What are your expectations now after last night?

Michigan wins the next 5 games. Western and SMU are easy cupcakes. Nebraska is comfortable, but not a blowout. 

Michigan edges out a 4-0 ranked Northwestern in Evanston leading many to believe that things have been fixed (the 17 game ranked road losing streak is snapped! Hooray!!! Nevermind that Northwestern was ranked #24 and the 30,000 person stadium was split nearly 50-50).

Handling a resurgent Maryland on Homecoming continues the momentum and brings the annual hope of a Big Ten title roaring back. 

Then, it turns, as usual. At 5-1, Top 15 ish Michigan hosts a Top 5 Wisconsin Badger team and our offense gets obliterated. Similarly to the ND game, the score is relatively close, but Wisconsin controls the entire game. 

The following week we head to East Lansing and are knocked out of the Big Ten title race, and the Top 25, in a game that's close for a half and then gets away from us. 

We enter the bye week on a two game losing streak at 5-3 and people are, somewhat rightfully, losing their mind. 1-3 record against MSU (an MSU team that lost the week before in Happy Valley) finally leads moderate apologists to admit maybe Harbaugh's tenure needs to be looked at.

Michigan beats a middling Penn State team (who winds up losing 3-4 games themselves) in a close game leading the hard-core apologists to say "we've bounced back, it'll be fine!"

Blowout Rutgers, as usual. Scared by Indiana, but prevail, as usual. Lose to Ohio State in a close game that widens in the 4th quarter, as usual. 

8-4.

I didn't get a chance to watch last night, so I'm watching it this morning.  What I see midway through the second is a team that came out two steps slower than the home team, instead of one step.  And an OL that is straight up trash.  I wasn't expecting much from the tackles, but I thought the interior would look so much better than this, so far.  I totally get the play calls - lot of runs up the middle, rollouts, and short quickies.  All of it to try hiding the utter complete lack of pass pro.  I mean, its worse than last year!

I do expect improvement from the OL, and I doubt the defense comes out that much slower than anyone else this year.  Not happy about being sold a line on OL 'improvement', though.  The confidence coming out of camp tells me that they completely overlooked ND, thinking an easy win.  They got punched in the face right out of the gate.

They should absolutely be embarrassed about this game.  And it should drive a massive desire to improve.  But, if the OL doesn't man up and get better over these next two games...

BTW, where the hell was Aubrey Solomon?  Anyone know?

9-3 or 8-4. Sorry to say, that’s what I thought at the beginning of the year. Last night didn’t surprise me one bit. We knew the OL has work to do. Even with a very bad OL we nearly came back. We will compete in every game and get better as the season goes. 

ND has a good defense and I thought we moved the ball alright considering the lack of blocking. Patterson missed a couple drives and was clearly cramping badly, that didn’t help. The FG team, yikes...argue what you want but those 3 points wouldn’t have tied the game or won it, but it would have been a different feel if a TD won it instead of tied it before Patterson fumbled. 

Now onto figuring some things out in the next couple weeks. I think going home, practicing now that we know how the team reacts during a game will help and we will see a different team in October than we saw last night. 2015 against Utah felt bad, but by November we were a much better team. 

1) I’ve always said that it is very tough to know how good or bad you are after one game.. Everything is based upon how good people expected you to be based on last season, returning starters etc. Notre Dame could be the best team in the country or they could be a 6-6 team- we don’t know. It appears that they are very good but we’ll see. Fans are always internally focused, i.e. because Mich upgraded at QB we should beat ND on the road at night in our opener, when in fact ND may well have improved just as much. Winbush certainly looks better than at any time last season. He made some big throws. The one TD our back-up safety was there and barely missed the ball- it’s a game of inches.


Some positives:

2) Patterson and in brief action, McCaffrey, looked better by far than our QB play last year. I guess Peters hurt his knee in practice this week.

3) Our defense after being shredded in the first half, gave up virtually nothing (less than 100 yards and 3 points) in the second half. Now some of that was probably Kelly going conservative with the lead. We played most of the game without Mettelus after the early targeting call.

4) An opening game on the road loss 24-17 to ND won’t kill us if ND is a 10 win or better team and we get better.

At this point it is all about the offensive line. With our schedule if they don’t get better we are probably looking at 7-5 or 8-4. If they do get better, 9-3 or even 10-2 is possible if the QB improvement is as good as it appears to be. MSU and PSU were not impressive at all. We at least will not be overrated for awhile now and its possible we will even be underrated.

The fan base will run around panicking and we’ll have to listen to some of them and Finebaum rip Harbaugh until we do win some big games. I have not lost faith.

Maybe 8-4. I’m not confident against any of the better teams we play.

I still think this is a better team than last year even based on the painful play on the field at times. 

Still going with a 9-3.

Both PSU and MSU have struggled as well so my predictions for those hasn't really changed.  Don't see how we hang with OSU though.

9-3 with a Holiday Bowl win and 10-3.  Fans are not satisfied.  

They look like they could hang with most everyone, but OSU. Although the fact that Haskins is a big, immobile target gives me a shred of hope (of course, OSU would just put Martell out there in response).

But if Harbaugh can’t make even a tiny dent in this 1-6 shit this year, flip the hotseat to broil. 

And after the bonehead stuff from last night, that fluke loss to MSU is looking like less of a fluke every game, and more symbolic of a poorly coached program. 

I just don't care today.  Writing off this whole season and will find something else to do with my Saturdays.  Will catch Youtube highlights if we manage to beat someone with a pulse this year.

We lose to MSU, Wisky and OSU for sure, so 9-3 is the ceiling.

Depending on the PSU and @NW games, 7-5 and 8-4 can’t be ruled out.

Also, with our luck Scott Frosts mom will prevail over us as well.

Who cares what fans think after one game? The arm chair “analysi filled with summations of “total shit” and complete absolutisms is a mind-uckingly annoying as Harbaugh’s toned-down demeanor. Too many fans completely disrespect the opponent or the situation and only understand a win or loss means good or bad, and then have meltdowns on Twitter and MGoBlog over the fate of the season. 

Sure, discount that a 10-win Citrus Bowl and higher ranked team came out on their home field and won the first half of a game—fans have very little respect for opponents or their own team. This fan base has severely traumatized quitters.

I missed the part where the team completely folded and kept getting steamrolled from the start. I must have made up the fact that ND had less than 70 yards in second half.  Apparently players are supposed to exert massive amounts of energy on screaming and jumping up and down on the sideline to make friends fans on TV happy. Perhaps the players were saving energy since, you know, it was hot and humid and a lot of folks cramped later? 

Of course there were stupid penalties early, and offensive line play. But the fan reactions are even more predictable. 

7-5. We’ve become Tennessee north in every way, shape and form. Every team with an above average Dline is going to pummel us. 

I didn’t see much better than 9-3 this year just because of the schedule and because of the offensive line. Last night did nothing to improve those expectations. Four years in and the line is still a disaster. I think the rest of the team is more or less there, but you can’t win championships of any kind if you can’t field a halfway decent OL. You saw what happened last night: Patterson was running for his life the whole night, Higdon had nowhere to go, and the WRs had no time to get downfield. If you have no OL, you have no offense, period.

We’ll probably split between PSU and Wisconsin, but until this OL can just get to average, I don’t see any way we can realistically beat MSU or OSU on the road. Hell, I’d have a tough time seeing us beat either of them at home. If the OL gets no better by the MSU game, Patterson could get crushed to death like Gardner did.

8-4 is the ceiling. I knew the OL would be hot garbage but wow interior DL was a disaster. The reason Gary/Chase were giving up run lanes was because Hurst covered up how bad we are without him. I hope Solomon had some kind of tweak during last week because him not starting and being a rotation guy was a joke. 

8-5 after another frustrating collapse in a mid-tier bowl. Harbaugh is gone after the 2019 season, if not sooner. 

5 losses for sure. OSU, PSU, Wiscy, MSU. Throw in Nebraska or NW (not gonna be as easy as once thought) and a low tier bowl game and could be 7 losses. Very possible after that performance last night. The constant disappointment makes it hard to be optimistic.

Unless oline improves; 7-8 wins 

They haven't changed at all. I thought this game and OSU were likely losses and they would be favored in all the rest but might drop one more.  They played a top 10-15 team essentially even on the road in their first game but lost a close one.  It was not smart to schedule this type of game if you want to run the table.  And in a better system, it wouldn't count against you when determining playoff teams.

That being said, I was disappointed in the bad penalties, defensive lapses on key plays and our passive and unimaginative offensive game plan.  I expect better from this highly paid coaching staff.  At the same time, I think its completely nuts to give up on them.

No change. I had a low expectation, wait and see attitude going in and I still do.

i saw improvement at the qb position and that is about it.

Unchanged. 9-3 is probably the ceiling. Wouldn’t be shocked at 7-5. Program is stalled out and I don’t know what will fix it. 

8-5 with another bad loss in a meaningless bowl game

The offense is a goddamn tire fire.  Even good QB play can’t fix the gutless playcalling 

Hudson will start in place of Runyan for the rest of the year. We'll drop a couple more games and will look really good by the end of the year. 

Sticking with 9-3...

this fanbase is weirdly passive aggressive... Outraged whenever someone in the media says Harbaugh 'needs to win' or he's at a crossroads...or that Michigan is over rated or playing the 'Disrespkt' card with every negative commentator article. People can't even question whether kids with zero P5 offers should be takes in the summer with people jumping on them and calling them "star gazers"...

And then they lose a tough game on the road versus a legitimate opponent, and everyone loses their minds and thinks the team is crap and all the coaches should be fired...

I've been pretty frank on Harbaugh needing to do well this year in Year 4 because all the players are his, even the transition class is his...there's only a handful of kids left from Hoke at this point.

the season always boiled down to ND/PSU/MSU/OSU/Wisky and one from the NW/Nebraska group... I believe that Michigan should be good enough to be .500 playing those teams, which means they ought to finish 9-3

Michigan has a lot to fix, especially with offensive playcalling... and if that was Jim as the OC last night he did an awful job... we're stuck with this Harball (aka Tressellball aka Lloydball) even though their are plenty enough athletes to have played a little bit more wide open - especially being down 2 TDs late in the fourth.

D has always been susceptible to the long ball..."chuck and luck' seems to work well vs Brown's defense.

The oline is still struggling, though ND has a very very good defense...

I personally felt a little bit like after the Utah game... The game was close, maybe the score flattered them, but they still had a last drive to win or tie.

9-3

Not great.

QB play was better, but Shea has too much "Tate Forcier" in him for my liking.  I also didnt like pulling McCaffrey mid drive.  

OL play is still terrible.  Defense is fine but they still struggle with run first QBs and giving up big plays.  

I expect every fan to over react.   I think the tackles are a problem and will be all year whether speed rushes or twists.  I think we needed to run more power and more plays under Center as our Read option and RPO capabilities still seem immature.   Plus easier to chip from that formation.  I think Shea Patterson is very good but not great.  I think Dylan McCaffery will be a STAR!  I think the defense needed to compress running lanes far more than they did in the first half rushing too far upfield and with not enough discipline.   They corrected that in the second half for the most part and will get even better over time.   I think Wimbush hit some passes that he never hits which happens.    I don’t think notre Dave got “conservative” in the second half - it wasn’t a blow out and if Notre Dame has you by the throat they will go for the kill.   They didn’t because they couldn’t.  I think Harbaugh out smarted himself a couple of times and needs to be more creative in how to get his best players catching the ball in space.  I think the safety from Notre Dame single handedly prevented many plays from busting big.  I think we are an extremely entitled fan base that has zero cause to be entitled.  Bo won zero national championships, we have won ONE in most of our lifetimes, yet we have an expectation of greatness that is immediate.   I think none of this matters as much as people think it does.

I think this team is a year away and I don’t think Harbaugh is going anywhere.    

Expectations:

Another long season of meh wins against crap teams with one or two heroic efforts against marginally good teams.  Probably Northwestern/Indiana.  Might even be the year Indiana gets us finally and jesus Maryland might even give us a game.  A bowl game I don't care about against an opponent we'll get embarrassed by because they'll be "bumped" up a bowl notch.

And 4 more games of watching an offense flail around against a good defense because they can't pass block for 2 beats.

I honestly feel horrible for every QB who comes to Michigan now.  There is no excuse for a program like Michigan to have such a terrible, terrible offensive line year after year after year.  How in year 4 can you not even have options there?

Did you see anything yesterday that says we can even beat Northwestern in Evanston?

Well, it could be that Notre Dame is a CFP team and once we shake off the rust on defense and get some more game reps on offense, we'll be OK . . . nah, I don't believe that either.

Notre Dame has always been a lousy barometer of where we actually stand at the beginning of a season.

On defense, we do catch a break in that we won't face a true running QB like Winbush - our Achilles heel - the rest of the season.  We'll face mobile QBs and even QBs that run, but we won't face a running QB where it's 3rd and 9, he knows he's going to run, you know he's going to run, and you can't stop it anyway.

But we miss Mo Hurst.  This defense is not at the level of last year's.  If there was a thought that it will hold teams to 14 points and all you need is a mildly functional offense to win games, well that's wrong.  The offense has to score points.

But on offense, we're kinda screwed.  We still have structural OL problems.  Just like last year, we can't run the ball and we can't pass protect on third and long.  That's a deadly combination that makes us easy to defend.  

They can do some stuff with Shea and the scheme - the spread plays early in the game at least gave ND something to think about rather then just being able to take off into the backfield on defense - but those are just mitigations.  We are going to struggle with teams with good defenses.

Those pre-season Big Ten East / Big Ten Champion / CFP expectations?  Um, yeah not seeing it.

We'll be lucky to win two out of MSU / PSU / WISC / OSU.  That's probably the ceiling.

7-5