Unverified Voracity Decommits From Rutgers, Becomes Unimaginably Powerful Comment Count

Brian

[Bryan Fuller]

Not many throws but they were pretty good. PFF B10 QB grades from last week:

Do not read the replies, which are all #TalkinBouttheBuckeyes. Unfortunately the PFF news isn't all good. Their list of Michigan's top five offensive players against WMU drops off pretty rapidly and implies that if any OL scraped over a 70 rating it wasn't by much:

In the past 70 has been "this person isn't terrible"; if they've still got the same scale they're attributing much of Michigan's success to WMU dorfs. Which is accurate.

Quick! Who does Rutgers have committed at running back? Recruiting services should probably give a running back who decommits from Rutgers six stars:

Imagine being Rutgers and watching two Heisman-quality RBs you had committed play in the Big Ten, a conference you would like to join but cannot.

[After THE JUMP: George Perles features, which is never a good thing.]

It takes something to stand out in this context. MSU is a failed institution and has been one for decades. Even in the context of Larry Nassar stories this one stands out as appalling:

Erika Davis told her coach what happened, including that the assault was videotaped, according to the lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in Grand Rapids and includes her name. Her coach, Martha Ludwig, confronted Nassar about what happened and demanded and received a copy of the recording, according to the lawsuit.

George Perles, who resigned as athletic director in 1992 and is a current Michigan State University trustee, later intervened and the complaint was dropped, according to the lawsuit. Perles forced Ludwig to return the video, resign and sign a non-disclosure agreement, according to the lawsuit.

Perles is a trustee, naturally.

A man named Mikey. Bobby Loesch on the star-crossed Illinois receiver:

Before he was 18, he was 3.

The first time I saw Mikey Dudek play football was on a swampy night in the fall of 2012. I remember walking up to the field in north Naperville and seeing a player in my lucky number and immediately writing him off due to his height and complexion. First impressions, right?

Even playing WR for a team with the greatest RB in my school's history (Joey Rhattigan, who went on to play for Princeton), Mikey stood out. The speed, the cuts, the agility, the hands. He was a constant deep threat, and even though he always contributed, it still almost felt like he was underutilized as a junior. He -- along with that aforementioned RB and a truly special senior class -- led Neuqua Valley High School to a perfect regular season and state semifinal. Both of those things had never happened before in school history and have not happened since.

Worth your time.

Shon where are you Shon. Michigan's basketball schedule is out, including TV information, and the thing that rather leaps out: a dearth of BTN games. Fully 15 of Michigan's now-20 conference games are on FS1, CBS, or some flavor of ESPN. Only Michigan's two games against Northwestern and one-offs against PSU, Rutgers, and Minnesota are in Shonland.

The most B1G injury. Alas, the punter:

Lombardi, who's a freshman backup QB, had a 32 yard punt against Arizona State after Hartbarger was injured.

In other league injury notes, Adrian Martinez is day-to-day after his scary rollup injury got MRIed and came back showing no ligament damage; he might play this weekend and you should expect him in the Big Ten opener. Also, Minnesota running back Rodney Smith is out for the year and seeking a sixth.

Paid that men their moneys. This is a couple weeks old but got lost in the preview shuffle and may still be of interest: basketball's assistants got major boosts and should be proportionally harder to poach as a result:

Assistant coaches Saddi Washington, Luke Yaklich and DeAndre Haynes each received raises of at least $55,000, according to contracts obtained Friday by The Detroit News via the Freedom of Information Act.

Yaklich, 42, and Haynes, 34, who are both entering their second year on Beilein’s staff, will each make $75,000 more this season, bringing their base salaries to $300,000 and $275,000, respectively.

Washington, 43, who is in his third season at Michigan and is currently serving as the interim head coach as Beilein recovers from heart surgery, will remain the highest-paid assistant and have his base salary increased from $250,000 to $305,000.

Those raises bring Michigan's assistant pool up to par with MSU and Indiana.

The worst tournament in sports, continued. The NCAA hockey tournament is projected to continue to suck for the foreseeable future:

Here's a bet that only one of those will be anywhere near the Midwest, which supplies almost a quarter of the NCAA's teams.

Etc: Jack Lafontaine working to get back to Ann Arbor. Carlo Kemp hulks up. The strange ecosystem of crootin sites.

Comments

lhglrkwg

September 11th, 2018 at 12:51 PM ^

Ah yes. I love a good complaint about NCAA regionals. Looking forward to playing in the 'Midwest' regional in Fargo in 2020 where we can be a 1-seed playing the 4-seed North Dakotans or maybe playing in Bridgeport against Yale, Quinnipiac, and BU. We gotta avoid home regionals AT ALL COSTS because it'll upset RIT

Diagonal Blue

September 11th, 2018 at 12:54 PM ^

Given the PFF grades, are we all expecting Mayfield and Hudson to enter the starting lineup sooner rather than later? It just seems like Harbaugh has a history of playing older guys over more talented younger guys until he no choice not to.

mgobaran

September 11th, 2018 at 12:59 PM ^

It just seems like Harbaugh has a history of playing older guys over more talented younger guys until he no choice not to.

Just last year Harbaugh played Ulizio over JBB because his youth should have been an asset. Ulizio didn't improve so he put the better player (JBB) in. 

 

ak47

September 11th, 2018 at 1:01 PM ^

I think if they thought Hudson and Mayfield had a chance to be starters they would have played earlier to guarantee more snaps against westerns starters to get a baseline of comparison. Rolling with Runyan and JBB so long, even as they were giving up qb pressure on plenty of throws shows the staff thinks they are still the best option.

I'm thinking this is probably our offensive line until Nebraska or Northwestern dominate the oline and we are forced into a change. But I certainly don't expect the offense to perform well against wisconsin with Runyan and JBB as the starting tackles despite this game and whatever we do to SMU.

ak47

September 11th, 2018 at 4:27 PM ^

No I think Runyan and JBB are the two best options from a consistency stand point in practice and the coaches are making the calculation that more consistency is preferrable to a higher ceiling. And I think that calculation is correct for the majority of our schedule and would get us to 8 or 9 wins. But if we want a shot at beating wisconsin, or osu we need the higher upside guys in there and for it to work out. I'd rather have a shot at having a functioning offense against osu but with the downside of getting shut out than an offense likely to generate 7-10 points but that is almost guaranteed to stall out regularly.

BroadneckBlue21

September 11th, 2018 at 5:08 PM ^

Your premise is faulty. You assume we cannot win those games with JBB or Jr Runyan. We can. You are faulty to assume they’re not able to improve with actual playing time. Yeah, they are upperclassmen, but Runyan is finally getting his shot and his first chance was against a stout defensive line. 

And furthermore, these projections masked as definites (i.e. “if we play the young guy he will undoubtedly be great by the end”) are fan fodder only. It’d be nice if fans trusted the coaches more—or at least would stop pretending that because they want to challenge the coaches that aloof us feel the same way. No, I don’t think fans have earned the respect to hypothesize as if the coaches don’t want to win and need our help in projecting the players they actually coach.

Tedious. 

ak47

September 12th, 2018 at 1:04 AM ^

The coaches threw out Ulizio and John O'Korn last year, they don't just get automatic trust. Seniors who have played before don't just get better as their 4th year goes on. Sure it would be great if it happened but it doesn't really happen. Runyan is a guard, he's been abused by any power 5 level defensive end he's ever gone against, that isn't going to magically go away. Of course it is technically possible we could beat OSU with Runyan in, but it would require winning a game like 14-10 or getting defensive and special teams touchdowns because it wouldn't be our offense doing it.

evenyoubrutus

September 11th, 2018 at 1:44 PM ^

If you're referring to John Okorn, don't forget that he had a pretty darn good game against Purdue for his first extended playing time, likely giving him a longer leash. I have a feeling he would have been replaced earlier than he was if that game had turned out differently. 

mgobaran

September 11th, 2018 at 3:07 PM ^

Go read an article before you talk.

But as Michigan moved on from spring ball, Peters fell out of that competition. When the season opener rolled around, he was third on the depth chart.

This drop, Peters admits, was the product of mental errors. As the playbook opened up, the issues arose. There were turnovers, fumbled snaps and missed reads, and he wouldn’t call the play right in the huddle.

He couldn't call the right play in the huddle!

“At the beginning of the year, third string, obviously not many third strings get the chance to get in the game unless it’s like a blowout,” Peters said. “I saw the opportunity when Wilton went down.

“You never want to wish that against your teammate for someone to go down, but it happens, so you’ve just gotta be ready. When that happened, I saw an opportunity — second string, anything can happen, it’s one play away.”

Peters knew he was 3rd string, knew why, and it still took him till he was 2nd string to put in the work to beat out O'Korn.

A2toGVSU

September 11th, 2018 at 1:59 PM ^

PFF rewards patient backs with good vision. They don't hand out big scores for running away from linebackers and safeties, which Higdon is great at. As much as I love Higdon in the open field, he still sometimes gets going too fast too soon in the backfield. He doesn't have great instincts when setting up his blocks. Great physical ability, sometimes in too much of a hurry to make the most of it.

BroadneckBlue21

September 11th, 2018 at 5:16 PM ^

So what you are saying is that PFF is subjective as fuuuuu—? 

I’ll take the results from Higdon over a rating. 

And rating systems like PFF—donthey take into account the talent level of a matchup? The appearance of an objective measurement system is just that, an appearance. Sports involve more factors that ratings alone can tell one. A dude got cut from my NFL favorite team despite having the highest position rating on the te'/am. He was the first cut. 

BroadneckBlue21

September 11th, 2018 at 5:21 PM ^

That’s called angles. The WMU player has a shorter distance to cover, and he still did not catch Higdon, who maintained his balance despite the clips at his feet. His TD was great. Some people here must’ve never played, to criticize his speed and skill on that run.

And if the hole was so it took no skill to go through it, why shit on the o line? They opened the hole up big.

Fezzik

September 12th, 2018 at 1:40 AM ^

Higdon was already at or very near top end speed meanwhile the WMU player was not and had to change direction which more than makes up having a bit or an angle on Higdon. I never said it wasn't a good run. And I didn't even mention the O line. What is up your ass?

I made an observation about a player's speed after he has added a large amount of weight to his frame in a fairly short time. It is possible he is slightly slower due to the gains, or not. But you sure are jumping to a lot of assumptions.

Edit: And the player he outran has had THREE acl tears. If you want to brag about speed this is not the play to do it and be pompous about it.

Chaz_Smash

September 11th, 2018 at 1:04 PM ^

That punter injury was pretty shitty. He kicks the ball and takes a helmet to the shin, but play was blown dead for a false start and MSU gets penalized 5 yards while roughing the kicker ignored. That would really suck if I cared about that team.

Fezzik

September 11th, 2018 at 4:13 PM ^

I read they try to take context into every play more so than stats. So if a player runs untouched through a monster hole for an 80 yard score he likely wouldn't be graded as high as a guy who ran 50 yards, did not score, but broke 6 tackles in the process and had no blocking help whatsoever. That said, if he wasn't a 70 than he must of been a 69 or so. He played well.

BroadneckBlue21

September 11th, 2018 at 5:26 PM ^

And there is the stupidity, because he still made the right choice to move go left. Plenty of backs (in looking at you, De’veon Smith) lack vision and correct decisions when a hole parts open wide as the Red Sea. Kevin Grady, Derrick Henry—the hole is that way. 

Also, one may want to think about how he should be rewarded for having the speed and decision to make that hole seem stay open longer. 

 

BlueHenBlue

September 11th, 2018 at 1:09 PM ^

I don't mind the lack of games on BTN at all. I cut the cord and have been using a friend's cable account login to stream sports from various apps on Apple TV. BTN is the only channel out of the major sport ones without an app.