Western Michigan Snowflakes - The Offense

Hey now, this is a hot takes thread! Gtfo with your levelheadedness

One play stood out to me, we faked a dive to the RB and had Henning on the end around…we have some speed at WR.

Yeah. Good news is that they were put in positions to improvise. There's a lot of speed and power there. I didn't see UM just road grading them. But the QBs weren't running for their lives, either.

Yeah, Oline seems like they might need more time to gel. They were good but probably the weakest unit out there. But then again, I heard that the Dline for Western weren't a bunch of scrubs so maybe my expectations are just off. 

any info on his injury?

yeah well see as the competition improves.  QB looked fairly confident which hasnt always been the case so thats something to build on.  

corum is a bright spot.  theyve lacked that quickness and overall ability at RB for years.  heres hoping he sees similar touches in bigger games.  haskins a nice player but corum appears to have what theyve been missing.  

41 on D looks promising too.  not bush 2.0 and i didnt zero in on his play but saw some explosiveness, especially compared to rest of front 7.  uw should be a good test for the fellas

"...seeing a well thrown deep ball has been missed for so fucking long."

Yes! Such a relief to not see the ball landing on the ground 5 yards past a deep receiver, or hitting the ground at a guy's feet. Yes, it was against a questionable pass defense, but how many times has that been the case and it came out a lot different than today?

EDIT: And Ronnie Bell's beautiful one hand catch only happens because the ball is thrown with nice touch off his outside shoulder, right where it needed to be. If that's a bullet off the back of the DBs head, or 12 feet into the sidelines, that catch doesn't happen.

Obligatory- If you have 2 quarterbacks, you blah, blah, blah

Tend to agree. 

This is a bad take. 

Ill take it. Give me MSU and 7 blowouts and 4 hard fought losses. OSU and the refs cheat their way to a last second win and the non OSU workd officially declares something rotten in the Big Ten. I get to pick how they happen so there. 

If they let McNamara throw longer passes he will surprise you.  Great accuracy, and he hasn't shown yet he can't do it so am surprised at your surety here.  

I think a lot will depend on if they can use stuff like the sweeps we saw to get some chunk plays out of the running game.  They still don’t seem to want to push the ball downfield, which might be strategic in a game where they didn’t need to or might indicate a problem.  
 

For me wrt Cade it’s not about making the throws.  It is about knowing right away what the right throw is.  

I'm not a UW fan (though I did get a Masters there), but I live in Seattle and love college football, so I tend to know more about them than the average non-fan.

UW's living a bit on reputation (one could, of course, say the same thing for UM).  Their recruiting is pedestrian, they won't field nearly as much raw talent as Michigan.  The jury on the coaching staff is still very much out.  Their results on the field have been middle-of-the-pack for the PAC-12, which... is not so great.

If UW does win, I believe it will be because of their returning experience.  The players they return aren't better than UM's, but second game of the year, you can imagine a scenario where the extra experience allows them to spend some time on practicing gimmicks, or where they may have more formations prepared, or whatever.

I'd say UW is in the same ballpark (quality wise, not in terms of style or strengths and weaknesses) as Iowa or Minnesota (in a good year) or maybe Wisconsin.  It's not like one wouldn't worry about those games, but they're also not one that you would normally go into full of fear and doubt (last year's debacle notwithstanding).

Washington is currently up 4 against Montana with the third quarter coming to a close. We’re going to clap those fucks.  

Holy shit you’re even more of a downer than Brian. WMU is not a bad team and Washington just lost to Montana. I can’t believe you’re complaining about about Cade going 11/13

You’re wrong. 49 against Minnesota, 48 (albeit through 3 OTs) against Rutgers. There’s also the fact that we played only Big Ten teams last year so scoring was naturally harder than it is when you’re playing a middle of the pack MAC team. 
 

Not that they didn’t look good today. But yeah. Essentially did what you’re supposed to do against an overmatched MAC opponent and played fairly conservatively to do it. Which is fine, but hard to glean much.

I recall seeing ESPN put up a note saying this was the most yards in a game since 2016. That’s worth something. 

Good observation on Cade as we'll need to have that playbook opened up against Washington. The passing was vanilla so I hope to see more. Let's hope Ronnie Bell can recover quickly.

The DL and linebackers bit hard on Haskins on that end-around play to Henning. Then Haskins got out and had a key block. Loved it! 

Agreed, and that's all Gattis. There's simply no evidence that Cade can't hit all of those throws. He's being hobbled by conservative play-calling. It worked against Western Michigan. I'm doubtful it will against better opponents.