For all the pain - we had a good season
We lost to the #1 team in the Nation – on the road at Notre Dame 13-6.
We lost to the National Champs on the road.
We lost to the Big Ten Champs on the road.
We went up against and undefeated Ohio team on the road without our starting QB and RB. Lost by 5.
I am proud of our season.
November 25th, 2012 at 9:54 AM ^
We gotta stay together on this. We all KNOW our team is in better hands than the last regime. The defensive turnaround alone shows we are on the path. Recruiting better players, better students, will lead us down the path to championships. Hoke and co are doing that. Gimme Hoke over Meyer all day, everyday. Anyone else think they will have the same awkward celebration in about ten with Meyer in Ohio they just had with Tressel? Celebrating his record, while making excuses for his not following the rules. Win at all cost mentality is fine if you don't want to look at yourself in the mirror. Winning within the rules, and thru hard work is going to pull us thru...GO BLUE OR GO HOME!
November 25th, 2012 at 1:22 AM ^
Sorry, Llllllllllllllllllllllllloyd, but 8-4 is not a good season.
Losing to a marginal Notre Dame team by a touchdown is not part of a good season.
Dropping a game to Nebraska because the coaches failed to prepare the team's second best quarterback is not part of a good season.
Not recognizing that Vincent Smith can't pick up a first down on a third-and-short (something he's never been able to do) and other assorted offensive play-calling flubs are not a part of a good season.
The utter failure to establish a running game outside of your quarterback is not part of a good season.
That's enough for me for now. Now you go back to your recliner. You're retired, remember?
November 25th, 2012 at 12:42 PM ^
Keep withholding any credit, but they are playing for the National Championship, not only having beat us, but Stanford, USC, and Oklahoma. I think that's a bit better than "marginal."
November 25th, 2012 at 1:04 PM ^
You're right about Stanford and Oklahoma but I would not call a win against USC this year a quality win. They are rivals so a good win for them but USC is not a nationally relevant team this year.
November 25th, 2012 at 2:22 PM ^
But probably no worse than us. Back-up QB=6 INT QB. You go cross country to beat a decent rival, it's a good win. Certainly not a great one. But who has 4-5 great wins? Alabama has beaten LSU....annnnddd... Georgia, if they win. Georgia has beaten Florida...and maybe Bama. Kansas State beat Oklahoma. Did Oregon beat ANYBODY? (The 2 games they played against teams that played ND, they did worse). Yet these are all teams that the "eye test" tell us are better, and I kinda think they are too. But or on field accomplishments, teams just don't play and win against 4-5 great teams. The best schedule of the bigs might be Florida. Sure ND's schedule wasn't the gauntlet we thought it was going to be. But it's never easy to go undefeated. And they may get rocked by a better team in a bowl, but they're hardly middling.
November 25th, 2012 at 1:22 AM ^
This was an awful season. What is the OP smoking?
November 25th, 2012 at 1:30 AM ^
I'd probably be happier if State hadn't turned out to be a fraud. That was a satisfying win at the time, but now it doesn't make up as much for the close losses (and could have beens).
However, I really love this class of kids. I don't know if I'll be as personally invested in group of players as much as these guys. I really wanted these guys to succeed, and as we get farther and farther from these years, I think everyone will look back and be very pleased with what we had, what we did, and how they did it.
November 25th, 2012 at 1:34 AM ^
Lewan comes back next year?
November 25th, 2012 at 1:36 AM ^
Will all depend on what he hears from scouts but the last mock draft I saw had him going in the top 10. No way he comes back if he projects that high. Would simply not be worth the risk of injury.
November 25th, 2012 at 1:40 AM ^
8-4 as a record is strange... at 7-5 you know you had a bad year and at 9-3 you know you had a good year. At 8-4, nobody really knows what to think and you're sort of waiting for the bowl game to validate you one way or the other.
But anyone calling this season awful probably hasn't been paying attention to Michigan football over the past 30 years. Because this has been kind of average for us over that stretch.
November 25th, 2012 at 2:55 AM ^
except for 1984
November 25th, 2012 at 2:11 PM ^
before 2005, nobody complained about 4 losses either
November 25th, 2012 at 2:32 PM ^
That's not true. We had four four-loss seasons in a row from 1993-96 and it got Carr under a lot of heat going into 1997. There has historically been a big perceived difference here between three and four losses.
November 26th, 2012 at 1:15 AM ^
Lloyd was considered an underwhelming hire and there were still people who thought Cam Cameron was the better choice, which certainly played into that pressure
November 25th, 2012 at 1:43 AM ^
It's hard to consider it a good season after you've lost to every top opponent you've played. Basically we only best second-tier teams. So the season was average at best.
November 25th, 2012 at 2:21 AM ^
People predicting we would field a better team this year than last year's and have a worse record.
Next year I predict we field a very similar team and win at least 2 more games.
We got fucked with this scheduling
November 25th, 2012 at 2:02 AM ^
The team and the seniors deserved better than this. This conference is ripe for the picking this year. With the defense playing the way that it is, and all of the experienced talent returning on offense, we should have won the Big Ten title.
Alabama was impossible, and the team's own mistakes killed hope of winning the ND game.
But Hoke and his staff made significant mistakes in the two Big Ten losses, and need to act quickly to fix some things:
1) Lack of ability to win any kind of big game on the road.
2) Stubborness bordering on foolishness in the play calling today.
3) Not trying something, anything different after the first few series of Bellomy at Nebraska.
4) Lack of any sort of step forward for the O-line all year, to the point of actual regression.
If these things do not get fixed quickly, we could be staring four losses in the face for the next couple of years.
November 25th, 2012 at 2:47 AM ^
and four losses against real teams.
FWIW, Sagarin's predictor isn't too impressed with tOSU
I'd like to think we were better than the production below.
Sagaring College Football 2012 Rankings
through games of Saturday, November 17
LOSSES | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Rank | Team | RATING | W | L | PRED | Rank |
1 | Alabama | 94.61 | 10 | 1 | 98.26 | 1 |
2 | Notre Dame | 93.88 | 11 | 0 | 92.18 | 4 |
16 | Ohio State | 85.04 | 11 | 0 | 81.97 | 25 |
18 | Nebraska | 84.44 | 9 | 2 | 82.99 | 21 |
WINS | ||||||
Rank | Team | RATING | W | L | PRED | Rank |
31 | Northwestern | 79.53 | 8 | 3 | 78.01 | 38 |
42 | Michigan State | 76.80 | 5 | 6 | 76.17 | 44 |
66 | Minnesota | 69.88 | 6 | 5 | 68.20 | 70 |
67 | Purdue | 69.74 | 5 | 6 | 68.96 | 67 |
69 | Iowa | 69.28 | 4 | 7 | 68.63 | 69 |
104 | Air Force | 61.43 | 6 | 5 | 61.49 | 99 |
126 | Illinois | 58.40 | 2 | 9 | 56.82 | 132 |
178 | Massachusetts | 46.33 | 1 | 10 | 39.66 | 205 |
FWIW | ||||||
Rank | Team | RATING | W | L | PRED | Rank |
20 | Michigan | 83.31 | 8 | 3 | 82.50 | 24 |
November 25th, 2012 at 2:45 AM ^
Being honest here but there wasn't much that was good about this season.
1-2 in rivalry games
No conference championship
No BCS bowl
Didn't see much growth from any players cept Devin late at QB
We never used the few weapons we had ( How many targets did Funches have all season)
Our coaching staff looked incompetent and I'm sorry but you have to blame Hoke just as much as Borges he is the head coach after all.
Borges should have to publicly appologize to Denard after that last game
November 25th, 2012 at 8:12 AM ^
Mostly agree if I'm feeling pessimistic except I think Jake Ryan progressed.
November 26th, 2012 at 3:20 AM ^
You're right I didn't really count the defense where we saw so much growth the last 2 years I kind of over looked it. I wanted these seniors to end the season with a roar but all we got was a sick whimper. Hoke should reevaluate his offensive staff this off season , if he doesn't I'm sure Dave Brandon will. Al Borges is one of the highest paid offensive coordinators in the Big ten
November 25th, 2012 at 3:09 AM ^
by the standards we want for ourselves. But it wasn't a catastrophe either. Can we please wait until the bowl game before jumping to all these wild conclusions? The bowl will probably tell quite a bit.
November 25th, 2012 at 6:01 AM ^
I hope that it's entirely because of a talent deficit, if you know what I mean.
November 25th, 2012 at 7:17 AM ^
It is NEVER a good season when you lose to Ohio, and I bet the players to a man would agree.
November 25th, 2012 at 8:06 AM ^
Why is whenever MIchigan suffers a loss of some relative pain the threads split evenly into two camps everytime:
Camp 1 - "All is lost - coaches suck - fire people" group
Camp 2 - "Things really arent bad and now that I think about it it's probably a good thing we lost" group
Do all boards do this?
November 25th, 2012 at 8:12 AM ^
Yep, because the rational folks in the middle don't care enough to post about it online most of the time.
November 25th, 2012 at 9:04 AM ^
When I get off this ledge with my iPhone.
November 25th, 2012 at 11:56 AM ^
Why would anyone want to be a rational M fan? What's the fun in that? I watch for the excitement of it, and I have a great passion for Michigan football. If you take away the high expectations, everything that's special about Michigan football goes right out the window with it. Can you imagine what Bo would think if he heard this? Sorry, can't abide by this.
November 25th, 2012 at 2:18 PM ^
Bo would think "we'll get 'em next year... for now, we have a bowl game to win"
November 25th, 2012 at 8:11 AM ^
Geez. Does anyone just enjoy watching sports anymore? We got to see a bunch of exciting games this year, we got to see Denard be Denard and do crazy stuff only he can do, and we even got the MSU monkey off our backs.
Obviously we'd prefer our team wins every game, but good heavens people, take a minute to stop whining and picking nits.
November 25th, 2012 at 8:15 AM ^
love to win and get mad when we lose, but man you're absolutely right, people (including myself) get to involved and can't enjoy the game
November 25th, 2012 at 11:57 AM ^
This is just crazy talk.
November 25th, 2012 at 12:14 PM ^
What is enjoyable about losing? How does one enjoy it? I have never figured out how people do that.
November 25th, 2012 at 3:30 PM ^
I don't enjoy losing one bit, I enjoy overanalyzing what we could have done differently, and I'm certainly not advocating giving everyone ribbons for trying or anything. Doesn't mean I'm going to freak the F out every time we don't score as many points as the other team.
November 25th, 2012 at 8:33 AM ^
... It's the Jimmy's and Joe's
Monster recruiting success is the main reason to not melt down. The schedule next year will be kind as well. Give Borges a full year with Gardner and then let's take stock of where this staff is.
Never forget the real tire fire season a few years ago.
November 25th, 2012 at 12:04 PM ^
He has never had a top-tier offense. I believe 17th in the nation was as high as it ever got for him.
His ceiling was evidenced by his playing calling on Saturday. His decision-making shows severe deficiency.
Push him out the door.
November 25th, 2012 at 8:39 AM ^
Well, a good season just isn't good enough. You can be happy with it, but I want a great season.
November 25th, 2012 at 8:48 AM ^
Let's face the facts, this has turned into a horrible year. Not just based on the fact of Michigan's mediocre record, but the 2 teams that we hate the most are undefeated. That's just rubbing salt in the wound. Thank God for Ohio's sanctions or I would have to be on suicide watch right now haha
November 25th, 2012 at 9:43 AM ^
It was a very forgettable season in my opinion. We lost to some very good teams, and we beat some very bad teams. I wouldn't call that a good season. It was a mediocre season. The horrible home slate combined with the poor performances in prime time made it even worse.
November 25th, 2012 at 9:00 AM ^
I don't know if this is heartening at all, but Notre Dame went 8-5 last year and they're in the national title game this year largely due to a suffocating defense and a mediocre offense. Wouldn't be surprised if Michigan made the same jump next year, and Michigan gets all their tough games at home.
We all knew this season was possible back in August. We knew the preseason ranking was too high, but it may be too low next year. I'm looking forward to it.
November 25th, 2012 at 9:10 AM ^
...500 team in contention late in the season, but these are the type of LLoyd seasons that will eventually get tiresome and get you fired fast. You have to win one or two the games we lost this year. We manufactured wins against lesser opponents this year....msu, northwestern, Air Force but fell flat in the big ones. All of them. Again, loved the make up of this team but technically the results indicate a work in progress. I am thinking a victory of a non-meddling bowl opponent could be a huge and unexpected step for us. Unlikely but I would prefer to give it go then face another 4 loss team.
November 25th, 2012 at 9:13 AM ^
In the Carr years, 8-4 was the floor. So at least we appear to be back in that neighborhood consistently. But this 8-4 feels about as hollow as 8-4 can get. We got back on the right side of the MSU rivarly but after that there's not much except games that left me feeling kinda shitty. Don't get me wrong--I love these players and, aside from Borges' playcalling in the big games, I love this coaching staff. The whole thing is headed back in the right direction. But the season itself was pretty lame, from the schedule with all the good stuff except State away from Michigan Stadium to losing a very winnable game in Ohio Toilet to back to some down-roster Florida bowl.
November 25th, 2012 at 9:19 AM ^
On the bright side, along with squeaking past a one-armed MSU team, the most basic objective--bowl eligibility--never seemed like it was going to be an issue.
November 25th, 2012 at 9:45 AM ^
than Al "I like to call shitty plays" Borges! They should have been 10-2, 11-1 if Gardner had been ready vs Nebraska (I don't put all of that on Borges, Hoke is the head coach and clearly Gardner was a far better option).
November 25th, 2012 at 9:48 AM ^
8-4 and needed a miracle to beat NW, who also happens to be the signature win on the schedule, and you want me to call that good? I am not ready to become that kind of fan. Have we fallen so far that we forget....THIS IS MICHIGAN FERGODSAKES!
This isn't elementary school... we don't all get blue ribbons for participation. This team was mediocre, is a mediocre conference. Not good enough, no morale victories here.
November 25th, 2012 at 10:02 AM ^
This entire discussion confuses me. I have yet to hear why or how anyone has a ligitimate claim of entitlement to football success as they define it.
November 25th, 2012 at 10:39 AM ^
Because THISISMICHIGANFERGODSAKES!
Anything less than perfection is UNACCEPTABLE. We will not accept it. This is me not accepting it.
November 25th, 2012 at 12:46 PM ^
Isn't it safe to say that the coach (whom I support, this isn't me calling for anyone's head) set up that expectation? So chiding it and those who follow it seems disingenous to me.
November 25th, 2012 at 2:27 PM ^
he set it up as a goal
he did not promise you 10 wins a year every year for perpetuity
November 25th, 2012 at 4:32 PM ^
Your omission of at least 2 exclamation points after "UNACCEPTABLE" clearly indicates that you ARE accepting it.
Which means you embrace mediocrity and have no business rooting for M and your dog should have a shiv stuck in its left hind leg and your house should burn to the ground. You scum.