no matter what, but running the read option with Threet didn't help.
Borges did a better job because, even though we want to install a pro style offense, he didn't try to have Denard throw a bunch of fly routes to Odoms / Gallon / Roundtree because that's insane. They're guys that are built for the spread and fortunately Borges adapted his offense to utilize the talent we had instead of going "Well I only know how to run the pro-style" ala Richrod. If Borges (and co.) had been as stubbornly for the pro-style as Richrod was for the spread then we probably would've been pretty bad on offense this year as you can extrapolate from how well all of those playaction passes from the i-formation went this year.
I agree that it's apples and oranges, but I'm curious to know why you think Rodriguez did a good job in 2008. By any measure it was our worst offensive team in decades. You could argue that he deserved an "Incomplete" for that season, but I definitely wouldn't consider it anything remotely good.
April 16th, 2012 at 10:22 PM ^
We played 10 bowl opponents last year. We've faced much easier schedules in the past.
April 17th, 2012 at 10:42 AM ^
Normally it is harder to score points on better teams. NORMALLY. Thanks for the lesson though. You sure taught me.
April 16th, 2012 at 10:47 PM ^
And of course, the 2010 team had the triple-OT marathon game against Illinois, where it scored 22 points in the overtime sessions. The 2011 team only scored three points in overtime.
In regulation, the 2011 team averaged 33.1 ppg (or 33.7 ppg if you consider WMU to be .75 of a game) and 2010 averaged 31.0.
April 16th, 2012 at 10:53 PM ^
Yes, because the defensive improvement had NOTHING to do with giving the offense a better chance to score with a shorter field, not playing from behind, time to rest, etc. etc.
April 16th, 2012 at 11:19 PM ^
To further my point, my quick scan of last year's game scores shows that we scored a total of 433 points, which is where the article gets the 33.3 ppg stat. Which is very poor reporting, since it includes 2 defensive touchdowns against WMU, safeties against Purdue and Ohio, and probably some other defensive scores I cannot remember. Also, I remember at least 2 "field goal drives" in the Sugar Bowl where the defense got a turnover in VT territory and the offense did nothing for 3 downs before kicking. Unless you count the fake-field-goal-throw-it-to-the-long-snapper play as something Borges actually drew up.
Also, we scored 58 points against Minnesota, probably one of the worst B1G teams in the last decade. That skews the ppg number too.
April 16th, 2012 at 11:38 PM ^
Throw any spin you want to prove the 2010 offense was superior to the 2011 offense, but guess what, the $ per point scored ratio is still a helluva lot lower now than it was with the guy running the 2010 offense.
April 17th, 2012 at 11:26 AM ^
If we are going to go with disclaimers for 2011, let's do the same for 2011:
Things that skewed the 2010 numbers:
1. 65 points against Bowling Green. Worse than 2011 Minnesota.
2. 42 Points against 1AA Umass. No comparable 1-AA in 2011.
3. 67 in a triple overtime game against Illinois. We didn't play any triple overtime games in 2011.
The more you dig into the numbers as you have done, the more it hurts your cause.
Some other interesting 2010 vs. 2011 observations:
1. Notre Dame:
2010 - 28 points scored
2011 - 34
SMALL EDGE - 2011 Offense
2. MSU
2010: 17
2011: 28
EDGE 2011
3. Iowa
2010: 28
2011: 24
SMALL EDGE 2010
4. Purdue
2010: 27
2011: 36
SMALL EDGE: 2011
5. OSU
2010: 7 (!!!)
2011: 40 (!!!)
HUGE EDGE: 2011
Sorry, the numbers just do not support the 2010 offense being better than the 2011 offense.
April 17th, 2012 at 12:31 PM ^
Also, we scored a defensive TD in the 2010 Purdue game, so we actually had 20 offensive points.
April 17th, 2012 at 12:24 PM ^
The defensive improvement was a double-edged sword as far as points per game went. We often didn't need to score as many points in games in 2011 to win. In the majority of our wins, we won going away. In 2010, by contrast, almost every game was a struggle and we needed to go all-out every possession.
Regardless of whether the 2011 offense was slightly better or slightly worse than the 2010 offense (I think we can agree that it was not dramatically different), on the whole we can be pleased with how smooth the transition ended up being.
That was way too reasonable of a statement for a discussion of RR v. Borges. Where is the hyperbole? Where are the dramatic all-or-nothing statements?
You don't even cite any advanced statistics for your statement that "we can be pleased with how smooth the transition ended up being."
Some people!
April 16th, 2012 at 10:31 PM ^
April 16th, 2012 at 10:55 PM ^
She probably listens to you and all your wisdom...