MGoPodcast 6.13: The Game Is Over

1 hour 10 minutes

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having a séance with his ribs [Eric Upchurch]

FOOTBALL

Do not step to Rod Gilmore. Rod Gilmore's wikipedia page will own you. Offensive competence, defensive problems, and exit Bo Pelini.

BASKETBALL

Doyle vs Donnal; Chatman's progress. Spike is very sneaky. Schedule complainin' morphs into general complaining: having home games for basketball and hockey on the day of the OSU game is a lolwut experience.

TALKING BIG TEN WITH JAMIEMAC

More Pelini, Wisconsin vs OSU, Riley O'Toole ambling through the Northwestern defense repelling people with the rank odor of alcohol.

MUSIC

"Across 110th Street"

"Tuff Ghost," The Unicorns

"It Doesn't Matter Anymore," Buddy Holly

THE USUAL LINKS

Comments

Mr. Yost

December 1st, 2014 at 7:08 PM ^

I already see "hip hop horraaaaay hoooooo." "Praise Jesus! This season is over!" #Ferguson #HandsUpDon'tShoot and random pictures of Gardner holding up/bench pressing something.

ifis

December 1st, 2014 at 7:22 PM ^

I don't understand the emphatic call to change offensive philosophies.

1)  This type of offense succeeds.  Michigan State, Stanford, LSU, Alabama, and Wisconsin have all succeeded with this style of offense in the last five years. 

2) Our talent on this roster is clearly appropriate for this style of offense and ill-suited for spread-style play.  We are loaded with big, bruising backs and a big offensive line that is finally coming of age.  Our question marks are QB and WR. 

3) The best qaulity coaches who we are likely to land are comfortable with our current system.  Harbaugh succeeded with the offensive system we currently run.  Les Miles is another strong candidate who succeeds with this type of offense. 

I am not partial to MANBALL, but I really think Michigan is in a strong position to improve dramatically next year if it  lands one of the best available coaches, retains its current players, and sticks relatively close to its current philosophy. 

If we land a good coach with a different philosophy, we are going to lose a lot of talented players and have to start from scratch at the beginning of a four year process.  That would be awful.

OccaM

December 1st, 2014 at 9:54 PM ^

MSU got torched by OSU. Stanford had exceptional talent with Luck leading the charge. Look at them now with Hogan... yeah thought so. Alabama plays no huddle now. Wisco has a generational runningback and 0 passing game.

yeah...

 

Michigan has 0 idea how to defend mobile QBs. It has always been true since 2006

dragonchild

December 2nd, 2014 at 9:54 AM ^

Because I guess "manball" doesn't mean to me what it's portrayed as in its reductio ad absurdum form:  predictable, boring, inefficient, and dumb.

"Manball" doesn't necessarily mean ignoring constriant theory like Borges.  It doesn't mean being predictable like Carr.  It doesn't mean making players do things they're bad at, like asking Funchess to block a DE.  It doesn't mean always doing things the hard way.  It doesn't mean bad clock management.  It doesn't mean running power out of I-form on first down with 9 defenders in the box.  It doesn't even mean huddle!  That's not MANBALL; that's just bad footballRun a spread with the same level of incompetence and you will get the same horrible results.

The concept as its most vague is that the O-line splits are narrow, favoring strength over speed.  That's pretty much it.  FFS pro-style offenses use constraints, QB runs, hurry-up and shotgun formations.  If your offensive line is bigger, it should in theory have an advantage at the LoS.  And if you're the only team running it, you should also have a recruiting advantage in that you can pick and choose among recruits other teams are passing over.  You can still play a sort of Sun Tzu offense where you viciously exploit mismatches, force the defense to be wrong and punish them for overplaying.  That's not unique to spread; spread didn't invent that.  There's a difference between an offensive philosophy and dogmatic conventions.

Look, I'm not anti-spread; the effectiveness of it speaks for itself.  Michigan running spread is fine.  But the problem with Hoke isn't that he's running MANBALL; it's that he's running STUPIDBALL.  We could in theory convert completely to a spread-n'-shred next season and -- the difficulties of yet another scheme change aside -- we could still wind up with 10 players fielding a punt.  WTF does that have to do with MANBALL??

los barcos

December 2nd, 2014 at 12:18 PM ^

the podcast once it became the audio version of the mgoblog-RR-revisionist history hour.

 Okay Ace - Michigan didn't pony up for Casteel - even assuming you're right, the only reasonable option to that was to hire Greg Robinson and force him to run a 3-3-5?  Surely there were more than 2 defensive coordinators in the world in 2009.  But nope - everything bad that happened to RR was because the amorphous  "We" here at Michigan sabotaged his every move.