OT: Steven Threet

Threet is tall, but it's going to be hard for him to be effective in the pocket when he practically throws sidearm.  I don't see him turning into a mobile, roll-out guy, either.  I would imagine that coaches are still working with him to at least tweak his motion, which will probably affect his consistency.

may have 4 QBs (current and former) in college football that have started a game for the wolverines.

Mallet, threet, Tate, Drob. This is a little strange.

Of course he improved. He's in a system somewhat more favorable to his physical attributes and style of play. He's probably bigger, much more mature, more used to the speed of play, etc. Certainly more so than when he played here.

I'm sure it doesn't hurt that Dennis Erickson is one of the Wise Old Men of college coaches. He's seen his share of quarterbacks, and coached some very, very good ones.

The guy was also basically a true freshman (and they don't tend to be any good playing quarterback no matter where they play).  Add in a pretty lousy offensive line and a group of skill players that was just oft-injured Brandon Minor and a bunch of freshmen and no young quarterback is going to be successful under those circumstances.

Hopefully he gets a shot to play and has some success at ASU.

Don't know the story, so care to explain?

Or do you have any facts or references to prove that?

Exactly. He was a redshirt freshmen, who probably didn't expect to contribrute until his junior or senior year. He showed flashes of good things while he was here, it was just an offense that didn't suit him very well. I think he had some potential had Michigan stayed in a pro-style offense. Would been a good QB here.

I agree.  His elbow seemingly exploded and he was out for the rest of the year, but he played reasonably well while out there and I would have liked to see him return last year (even though Tate played well, having Threet as a backup would have been better than DR).  Again, I expect him to play well at ASU, especially in an offense that will highlight what he can do well.

To me the "system fit" argument gets annoying.  Threet didn't struggle because of the system or because of a lack of his own natural ability.  He struggled because he was essentially a true freshman playing on a pretty terrible offense.  The system wasn't the reason he got no pass protection and had virtually no experienced talent to get the ball to.  The system also didn't cause the players who finally did get the ball to fumble half the time.  New coaches and terminology was just the crap icing on an already shitty cake.

Jimmy Clausen has proven himself to have been a pretty damn good college quarterback and a great fit for Charlie Weis' offense, but he absolutely sucked as a true freshman in a similarly unspectacular offense.  Give him Tate/Floyd, a decent offensive line, and a bit of experience, and he played like an all-American.  Why would anyone have expected Threet to do any better in the same bad circumstances?

I love Rodriguez as much, if not more, than anybody, but the excuses people make based on "system fit" are just ridiculous.  Urban Meyer is running essentially the same system and he doesn't have any problem finding 5-star athletes to sign up.  Percy Harvin and Noel Devine didn't have prototypical NFL size coming out of high school, but the recruiting services still recognized their talent (though some would have you believe Rodriguez is looking for a different "type" of athlete than anybody else).  The last two years haven't sucked because Rodriguez had to tear things down to play his system, they sucked because our entire (very talented) offense left to go to the NFL, Boren and Mallett bolted, and we were stuck with freshmen skill players and an offensive line starting a guy like John Ferrara who at the time was a sophomore just moved over from the defensive line and who is now not even on the two deep (not to mention all the roster issues on defense).

Things are about to get a lot better real soon, but let's stop pretending that the struggles were the inevitable consequences of transition to a spread offense when the fact remains that no matter what system you play, the talent and experience level of the players has a lot more to do with a team's success.  Now that those two factors are on the rise at Michigan, I think Rodriguez is magically going to start coaching a whole lot better.

/End rant.

There's at least one person man enough to admit it. Kudos to you.

That run wasn't exactly "lumbering."  Threet ran 58 yards and one of the Big Ten's fastest linebackers, Johnathan Casillas, had trouble catching up to him.  That run was pretty damn impressive for a kid Threet's size who isn't a "dual threat" QB.