Did anything really change?

Mike Martin played against UMass.  Anyone surprised by the defensive performance against PSU hasn't been paying attention.  They are who we thought they were before the season started. 

Even jmblue has gone all Tom Hagan up in this bitch.

..Is about having hope. A lot of people lost that Saturday. We forced two punts, and they were mostly off offensive errors. Against UMass, there were a couple of blown coverages and big plays that killed us. Penn State saw a meticulous offense slowly trekking it's way down the field, with little to nothing stopping it. They converted third downs at will. They busted large gaps up the middle at will. They broke tackles at will. This game was the worst performance I have ever seen from a Michigan defense. 

I don't think that much really changed, but the general flat nature of the team was unexpected and disappointing.  Combine that with our failure to take advantage of PSU injuries (as nearly everyone has to our defense), our failure to adjust to PSU offensive play-calling and continued mistakes on special teams...then it begins to look fairly hopeless.

1) Griese wasn't a true freshman when he started, he was a red-shirted sophmore.

2) UMass was a classic let-down, didn't really care about it so we looked bad etc game to a lot of people so it gets written off.  Penn State was a conference game, a revenge game, and after a bye week so there is no reason to play one of the worst games of the season. 

3) The fact that you weren't surprised by us getting dominated by a freshman walk on ginger and putting up 10 pts in the first half against an injury riddled, terrible defense (that has gotten curb stomped by almost everyone) says a lot about the program.  It says that after almost three years this is what you expect to happen...what does that tell you about the state of affiars.  Never would these have been the expectations before, and yet they are for a lot of people...that's why people are pissed.

Going into the season we all knew, or at least I thought we did, the D would struggle. Take Woolfolk and Martin out of the line up and we are proper fucked. It is a hard pill to swallow for sure but no coach and certainly no magic scheme would change this fact.

I hope NW doesn't go into JoePa land and beat PSU.  If they do then we'll hear more bitching because UM lost and NW won.  even though NW is s decent team with a better D than UM.

We allowed a third string, redshirt Freshman walk-on QB carve up our defense at will.  Can you imagine ANY defense anywhere that would've allowed Nick Sheridan to do the same?

And dont say Minnesota - we only scored 29 points, punted 3 times and kicked 5 Field Goals.

For me, it was about seeing improvement. We hadn't played a poor offensive team in about 5 weeks. I was hoping our defense had just been beaten by very productive offenses and against a poor offense, I was hoping we would show life. We didn't. We laid an egg. Maybe my expectations were wrong. It wasn't really a surprise, just more of a huge letdown.

I'm tired of the mantra "well everyone expected us to lose 5 or 6 games before the season started", big fucking deal. The fact is that this team and the coaching staff are showing zero improvement week in and week out...that's why the PSU loss was so unbelievabley disgusting.

I really want to see Drew Dileo get out there and play...watching all these speedy white dudes in the NFL like Woodhead and Welker...if he plays well and makes some guys miss he would be an instant cult hero.

So, I don’t understand why people are any more or less on the RR bandwagon than they were on Friday.

Because here was a prime opportunity to show the world that Michigan had turned the corner, and we utterly failed.  Before the game, we could convince ourselves that we had a solid team that lost two mistake-filled games to top-15 opponents.  Then we played turnover-free and were beaten soundly by a bad PSU team.  It's now evident: we're not a good team.  And to not have a good team in year 3 is incredibly disappointing. 

this is the defense we expected before the season.  You are correct. I expected this in week one, with improvements week to week. I expected experienced teams with experienced and talanted QB's to be very difficult for our defense to stop. I did not expect a team with a bad offensive line and a first time starter, walk-on or not, to score 41 points without the aid of a single UM turnover. I did not expect, that on every third down our best defense would be for the opposing QB to make a bad throw. I expected MANY freshman mistakes, with the occasional "making a play" sprinkled in. We got no sprinkles.

May I please have some sprinkles?

the defensive play calling absolutely sucked balls.  rushing 3-4 guys every play and not forcing him to make decisions.   A mediocre HS Qb wouldve played just as well.   I absolutely dont understand what the defensive gameplan was.

Illinois and Purdue have two of the worst offenses in the Big Ten.  Michigan's defense is horrible, but they have a fighting chance against these two opponents.

Both the Illini and Boilers have pretty decent defenses (UofI's is good, Purdue's is average in ppg and ypg) among Big Ten teams.

I like Michigan's chances better in these games than playing PSU in Happy Valley at night.

And no, I was not surprised by the outcome on Saturday either. I was disappointed in the final score, but I was impressed with the 2nd half effort to rally back as they did. This is a really young team that will return a lot of starters back next year.