Positives
I have read alot of media post-game write ups, all of which have been saying how bad Michigan is.I have also read alot of emo post on here. Personally i thought MIchigan was going to win, Well, i was apparently wrong,but i did watch the entire game. There are some things that I saw which are good signs for the remainder of the year.
1. The D line di get pushed around, but not as bad as the stat line would indicate. There was actually a robust pass rush.As well seeing Big Will hold up at the point of attack and produce results against what is a high level O line. Roh's absence was kind of puzzling to me, and the linebackers/secondary need to spend some time doing tackling drills.
2.O line we wont discuss the run blocking, because that was obviously bad. The Pass protection was beast mode all game long.However there has to be a caveat added here.I think that may have been a boon from the defensive strategy.There weren't alot of blitzes, which may have caught Borges off guard becuase every other team did/will use that strategy against this offense.
3.Passing Game alot of remarks have been made about Drob's passing.HIs passing skills have made a jump I think. The passes look tighter, a definite increase on his touch with the deep ball. He did throw a few passes that were off the mark, but every quarterback does.The 3-4 defense took away the run, and the linebackers gave some zone looks which took away the short routes, the only routes available were deep routes, which they actually hit. The receivers need to gel, and get more aggressive, don't let yourself get pushed out of bounds on a go route.
4. Overall This is the best defense I think any Michigan team has faced in the last 15 years, and fortunately they do not have to play them again. The D line will be fine, Gardner is obviously a threat, he just needs more rep in game situations, Gallon is real, so everyone can stop complainining about his height, dude makes plays, right now Roundtree remains a giant question mark. LInebackers will be ok as long as they dont face a team that can rotate 3 big backs, and they LEARN HOW TO TACKLE.
September 3rd, 2012 at 11:14 AM ^
This could have gone in one of the other 10 threads like it
September 3rd, 2012 at 11:15 AM ^
Positives?
I has none.
September 3rd, 2012 at 11:24 AM ^
We out punted them... at least we have that going for us.
September 3rd, 2012 at 6:24 PM ^
If only he hadn't outkicked our coverage team as well...
September 3rd, 2012 at 11:16 AM ^
(the more you know!)
And yes, the sky is not falling on M football.
September 3rd, 2012 at 11:25 AM ^
Tell that to my pet alot!
September 3rd, 2012 at 11:17 AM ^
Quite a few.
September 3rd, 2012 at 11:22 AM ^
These kind of posts have to end sooner or later... don't they?!?!
September 3rd, 2012 at 11:26 AM ^
September 3rd, 2012 at 11:28 AM ^
September 3rd, 2012 at 11:30 AM ^
My take is that the returning talent was not as good as we thought and it showed. It may be good enough for the rest of schedule.
September 3rd, 2012 at 11:32 AM ^
September 3rd, 2012 at 11:35 AM ^
September 3rd, 2012 at 5:06 PM ^
How much beer?
September 3rd, 2012 at 11:36 AM ^
2003 USC disagrees with #4.
September 3rd, 2012 at 11:43 AM ^
I think Hoke has changed the tide on the rivalry. Hell people in Ohio are starting to believe him. Never in a million years I would have thought that. Selling Michigan jerseys is a good start.
September 3rd, 2012 at 12:32 PM ^
I'm all for looking at the positives, but I'm also all for looking at reality. We got our butt kicked and the most positive thing is the game is over. PERIOD.
As far as your Denard observations. Dude, take off the "I love you Denard" sun glasses. "his passes looked tighter"?? Really? His passing looked like shit and you know it. He had time to throw most of the night and horribly missed his targets. Gallon made him look better on completions he did make.
Borges needs to can this circus and get back to short passes and read option running.
The most positive thing I saw was the offensive line pass blocking, and Norfleet's nimbleness. I think he should be wearing #21. He's closer to looking like Howard than Roundtree.
September 3rd, 2012 at 12:44 PM ^
Bashing players is what a jerk does.
September 3rd, 2012 at 12:51 PM ^
positive is that we don't have to play another team this good probably until the next time we are in the MNC, or the next big opponent that DB schedules, and we will be better by then.
i for one do like this post, because I saw pretty much the same positives you did. I knew in the back of my mind that getting crushed by bama was a great possibility the whole time, so I wasn't really suprised.
One more I would add is special teams seemed to actually perform as they obviously had tons of reps to to do so. Hagerups punts seemed good and I see Norfleet taking one or two to the house this year.
September 3rd, 2012 at 4:35 PM ^
My thoughts exactly. We don't have another NFL team on the schedule. We still know very little about this team other than that they can't hang with Alabama. Most of the country, if not all of it, can't either - including every team left on our schedule. Hopefully we do what we are capable over the next two weeks and then head to South Bend ready for another test that will tell us much more about what team 133 is going to be than the opener did.
September 3rd, 2012 at 12:58 PM ^
!. I looked over the board, and i didn't see any positive threads. The sole purpose of this post was to lok for positives from the game.
2. Not a Denard love fest, this is reality. i found some stats because you guys love to believe those lies. Arkansas, is considered to have the best Offense in the SEC. ( The ESPN pundits said that Alabama will get a real challenge instead of what they faced Saturday) Tyler Wilson and crew rushed for 17 yards, scored 14 pts, and went24/40 for 209 yards and threw too interceptions. MIchigan scored 14 pts. Drob Went 11/26 200 yards threw 2 picks. Sure Arkansas's completion percentage was better, but they scored the same amount of points, on way more pass attempts, Michigan doubled their rush yards, and threw the sam amount of interceptions, and allowed the same amount of yards on defense. Remain emo if you want to, but Michigan equaled the best offensive total of any team that Alabama faced last year, i don't think Michigan regressed, Bama is just still good. The likelihood that any team on the schedule can replicate Bama's defense is almost unlikely.Any other team will blitz Denard heavily. Alabama had the athletes on defense to apply outside blitz contain, and drop the ILB's into zone. The first pick you cant even blame on the QB, that was a timed route, unfortunately Roundtree got schooled and ate turf on a one handed jam. Enough with the emo Michigan sucks/ Denard armpunt crying, no one seems to be able to pass on this team, give Bama their due, those boys can play, and quite frankly Michigan got out played, the same way every other team that has faced Bama has been outplayed.
September 3rd, 2012 at 1:02 PM ^
Postives? GTFO
September 3rd, 2012 at 1:25 PM ^
#1. BUBBLE SCREENS!!! WE HAZ THEM! DEY GO FOR 8 YARDS!! This will be particularly good when our running game gets back into gear. I have a theory that the zone reads in this game weren't zone reads, but "called gives" because Borges knew we weren't going to get it done on the ground and didn't want to sacrifice Denard's body with 20 rushing attempts into the meatgrinder.
#2. Gallon is legit. Like Woah
#3. Denard's injury wasn't serious... I texted a friend saying "I'd rather lose to Bama by 50+ than lose Denard for the season". As bad as everything was, we didn't have to deal with either of those... quite.
#4. Hagarup is back to BOOMing punts. Now if he can start coffin-corning them at the 2 yard line that'd be nice. ^_^
#5. Norfleet is faaaaaassssst. If he learns the offense and can block like a mountain goat I expect he'll take Smiths place as the 3rd down back because the threat of him slipping out into the flat or running a draw is legit.
Now we're into the realm of adjusted positives. I think our passing offense showed some major improvement on Denard's end and the loss of Hemingway will be moderated by the emergence of Gardner and Gallon. Roundtree will be fine when he's not getting HULK SMASHED by NFL corners every other play. Similarly the O-line pass protected nicely until Lewan went out. Finally the D-line was alright, and adjusted for "strength of opponent O-line" that means excellent things. Big Will Campbell especially looked fo' real. So we'll see.
Big question marks: Will Borges call Denards number in the ground game? Do we have a ground game? Can our linebackers and secondary not named Jordan Kovacs tackle? Where in the world was Criag Roh? Can we shutdown recievers on field side without Countess?
God I hope Lewan is okay... Until there's word on that I'm still resigned to sulking. :-/
EDIT: Accoring to Hoke's week 2 media stuffs Lewan is fine. Excellent. Panic now ceases (for me anyway).
September 3rd, 2012 at 3:28 PM ^
I agree with everything you stated. I would like to also add that Big Will was pretty much the only DLman that played well. He actually did very good. Rest of the line was absolutely trucked. Roh? WTH is up with him. Next to terrible for 2 straight years now.
Our LB's get eaten alive in 1 on 1 tackling. Just awful. Cant wait for an uperclass of Bolden and Ross. Been since David Harris since i have seen Michigan with great LB play.
Hope we can stop this DG is impressing at WR talk now. I have heard too much fake hype on he and Rawls.
And Borges. Grrrrr. You HAVE to be kidding me!
September 3rd, 2012 at 1:26 PM ^
We're all down about this game. Here's an optimistic view: think about how much worse this game could have been if Rich Rod was still coaching and we had another GERG defense.
At the end of the season we will still be in the hint for a B1G title. Go BLUE!
September 3rd, 2012 at 1:39 PM ^
Gardner and Gallon definitely look legit. Roundtree looked terrible. I was disappointed to not see Darboh in the game after his summer camp hype.
Raymon Taylor looked serviceable, and Dennis Norfleet fit the part. Would love to see Gorgeous set up some designed plays for him.
Would have liked to see Gibbons attempt a FG, but special teams looked decent.
All in all, finding flaws after playing the best team in the country is pretty easy. This team is going to look a whole lot better in the next 2 weeks coming up to the showdown in South Bend.
September 4th, 2012 at 12:49 AM ^
Just finished rewatching the game. Here's a few things that stood out to me:
-Barnum was the weak-link of the OL. He was blown back often and stands around too often not engaging a defender.
-Norfleet= WOW
-Gardner looked great at WR for his first game. I'm not sure there is a B1G secondary that can cover him because of his size/speed combo. MSU has a good corner combo but they lack the size/physicality that Bama has.
-Gallon has developed into a good WR and really played a great game.
-Denard looks like he improved his deep ball since last year but his accuracy on intermediate throws just isn't there. Way too many key passes early on could have kept us in the game but were overthrown.
-Linebackers did not have a very good game at all. I'll keep it at that.
-BWC was easily our most consistant dlineman. He was stood up at times from double-teams but he played pretty good IMO. Roh was an absolute non-factor. QWash was serviceable.
In trying to keep this positive, I feel that we still have a good chance to win the B1G. I liked the new wrinkles I saw in the passing game (bubble screens, GARDNER, GALLON). Fitz returning will obviously be a big help. I think our Dline will be fine against the rest of the schedule because we face maybe one other above average OL (ND) the rest of the way.
September 3rd, 2012 at 1:40 PM ^
One thing that really stuck out to me was how composed our players were during the game. There was no pouting or whining to the refs. We did not get in the face of the other team. This is a direct reflection of the coaching staff. It will only lead to more success in the future.
September 3rd, 2012 at 2:09 PM ^
I won't try to draw a definite conclusion given all the circumstances we've mentioned, but I saw way to many back foot throws again. Footwork continues to be an issue against top teams. Let's see if he can correct by ND or MSU.
September 3rd, 2012 at 3:24 PM ^
I thought his footwork was definitely improved over last year, i particularly don't remember any backfoot throws.The main flaw i saw from Denard is a mental aspect, i think he was too hyper. He is a high energy guy, which sometimes can get uber-athletes in trouble.He seemed to be kinda bouncy.Reminiscent of a hummingbird on a three day Meth binge.
September 3rd, 2012 at 3:03 PM ^
I'm positive everyone is tired of these threads. What we need are some good OT threads until next Saturday.
September 3rd, 2012 at 4:43 PM ^
Well if there are any true fans out there, come grab a seat.There is an empty one here next to me on the bandwagon. I survived this board thru the RR final season, lose the first game of the season and people have already turned into wrist cutters. Fair weather fans are annoying no matter which fan base they are in.
September 3rd, 2012 at 5:17 PM ^
1.) My wife's boobs look great in her new, lowcut M-Den shirt.
2.) ?
3.) Boobs again.