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Date	Title	Body
41 weeks 2 days ago	Maybe he should have kept	Countess and Lewan off the field, then.  If you're afraid of players getting hurt, you shouldn't be coaching football.   Our coaches had better have been planning based on how they best thought they could win the game, not conceding it from the start and simply looking to protect players.
1 year 28 weeks ago	Zone Read and Inverted Veer	forever, please.  Along with some Triple Option and Flexbone.  I like exciting, running football.  Pro-style, I-formation is boring, even when it's done well and works.   This is the most depressing part of this transition.  I'm absolutely gaga for Rodriguez's offense, as much as I loathed his lack of defense.  Please, Al - think of the children.
1 year 28 weeks ago	That certainly worked	for Penn State.
1 year 31 weeks ago	But he was falling...	More rules apply when the ball is caught while falling.  The player must maintain control until the play is over (stops moving) and the ball cannot hit the ground in a way that helps the player control the ball. The ball clearly hit the ground when he landed.  That is nearly always ruled an incomplete pass.  IMO the refs called it correctly.
1 year 37 weeks ago	Agreed. Some things are worth paying taxes for.	Education is one of them.  I would quite willingly pay higher taxes to support K-12 and higher education.  Getting started in life is tough enough.  A huge student loan debt hanging over your head holds you back at a time when you can least afford it. The solution is higher taxes and greater education funding, Tea Party be damned.
1 year 37 weeks ago	Mostly because	they've already got their stories written in standard sports story boilerplate, so they need a few standard coach-quotes to fill it in.  Their editors don't want creative, insightful stories so they don't ask creative, insightful questions.  Column-inches have already been allocated and laid out, so the writer needs to stick to a fairly well-known layout. Creative, insightful stories are longer-form editions  - magazines, websites, focus sections, what have you.  Those usually involve a sit-down with the coach and some better questions.
1 year 37 weeks ago	Yeah, it may have been a diversion.	They may never run those plays again - but future opponents are going to spend time preparing for them anyway.  They may also use the same formation to run significantly different plays.  Their main value is in keeping the opponents guessing as to just what we'll do, giving them fewer reps on the main stuff.
1 year 40 weeks ago	At least Denard learned:	The bomb to Gallon with 8 seconds left was the exact same play that he'd thrown an interception over the middle on earlier.  There was a guy on a wheel route on that play, as well - completely uncovered.   They pulled that play out and ND obligingly went into the same coverage, expecting Denard once again to force it to Hemingway over the middle - and there was little Jeremy on the wheel route with no one within 20 yards.  I'll give Borges and Denard some credit for seeing that one.
1 year 43 weeks ago	Same thing I feel.	Offense will be different, maybe better, maybe worse, than last year - I don't really have a feel for it.  They're older and more skilled as a unit, but the coaching change has set them back.  Just have to wait and see. On the other hand, the vibe I'm getting from Mattison and Hoke both is that the defense is not in good shape.  While the coaching last year was clearly an issue, the conclusion I'm drawing is that those guys really weren't very good, and there wasn't a coach in the world who was going to make them decent.  I suspect this year will be a bit better than last year, due to both older players and better coaching, but it's still going to be a lot of baling wire and duct tape for a while.  I foresee a bunch of four-letter-words in Brians defensive UFRs yet this season. Don't see as ending up much better than 7-5, with 6-6 more likely.  The end of the season will be another meatgrinder.  This year Hoke gets a pass, anyway, as he establishes his baseline.  As with Rodriguez, my criterion for evaluation will be improvement more than anything else.  The wins will come as long as we keep improving.
2 years 1 week ago	If somebody fumbles, will	If somebody fumbles, will they have a formal ceremony at midfield where they tear his stripes off and send him out of the stadium?
2 years 19 weeks ago	To quote Henry Ford II	(who was quoting Benjamin Disraeli): "Never complain, never explain" It's a basic tenet of leadership.  You're judged by your results, not by your intents.  I have no expectations of Rich ever "owning up" to anything, except maybe in a memoir in 25 years or so.
2 years 21 weeks ago	Magnificent, as usual, Mis.	Dylan beats The Smiths by several touchdowns.
2 years 21 weeks ago	No.	They make the helmet look trashy.  Coaches should find some other way of rewarding good performance.
2 years 21 weeks ago	GAME	4-3 Michigan!!!!
2 years 21 weeks ago	Penalties killed.	1:00 to go.
2 years 21 weeks ago	Uh, it's a real word.	http://www.thefreedictionary.com/jibe If you're just being silly, my apologies.
2 years 21 weeks ago	2-1 for the good guys!	Rust with the deflection, 14:21 1st.
2 years 21 weeks ago	Your analysis of Borges	is precisely my own thoughts on the matter.  All the talk about stuff Borges could do to maximize Denard's potential is so much wind.  Al Borges is going to do what Al Borges knows how to do, and Denard is going to have to adapt or sit the bench behind Devin.  That's not a knock on Borges, that's just the way it is.  Coaches are not universal computing machines, they're human beings with strengths and limitations.  They will coach what their past experience tells them will work, and will not try to invent a completely new scheme out of whole cloth in a couple months. I hope Borges has enough tricks in his bag to take good advantage of Denard's running abilities, but there's precious little evidence to this point that those tricks exist.  I will be quite pleasantly surprised if some appear.
2 years 21 weeks ago	Eight wins	is about what I'm anticipating.  The Notre Dame game will be a bellwether for the rest of the season.
2 years 21 weeks ago	It's not a question	of whether or not Nevada's offense is a good idea.  It's whether or not Al Borges knows how to run it.  If he doesn't have a history of using the Pistol, it's not likely to happen, however good of an idea it may seem.
2 years 21 weeks ago	Greg Mattison	anagrams to "Megaton Grits". I'm sold.
2 years 21 weeks ago	Heresy!	The triple option is the most beautiful offense ever conceived by man.  It ought to be mandatory for all college teams to run the option.  I also attended Michigan at the height of the Bo years (77-81) and loved every minute of every game.
2 years 21 weeks ago	That would indeed	be the fiercely pragmatic way to deal with it.
2 years 21 weeks ago	Good point.	Due to the running backs never really stepping up to offer a legitimate option to Denard running, opposing teams were able to just play the ZR to force the handoff (which usually didn't get much).  Most of Denard's runs were designed iso's since he never got to keep the ball on a true option play. Nonetheless, Brian's statement is true that the offense was designed around the zone read, despite them not being able to run it as often as they'd like.  I-formation power runs were not generally successful with this line, so the notion that Hoke will be able to quickly shift them to ManBall™ is a bit suspect.
2 years 21 weeks ago	I have the feeling	that a lot of the pro-Hoke stuff out there from former players is a deliberate PR blitz from the athletic department.  These guys are doing their part to talk him up (and I do appreciate their efforts) but you can see that a lot of them don't really believe that Hoke is the best Michigan could do.  Some of them really are gung-ho, but most of them just seem to be going through the motions.
2 years 22 weeks ago	That's not really saying anything.	Just Snyder name-dropping people previously associated with Hoke.  No suggestion anywhere that they are names he's actually considering. Looks like little more than space filler.
2 years 22 weeks ago	I'm starting to get that same vibe.	The actual head coach of the team is Dave Brandon.  Brady Hoke is the Assistant Head Coach.  Something else to watch for, then - how independent does Hoke become?  Is he his own man in decision-making, or is he doing his master's bidding? God, I hate that I'm even thinking these thoughts about Michigan football.  *sigh*
2 years 22 weeks ago	Last time I checked	5 wins is more than 3 wins and 7 wins is more than 5 wins. The offensive output was surging.  The team overall was progressing steadily on an upward trajectory.  Playing three teams that ended up 11-1 will tend to make you look bad when you're not yet at their level. Your analysis seems to be an attempt to tell me I should believe you rather than my lying eyes.
2 years 22 weeks ago	You've missed the whole point of the argument.	Everybody knows that the last 3 years were historically bad.  You haven't told us anything new here. When Rodriguez was hired, I looked at his past record, and saw a common pattern of starting slowly then building to something spectacular.  That is what I was expecting to happen here - a few years of misery followed by many years of great joy. The trajectory of Rodriguez's teams was upward.  It was never about where they were, it was about where they were going.  If we had the nerve to tough out the hard years we'd be richly (pun) rewarded.  Unfortunately, we did not have the nerve and took all the pain for no benefit at all. I have to assume the Michigan athletic department was also aware of Rodriguez's track record.  If they weren't willing to give him four or five years without question before even contemplating pulling the plug, he never should have been hired. So Rodriguez ended up being a bad hire - not because Rodriguez was necessarily a bad coach, but because the Michigan athletic department didn't have the patience to ride out the transition to his system.
2 years 22 weeks ago	It ought to be	Bo, Fritz, Fielding, and Lloyd in armor on horseback with long sharp lances leading in front of them, galloping across the field at Michigan Stadium with Brady Hoke desperately scrambling to stay ahead of them.  Of course, the bloody, impaled corpse of Rich Rodriguez would be behind them.

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