OT: Dorian Thompson-Robinson's performance last night
Did anyone else watch the UCLA - Cincinnati game last night? The UCLA quarterback, Dorian Thompson-Robinson, was Harbaugh's number one choice of quarterback a few years ago. He looked absolutely dreadful last night, going 8/26 and giving up two *unforced* fumbles at crucial points of the game.
This post isn't to blast Harbaugh's QB evaluation, but rather to suggest that immediate playing time might not be the best thing for a lot of these kids. As I understand it, a big reason DTR chose UCLA over Michigan was the chance to play immediately. DTR was a near five-star, and he looks completely broken as a QB. At this point, it will be surprising if he's still that starting quarterback at the end of the season let alone has any NFL future. Very glad we've had talented QBs like McCaffrey who have waited a few years rather than insist on being fed to the wolves.
August 30th, 2019 at 11:05 AM ^
Already been discussed.
August 30th, 2019 at 11:07 AM ^
But, to OP's credit, a much more diplomatic title and tone.
August 30th, 2019 at 11:07 AM ^
Really? I searched a few of the recent board pages and couldn't find anything.
August 30th, 2019 at 11:08 AM ^
That's because moms nuked the previous version
August 30th, 2019 at 11:10 AM ^
Mods may have nuked the thread from last night, that OP was pretty much a DTR shipost that was poorly written to go along with the poor tone. You did a much better job, aflapan. And I largely agree with you, but when a kid is highly recruited coming out of high school and has been a star their entire lives - it has to be tough not to buy into the hype that they should be given immediate playing time right out of the gate.
August 30th, 2019 at 11:14 AM ^
Thread was nuked (like 12 hours too late) and not mentioned on the mod's sticky. OP is fine.
August 30th, 2019 at 1:03 PM ^
it has to be tough not to buy into the hype that they should be given immediate playing time right out of the gate.
Yeah, Derrick Green was a bummer for me.
But best wishes to him nonetheless.
August 30th, 2019 at 2:13 PM ^
Moms!
August 30th, 2019 at 2:55 PM ^
If they're not answering they're probably busy trying on more mom jeans.
August 30th, 2019 at 11:07 AM ^
Well, he's the only quarterback in the country who couldn't beat out Tate Martell.
August 30th, 2019 at 11:42 AM ^
LOL... that's one of the best user comments I've seen on here in awhile. Concise, funny and impossible to argue with.
August 30th, 2019 at 11:51 AM ^
It was funnier on the post-game thread on reddit
August 30th, 2019 at 12:41 PM ^
No doubt, Bishop Gorman produces the most overrated QBs
August 30th, 2019 at 1:20 PM ^
Is Tathan still pouting in a corner somewhere?
August 30th, 2019 at 11:08 AM ^
This will end well
August 30th, 2019 at 11:40 AM ^
Live from East Lansing?
August 30th, 2019 at 12:20 PM ^
No.
Doesn't look like the burning tires are sexually assaulting anyone or actively committing a felony against the student body....so no, probably not East Lansing.
August 30th, 2019 at 1:22 PM ^
Tires, not couches.
August 30th, 2019 at 11:09 AM ^
Welp, I didn't realize that this was a hot-button issue for the board. Please keep it civil, I guess.
August 30th, 2019 at 11:15 AM ^
Previous thread was removed for, I assume, visceral hot take accompanied by rather undiplomatic language.
You, OTOH, presented this topic in a far less toxic manner. You post stats and include more background regarding his Harbaugh recruitment. You describe his struggles without launching personal incendiaries. I approve.
August 30th, 2019 at 11:20 AM ^
Thanks, Naked Bootlegger. You're cool.
August 30th, 2019 at 11:16 AM ^
Upvoting because you're going to get negged for not seeing a post that is no longer there.
DTR looked bad. But everybody on UCLA looked bad. Asiasi looked bad. Not sure what happened to Kelly. Also not sure why UCLA can't ever get their shit together. From a million miles away, that program seems like a sleeping giant that refuses to wake up.
August 30th, 2019 at 11:24 AM ^
They've been a recruiting thorn in our side for a very long time, so I'm not too sad about them tanking. Seriously, how many recruiting head-to-heads have we lost to them? To be fair, they were almost all California kids who wanted to stay closer to home, but still. We also lost a few transfers to them as well (Asiasi).
August 30th, 2019 at 11:40 AM ^
Agreed. Darnay Holmes would look awfully good on our roster right about now.
August 30th, 2019 at 12:00 PM ^
Ugh, he's another one that I had forgotten about. Seriously, here's a list of head-to-head recruiting losses:
Josh Allen (apparently, Harbaugh tried to get him to come to Michigan)
Chris Clark (maybe we dodged a bullet there)
DTR
Boss Tagaloa and Devin Asiasi
and Darnay Holmes
If UCLA could stop draining elite talent from Michigan, that'd be great.
August 30th, 2019 at 12:32 PM ^
Interesting list -- those are most of the highly recruited players on their roster, from what I can tell.
August 30th, 2019 at 5:05 PM ^
Lucier-South was another. Didn't play last night. May not have made the trip ... think they referenced but I didn't quite catch between all the Pat McAfee aussie impressions and punt talk. Not a great game and I actually kind of enjoyed the less than serious patina the booth guys were putting on the call.
August 30th, 2019 at 11:25 AM ^
Kelly's decline is so bizarre. I wonder if he reached his goal of the NFL and his failure just broke him. His UCLA teams have looked awful.
August 30th, 2019 at 11:41 AM ^
As others have mentioned, he's been figured out. On top of that, I don't think he's ever built a program from the ground up. Mike Bellotti had been HC at Oregon since 1995. When Kelly came in in 2007, he already had the pieces he needed to make a splash. He became HC for the first time in 2009. He couldn't build something in the NFL and I think he's showing that he maybe can't build something in college either. I'd say the jury is still out, but he very likely is best off taking a step back a la Rich Rod.
August 30th, 2019 at 11:55 AM ^
I hadn't thought about the lack of program building. But I think he's definitely been figured out as far as what he runs. And I don't think he's creative enough to reinvent himself. I think a la RR is a perfect comparison.
August 30th, 2019 at 11:53 AM ^
I think he ran a mediocre offense at warp speed and isn't actually that good a game planner. Wasn't it Les at LSU that whooped their assess when Kelly was at Oregon because they practiced specifically for tempo? Not for scheme. Just for tempo.
August 30th, 2019 at 12:09 PM ^
Not sure I agree with others that say he's been "figured out".
I feel like he ran a spread at Oregon. Full spread it out, up-tempo, lots of waterbug WRs, all the things you picture. Things that terrified us as Michigan fans at the time.
Then he went to the Eagles and I was interested. How would this college offense do in the pros? There has to be a reason nobody does it in the NFL. He'll probably fail, but it should be interesting to see how. Let's see how many QBs he gets killed. And then his Eagles offense was as regular-ass stale NFL offense as anybody else. It's like he got there and decided "this is how it has to be done at this level" and dropped what made him successful. Not entirely of course, but his QBs were never runners. Lots of under-center, etc.
Then when he returned to college, I thought okay, now he's going to realize what made him successful and get back to pushing the envelope. And instead, watching that UCLA game last night, it's like he dragged that stale NFL style back with him.
I haven't studied him extensively. I'm forming these opinions on limited views, but it seems like he voluntarily quit doing the stuff that made him such a huge, scary success in the first place.
August 30th, 2019 at 12:21 PM ^
He failed in the NFL because you can't snap the ball until the officials say. There is a mandatory wait time. There is no such rule in college.
August 30th, 2019 at 12:25 PM ^
His failures in the NFL are well documented by X's and O's sites if you dig around. Basically, two things happened:
- The extensive amount of film study and sheer number of analysts NFL teams were able to download his playbook rather quickly. There could be a component to this as well that he wasn't changing enough or adding enough wrinkles, but the gist of it was teams knew what was coming after having half a season of film.
- NFL officials control the pace of the game and literally would not set the ball and let the Eagles snap the ball as fast as they wanted to. If any tempo advantage wanes or is outright taken out, it's really just another spread offense.
August 30th, 2019 at 1:50 PM ^
Cool. As I said, a third thing happened as well:
At Oregon, his QBs were Jeremiah Masoli, Darron Thomas and Marcus Mariota.
His Eagle QBs were Nick Foles, Mark Sanchez and Sam Bradford.
That is a huge shift in style. You can not run the offense he did at Oregon with those QBs, at any pace. Whether it was his decision to acclimate to that level or whether those players were forced upon him by the GM, they resembled a traditional NFL offense instead of the hyperspeed spread-to-run college show.
Saturday UCLA came out with multiple TEs, DTR under center and on their first play ran a standard-ass counter for about 4 yards. Find me one single under-center snap in this video or any other from his Oregon days.
He changed when he went to the league.
August 30th, 2019 at 1:25 PM ^
RR was once seen as an offensive savant. Coaches get figured out all the time. The good ones (e.g, Meyer and Saban) evolve all the time.
August 30th, 2019 at 12:16 PM ^
At least Kelly isn't throwing his QB under the bus.
They haven't had a good coach since Terry Donahue retired. Donahue wasn't fantastic, but he did have a nice run in the eighties before he started to slip in his last several years. Bob Toledo managed to have a 20-game winning streak (!) and the two best years of Al Borges' career but still got fired a couple years later. Even after he fired Al Borges.*
I'm really surprised Kelly is struggling as much as he seems to be. Karl Dorrell was a gamble that didn't pay off, I don't know what they were thinking with Jim Mora and particularly Rick Neuheisel, but Kelly should have been a safe bet.
* I don't think Al was actually fired here.
August 30th, 2019 at 1:21 PM ^
I attended both schools in Ann Arbor and in Westwood, and I can answer this... out there, with the weather, the girls, etc, it makes one rather laid back, the entire culture out there tends to make them soft... at least that is what it seemed like... USC has that disadvantage too, but have overcome it, I guess. Plus... baby blue uniforms ? Cmon...
August 30th, 2019 at 1:24 PM ^
Upvote away as points are not working again.
August 30th, 2019 at 1:56 PM ^
Saw that. RIP to the latest hamster.
August 30th, 2019 at 4:31 PM ^
I, too, am baffled by whatever it is Kelly is doing. He has abandoned what made him successful at Oregon. It's like the NFL broke him stylistically, and he's become a relic of past spread offenses except he's not even running a spread anymore.
August 30th, 2019 at 11:10 AM ^
DTR is more of a product of Chip Kelly’s trash system. Dude has been figured out like Rich Rod
August 30th, 2019 at 11:14 AM ^
Not sure I agree with that. While the system may be trash and Kelly may have been figured out, DTR wasn't completing easy throws which would have helped UCLA. The kid is talented enough to be making those throws in practice and more casual situations, but in game-time he looked overwhelmed.
August 30th, 2019 at 11:53 AM ^
His starting LT is a true freshman. You’d be overwhelmed too.
UCLA (and USC) have been recruiting terribly the last couple years. Kelly hasn’t improved that at all since he hates that stuff. Hell, the only reason he’s in college is bc the NFL chewed him up and spit him back out.
August 30th, 2019 at 12:10 PM ^
USC has been recruiting really well. Their coaching staff just can't develop them for shit. This year was definitely down (#20) but every other class going back to 2014 was top 10 and 3 of them were top 5.
August 30th, 2019 at 11:18 AM ^
Pretty sure Kelly's system doesn't call for throwing the ball backwards for the other team to jump on. Maybe Kelly won't work out at UCLA, but DTR made individual errors last night that probably cost his team the game.
August 30th, 2019 at 11:19 AM ^
Even after people figured out RRods offense he adjusted and still put up points, his problem everywhere he’s been is his defensive player philosophy
August 30th, 2019 at 12:02 PM ^
Well that and fucking secretaries on his desk while chugging vodka.