September 11th, 2014 at 4:25 PM ^
Well, yes, obviously when you're running an offense with a ground game that revolves around your quarterback, the ability of your quarterback to run is going to be important. When we're discussing which team has a better running game we don't usually net the ball carriers out of the equation. They're part of the running game.
On the other hand, Denard was entirely absent for two games in 2012 and Michigan still ran for 69-313. So I'm not sure he's the entire story.
September 11th, 2014 at 5:23 PM ^
September 12th, 2014 at 1:11 PM ^
Out of curiousity I went back and looked at some stats from the two seasons.
2009: Tate Forcier rushed for 240 yards on 118 carries for 2.0 ypc.
All other rushers for Michigan ran for 1994 yards on 376 carries for 5.3 ypc.
2012: Denard Robinson rushed for 1266 yards on 177 carries for 7.2 ypc.
All other rushers for Michigan ran for 1123 yards on 325 carries for 3.4 ypc.
So in reality, its as close to the whole story as you can possibly get. The most spread player in Michigan history is the only reason our manball coaching staff had anything close to the numbers they had in 2012.
In fact, its even more pathetic when you consider that they had two upperclass QBs, a returning 1000 yard rusher and 4 NFL upperclass linemen and other than Denard being Denard, they couldn't do a damn thing on the ground.
September 12th, 2014 at 1:24 PM ^
Erik posted those yesterday.
And again, your stats include games against Eastern and Delaware State. The 2009 schedule was much, much softer than 2012's; against conference opponents the 2012 team had a better ypc in the games Denard missed than 2009 had.
About 3/4 of the difference between the two rushing games was Denard vs. Tate. The other 1/4 was something else.
September 12th, 2014 at 1:41 PM ^
Erik posted some of those stats. The big one is the difference between the starting quarterbacks, which ends up being 5.2 ypc.
I'd say that Denard is about 90% of the difference and then another 5% is the fact that we had 5 upperclassmen (4 NFLers!) on the line is the rest of the difference.
The Big Ten was also much better in 2009 than it was in 2012, so you're kind of clueless there. Shockingly so. We played the likes of 11-2 Ohio State, Penn State and Iowa, not to mention 10-3 Wisconsin. In 2012 we played 12-0 Ohio State and....well....10-4/10-3 Nebraska/Northwestern? So there's your other 5%.
So it was pretty much all Denard mixed with a more experienced line and a weaker schedule. Just because one game stands out as an anomaly doesn't mean you have an argument. Sit this one out champ.
September 12th, 2014 at 1:53 PM ^
...were the rushing stats for the two starting quarterbacks. He didn't explicitly do the subtraction but it wasn't a difficult exercise for the reader.
Ultimately your argument comes down to "2009 ran the ball at will against DSU and EMU while 2012 struggled against Alabama." That's basically what you're doing when you simply compare raw numbers without adjusting for schedule. Clowney, the NC, the NC runner-up vs. 6-6 ND and Delaware State. (I'm going to call Air Force/Western and UMass/Eastern a wash, which is probably generous to Western.)
September 11th, 2014 at 3:01 PM ^
Season sack totals from mgoblue.com:
- 2012: 18 sacks for -131
- 2009: 27 sacks for -179
Doesn't seem like that should be enough difference though.
September 11th, 2014 at 3:04 PM ^
See my 2nd reply to Reader71.
September 11th, 2014 at 1:12 PM ^
A way too long article, mostly taken from other areas, with the author not contributing much.
September 11th, 2014 at 1:27 PM ^
Fair enough, but this article wasn't written for denizens of this board. It was written for Grantland's average reader, i.e. passionate sports fans who like to read the best writing on whatever the topic is. If the topic is Michigan Football, Brian Cook is the guy I'd recommend to the aforementioned reader. Not to mention that Brian and Hinton go way back to at least when I started reading this blog in 2006, if not farther. I thought it was on point and is going to be great exposure for this site... don't understand why people are ripping on it.
September 11th, 2014 at 2:56 PM ^
As someone who occasionally writes Mich articles for a national audience. Yeah, you guys all already know. Doesn't mean it isn't useful or hackish for someone to sum up the hardcore fans' knowledge for others. If Hinton did this same kind of story about, say, USC, I'm sure I'd learn something.
September 11th, 2014 at 1:45 PM ^
September 11th, 2014 at 2:20 PM ^
Grantland is an excellent site which is ahead of the curve in comparison to other sports sites, but if bleacher report is more your cup of tea then help yourself.
September 11th, 2014 at 1:13 PM ^
Summary of the article: Brian, you're the best.
Can't argue with it.
September 12th, 2014 at 1:09 PM ^
Agreed that was my main takeaway as well.
September 11th, 2014 at 1:35 PM ^
There's something about the way that Hinton writes (some kind of underlying layer of smugness, if that makes sense?) which has always kept me from really enjoying his articles. On the other hand, he's a Southern Miss grad, and it's not exactly a great time to be a fan of the Golden Eagles, so maybe I should let it slide.
Also, am I blind or can you not comment on articles at Grantland?
September 11th, 2014 at 1:46 PM ^
September 11th, 2014 at 2:38 PM ^
That I'm just stupid.
September 11th, 2014 at 3:18 PM ^
The Smugness probably just happens when you write for the same site as Klosterman
September 11th, 2014 at 11:55 PM ^
September 11th, 2014 at 2:03 PM ^
Don't much care for the article. Agree that it is appealing to AA T&P crowd, and to some in the MMM crowd. (Mich Man Meme.) I completely, totally, believe Michigan is heading in the right direction. We're just not there yet. We are going to be better this year than last year, and better next year than this year.
I completely agree with Brian on the patience thing (two standard deviations north of many in the crowd) because another transition would be disastrous, disastrous, disastrous. There are no good options, and we need to stay the course.
I also think that with Hoke, Nuss, Mattison, and especially Manning, our recruiting is going to continue (short term) to outpace our performance. Recruiting and talented players are the lifeblood of a program. This recruiting theme is one of the major reasons a transition would be disastrous. It was bad enough losing Damien Harris (with cutting Borges loose.) I shudder to think what would happen with cutting ANY of our current staff loose
One other observation. I really hope that DB isn't stupid, and is chastened by his failures. Work to schedule good games, keep the prices stable, avoid corny shtick, and the program will be fine. DB has been a bit tone deaf. I do give him some slack, because as I think back to the old gold standard, Don Canham, he was kind of corny and progressive for that era of AD's.
September 11th, 2014 at 2:07 PM ^
On the subject of Hoke’s future, Cook feels he’s “two standard deviations above the patience mean” compared to the rest of the fan base, in part because he doesn’t see any viable successors on the horizon.
I was intrigued by what Brian said here because as much as I gripe privately - and publicly, the little bit that I allow myself - about certain aspects of what is going on, I sort of find myself here feeling that way as well. We've had these coaching change threads throughout the week, most of which grope for the improbable or pose disingenuous hypotheticals, but they all tend to miss what Brian said in the end of quoted passage. Another transition when there really are not realistic viable alternatives would be a willful cratering, which I am sure no one wants.
September 11th, 2014 at 2:25 PM ^
Emotions run high after a game like Saturday's and people naturally want to find a scapegoat and get a quick fix. And while I personally wasn't sold on Hoke from the beginning given his overall losing record as HC at mid tier schools another change would indeed be a "willful cratering".
It does feel like the ceiling on Hoke & Co. is 2011, which isn't awful but we benefited from a lot of luck that year. While it always takes a lot of luck to win it all, we had a lot of luck and didn't win it all.
September 11th, 2014 at 2:19 PM ^
Man, I'm kinda sick of these articles. UM lost a weird game to a rival; it sucks but my gawd are people looking for hidden meanings. Hinton is usually a good read, but this just felt like lazy writing by a guy who was tasked with talking about a topic nobody really cares about.
Hoke is in trouble; he needs to win now. To read some OSU boards, people are starting to worry about Meyer and his continued inability to field a good defense and now with real questions about his QB recruiting and development post-Miller. That seems insane to me because the guy has lost 3 games in 2+ years, but that's the nature of fandom.
I'm not saying the team is going to go undefeated the rest of the way, but maybe this ND game is the outlier in the season. Maybe UM splits with MSU and OSU and does reasonably well at the bowl game. Hell, the year before last they were a last-minute breakdown defensively from beating a top-10ish USC team. Stuff happens, and the farther we get away from ND it starts to feel like a weird exception created by the rivalry, like how last year the team looked like a million bucks following UTL II and then struggled basically the rest of the year. Perhaps that is the case now.
Also, I get tired of guys talking about players looking "desultory" and sleepwalking through a second half in which the defense held ND to 10 points despite some bad field position and turnovers, and the offense had a couple of breakdowns but weren't really being stoned the way they have in the past. It's dumb writing because it implies some loss of faith and effort when in fact the team was down because it was behind and it didn't look like they were going to win. That's human nature, and every team on the bad side of a blowout has that look. Doesn't mean the team has given up on the season; they are just mentally easing off an unwinnable situaiton because unlike a bunch of fans, they have to prepare for the next opponent.
September 11th, 2014 at 2:38 PM ^
I think it is important to see progress through the season. If we are a much better team at the end of the season then Hoke & CO should be given one more season even if the final record has 4 to 5 losses. If there is no improvement, then a change may be needed.
September 11th, 2014 at 3:02 PM ^
then he should be given at least 2 more seasons (given the crap storm that has been thrown at him this week).
September 11th, 2014 at 2:51 PM ^
Agree on the last graph about team giving up/body language interpretation, etc. You're gonna be bummed when you lose. Football lends itself to such interpretation tho. No one thinks NBA teams have given up because they're slumping at the end of a playoff blowout, because we know there's another game in two days and it's not at all rare to get blown out and then win a series.
But I disagree that the larger Hinton article wasn't worthwhile. I think malaise is a good way of describing the feeling of my friends who are fans, and mid-2010 is a good comparison. This doesn't mean we don't understand that ND could be an outlier and that the program has positive things going for it as well. We're not throwing tantrums and calling for firings. It just means, well, we've lost 6 out of the last 10 games in the same desultory-offense, mediocre-defense way, and we lost the one game that could've redeemed a lot of it (OSU) on a coin flip, and until we do something like pasting PSU at the end of a four-game streak, or giving MSU a real game, we're going to feel a little bleh. I thought the article conveyed this state of the program fairly in a way that other fans could learn from and relate to.
September 11th, 2014 at 3:14 PM ^
I liked how he took steps backward and forward in time again, zooming in an out of each, to view the crisis for what it is, and from different perspectives.
Some other takeaways:
- Reminds me that Brian has done an outstanding job. As a reader of mgoblog, I don't know what I'd do without it.
- The quotes of Brian in the article reminded me that nobody has chronicled the crisis more thoroughly and in greatest detail than mgoblog.
- I really wish Michigan football would finally improve, for the sake of mgoblog readers, UM football fans, and for Brian. The dude deserves to know what college football success looks like (again).
Hinton summarized things for the outside masses. I thought he did a nice job here.
September 11th, 2014 at 3:20 PM ^
I'm actually a fan of what the Notre Dame game has done to our season: Things boil down to Michigan outperforming expectations. If Hoke can cure his road woes by beating MSU and/or OSU, the team will almost certainly be near the top of the division and that will be enough to stabilize the program and move forward. If he loses to both rivals, I think its pretty apparent he'll be gone (and probably should be gone) at the end of the season.
I truly hope its the former.
September 11th, 2014 at 3:44 PM ^
I always secretly suspected that Hunter Lochmann is an MGoBlog mole in the AD.
September 11th, 2014 at 4:02 PM ^
“Notre Dame was like the 2010 Penn State game, where [Penn State quarterback] Matt McGloin ripped Michigan’s defense a new asshole,” said Brian Cook, who has seen head coaches come and go as proprietor of the Michigan-obsessed site MGoBlog, and who remembers the precise moment when the mob turned the pitchforks on Hoke’s predecessor, Rich Rodriguez. “It was a breaking point for a lot of people.”
Michigan-obsessed site MGoBlog. That's a wee bit of an understatement.
September 11th, 2014 at 4:03 PM ^
1. Michigan has a tradition-rich, glorious past
2. Michigan has a stagnant, woeful present
3. Michigan has a future of, let's just hope for the best
September 11th, 2014 at 10:32 PM ^
headlines like “Meat man Brady Hoke is the beef Michigan wanted.” (A small sample: “The three-year Rich Rodriguez experiment was like an avowed meat-lover going vegan because everyone says he should, until he finally spits out the bean curd and says, ‘Gimme a steak!’ … Hoke is a steak. He’s a porterhouse. A former linebacker, he is beefy in stature, beefy in voice … and beefy in Michigan tradition.”)
Good God. Embarassing writing from the freep.
September 11th, 2014 at 11:11 PM ^
If the OP had included even a minimal summary of the article, I probably would have upvoted, but I really dislike threads that are essentially just "click on this link."