The-Ozone (Buckeye) preview of UM's season
didn't see this on the board or on mgo.licio.us.
o-zone has been decent and fair in their assessment of UM in their Michigan Monday columns during the season.
posted for your perusal
Edit:
http://www.the-ozone.net/football/2009/Bigtencountdown/no9Michigan.htm
(link, duh)
Interesting. I like how they use "maligned" to describe our O-Line. Honestly, I think they will surprise people.
Strangely somewhat positive and bounds better than the previous preview.
I lol'd at, "In an effort to curtail Mesko’s power and speed, the NCAA changed the rule on these types of kicks and have essentially said that if your punter runs wide, then he’s “live” and can be hit pretty much just like a quarterback."
That was a nice preview. Actually sounded opimistic about UM.
I liked their bonus prediction of UM having the ball with a chance to tie or take the lead against OSU in the fourth quarter.
The didnt happen in 2007 or 2008.
Sadly, I would accept that outcome, roll the dice and see what happens on that drive.
prediction though. 5-7, 2-6 in conference. Good stuff, for most part, though. Witty and pretty informed.
Regarding missing Minny and NW: for my money, I'd rather have IU and Purdue on the schedule this year. Home or road, I don't care. After last year, a W is a W, and these teams should be awful.
Agree with the Notre Dame game as being the most important to the entire season. Though a part of me thinks WMU is just as important.
Good stuff on the 'no I in Barwis' quip.
I'd like to say I read it with a fine toothed comb, but for whatever reason I blinked and I missed the record prediction.
Thanks for the link to a (shockingly well) researched and reasoned preview. And jamiemac, I don't think it's all sad to accept that outcome. Hell, USC might end up in a similar position.
well, i don't think it is necessarily positive - they think we go 5-7 - best win on the season being either purdue or western - it is better than what i expected from an OSU site.
it only sounds positive because i am sure most of us were just expecting something more along the lines of "meatchicken (hur, hur) is teh suck! Buckzzz roooolzzzz! tressel is the only dude it is coolz to spank it 2. and herbie."
although i agree with them that stevie brown's new hybrid position, and how he plays in this new position will go a long way in determining whether this defense turns it around this season. to me, graham, martin and a healthy d-warren are the only proven commodities on this defense.
5-7 is a completely realistic expectation for the 2009 season, though.
August 7th, 2009 at 11:03 PM ^
Mouton brah
That was actually good. I don't know about Martin being the best tackle in the B10 though. I don't pay attention to other teams that much, but is Martin the best or one of the best tackles in the conference?
Few are predicting a win against Ohio State this season, so it's surprising that he's predicting a close game this November.
This one is much more balanced than the Purdue one.
That popped into my head Chi. I thought it pretty much hit the nail on the head for upcoming season.
I'm still laughing at this line though....
"Brown, who currently holds the Guinness World Record for touchdowns given up in a career with 179, "
They do a good job previewing us. Their "Michigan Monday" columns during the season are very interesting to read.
Although I doubt we will do that poorly in the big10. Also, they seem to be overestimating ND. Don't they?
the second bonus prediction is interesting.
Overestimating ND at this point is incredibly dangerous. They've got a lot of very talented veteran players, and should be a good/great team if they don't implode.
EDIT: I meant underestimating ND is dangerous, but you all know what I meant.
Is my prediction too. That might be the best preview I have seen anywhere.
I'm sorry, unless Tate gets hurt, I don't see anything less than 6-6
Wins -
Western
Indiana
Delaware State
Purdue
Eastern
That's 5. Attention non-Michigan fans; If you're willing to bet we lose the rest of the games please get in touch with me.
Agree 100%.
We will be less than a TD underdog in 6 of the other 7 games (according to current lines on sportsbook) so for the people predicting 5-7 to assume we will lose all 7 of those is pretty bold. Also those >7 lines aren't factoring in the over-ratedness of teams like MSU and ND going into this year.
We may slip up in one of our 5 "should wins" but it is much more likely that we win two of the other 7 than lose one of those 5, IMO. I would say 6-6 is the realistic floor for this team and it would take oodles of bad luck even worse than what we've experience before to have us at a losing record again.
Did you miss the part where he predicted Tate would miss at least a game?
That preview was suprisingly very good. However I'm confused as to why they made it sound so positive (noting the big difference between tate/denard and sheridan, lack of stevie brown giving up 2 tds a game, and our running game) and then predict 5-7. I'm a believer that 6-6 is the floor for this team and I don't think anyone should believe we have a serious chance of going less than 5-7.
So why does the preview correctly analyse our improvements and sound optimistic (for us) about it and then predict we do about as bad as we possibly can?
EDIT: Also, my favorite part of the preview as that OSU refered to MSU as "little brother"
Well-written post. As others have said, 5-7 seems a little weak. 6-6 or 7-5 makes more sense, but 4-0 going into MSU makes me think that 8-4 is possible.
I think they are underplaying the difference between Forcier/Robinson and Sheridan/Threet. Threet has a chance to be a decent QB in the right system, but Sheridan was a train wreck outside of the game against Minny. Forcier and Robinson, even as freshmen, will be more dynamic than anything UM had last year, and accuracy should be about equal, if not a little better. Plus, the running game and offensive line will be far stronger than early last season.
There was NO accuracy last year. I think that was easily our biggest problem last year...nobody had to respect our passing game because neither Threet nor Sheridan could hit open receivers. Even Tacopants was complaining. I don't know how much of an improvement Robinson would be (couldn't be worse), but Tate should be MUCH more accurate (as well as dynamic). I see that making a huge difference.
Prediction of 2-6 for the Big 10 is pretty bad. It's definitely on the low end. It's basically saying that we will not win a single game in which we are minor underdogs.
It is kinda hard to look at the schedule and say, "I think we'll win this game in which we'll be an underdog," but it is pretty unlikely that we lose all seven, especially if we've improved in the way O-Zone predicts (it was a well-written and knowledgeable article, BTW).
Statistically speaking, if we have a 40% chance to win against MSU, Wisconsin, Illinois and Iowa and then a 30% chance against OSU and PSU, the odds of losing all seven are 6% (I know that doesn't take into account things such as injuries and momentum and all that, but those variables could throw off everything -- for example, if Terrelle Pryor or Darryl Clark gets seriously injured before playing Michigan, I'd say that we'll have a much greater than 30% chance of beating Ohio State or Penn State).
True, there are a lot of unknowns that are hard to account for in the preseason (injuries and whatnot). Hopefully, things go our way this time around, especially with regard to turnovers.
5-7 (2-6) is a reasonable prediction if just for the fact that it has us winning every game we're favored in. As of this moment we have no idea what's going to happen with Illinois or Iowa, etc. and how much of a chance we're actually going to have in those games. I'm sure we go 6-6 or 7-5, too... but I'm not ready to predict what the other win or two will be.
August 7th, 2009 at 11:19 PM ^
5-7 is probably the most realistic floor for the season (acutally 4-8 b/c i think EMU,IND,PUR,DSU are all as close to gimmes as possible and WMU will be tough). And he has us losing all 7 other games because we won't be favored in any of them. But going game by game is a dangerous way of doing a preview: just assuming losses in all underdog games even if the games look to be possibly close. The actual chances of losing all of them is pretty rare. If we assume for these 7 underdog games the following victory probabilities:
(these i think are pretty conservative estimates for Michigan's chances as well)
ND: 35%
MSU: 40%
Iowa: 35%
PSU: 25%
ILL: 35%
WISC: 40%
OSU: 20%
Then the prob of winning atleast 1 of them(thus going 6-6 and bowl eligible) is equal to (1 - prob. of losing all games).
So 1 - (.65*.6*.65*.75*.65*.55*.8) = .05437
So there is a 5% chance we don't win any of those. If you want to add WMU (assume 60% chance of M win) into the underdog games then it comes out to a 2% chance of losing all those.
I think if we win all the gimmees, then we're going to be bowl eligible. In reality, we probably have a better chance of winning some of these games than the %'s I gave.
August 7th, 2009 at 11:26 PM ^
anyway i think it was a great preview considering it came from an outsider. I'm happy he realized the relative chances of success for Tate compared to most freshman qb's. Again the prediction doesn't sound representative of his feelings on the team, but I think that has a lot to do w/ our tough schedule. This, i think, is the 2nd or 3rd place i've seen someone say that this years team likely would have won 7-8 games against last years schedule. Heck, I think we should've won 5 by beating TOL,PUR,NW and shoulda lost to WISC(thought it was kinda fluky but awesome nonetheless).
We were obviously a bad team last year, but I don't think we were 3-9 bad. It was the incredibly nasty injury toll that caused us to fall all the way to that record. If just Threet and Minor could have stayed healthy all season, I think we would have been more like 5-7 and possibly even 6-6.