Carr: U-M will compete in B1G with consistent defense, bigger players
"The biggest thing (is) you can't be changing defenses every year," Carr said on the Sports Pen on ESPN 970-AM. "The players need to learn a system, and you can't learn a system if you're changing every year. (Defensive coordinator Greg Mattison's) brought in the 4-3 defense, and I think we've got to recruit some bigger players."
Rodriguez's offensive and defensive systems were predicated on smaller, quicker players. Many questioned the wisdom of using those players in the Big Ten, where tradition (and weather) generally dictates the use of bigger, stronger players.
"We've been a very, very small team for the last three years," Carr said. "In this conference, to play championship football, you need big people because you're gonna play against big people almost every single week. And when you're a much smaller team, you're gonna wear down, you're gonna get beat up, and you're not gonna be able to finish a season.
"In this conference, it's at the end of the season that you have to be strong if you're going to do the types of things and have the kind of seasons that we've always aspired to have here."
Click here to read the full article: http://www.mlive.com/wolverines/index.ssf/2011/05/lloyd_carr_on_espn_97…
I vividly remember USC offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin at the 2006 Rose Bowl, offhandedly mentioning that "Michigan's guys have on average, 2 inches and 20 pounds on ours.
"We focus on speed."
Talent does not. Equal. Size.
Where were all these manball purists when Drew Breezy was going H.A.M. on the Big Ten? Perhaps you folks remember Big Ten stars like Wisconsin's Jim Leonhard and OSU's Troy Smith? Mike Hart? Brandon Harrison? OSU LB Brian Rolle?
MIKE HART WAS A THREE STAR PEOPLE!
DAVID HARRRRIIIIISSSS!
For many a moon, folks here have been bashing Hall of Fame Coach Lloyd Carr as they look to deflect blame from RR. When posting in another thread, I noticed the "Bo" t-shirt (awesome) in the mgoblogstore and thought of an interesting idea...
Why not sell a RichRod t-shirt? Certainly all of his supporters here would purchase it, no? Imagine the huge online sales! Think of the lines out the door at Underground Printing. Please, allow me to suggest some tag lines which could appear under the RR head:
-It was Carr's fault
-It was the media's fault
-It was the fans' fault
-It was the former players' fault
-I just needed more time
-It was the defensive coordinator's fault
-It was the second defensive coordinator's fault
-It was Bill Martin's fault for hiring me
-The sun got in my eyes
-The dog ate my homework
Or, my personal favorite, "Three years and a cloud of dust"
Frankly, the fact that so many are ripping a Hall of Fame coach while defending RR (worst coach in Michigan history) is embarrassing. How can you hope to be credible when you start from a position of insanity? It's like attacking Dan Marino to support Scott Mitchell.
Hey now, I did some pretty good things with Scott Mitchell in Madden 64
Considering that your starting positions are "any disagreement with Lloyd/Hoke/former players constitutes "ripping on" Lloyd/Hoke/former players" and "any non-explicitly-negative statement regarding RR constitutes wishing for his return and considering him blameless in all respects", how do you hope to be credible when you start from a position of insanity?
...more specific:
- It was the Freep's fault
Million seller for sure.*
*Not really
Memorial Day weekend. I can see it now, he's blowing his sh*t and will breath fire upon Lloyd for these words.
Not meant to be a dig at anyone, but I find it strange that on this blog it almost seems like Brian's opinion on Michigan football is more valued than Carr's opinion on Michigan football. That just seems backwards to me.
You are getting at one of the fundamental issues of journalism: at what point do the opinions of he who owns the press supersede the opinions of the "real" newsmakers? Brian took a stand on RR and as things turned out, he was proven wrong. In the process, he established himself as an independent voice on Michigan sports, with an opinion of his own, for better or worse.
A lot of comments have been negged, flamebaited, banned, and so forth on this very topic. It's an ongoing issue without any easy answers. The best solution I can think of is that it's important for us all to formulate our own opinions and to share them rationally, on the blogosphere and off.
Brian is candid. Carr is coy.
I'll value the candid guy's opinion more every time.
With respect to what Brian has built here, Ill take the coach in the hall of fame over Brian any day....
You idiots have really been emboldened by the Hall of Fame thing, haven't you? Forgetting that John Cooper is in it.
The college football HOF is not Cooperstown. It doesn't need to be revered and talked about in hushed tones. It's more or less a dump in South Bend that has a TON of names in it.
I would also take John Cooper's opinion about Michigan football very seriously as well. You talk of Cooper as if he was the worst coach ever. We beat him, but he had some really solid teams.
You know, when you are deciding it is unimportant that our head football coach being in the hall of freaking fame it unimportant, there is no helping you.
In case you missed it, Cooper regularly had teams in the top 10 when we ran into each other. Just because we beat his teams more than not doesn't mean he wasnt a terrific coach, just look at his record.
Brian Cook is a blog-author. I'm one of the people who largely agree with Brian and who value what he writes. It's easy for me explain why I log on to this site and why I look forward to reading Brian.
What's a lot harder to explain is why people who want to rip on Rich Rodriguez still come here.
I agree entirely with your post.
I had more to say, but I just cannot find a way to say it without metaphorically screaming the RR horde who feels the needs to defends what he hath wrought here even to the point of calling Llyoyd Carr an overrated member of the hall of fame.
Honestly I don't think there are many people who value Brian's opinion just because it's Brian's opinion. To the extent there are, they are offset by people who disregard Brian's opinion just because it's Brian's opinion.
A lot of people value Brian's opinion on the topic because it makes sense. When it comes to the "size beats all" argument, it actually makes more sense than Carr's.
I think the more illogical mindset is that "we have to believe everything Lloyd Carr says because he's Lloyd Carr, and if you question any of it, you must hate a demonstrably great man".
Lloyd is fallible. He won a lot of games, but he didn't win all of them. His big teams managed to lose some games as well. His big teams managed to get worn out late in games. So, great as Lloyd is, I think he overstates the case for size (but he's right about scheme changes).
On a related note, why is it assumed that big, heavy guys will get less tired during a game? I'd think exhaustion has a lot more to do with athleticism - the big guys may be stronger, but they also have more weight to haul. If any of it is bad weight, they'll get tired faster than a smaller guy who's more in shape.
I distinctly remember watching the Wisconsin game last year and thinking the players were finally in the right places a lot of the time. The problem was, they were too small to do anything about it when the big ol running back plowed them over. Even when out gamest players like Kovacs and Martin were there, they often weren't able to do more than get run over while the RB fell forward for 2-3 yards every play.
With depth and conditioning, fatigue is something a good staff can manage, and is often a serious strategic point in the game. How many times were we treated to discussions of how a massive O line was leaning on a smaller d line, and it would show in the 4th quarter when the d was too tired? Madden was huge for that during dallas cowboy games.
Carr is right on this. Maybe some of us put the cart before the horse. We wanted speed,speed, speed. Because we thought that was what is needed to beat the SEC, BIG 12 and PAC 10 and win a national title. The thing is, you cannot win a national title until you atleast win the conference first. And that's something the last coaching staff had no idea how to accomplish.
Nice to see that our newly minted and overrated Hall of Fame coach couldn't find the time to lend that wisdom three years ago. It's not his fault that RR couldn't figure that stuff out himself, but Lloyd was right there all this time keeping to himself. Where was that HOF mouth back then before this experiement started?
2 things:
1) if Carr told RR this, would RR have listened? Given what went on on the defensive side of the ball, its hard for me to believe RR was really open to suggestions
2) if Carr told the media this while RR was the coach, could you imagine the reaction to that on this blog?
I think it would have been gracious of him to give the advice in person and not go to the media if RR shuts him out. I know RR is stubborn about the 3-3-5, but Lloyd was the most credentialed person around the program. RR might have listened to him about sticking with the 4-3 and sticking to the Midwest recruiting ground.
"overrated Hall of Fame coach"
Is that what you really think? I can't quite tell.
"Carr...overrated?" Did you start drinking early?
We couldn't beat OSU with Tressel there. USC outclassed us in the Rose Bowl twice. We had winning streaks broken against NW, Purdue and Minnesota. We stopped blowing away MSU and were ecstatic with just scraping out wins against Little Brother. And Tennessee handed us what was our worst bowl loss in history before this year.
Does he deserve to be in the HOF? Only because people with average resumes (Alvarez and Gene Stallings) are in there. He was an excellent caretaker of the program in my opinion, which I think is what a lot of people here miss.
I think most fans have unreasonable expectations, and tend to have a "what have you done for me lately?" perspective.
It seems to me like you could construct a similar paragraph of horribles for any coach at any level ever.
My feeling is that any number of teams across the country (including the "top" teams) would have been thrilled to have LC as head coach with his on and off field records.
Admittedly, I say that as an outsider, which either helps or hurts my credibility (probably hurts in your view).
Expecting to beat Ohio State more than once in seven tries is not unreasonable. The day it is is the day we truly are not Michigan anymore
And reasonably so. But that doesn't altogether negate LC's achievements as a whole. If you take a career "body of work" perspective, I think it's hard for you to defensibly say that he's overrated.
And the user who marked my post above as "Redundant" is absolutely right. It's an extremely redundant post.
But that's kind of the point. It's something many of us take as an obvious matter of course, particularly when we look at others. Yet, it's also something we lose sight of quite frequently when we examine ourselves (IMHE).
I'll own up to it - this past basketball season, I sometimes thought that Izzo was losing his effectiveness as a coach, among other things. What an impulsive, narrow-minded bastard I was.
Your other points aren't really valid. In college football with the scholarship limits of today, all winning streaks come to an end. I notice you didn't mention the absolute domination of Wisco and Penn State under Carr's watch. You also cite close victories against MSU as a reason he is overrated? Listen to yourself dude. Look at his b10 record. Not many coaching in conference history stack up.
Wow, what an idiotic statement. I think that RR should have been able to figure out how to win by himself. That's, you know, what we paid him for. Maybe Lloyd didn't feel that it was his place to tell RR how to do his job?
The disdain for former players and coaches on MGoblog is really disturbing. These are the same guys that you loved 4 years ago, and whenever anyone points out the obvious fact that RR didn't do something right you guys ridicule them for it.
"Overrated Hall of Fame coach"..... get your head out of your ass.
REALLY? Lloyd Carr overrated? THAT'S your defense of the coach who brought the most failure to michigan football in a 3 year span I am aware of?
Had he said these things before, those who defend RR would have screamed about how he was undercutting the current coach and should keep such opinions to himself.
I believe that when Lloyd Carr has words on the way to build a B1G football program, a wise person would shut the hell up and listen, especially when the alternative is to continue to try to defend 3 years of nearly abject failure.
Carr was not perfect, and there were clear reasons for him to stop being our coach, but none of those reason were a defense ranked below 100th in the country (and getting WORSE).
Lloyd Carr has MUCH firmer ground to stand on when speaking about how to run michigan's football program than RR or his supporters.
Incidentally, SIZE and WEIGHT in football terms are not the same thing. A 320 pound tub of lard is not the same as a man like Orlando Pace, otherwise, our best linemen would come from japanese sumo programs.
To read that last line and think "Hey...weight (haha!) a minute..."
You thought the hall of fame was overrated.
I respect Lloyd alot.
His legacy is cemented as a great coach.
Honestly I think he was grooming Brady Hoke to be his successor which is why he sent him to be the head coach at Ball State to get some experience.
Lloyd is someone who has a very respected opinion around Michigan football because of his tremendous track record.
I wanted RR to succeed as much as the next guy but ultimately my loyalties lie with the program not any one person. If RR was the coach I would be defending him tooth and nail. The fact is he is not and so I defend Hoke tooth and nail. I will root for RR led teams so long as they aren't among the few teams I can't root for,
OSU, MSU, Miami FL, USC, Oregon, Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Any SEC team except GA and Vandy.
What I am tying to say is that lloyd is right. He won 77.8% of the big ten games he coached in.
while the program was crumbling. All this Michigan Man crap would've stopped on Day 1 and that's if he would've been okay with the hiring of RR.
Bo was never in the very awkward position of having to watch his entire staff fired (save one guy) and the program subsequently collapse. If he had taken a public stand, it probably wouldn't have been favorable toward RR.
Ah, another dude who wants to use Bo's corpse as a puppet so he can ventriloquize his own points from a place of seemingly greater authority, as if anyone knows what Bo would have said regarding a coach he didn't know, and a tenure he didn't witness.
I am not trying to pass off judgment on RR here, just stating some facts though...
Bo would not just have disapproved of RR's tenure as head coach, he would have never allowed that hire to happen in the first place. Bo's stance on how Big Ten football should be played was VERY clear. He hated gimmicky offensive and defensive schemes and believed that to win in the Big 10, the most important thing a coach could do was emphasize fundamentals like blocking and tackling to an extreme degree. How do I know this? Because he wrote it, explicitly, in Bacon's book...
He did not "send Hoke off" to Ball State. Brady Hoke is a Ball State alum. They had a vacancy. Hoke was a respected position coach. They hired him.
At various points, Fred Jackson, Erik Campbell, Brady Hoke and I believe also Jim Herrmann held that "assistant head coach" spot. It didn't mean that much. Hoke was never a coordinator, which is the normal stepping stone before landing a head position. I'm not sure Carr was ready to dispatch him when he left.
Weren't many saying basically the same thing around here when Mel Pearson decided to leave U-M for Michigan Tech?
Welcome to Mgoblog Michigan world...where some "michigan man" has a problem with what another "michigan man" just said.
We also have cats.
So, let me get this straight...the guy who's best defense was the 96 team has an opinion on what he saw on the field the last few years....
And the guy whose best defense (at michigan) was with Lloyd's players in 08, which was still lousy by michigan standards has MORE supporters? What kind of bizarro world is this?
This thread is absolute ASS you fucking crybabbies on both sides of the fence should be ashamed. We're MICH for chist's sake, there's no crying in MICH
LC should be free to express his own opinions. I disagree with LC that size was the problem the last three years. There are several smaller quick teams like TCU and Oregon who can take on and beat big teams.
RR problems all revolved around staffing. He failed to hire a top notch DC to run the defense. My thoughts are that RR was planning on Casteel to follow him to Michigan. He did not have a good plan B and kept many of the defensive coaches while trying to make them mesh with Schafer! Greg was just a horrible hire. The defensive fiasco was the reason I supported Brandon letting RR go, even though I was big fan of RR and his spread offense. I wish RR the best in his next coaching gig...but I definitely will not be following the next team he ends up coaching. The only team I will be following and supporting 100 percent is Michigan!!!
So far LC is my 2nd favorite Michigan Coach right behind Bo. '97 was a magic season with a great defense! If Osborne didn't announce his retirement after his bowl game, then Michigan would not have split the national championship that season. LC was just a couple plays away from going undefeated in '99.
I can't wait for the start of the BH era at Michigan. I have feeling BH will be a great coach here and we will see Michigan return to dominate the B1G in 3 to 4 years from now!!!!
My favorite coaches since becoming a big Michigan fan at the age of 8 in 1971:
1. Bo
2. Carr
3. Mo
4. Hoke
5. RR
TCU and Oregon don't have to play week after week of big bruisers like we do. It's one thing to scheme well for one bowl game when your team is healthy and unknown to the opponent, another to slog through the mud of a Big 10 season. All those encounters take their toll over the course of a year, and we haven't had depth to begin with.
But yeah, it's not just about having bigger guys, it's also about having better depth.
So it's everything
Which is exactly what Carr meant when he said:
"In this conference, to play championship football, you need big people because you're gonna play against big people almost every single week. And when you're a much smaller team, you're gonna wear down, you're gonna get beat up, and you're not gonna be able to finish a season. "In this conference, it's at the end of the season that you have to be strong if you're going to do the types of things and have the kind of seasons that we've always aspired to have here."
Sure, TCU was impressive in beating Wisconsin. But you cannot discount the fact that they had over a month to not only gameplan for the Badgers, but to get healthy. Let's also not forget that the game was played in near-perfect conditions.
Would the outcome have been the same for TCU were the game being played in the slop and muck of mid-November, coming off a stretch where they had just played the likes of Penn State, Iowa, and Michigan State?
Or, what if in the weeks immediately following a matchup vs. Wisconsin, TCU had to play the likes of Michigan, Ohio State, and Nebraska?
Is that fast but small defense really going to hold up over the course of a Big Ten season without wearing down or being hit by major injury? That is the big question. Based on his comments, I think Lloyd Carr would say no, and, FWIW, I tend to agree.