Report: Rich Rod to Arizona

People bad mouthed Rodriguez's recruiting efforts on defense the entire time he was here.  They viewed player attrition (even by guys who had no chance of seeing the field) as a sign of shitty coaching and a poor attitude.  Brandon even mentioned these things in his evaluation list as if they were clearly damning to the job Rodriguez had done. 

Chris Spielman last year said all our players only had the talent to be back-ups at Indiana, save Mike Martin.  On Saturday he attributed the presence of Morgan, Ryan, and Countess to the recruiting efforts of our new staff, despite the fact that all three committed to play for Rodriguez (and Ryan did so over a year before Hoke was hired).  He said we have "the same players" that he had criticized a year earlier, but never once felt the need to point out where a player's massive physical shortcomings were dooming the team to failure.

The fact that the people who bitched about this for three years have all now decided that Rodriguez did a damn fine job recruiting on defense but just happened to suck at coaching his awesome players is an argument of total convenience.

There is a reason Mattison is making 4 times the money GERG was.  The fact is we've only played three games that were remotely competitive all year though.  Our record is 1-2 in those games (and the one required two miracle comebacks).  It is a little harsh in my mind to assume our record would be worse with Rodriguez and a substantial monetary investment in the defensive coaching staff from the powers that be at Michigan.  But that isn't the point.  What Rich Rodriguez's exact record would be this year is just a baseless mental exercise. 

My frustration comes from listening to people who were wrong for three years about the talent level we were accumulating on both sides of the ball refusing to acknowledge their error, and instead viewing our improvement on one side of the ball as the result of magical coaching, after previously arguing that such improvement was impossible and that the defense faced a massive, multi-year rebuilding process after three years of subpar recruiting and massive player attrition.

The fact is we are way better off than when he took the job.  We are also better off than we were in Lloyd Carr's last season (when we went 8-4 in the regular season and lost to a 1-AA team).  With all the starters returning next year, we are potentially looking at the best two year stretch the program has seen in quite some time.  You just don't go 9-2 and blow out 3/4 of your opponents if the guy in charge was screwing up for three years.  The fact that people are now using the team's success this year to confirm that indeed he was screwing up is completely ridiculous.