Does this performance against Ohio save Borges and Funk?
I know Borges has taken serious heat from all of us this year, but the O looked phenomenal today. I think we all agree that the team that played today beats every other team in the B1G. I thought the Oline was really good considering the competition and the skilled players produced the below numbers:
Devin-32/45-451 yds 4TD
Gallon- 9/175yds 1TD
Butt- 5/60yds 1TD
RBs-24/137yds 1TD I
thought Borges called a great game and we were one phantom Frank Clark unsportsmanlike penalty and one bad throw away from beating Ohio.
My question to the board is, does the potential of seeing more performances like this make you tolerate the idea of seeing Borges and Funk stay around one more year?
November 30th, 2013 at 4:56 PM ^
Borges needs to go. I think his fate was sealed going into this game. He's been a bad coordinator this season, but more importantly, I think he's lost his players. As someone above said, today tells me that he couldn't get them to play to their potential the last three months.
November 30th, 2013 at 5:04 PM ^
Really.?Tell me which of the players was "lost" today? They played their hearts out.
November 30th, 2013 at 5:21 PM ^
November 30th, 2013 at 5:36 PM ^
I think he's lost his ability to motivate and prepare his players. Based partly on insidery message board chatter, partly on what I see on the field. I don't think the guys respect Borges. They came to play today because it's The Game, but what about the rest of the season?
November 30th, 2013 at 6:32 PM ^
November 30th, 2013 at 7:50 PM ^
Like I said, insidery message board chatter and just a sense from how players comport themselves and little snippets from press conferences. Just my sense of things. Got the same sense about RR and GERG by season three. Doesn't really come out until after the coach has moved on.
November 30th, 2013 at 9:26 PM ^
Oh come on! You can't just make things up and think people will trust you.
November 30th, 2013 at 4:58 PM ^
What did he do differently this game? I couldn't see too much schematically. I liked the fake bubble, fake draw throw wrinkle, but that was really all that was new. We added a few different looks of the throw back screen I guess. The difference was the players executed. I realize that word has become a running joke but, you know, it does have a pretty big impact on the game. We stayed in front of the sticks all day and it kept the defense from teeing up on us. The couple times we got behind, we got sacked.
Is Borges the answer long term? Is this game enough to save his job? I don't know, but I think this game does show that he's not the only problem and how much the players finally clicking does to improve the offensive output.
November 30th, 2013 at 6:08 PM ^
I also have to say it seemed to me like the OSU defense was less well-prepared, and a lot less aggressive, than the defenses we saw the previous 3 games. We didn't see a lot of those troublesome A-gap blitzes until the second half, and it seemed the Bucks were more fooled by the cute draws and throwbacks. But no question, the execution was better, the blocking was better, and Gardner looked like he'd been freed once again to be Sandlot Superstar.
November 30th, 2013 at 6:51 PM ^
The success running the ball and the resulting downs and distances had a lot to do with it. When it was 3rd and long, we still struggled with sacks. They did blitz often most of the second half before prevent mode kicked in. We picked them up pretty well for the most part, which always helps back them off.
November 30th, 2013 at 8:12 PM ^
They couldn't be very aggressive today, because of the play calling and the sequencing of the plays. It started right from the first series, and we kept them off balance. That's what we've been missing, and I can't see a good reason why.
November 30th, 2013 at 10:07 PM ^
I've thought quite a bit about this, and I think it comes down to Borges' meta-philosophy about offense. It appears to me that Borges highly values novelty in an offense - he tries to keep defenses guessing primarily through a bewildering variety of plays and formations. He wants defenses to have no idea what's coming next, or ability to recognize it when it gets there.
This is not the meta-philosophy behind most high-powered offenses, whether you're looking at Alabama, or Oregon, or most other offenses along that schematic continuum. These offenses try to establish certain base premises that the defenses must react to, then they counter the defensive reaction. The essence of these schemes is tactical adjustment, between plays, before plays (audibles), and even within plays (e.g. read option or zone blocking).
The problem with Borges' meta-philosophy, it seems to me, is that there are a limited number of plays one can teach a college offense to execute well within the alloted practice time (ask Mike Rosenberg). So Borges is really making a bet with the opposing defensive coordinator that he's got enough variety to keep his opponent guessing most of the time. He's won that bet often enough - the '11 and '13 OSU games, for instance - but he's lost perhaps even more often.
The Tactical Adjustment philosophy, it seems to me, is much more suited to building a body of knowledge over time, and thus reducing the variability in results. After several years of running the same basic scheme, you've seen almost everything a defense can throw at you. You've developed countermeasures for all those things, and have drilled your offense on those measures ever since they arrived on campus. You have a good chance of immediately recognizing and adjusting to anything a defense does. You have much less chance that the defense will easily recognize and stuff a few of your key plays, and leave you without easy countermeasures.
Anyway, that's my shorthand explanation as to why Borges seems totally lost one game, totally dominant the next: he's not humble enough to acknowledge the agency of the opposing defense in his own success or failure.
November 30th, 2013 at 5:00 PM ^
sad to say but it doesnt matter. We are so irrelevant with the mindset that Michigan has. This staff seems to think 8-9 wins a year is good and an occasionaly win vs ohio and a Big Ten title is just fine. We're no different than Nebraska
November 30th, 2013 at 5:08 PM ^
November 30th, 2013 at 5:28 PM ^
November 30th, 2013 at 5:31 PM ^
Tell me what he did differently and why it made a difference.
November 30th, 2013 at 5:37 PM ^
the big difference today seemed to be they had success running the ball. I'm by no means an expert on football but when you have some success running the ball it opens up a lot of other things.
November 30th, 2013 at 5:50 PM ^
Exactly this. We'd get half a block here and a little more push there and all of a sudden the RBs are falling forward for 3 or 4 instead of 0. That made 2nd and 3rd down calls so much more manageable.
November 30th, 2013 at 8:59 PM ^
November 30th, 2013 at 5:39 PM ^
Seemed like he had a LOT more screens and quick passes built in. Used the pass to set up the run quite a bit. There have been elements of those things the last two weeks, but they were the base plays today.
Basically, today he did all the things that the fan base was clamoring for after the Nebraska debacle.
November 30th, 2013 at 5:45 PM ^
I thought the gameplay was similar last week. Last week we ran some option, screens and multiple play action passes on first down. Funchess' drops didn't hurt us in this game like it did last week. I don't think there's any question the players executed better this week. The line play was vastly improved.
November 30th, 2013 at 5:54 PM ^
I really didn't see that much difference as far as game planning goes. We tried the quick hitters and screens a lot the last few games. The biggest difference was we had long drives and favorable downs and distances that let Borges counter punch a lot more.
November 30th, 2013 at 7:00 PM ^
Falling foward for 3 or 4 yards instead of back for 0 or -1? thank Green and Smith for that. Two people who wouldn't be playing if Toussaint didn't get injured and showed what they could do because Al Borges is a lizard brain that likes to have one main back.
And the throw back screen they added should've been theere ALL DAMN YEAR. You can say "i geuss" that's a difference but why weren't these things apart of the dang system all year? It wasn't apart of the system until after Nebraska/Penn State and every cried about it.
They try this new screen pass system and short passes and it get's iffy results, then sure enough after 3 weeks of practice they get it and put up this performance. The problem is they should've been practicing this system ALL YEAR. It shouldn't have taken until THE GAME for us to be able to execute at this level. They chose to run a lizard brain offense for the majority of the season and that caused the lack of execution until this point.
Yes this gameplan wasn't very different from Iowa and we may have executed better, that's because lizard brain Al took until week 9 to implement a reasonable damn offense. That's indefensible and he needs to be gone. We need a person who can be ahead of the curve and have our guys ready by the start of the B1G conference games.
November 30th, 2013 at 8:13 PM ^
Toussaint ran pretty well today also, you know?
November 30th, 2013 at 8:28 PM ^
the game. The second he gets touched he goes down. It's almost instantaneous. He ran well when there was nothing near him. And that's it.
November 30th, 2013 at 9:56 PM ^
Green looked like shit before Iowa, because everyone looked like shit running behind that mess. How quickly we forget all the rumblings of "bust" prior to that.
That screen absolutely has been a part of the offense for the last three years. In fact, it even has its own tag here:
http://mgoblog.com/category/tags/throwback-screen
November 30th, 2013 at 10:47 PM ^
I certaintly wasn't calling him a bust. Everytime he had the ball I LOVED how he fell forward. So "others' may have said bust I was saying stud ever since I saw him carry. And if you wanna claim the screen and short passing game was in full affect during the shit shows that were penn state and msu go ahead.
Yeah screens were marginally apart of the system. But Mr. Lizard Brain loves reverting back to his bread-n-butter I-Formation down waster. One well called game does not excuse all of the many breakdowns in play calling this past season.
Whether or not you want Al Borges fired pretty much boils down to one thing. Do you or do you not tolerate epic failures -48. never forget.
November 30th, 2013 at 10:45 PM ^
Yo dude. did you really link to a tag last used in 2012!!! LMAO.
pathetic, pathetic...
November 30th, 2013 at 11:03 PM ^
November 30th, 2013 at 11:41 PM ^
Oh. To clarify I meant new this year. My concern is that it took us so long to run it this year. It boggles my mind he doesn't try to run it as part of the system until NW.
And don't come at my logic, and I won't come at yours. Cause I'm sure we are both really smart.
November 30th, 2013 at 5:59 PM ^
Go ahead and live in denial all you want. But we're clinging on to the past and have been one of the most underachieving teams in the last 15 plus years. I'll let the facts speak for themselves
November 30th, 2013 at 5:02 PM ^
No. Michigan will never win the B1G losing two winnable games a season b/c of the OC.
November 30th, 2013 at 5:02 PM ^
arent u tired of seeing no pressure on the qb,sacks,and tfl. this is not michigan defense! i want pelini or muschamp if they get fired
November 30th, 2013 at 5:10 PM ^
scotty2 hotty.....are you talking about Borges? If not get off this thread.
November 30th, 2013 at 5:10 PM ^
scotty2 hotty.....are you talking about Borges? If not get off this thread.
November 30th, 2013 at 5:38 PM ^
The thread purity police have arrived.
November 30th, 2013 at 5:03 PM ^
Probably not.
November 30th, 2013 at 5:03 PM ^
November 30th, 2013 at 5:04 PM ^
That this Michigan team would have "beaten every other team in the B1G". That's an insult to a Michigan State team that pretty soundly dominated Michigan. Their defense may have had more answers
November 30th, 2013 at 5:14 PM ^
November 30th, 2013 at 6:27 PM ^
November 30th, 2013 at 5:05 PM ^
no, absolutely not. You need to examine the whole body of work. Because where has this playcalling been all year? sure it's nice when it shows up 1 or 2 times a year but where has it been the other 10 games? Borges still has to go
November 30th, 2013 at 5:05 PM ^
November 30th, 2013 at 5:06 PM ^
November 30th, 2013 at 8:16 PM ^
If Lewan was serious, it was the seniors' call to go for it. Supposedly Hoke gave them the call.
November 30th, 2013 at 5:06 PM ^
November 30th, 2013 at 5:14 PM ^
Hopefully the people in charge will look at the whole season (as opposed to just the last game). I think we can safely assume that will happen.
Let's look at some other (*bad*) games:
Akron, UConn, Penn State, MSU, Nebraska, Iowa
There were too many embarrassing outings. I don't think it's reasonable to blame everything on "youth" and "Gardner." (I'd give both low percentages, in fact.)
November 30th, 2013 at 5:16 PM ^
November 30th, 2013 at 5:26 PM ^