Brandon Minor MVP
While Tate Forcier obviously had an amazing game yesterday, I would give my "unsung hero/MVP award" to Brandon Minor. When he got in there, the whole feel of the offense was different. He can run up the middle (until Moosman got hurt) and to the outside, but most importantly, he blocks better than any back on the team. He had at least 3 extremely crucial blocks in the game, 2 of which were on the last two offense plays. The first one was a major block that let Forcier get to the left of the field to hit Savoy (who dropped the tipped pass) and the second was the great one that allowed Forcier to hit Matthews for the GW score. If he goes down again, there is a major drop off between Minor's blocking abilities and Carlos Brown's.
September 13th, 2009 at 11:01 AM ^
their isn't a major drop off in the blocking abilities, i think carlos is a more than capable blocker for a running back
September 13th, 2009 at 11:03 AM ^
There was one play where Minor completely blew up the oncoming blitzer. I can't wait to watch that play again. Hurry up MGoVideo!!
September 13th, 2009 at 11:16 AM ^
on the final drive on 3rd and 4 at about the ND 40, he completely obliterated the ND defensive end; knocking him on his ass. awesome. i believe it was odoms who caught that first down pass, keeping the drive alive.
not enough to take mvp from tate, though.
September 13th, 2009 at 11:09 AM ^
So far hes the unsung hero of the season after two games, Hes had two huge blocks that have resulted in TD's. One for denard last week and a huge one for stonum on the kickoff return.
BTW was anyone else surprised to see how fast moundros was when he was trucking after stonum on the return
September 13th, 2009 at 11:12 AM ^
the defense in the 3rd quarter. It looked like a lot of good adjustments were made and slowing the Irish offense down for that stretch helped us a lot.
September 13th, 2009 at 11:21 AM ^
Just to reinforce minorforPresident's point, the defense gave up only 27 yards in the third quarter. TWENTY-SEVEN!!!!!
September 13th, 2009 at 11:23 AM ^
We won this game b/c of Minor. He is the ONLY back that provided any semblance of a running game for us this game. Apparently he's the only back that knows when to pick his holes, cut upfield and run between the tackles. Carlos Brown had major problems with this yesterday. Without a running game we would never have been able to throw the ball yesterday. As great as Foricer was yesterday, he wouldn't have been if it weren't for Minor. Hopefully he's 100% by the MSU game b/c if he is he should be in on the vast majority of the offensive plays.
September 13th, 2009 at 11:34 AM ^
Spiff,
I think Minor may have an intangible quality that makes the entire offense block better. Some players simply elicit better responses when they are in the huddle.
No less than Maurice Clarrett had such an effect on the OSU line when he was playing down south...not that they didn't want to block for them, but Maurice Hall and Lydell Ross just didn't get the same level of effort from the line, IMHO.
September 13th, 2009 at 11:36 AM ^
I also agree with the Minor love. The whole first half i was begging for him to get more touches. He was basically non-existent after that first TD. When he started getting more touches in the second half he was really changing the way our offense was working. he broke off a couple of big runs and looked like he was impossible to take down.
September 13th, 2009 at 11:44 AM ^
I agree with the previous comments about Minor so I am not going to repeat...I would of liked to see Minor get some more touches yesterday. He had the hot hand, he needs to be getting the ball more than 16 times.
Thoughts???
September 13th, 2009 at 12:14 PM ^
He's coming off an injury and is not one hundred percent. I don't think the coaches wanted to gamble too much with this health. He's too valuable to the team.
September 13th, 2009 at 1:45 PM ^
So he was capable of playing . . . but the coaches were keeping him out for concerns about his health . . . and they ran him a bunch in the second half?
How is he "too valueable to the team" if he was one of the main reasons Michigan won yesterday?
September 13th, 2009 at 12:15 PM ^
I think they need to bring him back slowly. I would prefer Minor be 100% healthy from week 5 on then to have constantly feed him the rock yesterday and risk reinjuring the ankle. Minor's got two more weeks before he starts to become the workhorse.