FEI: Michigan #3

That captured my concerns. It's almost like the coaching staff reverts to the most bland plays when things start to go sideways. Rather than try different things, they try the same thing over and over again hoping it will eventually work. The only reason it didn't cost us the Rutgers game is because Rutgers is Rutgers. Do that against ant other B10 team and we lose that game. 

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Yeah, I think we are relatively weak at DT and probably at CB but otherwise this is a quite talented team. I just don't think we have a coaching staff that will take this roster to the heights other staffs could.

I mean it’s not like the professional football coaches don’t see what we see. Perhaps they didn’t want to put the adjustment on film so Wisconsin doesn’t have it. If we get ahead on Wisconsin, then they will struggle to catch up. Now I know the past six years have taken away the benefit of the doubt, but I can’t think that there was literally no plan B here.
 

Fact is, we are 4-0 and if we win this game we will start exorcizing the demons of seasons past. Wisconsin won’t be a ranked team, but it’s one of the few teams we haven’t beaten on the road. Our next road test will be Nebraska and our next chance for the big road win will be MSU.  Hopefully we’ve figured the passing game out by then.   
 

for all the hand-wringing, we ignore that msu had pretty much the exact same game as us against Nebraska. They shot out to a lead at home, the offense completely stopped gaining yards in the second half, but they won at the end. Not sure why they are fine and we suck based on very similar season trajectories? 

This is why I havent gotten near a sports book yet.  For both NFL and College... dont see a lot of consistency or patterns at all, well outside of Bama.  But you aint making money on them anyway. 

Im going to wait until at least week 6 for both NFL/NCAA to even try and make a somewhat "rational" bet. 

People are acting like Georgia beat last year's Clemson team.  10-3 with no offensive touchdowns, getting outscored by the likes of NC State.  Sure, they've looked great since then, but they're not some unbeatable juggernaut and I find it fascinating that they're in the same top tier across the board.

Again, you can make this argument with basically any team in the country so it's pretty futile- but Michigan looks way better than anyone thought they would at this point.

He argues they weren’t running up the middle almost every play in 2H, then doesn’t go over any of the run plays up the middle in his analysis, until the last play where Cade keeps when he shouldn’t have.  Devin only looked at passing plays in 2H. All but one run was up the middle in 2H. He even says he’s not going to focus on 2H because Michigan had 20 at halftime and still had 20 at the end of the game, so obviously it wasn’t good in 2H. That’s what he said.

I’ve been enjoying those segments too, but after watching the last few, I think he comes from a very QB centric mindset, i.e. if something goes wrong, it’s the QBs fault.
I appreciate his insight on QB play and he has some great stories and charisma, but I take his overall offensive analysis with a grain of salt.

This has got to be the most insightful post about the collective mood of the board that I've read in a long time.  

I feel like my post on our poll ranking is evergreen:

https://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/ap-rankings-michigan-14#comment-244264201

"In a totally unsurprising note, the Michigan fanbase ranked Michigan #119 in the latest AP Poll"

I believe it was Hutchinson who said last week that the team knew that after one loss the fans would say they suck again. But he was wrong. All it took was getting out-scored in the 2nd half of a game they won.

Yeah everyone is hung up on the fact that Rutgers gave us our first big test, but they REALLY need to look at that 10-2 record from our opponents against non-us teams.  I think I saw that we're 2nd in the nation in transitive wins (ie. how many wins do the teams you've beaten have).  That's not nothing.  We've faced a harder than it looks schedule and still dominated it.  Ohio State can't say that (they did not easily pull away from Minnesota or Tulsa), Georgia struggled with a mediocre Clemson team, Clemson nearly lost to Georgia Tech, Notre Dame has been bumblefucking their way through their schedule, Florida struggled with USF & FAU, etc. etc.

Parity is king right now in CFB, and we happen to be one team who's mostly avoided it (aside from 1 half).  We've never trailed.  We have zero turnovers on offense.  Those are sure signs of a good team.

I wonder how much of the Rutger angst has to do with the lead-up articles analyzing the game on this very site, which basically boiled down to "yeah, Schiano was successful in the past, but it's Rutger and they still suck." But Rutger is sitting at 3-1 after the loss. Schiano is a lunkhead ("We need more Schiano Men around here") but is also a good coach. And that is not last year's SU of Jersey squad.

The reality is that the transfer portal is changing the game. A new coach doesn't have to sweat out a transition class and wait two more years for recruits to fill holes. It's easier install that new system when ideal starters are a phone call away. And those transfers may be the depth in a dominant program walking out the door. So starters get injured and they can't fill the holes with blue chippers as before; they're forced to play younger players when starters graduate. It's a free agent system, and it's bringing parity.

Michigan had their eye on the wrong rival!