jarrod bunch

This one turned into a beast as I ran into a lot of close decisions and had to watch a lot of Wolverine Historian'd Michigan victories on the youtubes to get them right. The things I do for you people.

Previously: Pro Offense/Pro Defense, 1879-Before Bo, 5-Stars, 3-Stars, Extracurriculars, Position-Switchers, Highlights, Numbers Offense/Numbers Defense, In-State, Names, Small Guys, Big Guys

Rules: Scoring the way we might with Upon Further Review or Pro Football Focus, i.e. overall positive impact minus negative impact. Eligible seasons are those where the guy played with freshman eligibility (you can be a redshirt freshman but not retroactively). Also we're grading only on that freshman season, not what came before or after.

Freshman Eligibility: With a few wartime exceptions and some irregularities from back when college football was 'Nam, from 1896 (the formation of the Big Ten) until 1972 freshmen in football were not eligible to compete on varsity. Instead they had freshman teams, who often played on Monday nights. It's way beyond my capabilities for some offseason #content to read every account of every freshman game from the 20th century, so only varsity freshmen are going to count here.

----------------------------------------------------

Quarterback: Chad Henne (2004)

Lloyd Carr promised a battle for the job of replacing John Navarre. The candidates were RS sophomore Matt Gutierrez, who had never lost a game in high school, RS freshman southpaw (and future South Side-er) Clayton Richard, and the new five-star freshman yanked out of Penn State territory over the public objections of his head coach.

Coming out of spring the smart money was on Gutierrez, who'd wet his feet some in 2003. Nearing the end of fall practice that pick was locked in, and leaking out, along with rumors that the newcomer had replaced the future lefty reliever. Then during prep week to face Miami (NNTM) and Notre Dame, Gutierrez went down. A true freshman took the controls of the most NFL-like passing offense outside of the NFL.

Henne wasn't allowed to do much, especially early on. But he could do the one thing—the thing that would define his 2,743-yard, 25-TD (12-INT) freshman campaign. That is: throw it to Braylon. Henne's first long pass was a dead-on-balls fade to Braylon. His first touchdown was a 20-yard rocket to Braylon. His first 40-pass day included 18 in the direction Braylon. Of course, Braylonfest went in the direction of Braylon.

But as the season progressed Henne was picking up the offense. His Big Ten debut was a 16/26/236-yard performance against Iowa. He dispatched Indiana with lethal efficiency, and carried the offense the rest of the way. Though they lost to Ohio State (on a 27/54 day for Henne), a Wisconsin loss that day secured Michigan another trip to Pasadena.

Backup: Rick Leach (1975). Before I get attacked by an army of sexagenarians led by Dr. Sap, this is not a knock on Leach so much as recognition of Henne. If you did want to knock Leach, he wasn't much of a passer (32/100, 680 yards, 3 TDs, 12 INTs, 75.0 QBRtg) even in the context of his day. His rushing stats—611 yards/4.88 YPC and 5 TDs on 83 attempts—weren't great either. But the freshman had the right feel for the option, and that set up both RB Gordie Bell and FB Rob Lytle for 1,000-yard rushing seasons. Leach had a terrible Ohio State game, and while that motivated him to win three straight afterward, it didn't feel so great in '75.

HM: Tate Forcier (2009), Elvis Grbac (1989), Steven Threet (2008), Ryan Mallett (2007)

[AFTER THE JUMP: A more freshman year than 2004.]

Officiating that even closely approximated what could plausibly described as normal, a breeze from a passing mosquito on a rim-balancing rock, a half-court prayer by the last guys you'd expect to get one of those answered…pick any two things that should or could have happened this year and that's the difference between the 1 seed in the Big Ten Tourney and the 5th.

As I lay in the middle of the B1G's final season standings, trying to will my defense out of entropy, I could see the faces of the weasels that did this to me and the hair cream aficionados responsible. When fortune smiles on something as violent and ugly as revenge, it seems proof like no other, that not only does God exist, you're doing His will.

Michigan shouldn't by all rights be taking the long way through the Big Ten Tournament. But fortune has seen fit to at least make that path go right through those whose ledgers with us are most in the red: Penn State yesterday, Wisconsin today, and pending survival there, almost certainly Indiana. That's our worst loss and then the only two teams who finished with winning records against us. In Indiana's case that won't change unless we meet in the NCAAs.

Can Wisconsin beat us again? I mean it's basketball: weird things happen even without the increased chaos of fewer possessions. Like for example sometimes the stripes inexplicably side with the harbingers of Rigelian swamp ball:

I felt paranoid watching all of this. It was a temporary window into the world of a 9/11 truther, seeing what looked like an insane conspiracy by Big Ten refs to keep Bo Ryan in their ears, screaming unprintable things about their mothers. A full half-dozen of the calls they made seemed literally impossible, from the two mentioned above to another breakaway layup that Burke missed because a dude hit him on the head and the charge Burke took on Berggren late that went the other way for a critical three-point play. Am I sane? I thought we got a fair whistle at Indiana. I did think that.

At this point a clunky start and a million defensive breakdowns by the freshmen and THJ wouldn't even be filed as weird things. Another weird thing would be an an outfit as attuned to profit margins as this Big Ten allowing a Rigelian sympathizer any kind of access to a whistle. If you need more than "it wouldn't fit the Kill Bill narrative" for reasons to be optimistic, Wisconsin in their own building needed probably the worst complete ref job in the conference's history and an impossible half-court buzzer shot to fall to beat us the first time. Those are thoughts. Here are diaries:

History lessons. Remember the funny Year in Review (with pics) things that saveferris used to write? Here he goes back to 1989, a time when the Simpsons was that new cartoon your mom didn't want you to watch, lest you turn into a spiky-haired scamp child who tells people to not have a cow, man. Most hilarious thing in the world in 1989 according to 1989 me: a nose tackle named Teeter. Teeter you all! Bad memories: the Tigers, kicking it to Rocket Ismail, and Phil Collins. Good memories: Berenson was just beginning to turn the hockey program around. Yzerman scored 155 points for the Wings, who won the Norris Division. The Pistons were at the peak of the Bad Boys period. Bo's last squad (and one of his best) with that backfield of Tony Boles, Leroy Hoard, Jarrod Bunch and Burnie Legette. And Glenn Rice, obvs.

Speaking of Bunch, he just popped up on the blog this week after someone noticed he was in the latest Tarantino film…

[After the jump]