Teams take time to gel. As good as this roster is, first half of next season could be rough to watch. That’s not a knock on Day; that’s just a realistic expectation.
I wouldn't call him quick (at least compared to what he'll face in the tourney) but he is smooth. I can't see him staying in front of an athletic wing, but he shouldn't be completely helpless either. You can things with that level of body control.
Bit concerning that he's an average finisher, considering the tools he has. He doesn't look particularly lanky, but he does strike me as a finesse type. I'm not sure he needs S&C so much as a mean streak.
There are valid reasons why Warde should've been fired years ago, but he did fine with the May hire.
What this did do is predictably bring out the Warde-hater-haters out en force (see above), because even trolling of this lowly caliber is an irresistible honeypot to them.
Expect more of the same, because apparently it's still very effective.
It's kind of a variant of "don't practice fucked". Orji can't be a pure pocket passer, but he can open up the offense in a way the others can't. Oversimplifying for the sake of brevity, we basically have two options:
Run an option offense with Orji and a chance to repeat as B1G champions, with an equal chance of going 6-6 if Orji goes down.
Shoot for 9-3 with a QB who can't do anything at an elite level.
I guess MGoBlog's take is, Orji has the most potential, so why would you structure your offense around backups?
The impetus for the run base was, Chop Robinson ghosted through our tackles like they weren't even there.
We didn't eschew the pass in the second half to make some sort of statement; JJ literally didn't have time. Robinson was past the LoS by the time a shotgun snap was halfway to JJ's hands.
I think WAAAY too much is being made of the PSU game.
They initially tried drop-backs and the results were almost disastrous. The kaiju package was prepared, but wasn't run well, indicating it was intended as a change-up.
Moore didn't even know he'd be coaching that game until they were en route. There's no evidence he drew up the play. His master stroke was to take what was likely a one-off gimmick in the playbook and make it their base, because it flipped the matchups from "Chop Robinson murderdeathkills our QB" to "beefcake vs. pass defenders in the X-gap".
It could well be the case that Moore is Harbaugh Jr. and will double down on the meat wall philosophy, we'll see, but I don't accept the PSU game as evidence of anything other than Moore's got the creativity and cojones to improvise a gameplan instead of sticking to what isn't working.
By far the most under-discussed bit for the Spring Game is, what does a Sherrone Moore team look like?
Moore coached the last few regular-season games of 2023, but he was still coaching a Harbaugh team. He worked with plays and philosophies that were developed within Harbaugh's system. We all have a good idea of Harbaugh's priorities. What are Moore's?
It's still largely a Harbaugh-shaped squad, loaded with RBs and thin on WRs, but Moore's the skipper now. Basic opsec, the preparatory nature of spring ball, and the question mark at QB will all limit what Moore will show us, but there's nothing to say he has to adhere to Harbaugh's on-field principles anymore.
I think perception is reality. I'm sure every non-M coach tells every WR on the recruiting trail that if they go to Michigan they'll just be asked to block and occasionally run end-arounds because Michigan never throws the ball. Maybe show them tape of last year's PSU game, and the second half of 2021 OSU.
Facts never get in the way of a recruiting visit, but this is a very easy case to fabricate.
It's a long time from April to September, so the QB missing some throws is nothing to panic about.
BUT the reasons should be timing and chemistry with the WRs. WR is supposed to be here, but the ball went here instead. That sort of thing. If the issue is footwork. . . for a junior?? That's not getting fixed in five months.
Now I'm a little upset about the "let's throw him under the bus" thread the other day. Someone who did this much for the program doesn't deserve that treatment, just because it's politically expedient.
Obvious ones are obvious, so I'll just toss another into the hat: 2023 MSU.
That one was about more than sports. The last meeting ended with violent crimes the media bent over backwards to "both sides" and. . . FFS was Tucker ever suspended at all for it? I was sickened by the corruption. Since the NCAA was going to do nothing about MSU, and the B1G was going to do nothing about MSU, and the media was coddling them with everything they could muster, and the legal system negotiated punishment down to almost nothing, it was up to Michigan to teach them a lesson the only way they could. I didn't want just a win; I wanted humiliations galore. If they care about beating Michigan so much that they'll resort to becoming a mob, make them eat the fucking football.
So they did. Michigan went to East Lansing and started scoring. And scoring. And scoring. 21-0, 28-0, 35-0. And they put in Ja'Den McBurrows and German Green, and the last play was Green with a TFL. By the end of the game, MSU had put up more Hitlers than points. Michigan 49, Fuck-around-and-find-outs zero. And then Sainristil wouldn't let the camera cut away and pulled McBurrows in front of it.
And they were still both-sidesing, but it didn't matter anymore. MSU had been reduced to a brittle, trampled, shattered husk.
It's tempting to dismiss them but there are serious psychological problems in anyone who takes sports so seriously that they resort to delusion as a coping mechanism.
I mean, I can get pretty worked up about sports, but I make distinctions between when Michigan punches itself in the face, gets beat by a clearly superior team, or gets robbed. I get upset when they lose, but in the end, I move on.
But when someone feels unhinged, mouth-frothing rage over some 20-year-olds they've never met wearing shirts of one color beating 20-year-olds they've never met wearing shirts of a different color in a competition. . . that's frighteningly poor impulse control, and that's not a nice thing to be around in many situations. Like, what if one of these wackos (of which there are thousands) is coaching your kid's team? Or any kids' team?
"Lambert-Smith is gonna be like a 2nd or 3rd round pick; he's legit." "So why didn't he leave?" "He did leave!" "No no no, why didn't he leave for the draft?" "I don't know. But Michigan should go get that guy." "Oh, I mean, totally! When did he leave?" "After spring practice." "So, very recently." "Uhhh, hello! What year is he?" "He's a senior." "OK, so, he hypothetically could get in?" "Uhhhh. . ."
For a long time, the women's game was more skill dependent than the boys, because they did not have the jump-out-of-the-gym, above-the-rim athletes. They had to play as a team, and you saw a lot more games that looked like the Princeton constant-motion offense than the NBA-style "I will drive to the hoop and you cannot stop me" variation.
What era are you talking about? Because I heard this a lot maybe ten years ago, and it was applicable then, but UConn's dominance goes back a good twenty years, and women's b-ball in the early aughts was horrid. Like, to hell with "team basketball" -- some scholarship players, on tournament teams, playing meaningful minutes, looked like they barely exercised.
Forget "above the rim" freaks; the game at one point was so atrocious that it questioned the notion of women being athletes. Teams that looked barely coached at all were making the tournament as if the prevailing attitude of WBB coaches was, "I'm here to undermine Title IX." UConn was one of a few programs that affirmed their players were indeed serious athletes.
But the obvious result of that disparity in approach was unwatchable. Today's game is real, and I daresay UConn's blowout wins played a role in that. They weren't doing anything special; they were largely showing what women could do if you took their game seriously, because back then that wasn't the norm. They made it the norm.
One other thought, I have to quibble with Brian's take on women's basketball.
I remember seeing some of those old UConn games and yeah they were boring, but the lack of hate wasn't the problem. The problem is that UConn games were a team of well-coached athletes destroying disorganized piles of stiff, unconditioned, clumsy intramural casuals. And that would be like the NCAA quarterfinals.
These days. . . OK, the back half of bubble rosters still look rather stiff, but I mean even an 8-9 match will have some real ballin'. There are still more programs than talent to go around, but it's gotten legitimately watchable -- and as a result, people are watching.
It's not like it suddenly got good because people now care. It's that it finally got good enough to give a damn about.
I'm being nice. Bryce Underwood is apparently getting offered well more than I've made in my entire life.
He may be a hard worker, but considering his age vs. the sleep debt I built up just from my years as an engineer, I don't think he's outworked my entire adult career.
I'm OK with athletes making money, but there's something audacious about asking fans to directly foot this bill on top of everything else.
I'm inclined to agree, but I think the "it's legal now!" cry a few years ago created the expectation that every program has an untapped pile of boosters-that-weren't-until-now, because they follow the rules, or something, which is a laughably delusional idea based on everything I've witnessed about high-revenue sports.
Anyone inclined to funnel personal funds into a damn collegiate sports program had been doing so all along. So yeah, it's the same people with the same money, but everyone thought NIL was going to magically create another huge pile of money out of thin air, and that it's not is causing serious problems.
Am I the only person to think NIL was unsustainable to begin with?
Brian finally got the model right. Sure, it was a way to finally pay the players "over the table", but it was a way to pay the players in a way that didn't threaten the billions going into the NCAA's insatiable maw. So, yeah, we're still paying for (increasingly expensive) tickets and subscriptions and parking and merch and $20 watery beers and then everyone's supposed to fork over NIL money on top of all that? And many of these young men are demanding more than I make in a year.
So NIL was always going to mostly come from bored rich people with nothing better to do with their money than throw it at athletes for literally no reason but fandom, but there are only so many of those.
Folks here keep pounding the table to "fix Michigan's NIL" but Michigan's fundamental problem is that -- from the donors' perspective -- NIL is a terribly stupid way to spend money, and Michigan alumni are generally on the smarter side with their finances. Like, even if I had millions to spend, the NIL pitch is basically, "We're a billion-dollar franchise but we need you to give us your millions so one high-schooler will wear a blue shirt instead of a purple shirt." My reaction is, what the fuck.
Maybe? I don't know what's going on with Phelia or even the program in general, but IF this is about NIL, they're being naive.
Women's basketball outdrew the men's finals. They know they're being watched. That bell can't be un-rung, and bully for them. But NIL isn't TV money*. It comes from business owners and other wealthy benefactors, who for the most part are white, male, sexist, and generally not fans of women's basketball. There are exceptions, but those exceptions literally define where NIL money is concentrated. From 30,000 feet, the inclination to pay female athletes is still a full generation -- if not two -- behind the revenue they're generating. (I mean if men want to complain about not getting paid. . . WBB going "LOL that's adorable")
So Michigan likely can't pay her, but most other places can't either, because (as pointed out by Brian on the latest Roundtable) NIL and TV revenue are two completely separate buckets, by design. She could land at a place with significant NIL for WBB, but if this is really about money, she's as likely to be looking for a pot of gold with her name on it that just doesn't exist.
*Again, unless you're a Caitlin Clark, which no one on M's squad is
Also, Clark is a horrible example. She is one of only a few cases of WBB NIL being used in a straightforward way -- businesses are sponsoring her, actually paying for her Name, Image and Likeness, not funneling money into Iowa WBB, per se.
99% of NIL is glorified money laundering, and WBB is growing in popularity, but sports fandom overall is still deeply sexist and happily exploiting the outdated notion that women's sports are "non-revenue" (ratings be damned, no really, the condescension is that brazen) to tell them they're [financially] worth nothing. Oh, I'm sure there's some money out there, but it's so miniscule compared to football that you can't imagine them working the same way. Phelia'd be welcomed at a number of programs and she can try to make NIL an issue, but those are basically two different conversations. She's good, but she's not Caitlin Clark.
Point being, the vast majority of women probably aren't getting paid, anywhere. I can't imagine the offers at any one program are significantly more lucrative than any other. And in the case of superstardom like Clark's, the money's following the individual, not coming from the program.
I recall Ross' comment as a "I think he could". In any case, AFAIK no one's seen him do it. I think Goldin moves much better than people give him credit for, but he's definitely not switchable.
Small is a true junior who transferred from ECU last year; Michigan admissions is going to obliterate many of his credits unless he somehow manages to get a degree in three years after a transfer.
Obligatory clarification that Admissions doesn't determine credits but we're all well aware of that. We're just using that as a shorthand because "admissions" is one word and we really don't care about splitting this hair.
Rule #1 about reads is, there is no such thing as a simple read. DCs will reverse-engineer the read and then position a defender to either force a bad decision or make the read "fuzzy" to induce confusion.
What you can do is make a simple progression so if a read looks iffy, it doesn't result in certain death. A lot of flawed offenses we've seen through here, especially zone reads, were one-read or even zero-read plays wherein the defense reliably herded the ball into a free hitter by exploiting the QB's programming.
What you can do with Orji is add option C, "just make a damn play". If A isn't there, check B. If B isn't there, it's now "broken play" time and you take what you can get. That's a viable progression with an athletic QB, but Harbaugh never did it because A) he's terrified of turnovers and B) he's trying to keep the QB healthy. Which, to be fair, were absolutely legitimate problems early in his tenure at M. But the conservatism also killed a ton of drives.
That said, I'm curious about the post-Harbaugh era. I think Harbaugh is good at developing NFL QBs, as in, QBs that can drink from the firehose. JJ might be an early first-rounder, and while Rudock didn't get much NFL interest, he's now in med school. (Then a bunch of QBs got hurt due to pass pro issues, so jury remained out.) Lesser QBs tended to struggle or get even worse. He can't make the game simple for them.
JJ's gone, but so is Harbaugh, so this doesn't mean we regress all the way back to O'Korn. It's Moore's team now, and it'll be interesting to see if he can put together an offense that mortals can run.
Not so crazy for us. We’ve played Chris Wormley and Rashan Gary at SDE; both were close to that size. Yeah it’s basically like having three DTs on the field but that’s not inherently a bad idea.
Recent Comments
Teams take time to gel. As good as this roster is, first half of next season could be rough to watch. That’s not a knock on Day; that’s just a realistic expectation.
I wouldn't call him quick (at least compared to what he'll face in the tourney) but he is smooth. I can't see him staying in front of an athletic wing, but he shouldn't be completely helpless either. You can things with that level of body control.
Bit concerning that he's an average finisher, considering the tools he has. He doesn't look particularly lanky, but he does strike me as a finesse type. I'm not sure he needs S&C so much as a mean streak.
Matt said none of those things, so you're trying to start something from nothing.
I hope you got that out of your system, if at least it means you're done.
"Another one?! Dammit. . . I'm so happy. . . but. . . I'm so tired. . . (sob)"
-Matt EM, probably
No, it's just lazy shitposting.
There are valid reasons why Warde should've been fired years ago, but he did fine with the May hire.
What this did do is predictably bring out the Warde-hater-haters out en force (see above), because even trolling of this lowly caliber is an irresistible honeypot to them.
Expect more of the same, because apparently it's still very effective.
Yes, you've made your point very clear, what with three detailed comments about your hate for Orji on this thread alone.
I'm not here to defend this hill. I'm just describing the view from its summit.
It's kind of a variant of "don't practice fucked". Orji can't be a pure pocket passer, but he can open up the offense in a way the others can't. Oversimplifying for the sake of brevity, we basically have two options:
I guess MGoBlog's take is, Orji has the most potential, so why would you structure your offense around backups?
In before the jackasses arrive to whine about the players when the coach is scrambling to build a roster basically from scratch.
We played Maryland that many times?
The impetus for the run base was, Chop Robinson ghosted through our tackles like they weren't even there.
We didn't eschew the pass in the second half to make some sort of statement; JJ literally didn't have time. Robinson was past the LoS by the time a shotgun snap was halfway to JJ's hands.
"upshot for the rest of the class": is warm body, yay, we still need more
I think WAAAY too much is being made of the PSU game.
They initially tried drop-backs and the results were almost disastrous. The kaiju package was prepared, but wasn't run well, indicating it was intended as a change-up.
Moore didn't even know he'd be coaching that game until they were en route. There's no evidence he drew up the play. His master stroke was to take what was likely a one-off gimmick in the playbook and make it their base, because it flipped the matchups from "Chop Robinson murderdeathkills our QB" to "beefcake vs. pass defenders in the X-gap".
It could well be the case that Moore is Harbaugh Jr. and will double down on the meat wall philosophy, we'll see, but I don't accept the PSU game as evidence of anything other than Moore's got the creativity and cojones to improvise a gameplan instead of sticking to what isn't working.
We'll see. First rule of business is, if it's not in a contract, it doesn't exist.
By far the most under-discussed bit for the Spring Game is, what does a Sherrone Moore team look like?
Moore coached the last few regular-season games of 2023, but he was still coaching a Harbaugh team. He worked with plays and philosophies that were developed within Harbaugh's system. We all have a good idea of Harbaugh's priorities. What are Moore's?
It's still largely a Harbaugh-shaped squad, loaded with RBs and thin on WRs, but Moore's the skipper now. Basic opsec, the preparatory nature of spring ball, and the question mark at QB will all limit what Moore will show us, but there's nothing to say he has to adhere to Harbaugh's on-field principles anymore.
No one you need to know. We should fire May and Warde over this. Not even an idiot would recruit a Pippin over a Brandybuck.
/ seriously, taking down a troll is nice, but it ain't getting the jump on the effin' honcho of the Nazgûl
Same. Attention gives him power, so it sounds like I should give him none.
May’s positive energy seems infectious. A staff infection, if you will.
/ what?
-Vlad Goldin, probably
I think perception is reality. I'm sure every non-M coach tells every WR on the recruiting trail that if they go to Michigan they'll just be asked to block and occasionally run end-arounds because Michigan never throws the ball. Maybe show them tape of last year's PSU game, and the second half of 2021 OSU.
Facts never get in the way of a recruiting visit, but this is a very easy case to fabricate.
It's a long time from April to September, so the QB missing some throws is nothing to panic about.
BUT the reasons should be timing and chemistry with the WRs. WR is supposed to be here, but the ball went here instead. That sort of thing. If the issue is footwork. . . for a junior?? That's not getting fixed in five months.
Harbaugh got us a lot of good wins.
Now I'm a little upset about the "let's throw him under the bus" thread the other day. Someone who did this much for the program doesn't deserve that treatment, just because it's politically expedient.
Obvious ones are obvious, so I'll just toss another into the hat: 2023 MSU.
That one was about more than sports. The last meeting ended with violent crimes the media bent over backwards to "both sides" and. . . FFS was Tucker ever suspended at all for it? I was sickened by the corruption. Since the NCAA was going to do nothing about MSU, and the B1G was going to do nothing about MSU, and the media was coddling them with everything they could muster, and the legal system negotiated punishment down to almost nothing, it was up to Michigan to teach them a lesson the only way they could. I didn't want just a win; I wanted humiliations galore. If they care about beating Michigan so much that they'll resort to becoming a mob, make them eat the fucking football.
So they did. Michigan went to East Lansing and started scoring. And scoring. And scoring. 21-0, 28-0, 35-0. And they put in Ja'Den McBurrows and German Green, and the last play was Green with a TFL. By the end of the game, MSU had put up more Hitlers than points. Michigan 49, Fuck-around-and-find-outs zero. And then Sainristil wouldn't let the camera cut away and pulled McBurrows in front of it.
And they were still both-sidesing, but it didn't matter anymore. MSU had been reduced to a brittle, trampled, shattered husk.
It's tempting to dismiss them but there are serious psychological problems in anyone who takes sports so seriously that they resort to delusion as a coping mechanism.
I mean, I can get pretty worked up about sports, but I make distinctions between when Michigan punches itself in the face, gets beat by a clearly superior team, or gets robbed. I get upset when they lose, but in the end, I move on.
But when someone feels unhinged, mouth-frothing rage over some 20-year-olds they've never met wearing shirts of one color beating 20-year-olds they've never met wearing shirts of a different color in a competition. . . that's frighteningly poor impulse control, and that's not a nice thing to be around in many situations. Like, what if one of these wackos (of which there are thousands) is coaching your kid's team? Or any kids' team?
To be fair, Hutchinson DID pad his stats against scrub teams. I mean, three of his sacks were against OSU.
None. Pippen tagged along and not even Elrond could dissuade him.
/ what?
What era are you talking about? Because I heard this a lot maybe ten years ago, and it was applicable then, but UConn's dominance goes back a good twenty years, and women's b-ball in the early aughts was horrid. Like, to hell with "team basketball" -- some scholarship players, on tournament teams, playing meaningful minutes, looked like they barely exercised.
Forget "above the rim" freaks; the game at one point was so atrocious that it questioned the notion of women being athletes. Teams that looked barely coached at all were making the tournament as if the prevailing attitude of WBB coaches was, "I'm here to undermine Title IX." UConn was one of a few programs that affirmed their players were indeed serious athletes.
But the obvious result of that disparity in approach was unwatchable. Today's game is real, and I daresay UConn's blowout wins played a role in that. They weren't doing anything special; they were largely showing what women could do if you took their game seriously, because back then that wasn't the norm. They made it the norm.
One other thought, I have to quibble with Brian's take on women's basketball.
I remember seeing some of those old UConn games and yeah they were boring, but the lack of hate wasn't the problem. The problem is that UConn games were a team of well-coached athletes destroying disorganized piles of stiff, unconditioned, clumsy intramural casuals. And that would be like the NCAA quarterfinals.
These days. . . OK, the back half of bubble rosters still look rather stiff, but I mean even an 8-9 match will have some real ballin'. There are still more programs than talent to go around, but it's gotten legitimately watchable -- and as a result, people are watching.
It's not like it suddenly got good because people now care. It's that it finally got good enough to give a damn about.
I'm being nice. Bryce Underwood is apparently getting offered well more than I've made in my entire life.
He may be a hard worker, but considering his age vs. the sleep debt I built up just from my years as an engineer, I don't think he's outworked my entire adult career.
I'm OK with athletes making money, but there's something audacious about asking fans to directly foot this bill on top of everything else.
I'm inclined to agree, but I think the "it's legal now!" cry a few years ago created the expectation that every program has an untapped pile of boosters-that-weren't-until-now, because they follow the rules, or something, which is a laughably delusional idea based on everything I've witnessed about high-revenue sports.
Anyone inclined to funnel personal funds into a damn collegiate sports program had been doing so all along. So yeah, it's the same people with the same money, but everyone thought NIL was going to magically create another huge pile of money out of thin air, and that it's not is causing serious problems.
Am I the only person to think NIL was unsustainable to begin with?
Brian finally got the model right. Sure, it was a way to finally pay the players "over the table", but it was a way to pay the players in a way that didn't threaten the billions going into the NCAA's insatiable maw. So, yeah, we're still paying for (increasingly expensive) tickets and subscriptions and parking and merch and $20 watery beers and then everyone's supposed to fork over NIL money on top of all that? And many of these young men are demanding more than I make in a year.
So NIL was always going to mostly come from bored rich people with nothing better to do with their money than throw it at athletes for literally no reason but fandom, but there are only so many of those.
Folks here keep pounding the table to "fix Michigan's NIL" but Michigan's fundamental problem is that -- from the donors' perspective -- NIL is a terribly stupid way to spend money, and Michigan alumni are generally on the smarter side with their finances. Like, even if I had millions to spend, the NIL pitch is basically, "We're a billion-dollar franchise but we need you to give us your millions so one high-schooler will wear a blue shirt instead of a purple shirt." My reaction is, what the fuck.
Maybe? I don't know what's going on with Phelia or even the program in general, but IF this is about NIL, they're being naive.
Women's basketball outdrew the men's finals. They know they're being watched. That bell can't be un-rung, and bully for them. But NIL isn't TV money*. It comes from business owners and other wealthy benefactors, who for the most part are white, male, sexist, and generally not fans of women's basketball. There are exceptions, but those exceptions literally define where NIL money is concentrated. From 30,000 feet, the inclination to pay female athletes is still a full generation -- if not two -- behind the revenue they're generating. (I mean if men want to complain about not getting paid. . . WBB going "LOL that's adorable")
So Michigan likely can't pay her, but most other places can't either, because (as pointed out by Brian on the latest Roundtable) NIL and TV revenue are two completely separate buckets, by design. She could land at a place with significant NIL for WBB, but if this is really about money, she's as likely to be looking for a pot of gold with her name on it that just doesn't exist.
*Again, unless you're a Caitlin Clark, which no one on M's squad is
Also, Clark is a horrible example. She is one of only a few cases of WBB NIL being used in a straightforward way -- businesses are sponsoring her, actually paying for her Name, Image and Likeness, not funneling money into Iowa WBB, per se.
99% of NIL is glorified money laundering, and WBB is growing in popularity, but sports fandom overall is still deeply sexist and happily exploiting the outdated notion that women's sports are "non-revenue" (ratings be damned, no really, the condescension is that brazen) to tell them they're [financially] worth nothing. Oh, I'm sure there's some money out there, but it's so miniscule compared to football that you can't imagine them working the same way. Phelia'd be welcomed at a number of programs and she can try to make NIL an issue, but those are basically two different conversations. She's good, but she's not Caitlin Clark.
Point being, the vast majority of women probably aren't getting paid, anywhere. I can't imagine the offers at any one program are significantly more lucrative than any other. And in the case of superstardom like Clark's, the money's following the individual, not coming from the program.
Uh-huh-huh.
I take it a lot of Brian’s uncertainty is baked into those numbers.
So 60% doesn’t mean 40% chance of rain, per se. It can mean something like, “I have 75% confidence in my information that it’s 80% happening.”
No, they moved him from de-bate to de-fense.
No it isn’t
Only because Pettiti had such regard for safety that he suspended Harbaugh another three games.
Stop the bleeding!
What the hell. I'm now starting to worry that our women's program might not be able to field a team next season.
I recall Ross' comment as a "I think he could". In any case, AFAIK no one's seen him do it. I think Goldin moves much better than people give him credit for, but he's definitely not switchable.
Obligatory clarification that Admissions doesn't determine credits but we're all well aware of that. We're just using that as a shorthand because "admissions" is one word and we really don't care about splitting this hair.
Rule #1 about reads is, there is no such thing as a simple read. DCs will reverse-engineer the read and then position a defender to either force a bad decision or make the read "fuzzy" to induce confusion.
What you can do is make a simple progression so if a read looks iffy, it doesn't result in certain death. A lot of flawed offenses we've seen through here, especially zone reads, were one-read or even zero-read plays wherein the defense reliably herded the ball into a free hitter by exploiting the QB's programming.
What you can do with Orji is add option C, "just make a damn play". If A isn't there, check B. If B isn't there, it's now "broken play" time and you take what you can get. That's a viable progression with an athletic QB, but Harbaugh never did it because A) he's terrified of turnovers and B) he's trying to keep the QB healthy. Which, to be fair, were absolutely legitimate problems early in his tenure at M. But the conservatism also killed a ton of drives.
It's kind of an important position.
That said, I'm curious about the post-Harbaugh era. I think Harbaugh is good at developing NFL QBs, as in, QBs that can drink from the firehose. JJ might be an early first-rounder, and while Rudock didn't get much NFL interest, he's now in med school. (Then a bunch of QBs got hurt due to pass pro issues, so jury remained out.) Lesser QBs tended to struggle or get even worse. He can't make the game simple for them.
JJ's gone, but so is Harbaugh, so this doesn't mean we regress all the way back to O'Korn. It's Moore's team now, and it'll be interesting to see if he can put together an offense that mortals can run.
Tuttle is injured.
I remember Brian giving Hall an early shout-out in UFR.
I'm amazed his arms still work. Dude's taken more hits than Ali.
Does “letting them play” mean no Kyle, or just a dog whistle for “let them cheat”?
Not so crazy for us. We’ve played Chris Wormley and Rashan Gary at SDE; both were close to that size. Yeah it’s basically like having three DTs on the field but that’s not inherently a bad idea.
Which is probably why we aren’t refs.
Everyone whines about officiating but if I ever called a game I would take no shit from either team and the result would be riots in the streets.