BTN Article on Michigan
Does anyone recall what that "beatdown" payout to Akron will be?
Shane Morris play the entire 2nd half and get experience as the backup QB!
I'd much rather see Cleary do that so Shane can keep his redshirt. Have Shane play the garbage time minutes during DG's senior year.
But if Shane is clearly the 2nd best QB option then the coaches should not RS him. If they're close or we get a good transfer then, yes I would say RS Shane.
I actually don't agree with that. I don't think you burn a redshirt on a kid for garbage time. You burn a redshirt if there is an injury, but not garbage time. I highly doubt Shane is the 2nd best option by Akron anyway, but I don't think that does much good.
If DG goes down, some garbage time plays with the rest of the second stringers in a game that is already in hand won't help Shane that much (it obviously didn't help Bellomy who had garbage time snaps in a few games). But if he doesn't play the rest of the season, you burned his RS for nothing.
The coaches told Shane months ago that he won't be redshirting.
Well if the coaches don't want to redshirt him anyway, then I suppose this argument is moot.
But it seems odd to me that the coaches would make that decision before he shows up to campus. I'd prefer they don't make that decision on any kid until they actually see him practice with the team.
I think they concluded long ago that Shane will have to be ready to play this season if Gardner were to get hurt.
But back to the original point, you only need Morris to play if DG does get hurt. Chances are he won't. If he gets dinged for a play here or a series there, you can send in Cleary to hand off the ball while DG rubs some dirt on it. If there's a significant injury and you need to put Morris in, then you do it -- but why cross that bridge unless you have to?
I believe that, but I wonder how many teams had all of their snaps either garbage time or 1-2 snaps to give someone a breather, walk-off a light injury?
I'm totally OK with Shane being prepared for a Nebraska-type situation where the backup needs to finish half or more of a game and possibly the following week(s), but if it's simply garbage time snaps or a situation where DG took a hit and needs to sit out one play (or a couple) then I'd rather keep his RS.
ND, MSU, NU and OSU will probably be close games. Hopefully we'll win most of them. I think we will do well against NE at home and on the road at IA. I hope this season we can defeat both MSU and OSU!
It will be a tremendous benefit to have a bye week right before playing MSU.
I could easily see Michigan putting a beating on them, as we're just better and deeper on both sides of the ball. But at the same time, I could also see a Penn State team limping into this game at 2-4 or 3-3, primed to completely fold for the rest of the season. O'Brien says what the hell and gives Hackenburg his first start, and all the talk on ESPN is about how Mattison's defense will make life miserable for the true freshman. But somehow Penn State gets fired up under the lights, their defense plays inspired and Hackenburg does just enough to give us a 14-7 loss.
I'm way too glass half-empty.
"I'm way too glass half-empty."
That's not suprising given your avatar.
Redshirt stuff, but the obvious Sparty Doug who could not help himself commenting, pissed me off to no end check it out if you have the time.
Ain't nobody got time for that.
"Honestly, the Wolverines may not be an underdog all season. They may be vs. Notre Dame on Sept. 7 vs. a Fighting Irish squad that figures to have a strong offense but reworked defense. If the Wolverines beat ND, they may be 7-0 entering their bye week on Oct. 26."
Actually, if you were to use the Sagarin numbers from this past season, Notre Dame would be the only game in which the Wolverines would be a decided underdog, and then only by about 1 TD or so - and that's not accounting for addition and attrition, if you will. There are a few tossups (Penn State, Michigan State, and one or two others as I recall). If we use this as a basis, however, there wouldn't be any game in which they would we at a huge disadvantage (indeed, in most, we would be at a distinct advantage) by the numbers available anyway.
With all this talk of teams running off streaks against UM I am probably a little more sensetive than usual. Especially to let a Sparty get me going
will go only as well as UM goes through that Nov from hell. Lets face it there is not alot of wiggle room there.
The relative lack of success being predicted by a lot of "experts" reminds me a little of '97. Not real high expacteations that year either. We know how that went. Just sayin'.
*EXPECTATIONS* Sorry, Oberon...Friday.
Yes, but being "available to play" is not the same thing as actually playing in unforced situations.
More importantly, "full boar" is seriously funny. I think it needs to become the next mgomeme.
I share the sentiment that Michigan will have a very good year too. BTN has been very high on us and they are really the only ones who've been given access to watch our practices. CBS and SI and all of the others that say we will be 7-5, haven't been to our practices and are just regurgitating numbers from who we lost. That's not a very good way to do it with all of the young talent we have.
The national publications put very little thought into their preseason prognostications. They look at how a team did last year, who they lost and who they return, and other big things that could change like injuries or coaching changes or something like that.
They look at us and think "Denard has been their whole team for most of his career, so with him gone they must take a huge drop off on offense" and then they see we lost 5 starters on D and, without actually looking at who they are, assume that our defense must get worse.
Those people aren't following recruiting that closely on a team by team basis, they didn't get to go to every team's spring practices (or hardly read about them) and Brady Hoke just isn't a household national name like Urban Meyer or Brian Kelly who can sway things on his own.
A lot of the preseason pubs don't even consider Gardner a returning starter, which is pretty damning by itself. Essentially, we're given the same "credit" at the QB position as we would have been if Bellamy was starting this year and Gardner was still playing receiver. Clearly, there is a flaw in that logic.
I also agree that there is a significant bias (and to an extent, a fair one) in favor of proven coaching commodities, ie guys that have won big at big programs. Hoke gets little to no credit for what he will or possibly will or what Michigan fans think he will do. No one cares about or in many cases even knows about Ball State or SDSU. Hoke is basically viewed as a two year coach with no conference titles and a 1-1 record against each rival and in bowls - not bad, but that Meyer guy has won national titles and has multiple undefeated seasons under his belt, including last year. So for a neutral and moderately informed observer, the choice in the Big 10 this year is obvious, and it isn't the team that lost five games last year and has little in the way of proven recent high-level success. They may be proven wrong, but these guys almost always make the safe bet. Picking a team that ran the table last year and has a proven coach and a returning stud QB is as easy a choice as they can make.
All that said, all coaches have to win before they are proven. Meyer did, Saban did, and so on. If Hoke is going to be on that list, it has to start somewhere. Every star player has to have that first big breakout season. Maybe this year is the year that some Michigan players that a lot of these writers have barely heard of become household names. If preseason predictions were always right, NOBODY would ever win except for people that had already won. Obviously, sports don't work that way. So maybe the safe picks will be proven correct. Or, maybe a new coach with a team full of new stars takes the Big 10 by storm this year.