Recent Comments

Dear Maryland, welcome to the Big10. Out of solidarity and as a welcoming gesture, we're trying to mimic your style. How'd we do?

... what a year without Kellen Moore was like. (Ok, ok, so they were good without him this year, but still. that type of talent is tough to replace.)

I'm with a previous poster, perhaps he's tired of never being able to bust through to the top echelon and decided he had a better chance to break through at a team in the SEC. As a coach, there's no better conference to prove yourself than the ESS EEE SEE.

Looks like the first game vs. Western is streaming on ESPN3.com as well (free).

This needs to be front-paged. I laughed my ass off!

Congratulations and welcome, Allen!

I am sure you will appreciate and respect the advice your dad has to give in regards to the demands of being at, and playing football at, Michigan. Soon it will be your own time to shine - we look forward to rooting for you in the Maize and Blue and to referring to you not as Mr. Gant's son, but as Allen Gant, our safety who is one heck of a football player.

Welcome, Allen, we're excited you chose to come to Ann Arbor!

The thing that jumped out at me was his nose for the ball. The guy can quickly diagnose a play, and he gets to the ball carrier in a hurry regardless of who is in his way. Great, great get for the Maize and Blue.

... he makes Fred Jackson sound like a Debbie Downer.

This situation sucks so much. I keep thinking: why does it have to be Japan who is worrying about the event of a nuclear melt down? Haven't they suffered enough nuclear damage already?

That is ABSOLUTELY AWESOME. Wow.

He was part of one of my favorite commercials (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCJNMKDzdWg), too, where the paperboy throws him a newspaper.

Great find and post, thank you.

Just had to throw that out there. Also, I'm in agreement with a poster above: you have to love guys who end up going to their dream school (*am knocking on wood that he goes Blue, of course*). The fact he had to battle adversity to get there only makes it sweeter.

Here's to hoping he chooses Michigan and that he has a fantastic career, both on the field and off.

... is from Pahokee and is in last year's class.

Thanks for the link - the kid is good!

ESPN article talking about Westerman flipping from Texas to Auburn has quotes from the man himself:

After the season, my position coach left the program and then [six] other coaches left. It just all changed. There was no more relationship to hang my hat on, and my position coach is [who] I will spend about 90 percent of my time [with]. It was just too little too late. Auburn had it all and I was very close to my position coach there over the last 8-10 months.

As has been reiterated around these parts, the late coaching change has hurt Hoke's chances of landing elite talent this year. That being said, I think so far he's doing well in getting good players interested, and some good players are going to sign with us this year. But let's not (completely) freak out this Feb 2nd if we aren't where we all want to be with recruiting, mmmmkay? Let's wait until 2012 to get a good assessment of were Hoke is with recruiting. (Unless, of course, he exceeds expectations in which case party hard and forget sanity.)

/preemptive plea for Feb 2nd sanity

EDIT: This is not saying Keith Heitzman is not an elite player. I don't know anything about him, and for all I know he will be the next Vernon Davis/Dallas Clark/Dwight Freeney/whoever depending on what position he will play, and is not a comment about any of our other current commits. Just a comment in general highlighting what we all know - that late coaching change = difficult to estabish ties to new coaching staff in such a short amount of time.

When Tate threw it, it always seemed to be between the numbers. I was constantly impressed with his accuracy. But maybe that was because I was comparing him to Threet/Sherridan.

I love Denard, but am not in love with his accuracy. Tate DEFINITELY scrambles too much, and needs to stay in the pocket more. But in 2009 he was a true freshman relying on skills that he was able to devour the competition with in high school, and in 2010 he didn't play much. I am not positive he would have learned to stay in the pocket more as an upperclassman, but his accuracy would not have dissapeared.

... on Molk. Awesome interview.

Along with the majority of you, I was angry with how our coaching search transpired. I was frustrated with the delay, the seeming indecision by DB, and the ramifications that resulted, including a decrease in the number of available coaches, the obvious impact on recruits, and the general unease felt amongst the fanbase at our seemingly flailing around in search of a coach.

But I have come to realize, especially with the recent hire of Mattison, that what DB did was the only realistic way that he could have gone. Why do I say that?

1. Availability of coaches to talk to. We wanted to talk to JH, obviously. And DB wanted to talk to Miles, even if many of us fans on mgoblog did not. These coaches had their bowl games in 2011. Firing RR in early December, only to wait a month just to talk to these coaches, would have been worse of a blunder than what transpired, since obviously we were going to talk to them before we made a change. We had to wait to make the coaching change, IF we were going to make one at all. These two coaches didn’t work out, for various reasons, but it’s not like there aren’t other great coaches around the country, even in early January with many positions filled.
2. Hoke has come with glowing recommendations. Do I care he’s a “Michigan Man hurr hurr”? Obviously not, that is starting to piss me off tremendously. What I think DB sees in him is that while yes, that may help with the fanbase to give him a chance that clearly RR did not, what I think REALLY helps and what he’s really looking for is a defensive-minded guy who can elevate our D back to what we as Michigan fans have come to expect. He comes glowingly recommended by many, many people who have played college and pro ball, and if they give their support, who am I, an average fan, to disagree or even argue?
3. Waiting until after the bowl game gave DB a change for an honest assessment of our program. Was the bowl game absolutely necessary to evaluate the progress of our coaches? One could easily argue no, that one data point is inconsequential. BUT, I can see a point being made that our defense and special teams has been suspect over RR’s tenure, which I think we can all agree with. Our overall record has steadily improved, and our offense has been great. But with a stagnant D and special teams, that does not equal long-term success. If the bowl game, after using 15 practices to address some of our against a quality opponent, showed improvement in both categories, then I would be more optimistic for 2011. But that obviously did not happen, and there seemed to be even a regression. If extra practices didn’t help, why would one be optimistic that things would turn around?
4. DB is not stupid. Bold, but obviously not stupid. He has said that Michigan football is his “company’s” flagship product, and he knew how critical its success is for Michigan athletics (and therefore, his own tenure and legacy). He would not have made a change if he did not think the product on the field would be worse long-term. People may complain that the spread offense is the ONLY way to get to national prominence, but I disagree – in 2006, not too long ago, we were #2 facing #1 Ohio State. Traditional pro-style offense is more boring, but modern pro-style offenses, whatever that means, can be dynamic and incorporate spread elements. What I’m saying is, there isn’t one way to skin a cat, and just because we’re going back to a more traditional pro-style offense doesn’t mean we’ll automatically be going back to “3 yards and a cloud of dust,” and hopefully we’ll incorporate some “spread” elements to incorporate the skill on our roster. That being said, I’ll be kicking myself and eating my words if we do not take advantage of the skills on our roster.

Now that the coaching change has been made*, I am more pleased with what has transpired. DB was true to his word in the sense that we are spending more, which must be the case to get Mattison from Baltimore, which I am thrilled with, he seems to be a great hire. Our most important recruit will be in Ann Arbor in 2011 (Denard). And we are going to a 4-3. Woo, I say. Our offense may slip a bit, from excellent to great. But if we trade our special teams and defense from bad to above average in the near term, and great in the long-term, I will take it.

*For the record, I was a fan of the RR hiring.  I loved the idea of bringing in a dynamic offense to Ann Arbor, and thought that coupled with our traditionally strong D great things would happen. I was also an advocate of giving RR a 4th year, but as our D continued to stagnate and our special teams showed little signs of improvement, I became more impartial to a change. Now that we have made the change, obviously I am becoming more and more okay with the hire, and am even guardedly optimistic.

Whoever we get, I echo Mike Hart's sentiments:

Rich Rod didn't have a chance because no one agreed with the hire from the top to the bottom of the school and all over town," Hart said. "I'm going to be 100 percent behind whoever the coach at Michigan is and I hope everybody that loves Michigan is the same way, too, even if they don't like who Dave Brandon hires.

Yes, even if that means Hoke or Miles.

Oh. I was sure you were going to make a comment about his being one of the most dependable tacklers on the team.

The multiple penalties are what are sticking out in my mind right now, specifically the drive-killers on offense, not one potential interception.

I love the play at 0:20 where he hits the RB, who just explodes. Seriously. I think he's dead.

Maybe all my past* cringing during punt returns has made me wary of all special teams play. But you're right, I can't remember any other specific incident, which makes me realize I shouldn't throw around words like 'propensity' if I can't recall another event.

*We're good, folks. We've got that out of our system. Right?

Thought Denard would be ok, but was really worried Shaw and Dorrestein were more seriously hurt. I'll have  drink to their recovery.

Great, great game by the Maize and Blue!!

That helps. Appreciate it.

I seem to recall Mouton getting hurt as well, requiring attention from the trainers. I was rather inebriated, so hopefully I am mistaken, or else it does not seem to be too serious? Can anyone confirm?

And man, Roundtree - wow. Just wow. Way to get up from that hit. Sucks if he can't make it for the next game as he'll be needed, I can't wait to see him back on the field, whenever that may be.

I was fired up seeing our players celebrate. I understand your concern, as you could see the ref basically saying, "Get back to your bench or I'm pulling this flag." every time we scored, but compared to UConn? We were jazzed to score - all our players seemed so absolutely, genuinely happy when their teammates scored. We were hungry for this game! Conversely, looking back at the highlights, UConn players seemed to say "Meh" when they scored... I'll take an occasional penalty if it means we're fired up and hungry.

Holy #&*! those are outstanding. Get those on shirts and I'll buy three of them.

In addition to the obvious reason that such an expansion would create a ginormous market base, I had another (horrifying) thought on why a move to 16 teams may be tempting for the conference. Forgive me if this has already been mentioned.

Say such an alleged super conf is broken up into two divisions of 8 teams apiece. Traditional thought has each team playing its own conference members, plus a few teams in the other division to continue rivalries. But the league could easily just have each team ONLY play teams within its own division (despite the subsequent home/away inbalance) and thereby allow each team an extra OOC game (5 instead of the current 4). Given the way the majority of BigTen schools schedule, this would likely be another home game, meaning even more $$ for the schools.

I definitely don't like the above idea - I abhor it. But until the Super Conference Rumor That Cannot Die is finally slain, I will worry about such thoughts as those above.

... but I have the good fortune of being able to go to two games this year. I chose the games before the draw came out, and lucked out with England v. Algeria and Portugal v. North Korea. I'll be rooting for whichever team has fewer points so that the U.S. has a better chance to advance (in full U.S. apparel, of course!).

USA! USA! USA!

Hello, Vincent Smith. With permission from Angry Michigan RB Hating God, of course.

That being said, Tate is our starter - I'm in agreement with the poster above who is surprised nobody recalls all that justified accolade early in the year (and all those Tate for Heisman mostly psuedo-jokes). Although it does make me so, so happy we are talking favorably at all about our back-up QB, let alone starting QB, and that there just might be some competition at the position. Yay for returning QBs.

Agreed. He also threw deep(er) more more often earlier on in the season; hopefully with a healthy shoulder we'll see a lot more of that.

The potential for this offense's precision + explosiveness = sleepless nights of anticipation.

But as the old MadTV skit taught me, it's all about "lowered expectaaaaations." I'm expecting a decent game, and anything better than that will be a bonus (Same goes for the commercials.)

As for predictions, I'm thinking Indy wins by 10+, though I'll be rooting for NO.

After seeing Doc Saturday's top 10 plays of 2009, again being reminded about Vincent Smith's knee injury (arg!), and seeing Manny being out for today's game, I needed a pick-me up. This article did it.

Some other things that have helped:

* Checking out the depth chart by class and seeing these offensive linemen in our class of 2013 - makes me absolutely giddy for our line's future:
P. Omameh*
R. Barnum*
E. Mealer*
R. Khoury*
M. Schofield
Q. Washington
T. Lewan

* The possibility of a starting QB playing his second year in RR's system

* And of course, I'm really liking our recruiting class and where stand, all things considering - I think we're getting solid players at positions of need