2014 Football Road Record

Submitted by Tuebor on

What do you think the road record will be for Michigan next season?  Hoke is 6-8 on the road at Michigan and 1-2 (hopefully 2-2 by next season) at neutral sites. This averages close to 2-3 on the road each year.  With next seasons brutal road schedule 2-3 might be the ceiling.  I feel like if i put the +/- at 1.5 safe money is on the over and at 2.5 safe money is on the under. 

 

@ Notre Dame - Loss, their last game against us with Everett Golson back.  Early season let down.

@ Rutgers - Win, (5-6 AAC) This is likely a win against an inferior opponent, knock on wood.

@ MSU - Loss, Their defense takes a step back but is still Al Borges kryptonite.  We do score an offensive touchdown though.

@ Northwestern - No idea, should be a win but the Pat Fitzgerald improbability drive could have other plans.

@ OSU - Loss, They lose Hyde but can we stop Braxton Miller?

Brightside

December 3rd, 2013 at 9:48 AM ^

They will be beatable, as will all of the others. We have the talent on both sides of the ball if we don't shoot ourselves or cramp up in our play calling.

maize-blue

December 3rd, 2013 at 9:51 AM ^

I think Notre Dame could be a loss but I think we get W's against Ohio and Sparty. So maybe a 4-1 or 3-2 road record. I think this team will be improved next year and if they can generate any kind of running game with the RB whatsoever they will be in good shape. I think they will be pretty determined next year and on a mission to wipe this season away.

unWavering

December 3rd, 2013 at 9:52 AM ^

About the ND game. In recent years it hasn't seemed like an overly tough road environment. In 2010 we pulled out the win and should have won in 2012. Not sure about who they lose/return, but my impression is that it will be your standard 8-4/9-3 type ND squad.

It remains to be seen how well MSU can recover drom losing almost everyone on D. If Narduzzi leaves it will put another huge dent in that D. I think we can pull out the win if our offense finds some identity (maybe a big if).

NW and Rutgers are gimmes. OSU will be undoubtedly tough but they will probably regress a little after losing their entire offensive line (after all, tjat happens to everyone, not just us, right? Right??) Either way it will be a close game.

I'm thinking 3-2 or 4-1 if things roll our way.

1 percent

December 3rd, 2013 at 10:28 AM ^

They lose their entire oline essentially their starting and back up RB and their backup QB. It wouldn't surprise me if Braxton saw that plus losing two and possibly D Smith to the L and bolted to the L himself.



They lose some other pretty good pieces on defense Roby, Barnett, C Bryant. I'm not sure about the Dline or LB corp but the dline should still be good with Spence, Bosa, Washington but hopefully Shazier bolts too.

GoWings2008

December 3rd, 2013 at 9:54 AM ^

Seems like the Irish suffered a similar season we did this year and will be hoping a reset on their season will help out, as we all do about Michigan.  The only advantage I see them having right now is home field, which is strong in that stadium but not insurmountable.

Blue Mike

December 3rd, 2013 at 10:34 AM ^

What I find funny is that we are apparently all afraid of playing in South Bend, but if you ever watch even 2 minutes of an ND game on NBC, all they talk about is how ND plays better on the road and isn't a good home team.  I understand that we can be nervous based on history there, but South Bend isn't the same place it used to be.  I think we go in there and win next year, with Devin having a big game in doing so.  

Don

December 3rd, 2013 at 9:55 AM ^

that's finished with a winning record during the regular season. The only road games we've won in the regular season are against teams with 6-6 records or worse.

One of the hallmarks of conference champions is that they go into the stadiums of good opponents and beat them.

Unless and until Hoke and his staff demonstrate that they can manage to lead Michigan to victory on the road against a good team during the regular season, we will not be anything more than mediocre.

 

JohnCorbin

December 3rd, 2013 at 9:56 AM ^

If everyone is healthy:
WLB: JR James Ross starting, SO Gideon will be a viable backup.
Mike: SR Morgan starting, Bolden backing up.
SLB: SR Ryan back to full form, with hopefully some able body to back him up.

I think our linebackers next year will be able to stop Miller when they need to.

Magnus

December 3rd, 2013 at 10:01 AM ^

I'm wondering if Beyer will stick at SAM linebacker so they can have Ryan, Beyer, and Clark on the field at the same time. Beyer seems too far away from SDE size to play there full-time next year, and using him as Clark's backup seems questionable because of Charlton and Ojemudia.

Magnus

December 3rd, 2013 at 10:07 AM ^

Those three losses that so many people are chalking up are toss-ups, in my opinion. Notre Dame has not been particularly impressive this year (8-4, just one blowout win against Air Force), I'm hoping Narduzzi gets a head coaching job this year and the defense falls off, and Ohio State is in line for a drop-off offensively with Hyde gone and Miller possibly leaving.

I'm not saying we'll go 5-0 in those games, but 2-3 is kind of pessimistic.

Don

December 3rd, 2013 at 10:27 AM ^

I think that depends on one's view of how good our staff is. Or to put it another way, it depends on whether one thinks that our struggles this year are wholly and entirely attributable to youth/inexperience/lack of real talent, or whether coaching ability has played any role.

dotslashderek

December 3rd, 2013 at 10:44 AM ^

Could be the case that the coaches are specifically not great at coaching young players up *quickly*.  Could even be a deliberate decision to not apply bandaid short-term fixes that would result in bad fundamentals, and instead focus on getting the correct fundamentals ingrained (which is almost by definition not a short-term process).

Sorry, but the whole 1-4/2-3 stuff, the unrelenting negativity - it's just too much.  OK, back to lurking!

Cheers.

westwardwolverine

December 3rd, 2013 at 10:32 AM ^

You would expect those teams to be above average. We haven't beaten an above average team on the road in three seasons. It seems overly optimistic to expect what will be a flawed Michigan team to suddenly start winning on the road next year. 

Magnus

December 3rd, 2013 at 10:40 AM ^

I don't think it's all that surprising that young teams are prone to losing on the road against good teams.

Next year the youth excuse disappears, in my opinion, with the exception of the offensive line (and running backs but that doesn't really matter much).

Tuebor

December 3rd, 2013 at 10:56 AM ^

But this year wasn't the excuse the youth of the OL?  So saying next year the OL will still be young means we didn't make any progress in 2 seasons.  Plus come 2015 when we get a favorable home schedule we will be breaking in a new QB either Shane Morris or Wilton Speight.  2014 is a make or break season for Hoke and Co. and I have no faith in them to win road games against teams I expect to go bowling.

westwardwolverine

December 3rd, 2013 at 11:01 AM ^

We weren't young in 2011 or 2012 and we still went 0-4 on the road against good teams (and lost to Iowa, who was not good).  Granted, the Nebraska game probably hinged more on Denard's injury than Hoke's road woes, but we weren't exactly murdering them before he went out. 

Again, this isn't coming from nowhere, this is coming from the reality of the results at hand. 

Where else was youth an excuse this year other than the OLine? TE? So if we lose 5 games next year, is that just because the offensive line really needs that one more year to gel? 

Magnus

December 3rd, 2013 at 11:06 AM ^

We were young in some areas, but we also lacked talent because of the Rich Rodriguez years. 2014 is when age/talent start to mesh. I'm not going to go position by position for three years and point out our deficiencies, but I will say that those deficiencies are starting to disappear.

WolvinLA2

December 3rd, 2013 at 11:37 AM ^

In every year oh the Hoke era, there has been a pretty large weak spot in almost every position group, sometimes due to injury (and thus lack of depth) and sometimes due to us not having the guys for that spot yet.  

This season, we had 2 non-frosh RBs we could rely on, and one tore his ACL in the opener.  The other, Fitz, just never got it back.  The frosh RBs have been coming on though, and they'll be the guys next year.  

On the OL, we have 3 new starters, who have been different guys seemingly every week, and of the ones who have seen the field regularly, they are RS Soph, RS Fr, RS Fr and true Fr.  Next year we should only have one OL with no starting experience and only one who isn't at least in his 3rd year (and those two aren't the same guy).  

We lose Gallon at WR, but holy smokes will we have a lot of talented bodies in the WR corps. Not to mention another year of maturation for guys like Butt and Funchess, who would be a nasty duo next year.  

Gardner had plenty of his own weaknesses this year, but those started to fade as the season went (November was our toughest schedule and Gardner had his fewest mistakes).  I don't expect him to be mistake-free as a 5th year senior but CW suggests those should keep decreasing.  

That's just the offense.  Defense actually looks brighter.

aiglick

December 3rd, 2013 at 10:36 AM ^

This is an issue right here. Our fan base wants teams that we play to get weaker rather than for our team to get stronger. I hope MSU keeps Narduzzi so we can finally beat him because our team improves and reaches their level. Ohio State has had some pretty good success the last decade+ but they've been a laughing stock nationally since they generally can't hang with elite teams from other conferences. This is probably the case because our conference is so weak right now that any damage a team does within it is next to nothing when compared to other teams' work with their hard schedules.

To be the best you've got to beat the best.

Magnus

December 3rd, 2013 at 10:43 AM ^

The natural order of things is that coordinators do well and move on to head coaching jobs, and position coaches move on to become coordinators (or head coaches).

I do want Michigan to improve, and I expect they will. I've been targeting 2014 for a couple years now. But I'm also not hoping for a team of all-time Buckeyes to regain eligibility and have to face a 'roided up David Boston, Orlando Pace, Eddie George, Joey Galloway, Andy Katzenmoyer, Vernon Gholston, etc.Good players graduate, and good coaches matriculate. That's the way it goes.

flashOverride

December 3rd, 2013 at 10:10 AM ^

Jeez, I can't believe people are writing off these games as automatic losses. The season is nine months away. On multiple threads lately I've been seeing this. Michigan replacing two o-linemen next year will be a disaster, but MSU and OSU replacing three and four is but a speedbump for each of them? Come on now. I'm not necessarily saying Michigan is going to go into Columbus and East Lansing and just crack skulls, but I do sincerely believe that, personnel-wise, the two-deep is oh-so-close to that tipping point where what the coaches would like to do, and the tools to do it, finally meet. I think there needs to be at least a modicum of trust in people who are paid handsomely to evaluate progress (not just the coaches, but Brandon as well), to give them some benefit of the doubt that there is progress that simply isn't visible to us yet. At the very least I'm waiting until the bowl game before I start loading the lifeboats.

flashOverride

December 3rd, 2013 at 10:48 AM ^

I'm fine with that mindset. And I'll happily admit I was wrong if Michigan gets thumped in these games, and that Hoke and staff probably aren't the crew to move this program forward. I just don't believe yet that they've had things the way they'd like them to be, in terms of personnel. I am willing to trust that they did consider the possibility of changing offensive philosophy this year to better match the players' skill sets, and concluded that it didn't guarantee success enough to justify injuring the development of their vision for the future. I know results have been ugly and I'm itching for that to change as much as anyone else. But I think we need to take into account the fact that Hoke didn't inherit anything like what Urban did, personnel-wise, and Dantonio has a four-year head start on him. It sucks in the interim, but I think next year is when we start to see results. And if I'm wrong, it won't be the first time, and I'll agree it's likely time to look in a new direction.

g_reaper3

December 3rd, 2013 at 10:10 AM ^

Given the schedule, that seems about right although I could see winning one of the tough 3.

On the flip side, we have a really good shot at winning all of our home games next year.  But I see a 9-3 season for 2014.

Then in 2015, we edge up to 10-2 (losing at Utah and PSU), but win the B1G East and the B1G.