OT: Dennis Dodd visits with RichRod
There are just a couple of references to UMich in here (nothing particularly new), but some may find this interesting/entertaining:
is this guy's favorite word "unpretentiousness?"
Dodd seems to be working overtime to make his claim about RichRod not fitting in at Michigan because he's unpretentious, I guess he hasn't seen Brady Hoke... nothing pretentious about him, either (except, perhaps, his undying faith in UM's greatness).
I also wish Rodriguez would get over making comments about UM's success since his departure that make him seem insecure and petty, such as:
"Even with some of the issues Michigan may not have wanted to believe that they had," Rodriguez said, "we thought we fixed them. We just didn't get to enjoy them after they all got fixed."
Yes, by the time he left, our defense was fixed tighter than Nick Saban's.
April 19th, 2012 at 11:48 AM ^
Yeah, but Rich Rod didn't have the $800,000 budget to give a D Coordinadtor.
April 19th, 2012 at 11:59 AM ^
I thought Brandon let him have 1 million to hire a d coordinator, but everyone saw the writing on the wall and wanted some guarantees.
April 19th, 2012 at 12:00 PM ^
Maybe it's just as well. It could have been painful to watch a guy like Mattison being forced to run Rodriguez's 3-3-5 with the crappy WVU position coaches.
April 19th, 2012 at 12:03 PM ^
You can get a good D-coordinator for less than that, and said d-coordinator is a lot more likely to succeed if he's allowed to run the D how he wants, without the interference of an offensive specialist. Plus, Mattison has said he came because of Hoke. He was making money in the NFL and didn't have to make the move.
It appears, at least on the outside, that Hoke and Co. did not take RR's cake batter and bake it into a delicious, beautiful cake. They took his cake batter, sifted some pretty nasty ingredients, added a few high quality ingredients of their own, and THAT's how they produced the cake. The main ingredients were all there, but the attention to detail and the baking expertise were severely lacking under RR's watch.
Sorry for the cake analogy, but RR started it.
When your Sous-Chef is stuffing beavers into the face of your waiters. And not the good kind.
April 19th, 2012 at 12:16 PM ^
Mattison's quotes last year regarding the defense's complete inability to watch film or tackle properly indicate otherwise, and I trust GMat a whole lot more than RR when it comes to defense (probably just in general but that's neither here nor there). All it takes is 5 minutes of D highlights from the Miss. St. game to know he's obviously full of it. Saying these kinds of things can only serve to make RR look delusional and undermine him all over again. Let it go, sir, let it go.
As word started to leak out in late November, Byrne decided on dropping his own version of a scoop. Moments after the deal was done, Byrne tweeted out the photo of Rodriguez and family. After Michigan Twitter fiends had their fun, the reality set inMichigan Twitter fiends? What the hell is he talking about, the sombrero picture? Was anyone making fun of RR for getting a new job? Stuff like that, and the constant use of the word pretentious, made it difficult to get through this article
Here's the Pulitzer-winning line, to me:
This is when how that unpretentiousness is meeting laidback.
This is when how that writing is meeting terrible.
That looks like something I would write on this blog when I am about 5 or 6 beers deep. I would then regret in the morning or perhaps later that afternoon when I sobered up a bit.
Rodridguez is using that interview to establish the reasons why a less-than-stellar year is to be expected.
I attended the UofA spring game in Tucson last Saturday. There are shades of 2008 evident. Ball security was a problem. The offense and the defense looked sluggish. Oh, and at least one episode of RR throwing his head-set to the ground in anger.
Arizona is every bit as pretentious as they claim Michigan is ... but in basketball.
Arizona in the Pac-12 is going to be akin to Northwestern or maybe Iowa in the Big-10 ... not bottom dwellers, but unable to consistently compete with their top teams -- USC and Oregon.
May have something to do with the ball exchange being more complex than a pro style team. Run a simple iso, you know who gets the ball. Run read option, and there are two potential ball carriers. That makes the handoff exchange more difficult I would imagine.
Edit: unless you’re talking about in the open field, which oddly I didn’t consider until after I replied, even though that makes more sense considering your comment.
April 19th, 2012 at 10:41 AM ^
Oh, and at least one episode of RR throwing his head-set to the ground in anger.
What kinda coach would throw his head-set to the ground in anger?
April 19th, 2012 at 12:44 PM ^
Yeah, your point is valid.
But I'd respond with this -- that was a different era.
Nowadays it seems the expected protocol is to maintain a calm, in-control demeanor. Brian Kelly at ND goes purple in the face and it's all the talk. Coaches like Saban, Meyer and Hoke maintain an almost stoic presence on the sideline. And it's praised as a good thing.
I'm trying to think if Hoke was ever caught on camera last year expressing anger or frustration. He had ample situations where he could have. But did he?
April 19th, 2012 at 12:48 PM ^
I dont think Saban is a good example. He dragged Mccarron off the field for a late pass 2 years ago. I think he has had other issues with his team
There's something wrong with Dennis Dodd's medulla oblongata. This whole article is terrible.
I hope RR does well, but he really needs to stop talking about Michigan. If he were still here, the program would be worse off than it is now.
RR did develop some under-the-radar guys at WVU, but Jordan Kovacs seems like the kind of guy that made it on his own initiative. Nothing about RR brought him to M, that was where he always wanted to go. His father was a walk-on at M, and Kovacs had zero scholarship offers. His only offer was as a preferred walk-on at Toledo. And doesn't every team / coach have tryouts for walk-ons? It's not as if this is unique to RR. RR and coaching staff did see enough promise to let him play on the team, but part of the reason he ever got to start is because all the recruited talent ahead of him on the roster flamed out in one way or another (some due to injury).
Kovacs is a winner, but I'm not sure any coach should get the credit for his success on the field.
April 19th, 2012 at 11:17 AM ^
Great points about Jordan, but some coaches don't give a walk-on on a fair shake at playing time. They always favor the scholarship players. I think RR's stance towards walk-ons might have opened the door wider for Jordan to see the field.
April 19th, 2012 at 11:49 AM ^
you are saying RR lucked out when Jordan Kovacs fell into his lap. I happen to believe that, outside of the casino and lotteries, people tend to make their own luck. RR deserves credit for it.
GREG, stuffed animals, and the entire secondary transferring to the MAC is not fixing the defense by any stretch.
He's down to one quote per article denigrating Hoke's accomplishments (the I had the defense fixed before I left one) though. So that's progress. It's kind of sad though, I still want RR to do well, but I'm also kind of hoping USC and Oregon remind him he is mortal.
Not meaning to bash RR (I was a cautious supporter), but he didn't fit in because he didn't win. If he had won games, the program might have bent towards him. And as far as credit goes, I give him credit for finding Denard. Other than that, not much.
April 19th, 2012 at 11:10 AM ^
April 19th, 2012 at 12:17 PM ^
Rodriguez recruited some good players, I agree, but that's a baseline expectation here. Have we ever had a head coach who couldn't recruit well?
April 19th, 2012 at 12:46 PM ^
I don't think that poster said "nothing else"; he said "not much else". Semantics aside, how do you think Denard would do throwing to Amani Toomer? Mario Manningham? Steve Breaston? Anthony Carter? How about blockers like Jake Long? Jon Jansen? Steve Hutchinson?
The point made was that it's expected that Michigan recruit and build great players, and to overlook the mess of RichRod for the benefit of two players is (to me) an error. A larger point is that they are all Michigan players regardless of which coach recruited them. Rich continues to fail to understand that. So do some folks (cough cough, you) here.
At O-line, D-line and receiver. The fact that we're maybe taking 7 linebackers in two classes doesn't speak greatly of the linebacker depth either.
There's a lot of things one can credit Rich for doing well. I'm not sure depth is one of them.
Its rich - no pun intended - that you would be blaming a former coach for a current coach's problems.
As M-Wolverine notes, Rich didn't bring us depth. It's more suitable to say he robbed us of it. As for Rich "bringing in the whole team last year"...ummm, no. He didn't. I believe Molk, RVB and Martin (among others) were recruited by Carr. If you are cool with that fact, maybe we can all stop talking about which coach brought in which players and simply approach these topics with the understanding that every Michigan coach is expected to bring in star talent.
"You don't have to sacrifice academics. You can still have a so-called social life, but gosh darn, football has to be important ...
Dollars to donuts he didn't say "gosh darn."
I didn't even notice another issue with the article until after reading some of the comments. Look at the photograph. It's of RR during his Michigan tenure, decked out in M gear. Now I know the author probably doesn't select the photograph, but how lazy and stupid is it to have an article praising the guy's fit at Arizona but showing him in M gear.
April 19th, 2012 at 10:04 AM ^
+1 ... there are plenty of photos of Rodriguez in Arizona garb. There's no reason to show him in Michigan colors at this point. None. Other than the desire by the press to harken back to a contentious time. That creates buzz and draws eyes.
But Michigan. Michigan draws page hits and readers. Arizona Spring Ball draws zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.......... That's why they keep asking him the questions. The problem is he keeps taking the bait.
I like Rich and he'll be great tonic for that program, but
His insistence on talking about Michigan in the way he does is totally at odds with all the great things people keep saying about his attitude, character, and will to succeed.
I am sure we'd all like to see him get over it and learn to be a lot more complementary and balanced on the subject. He embarrasses himself needlessly with his dubious version of the job he did up here and his ego driven need to take credit in absentia for the greatness of team 132.
I believe he's better than that, but he keeps proving me wrong.
I agree that he seems hung up on it all, but I'm not sure what else we've come to expect from RR. He's a guy who a) has a ton of confidence in his system and way of doing things b) feels like he was wronged here and c) is "sitting on the couch" watching players he recruited win big. Add in the fact that he hasn't ever had the greatest filter, and that's what we're seeing, I think.
I'd bet we see him tone down when he starts coaching games at Arizona and "his" classes start to graduate. To make a long story short, I wish he would stick to more Hokeish responses about M, but it doesn't make me think much less of him as a person, and I have a pretty high opinion of him in that department.
I'm not entirely fond of marking players as "RichRod's" or "Lloyd's" or whomever's (they're all "Michigan" players), but if Rich is going to complain that Hoke won with "his" players, while omitting the fact (I think and will surely be corrected if I'm wrong) that Molk, RVB and Martin were recruited by Carr...well, that complaint doesn't hold a lot of water.
Hence the quotes around "his". I don't believe that either, those players signed for Michigan, not Rich or Lloyd or Brady, but I also don't doubt for a second that coaches develop bonds and personal loyalties back and forth between themselves and recruits/players.
I think a lot of players and coaches view things in that light, and wouldn't be surprised to hear that graduation in 1995 (Bo) or 2016 (RR) is a bigger deal than normal for former coaches, since it's the last of "their" guys leaving.
April 19th, 2012 at 10:20 AM ^
I hear what you're saying and we seem to agree that they're all "Michigan" players, but Rich doesn't seem to see it that way. He wants to take credit for any good, none of the bad and take credit away from the current staff. That's not a swell guy in my book.
April 19th, 2012 at 10:39 AM ^
I prefer to think of him as a somewhat emotionally insecure, flawed person, but still a basically good guy. I think the first part of 3 and Out painted a picture of him that allows me to view him with quite a bit of sympathy. The old "small town origins, would have died of silicosis at 50 except for football" kind of a thing.
I'm glad he's doing well. Anxious to see him square off against Leach and Kelly over the years.
It made stars and award winners of Pat Smith, Steve Slaton, Noel Devine and, oh yes, another Michigan leftover -- Denard Robinson.
Jeebus, man.