If Michigan loses to Michigan State does your confidence in the direction that the program is heading change?
I was thinking about how important this game is for Michigan this Saturday against MSU. Not only is this game important in regards to Michigan winning the Legends division, but also a measuring stick in the progress that Hoke has made since being hired. This is Hoke's third season at Michigan and historically a good coach at a school like Michigan that has tradition, great facilities, and deep pockets is enough time to build a super power. That being said it is not like Hoke walked into a perfect scenario. The team he inherited lacked depth up front and was built to run a system that didn't match what coach Hoke wanted to implement. It looks like Hoke has finally been able to build some depth up front, but the players are young and raw. Personally, I think the program is heading in the right direction. Dave Brandon should allow Hoke to coach for the duration of his contract as long as Michigan wins 9 games and is competitive with MSU and OSU. Now in year five if Michigan has not won a Big Ten championship then it will be time to look for another coach. The team will be loaded with talent and experience in 2016 for a new coach to step in and succeed immediately.
October 29th, 2013 at 2:48 PM ^
I've read many of your posts and really appreciate your viewpoint. but to use a basketball analogy. Trey Burke was great at driving the lane and making contested layups (call this man ball); against most anyone. However, if I'm playing against a great 7 ft shotblocker (call this playing 9 men in the box), I'm not going to have Trey keep driving for layups to continually see his shot swatted into the 5th row. I might have him drive, pull the D, the kick it out to open guy (like a play action pass or quick screen). as bad as we run out of the I-form, i don't advocate abandoning it. but 25 times with no success is like having 20 shots blocked. the psu game was a horrible strategy. i really don't understand how anyone can see past that. the IU game was a much better mix, and i give borges credit. but he crapped the bed against psu.
October 29th, 2013 at 3:14 PM ^
And it's not a bad one, but hear me out.
Before Michigan tried to either a) kill the clock, or b) felt comfortable with their position to kick a FG, Michigan ran Fitz or Green 14 times. 14 times in 54 minutes of play. That's about 16.666 times in a game if you extrapolate it to 60 minutes. Three of those were to try to pick up "and 1" situations or trying to kill the clock at the end of the half (when the first down pop pass didn't spring, Michigan was just trying to get into the half, so they ran Fitz twice). So on normal downs they ran with the RBs a total of 11 times.
To me, that's a number that indicates "we're keeping the defense honest but we are running a lot of other things". Or in your basketball analogy, they went to it enough to keep the defense collapsing to open up the shooters. Now, I agree I would have liked to see it get more varied by down, and it did in the second half. But at the end of the day, people are vastly overstating how often Borges ran Fitz head first into brick walls. He used 11 plays to set up pretty much every successful deep pass Michigan had.
Again, the game plan wasn't great, but it should have been succeeded, and to some extent it still did. Or to throw it back in your analogy, if Burke had to take 11 to 14 shots (however you want to quantify the "and 1" situations), contested, difficult shots that had a minimal chance of scoring, say he makes two or three, is it worth it to leave the three-point shooters wide open all night. You can argue, maybe he should have taken only 9 shots or something like that, is that enough to keep the defense collapsing? What if for a time the defense quit collapsing as PSU quit stacking the box? Should those number then start going back up? So there is a magic number somewhere in there with a changing defensive plan. Michigan did need to at least get the defense to respect the run to open up the pass within their game plan. They were able to do that, but did they do it too much, perhaps. I just don't think it's as wildly out of control and stubborn as people are making it out to be.
FWIW, I don't mind people arguing that "yeah, maybe it should have been 7". I think when Borges looked back maybe he though, "yeah, maybe should have done it fewer times". The point is to try to see things from the there and now perspective, and trying to set up what Borges was trying to do within his game plan. You can't just abandon the game plan, and if the game plan is to run to set up the pass to an extreme extent, you need to do it a bit. So yeah, maybe it should have been 7, I have no problem with the argument. But I just think people are acting like he did it 27 times in the first 54 minutes, rather than what really happened.
October 29th, 2013 at 7:11 PM ^
i agree with much of what you say here. however, i don't think you can just shew away the end of regulation and the OTs (settling for punts and FG). i have as much an issue with that strategy as the overall game strategy. but we don't really know if that was hoke or borges. and i don't want to beat that dead horse. hopefully borges may have learned his lesson, as you have to agree the play breakdown was much different in the IU game (ie. throwing on early downs; more spread runs vs i-form runs, etc). but we've seen this in prior years; great gameplans against iowa, sc, neb and osu (both at home); yet several headscratchers: @iowa, @nw, @msu, @osu, alab, @psu, @nd, akron. he's paid too much money to have all those headscratchers.
October 29th, 2013 at 10:41 PM ^
I get that you have to run the ball a bit just to keep the defense honest. But if every single time you run that zone stretch outside..you lose 2 or 3 yards, wouldnt it be better to just slam it up the middle for no gain or maybe a yard or 2? What kills me is these run plays that take a long time to develop and go for big losses. Half the time I am just hoping we dont fumble..the lss of yardage seems guaranteed.
October 29th, 2013 at 2:00 PM ^
".in theory they can and might very well work when the pieces of the puzzle/experience are gained and in place."
I suspect it is a difference in how one sees the coaches duty.
The job of the offensive coordinator is to put the offense in an OPTIMAL play... a play that SHOULD succeed, not a play that COULD succeed.
SC seems to consider any play that COULD succeed to be a good play call. I consider any play that isn't the OPTIMAL play a failure.
October 29th, 2013 at 2:09 PM ^
Then probably 99% of all play calls are failures, because you can't just call the optimal play every time.
I don't think simply because a play could succeed that it's a good play call. All plays could succeed. A Hail Mary, in theory, works every time. So no, that's not at all what I think, though it's been said multiple times. Borges called played that should succeed, that took advantage of the opponent, and set the opponent up for success. The game plan wasn't optimal, but the play calling within the game plan should have succeeded. Not could have, should have.
October 29th, 2013 at 11:15 AM ^
You go, Space Coyote. Tell it.
October 29th, 2013 at 1:13 PM ^
Fitz and Gallon are the only experienced players on our offense? What about Lewan and Scholfield? Funchess has a year and a half of experience under his belt now. Devin Gardner is in his 3rd year in this system, and has a years worth of starts under his belt. Any faults in his game aren't from inexperience, but from lack of development by the coaches.
I actually agree with most of your points, but dont try and over sell them by making ridiculous claims about having only 2 experienced players on our whole offense.
October 29th, 2013 at 1:34 PM ^
So I wasn't counting the OL as play-makers. I took it to mean he meant skill-position guys and the QB. As for the OL: OL, probably more than any other position, is about a unit. You can have two great pieces and still be a terrible unit, because it's about all 5 working together. The unit as a whole is vastly inexperienced, and having two guys that have experience doesn't make up for that.
Gardner has some decent experience, but it's not great. He only has 2 years of QB coaching in this system and has only had a single off-season as a starter. For how raw he was coming in, he has made great improvement, no doubt. I think he'll continue to improve, but I wouldn't call him an extremely experienced player, he's kind of inbetween.
At the end of the day though, on both sides of the ball, Michigan is plugging in experienced players between the youth. It's the opposite of the desired way to have it. You want the more talented but raw inexperienced players to be plugged within the experienced players to maximize output. The balance is off on both sides of the ball.
October 29th, 2013 at 1:54 PM ^
We're young in terms of both class position and number of starts.
...but we're running with about the same amount of youth as Texas A&M.
October 29th, 2013 at 2:06 PM ^
And the DG we saw against ND is the worst DG that shows up week-to-week, then this Michigan team is an awful lot like Texas A&M, a club that has two loses, one of which being to a pretty bad Ole Miss team.
October 29th, 2013 at 7:58 PM ^
We'd get absolutely destroyed by A&M at this point I'm afraid.
October 29th, 2013 at 2:43 PM ^
Years experience in program (FR=1, RS FR/So =2, etc.)
Texas A&M skill players: 18 "player years"
Michigan skill players: 22 "player years"
Texas A&M OL: 17 "player years"
Michigan OL: 17 "player years"
Number of starts (entering season):
Texas A&M skill players: 39 starts (2 players with 0 starts entering this season)
Michigan skill players: 46 starts (2 players with 0 starts entering this season)
Texas A&M OL: 74 (2 players with 0 starts entering this season)
Michigan OL: 58 (3 players with 0 starts entering this season with Butt as TE)
October 29th, 2013 at 3:56 PM ^
But if you are right, and we have a very limited OL, why are we insisting on running power football behind our biggest weakness? Wouldn't a top coaching staff recognize the folly of trying to run out of formations that tip your play and expose our weakest players?
October 29th, 2013 at 4:04 PM ^
So I really didn't want to get into this again and don't want to continue what has started. Needless to say, there are different philosophies when looking at protecting players, giving them easier assignments (does this mean more likely to not lose consistently, or more likely to win?), utilizing methods that help you move the ball in big chunks because you aren't consistent, etc.
There is nothing binary about this. It's not 0 or 1. Running out of a formation the majority of the time doesn't mean every time. Running power doesn't mean you're utilizing you weakness when your weakness is apparent no matter what you run. I really don't want to go into depth with this again because I'm exhausted arguing my point of view. I'd really like to move past the game and onto future games. I am really sorry if you are genuinely asking because you haven't seen my responses or if you're just wondering my opinion or what have you, but it is something that has worn on me enough to not really wish to go in more depth now.
October 29th, 2013 at 10:15 AM ^
October 29th, 2013 at 10:16 AM ^
Is the secondary really that young?
Gordon is a senior who is a multi year starter. Avery's a senior who's started and seen lots of playing time. Taylor and Countess might be young when it comes to class designation but they are both 2nd year starters.
Wilson is young and a first year starter and the 6th db they bring in is very youong but with their core nickel package, don't they have tons of experience?
October 29th, 2013 at 10:27 AM ^
There may be some seniors, but they are the only seniors. It's not like there is a variety of upperclassmen to choose from here.
October 29th, 2013 at 10:33 AM ^
October 29th, 2013 at 1:25 PM ^
"Experience checks in at different times for different people. Better coaches will help it come along sooner, having more experienced players around you will also help."
Can't one also make the argument that better coaches will recruit players who have less far to come and that the if the "distance" needed to be covered by a player is excessive - it is a failure of the coach in recruiting?