expecting and seeing 2 different things?

We knew the offense would blow. We knew Utah would be a tough game. And yet, I sense a great disturbance in Wolverine Nation (ha ha I made us a Nation I am cool—UN here we come!) after Saturday’s loss. Is it possible that actually watching the expected awfulness was too much for the Big Blue Boy faithful (I want to shoot the person who first called anyone Big Blue)? Alternatively, maybe the abject incompetence we witnessed was somehow different or worse than expected.

I figured the offense would be bad. I was looking for scores from short fields, broken/break away plays, and a very few actual drives. I feared offensive line troubles would make running difficult and QB troubles would force lots of short passes off action and run looks. I did not expect so many freshmen to start, however. By and large, that’s what we got—minus the break aways and the one good drive ended in a fumble.

I was happy to see that while the OL was bad it wasn’t so bad (unlike ND 2007) as to preclude actual offense. I was also happy the potential for Yakety Sax was largely unrealized—think of ND’s first offensive serious of the 2007 UM/ND cripple fight. I was very happy to see Michigan getting 7 when the opportunity presented itself and not settling for FG attempts. That was a problem for Carr. Hopefully, that ability was by design and not all random chance. In the end, Michigan played poorly and still nearly beat a pretty good team. While I’m never happy with a loss this one hardly devastated me.

The defense in the first half—that both surprised me and had me reaching for the hemlock. Any game that defense shows up in will be a tough one for this Michigan team to win. However, I think conference play will appear to heal much of what ails both Michigan and Little Brother. At least until bowl time.

My question is, for those that are upset, what were you expecting? Was the badness worse than expected or different in some critical way?