Scheduling a Winner
As many of you know I have been cup really full guy for the 2011 season for about 2 years. We're getting close to some real football and I can't wait to put my money on the over 7.5 wins for Michigan(Easy Money). Denard will be in the gun and the defense will look completely different. We get past ND and anything is possible. I got an Insider at ESPN on the wagon as people are starting to look at us more closely. It's an Insider so I'll just post the snippe about us. Basically he looks at teams that have decent talent but a schedule set up to make a run if they play well. He uses the Sparties from last year as a perfect example which we know all about.
2. Michigan Wolverines
Keep Hoke alive! The Wolverines break in a new coach and buy into the Pure Michigan tourist campaign in clever fashion: They leave the state once before November, and that's a trip to distant Evanston, Ill., a short drive outside the border (where they'll see a 50-50 crowd, at worst). If Michigan gets by Notre Dame, it has a great shot to start 6-0 before a visit to East Lansing.
Full Article here
I think all of you are being way too optimistic. There are GREAT teams in the B10 but we are not among them yet. Things have been bad for 5 years now, but we are Michigan and they can't get worse, right ? This is not flipping a coin where the odds of getting more heads or tails in a row gets ridiculosely high, this is sports, non random, where the inertia of breaking out of a series of bad years is much higher than going bad after good years ( the situation we find ourselves in now ). IT CAN GET WORSE before it gets better. I will be satisfied with 7 wins and expect 6 and 6. In 2 years I expect to be a GREAT team, when Hoke gets to play with Hokeplayers.
I agree here. We won 7 games with squeakers in 3 of them last year. Against the top teams in the big ten, we were only in it for very small times, so expecting us to get better with new systems on both sides of the ball is possible, but not likely. I'm almost positive we'll improve on defense, but on offense I'm sensing a drop off (only for a year). The question will be whether our defensive improvement outweighs our offensive drop.
But 5 years?
Ooh I skimmed over that part of his comment. Yeah 5 years ago was 2006, and we were a very good team in 2006. I think we benefitted somewhat from a weak Big 10 in 2006, but an 11 win team in any conference is a very good team.
Who is the ranked first on that list?
V. Tech is #1
USC, South Carolina, Wash St, West Virginia, Illinois all get mentioned
think we will win at least 10 games if are defense plays better. Shoelace will show everybody that he is a great passer. GO BLUE!!!
Anyone who thinks this season features a cakewalk schedule is in for a rude awakening. On this schedule, I can spot no more than 4 gimmies in Western, Eastern, Minnesota and Purdue. That's it. San Diego State will come in featuring a very good senior QB, a lethal passing attack, and a metric asston of motivation. Illinois is on the road, and will be a tough matchup with Scheelhaase back at the helm. All the others are tossups or clear underdog situations. Really, I would be downright thrilled with 8-4, but I am expecting 6-6 or 7-5.
Hello, Baby Seal U.
Whoever wins the B1G this year will deffinately earn it. I hated the years when Northwestern used to win the Big 10 and never play Ohio state , Wisconsin , or Penn state and just have 1 incredible game against U of M. They should have added something in the old Big 10 rules that if you did'nt play atleast 2 of the 4 teams listed above you could'nt win the b-10.
Would qualify, because you couldn't miss more than 2 teams in a given schedule (unless you WERE on of those teams).
My attempt at being positive.
WMU- No tape for them to work with. So hopefully this is boring as hell show noting/shut it down in the 3ed game 27-13 game. W
ND- They play a Skip Holtz S. Florida team and I suspect a tough game week with no way to hold anything back. BH is putting a premium on ND/MSU/OSU. Dagnamnit we win this one the pressure will be on Brian Kelly's season and future with MSU the next week. We unleash a true Spread/Manball game. ???
EMU- Great week for a rebound or flat game. W
SDSU- They play Wash St. the week before, not saying WSU is big but it's still PAC-12 then traveling to the Eastern time zone vs. UM plus think Gruden vs. his old Raider team in the SB. UM should know SDSU weaknesses. W
Minnesota- I just hope they don't lose to whatever Dakota team they play before UM for S.O.S.. W
Northwestern- They play Ill the week before. Dan Persa scares me, NU O has always gave UM's D fits. ???
MSU- They come off a bye after playing OSU. Red letter game for both teams. Can't. Lose. Four. In. A. Row. UM has a bye week after so they'll be plenty of rest for our guys meanwhile Sparty gets Wisconsin the next week. W
Bye Week.
Purdue- UM recovers two Onside kicks, coverts a fake punt and a fake FG. F-you Danny Hope. Purdue plays Ill the week before. W
Iowa- They play Minnesota the week before. A big game for the Legends division with a home game vs MSU the next week. ???
ILL- Bye week after playing PSU, maybe Zooker will have lost his team by now plus can now UM play Defense. W
Nebraska- is coming to an end of a "Welcome to the B1G, take it up the ass schedule" and has just played PSU on the road so maybe they don't have much left in the tank with Iowa to finish the season. ???
OSU- Just played PSU at home and it's "The Game" ....24-12 (sound nice like '69), please take cooler's with you when you leave. W
8 wins for starters, but being that I would worry if UM played the sisters of the poor the above is pure BS on my part and I believe nothing till the final whistle.
TV better not screw up the scheduling and let us play the game at noon. A nice 9 am Pacific time kickoff should having them getting up nice and early mental clock wise.
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<br>And MSU, dread schedule. They get 2 weeks to prepare, and I don't like how many times we've lost BEFORE a bye.
Yes, we get ND, OSU, Nebraska at home ...
What does that mean?
It means we play ND, OSU, and Nebraska. None of those three figure to be easy to beat, and we can talk about having trouble with Northwestern, Illinois, MSU, and Iowa.
That's 7 games I'm unsure about, so I'm not expecting anything too great this year. I'm expecting around 6-6 or 7-5. Despite the hardest games being home (exception: MSU) we must remind ourselves that the offense will look almost nothing like last year's offense and the defense, while it should improve, still returns most of the starters that managed to rank 110th in FBS defense in 2012.
This was entirely more pessimistic sounding than I wanted it to sound.
ND was a better team than we were last year. A QB injury is the reason we won that game. They will be very good this year. We, on the other hand, will be going through a transition on both sides of the ball. If we somehow beat ND this year, and dont take another mid-season nosedive, and perhaps even get better throughout the season, then the rest of the schedule looks very good. But ND will be a very tough test. Make no mistake about it.
*ND was a better team than us and they were going through a first year transition. That is not the case this year to add to what you said.
Western Michigan = W
Notre Dame = L
Eastern Michigan = W
SDSU = W
East Dakota = W
Northwestern = W
Michigan State = L
Purdue = W
Iowa = L
Illinois = W
Nebraska = L
Ohio State - W
An extra loss (Illinois, or OSU) seem equally likely.
Notre Dames defense has the same problem Michigans defense had , Mobile QB's kill them. It happend all of last year. Every time they played a mobile QB they got beat. Until they show me otherwise Michigan wins under the lights.
We won't lose to MSU , i'll give you nebraska and prolly Iowa . but OSU is going to be an awesome game. There's not alot of gimme wins and there is no gimme losses either. If we play consistant football we'll have a good season.
Personally I think the defense has to and will show ALOT of improvement. With the return of our starting corners, a renewed emphasis on the D-line and new linebackers I honestly think we will shock alot of folks. There is no way to tell until the season starts.
My main hope is that Rawls or Hayes come in and turn out , because right now we have a log jam of medicore at the RB position. Look for a few RB and LB to transfer freeing up those scholarships everyone is so worried about.
Michigan didn't suck against mobile QB's. We sucked against competent QB's. This is why Tolzien lit us the hell up. Hell we got crushed by PSU's ginger wonder, and were lit up by Indiana's QB. The difference is that they weren't able to stop us.
I'm talking more late Carr era than the Richrod embarrasment. When every time we faced a mobile QB it made our Defense look plain silly. Syracuse / Appalacian State, but I can say this Notre Dame D looked alot worse than ours ever did VS. a mobile QB. When a QB rushes for over 200 yards on you, you got problems .
It's not like Notre corrected anything later in the season Dobbs from navy ran on them almost 100 yards and Navy's RB ran for 210. Kinne the QB from Tulsa also ran over ND , so don't buy into this Notre will beat us in A2 this year. If the defense steps up like i think they will this year , I'd put money on the fact we beat them by atleast 2 scores.
well and to be 100% honest we have'nt had a good pass defense in Michigan since 1997, just nobody could run on us.
Against WMU you'll see a lot of "manball" to throw ND off , but against ND you'll see alot of shotgun. It would be the smart thing to do