"Whatever" versus Biting Long-form Analysis
I suspect the front page will get another Whatever-titled recap and call it quits. I may be an atypical fan who overwhelmingly and beggingly prefers long-form (if prosaic) critical analysis. After bad losses, I want that heady reader-author catharsis. And then booze also. Never booze only.
Am I the only one voting for Brian to give it to us straight one more dark, wordy time before our football hibernation?
December 29th, 2018 at 3:32 PM ^
Whatever.
December 29th, 2018 at 9:43 PM ^
Thank you OP. I appreciate how hard Brian works for this blog, and he has every right to do whatever he wants. But the lack of serious analysis when we lose is frustrating -- because that's what we need to understand if we want to understand what steps are needed for this team to improve. Is it coaching? Is it specific positions? What is it?
December 29th, 2018 at 10:25 PM ^
You're welcome.
December 29th, 2018 at 3:32 PM ^
Our offense sucks dick, defense almost as bad. There's your analysis.
December 29th, 2018 at 4:21 PM ^
Special teams A+
December 29th, 2018 at 6:13 PM ^
Hard to recall a team blocking TWO (2) punts and losing by four scores, yet here we are.
December 30th, 2018 at 12:46 AM ^
How about blocking two punts and only getting five points out of it
December 29th, 2018 at 3:33 PM ^
It's just hard to care at this point. 10-3 is our ceiling under Harbaugh. Its a shame he has no L's in his name, could bring back the old LLLoyd meme
December 29th, 2018 at 3:36 PM ^
Remember that one time Harbaugh won a bowl game at Michigan?
December 29th, 2018 at 3:48 PM ^
I agree with you. I could call my buddies and get the whatever. I want Brian to dissect the problems--personnel or coaching, both? What's the fix? Are those on the fixes on the horizon? Are they possible? That's why I'm here. Well, that and posting Ace Ventura gifs.
December 29th, 2018 at 3:58 PM ^
You are barking up the wrong tree.
Brian was “meh” on this bowl from the get go.
His wrap up would be like this, “I told you not to pay attention, but you didn’t listen and got what you deserved.”
December 29th, 2018 at 4:59 PM ^
Brady Hoke broke Brian. He's erected some defenses to continue functioning. I've never met him, and know nothing about him personally, but his writing from the first few years of this site was so engaging, insightful, erudite, and funny, that I will continue rooting for him and hoping he heals to the point that he doesn't need to protect himself anymore.
So yeah, in the abstract, I'd like an analysis that acknowledges that the coaching staff prepared for the game, and the players prepared for the game, and given the amount of time they spent practicing, something useful can be gleaned from the game, even if it didn't "mean" anything to the fans and some of the players. Pragmatically, though, I'm okay with Brian giving it a pass.
December 29th, 2018 at 5:37 PM ^
I would argue that it was the combination of the RR and Hoke years, but otherwise agree.
December 29th, 2018 at 5:58 PM ^
I don't really care if Brian writes another article for this site or not. If he's burnt out then he should be smart enough to find his replacement, from a writing perspective. If he can't provide compelling commentary on a regular basis, himself or via proxy, then why not move the forum to reddit or something and close the site down.
December 29th, 2018 at 5:58 PM ^
We chose to care about something we have to control over, so we either say whatever and live our lives, or what? We freak out and complain about something we don't have any say in? That's a big nah from me dawg.
I hope the offense is better next year, but my hopes have nothing to do with whether it actually gets fixed, so...
December 29th, 2018 at 6:32 PM ^
The attitude of "whatever" is fully defensible. But it's false to say the option is *either* that "or freak out and complain." I laid out a third possibility (to leap down the rabbit hole and hyperintellectualize everything), and of course fourth and seventeenth options also exist.
Just my cheap interpretation but, here, you seem hung up on a narrow definition of good living. There's nothing incompatible with good living and neatly dissecting a terrible football game. For most if not all posters, football-watching is our intense-favorite of lazy hobbies. I challenge that we can tear into this one and still have well proportioned lives, no matter how little football means on cosmic scales.
Isn't all of that quite obvious and maybe even beside the point of this thread - which is to recruit Brian to dispassionately break it all down?