Aubrey Solomon Transferring

I mean...will we have a good defense? Or at least good compared to recent standards? The DL is going to be a big weakness next season and it was already a weakness on an elite defense. You lose Gary, Chase, Mone, and Solomon. That’s A LOT and they don’t have people to replace them at that skill level. Plus there’s barely any upperclassmen on the DL.

Should be great in 2020 when everyone is juniors and seniors, but 2019? Ehhh....maybe.

Umm, will we?  Losing Gary, Winovich, Solomon, Bush and possibly Long and Hill means next year will be a transitional year on defense.  Hopefully Dr. Blitz has those LBs and Vipers causing havoc next season.

I kind of disagree on this. It feels like a lot of the guys on this team don't have that connection with the team and school and its being reflected in the number of transfers and early nfl draft decisions. They obviously care about each other but its a really high rate of guys leaving the program. 

Dude, I appreciate your general outlook. But that's not how this works. You can't plug in freshmen, especially on the interior line. We were already weak at DT this year and we graduated Mone & Marshall, now lost Solomon. There just aren't many game-ready, experienced bodies ready to go.

We have Dwumfour and Kemp. And they should be solid. Hopefully former 4-star Donovan Jeter can jump in the rotation in his 3RD YEAR here. Beyond that, we have nothing. True freshmen or emergency position flips. In my most optimistic Michigan fandom, I proclaim this situation "Not good".

While he wasn't a terribly important contributor this year due to injuries and illness, I think it's safe to say that we were counting on him becoming an important contributor next year.  Smith and Hinton arriving on campus as early impact players is so very important now, along with Dwumfor,  Kemp, and Jeter continual development.   This news really hurts from an interior DL depth perspective.

It’s important because he was expected to be a major part of the DL next season. Without him the depth there is thin, inexperienced, and young as hell. Same as OL, you can’t expect to throw a bunch of freshmen and sophs out there and expect to be great/elite.

GTFO with that nonsense. We'll be lucky to win one game next year. 

Seriously though, you can't argue that losing interior depth like that isn't a big deal. It definitely mattered in the Game this year. 

Not losing sleep over Robbins and Nordin, think they're covered in those spots.  Peters is no big loss if Patterson returns.  

He was playing when healthy.

There is clearly something wrong - too much attrition to think otherwise.  I dont know what it is (although your guess is a pretty damn good one) but there's something just not right with the program to suffer this many losses and this many players wanting to sit out the bowl game (allegedly).

The sad thing is we almost always find out what it is after the damage has been done.  OSU 2015 the defense comes out and lays the biggest egg imaginable and we find out shortly after that our DC spent that week interviewing (and accepting) a HC job at another B1G school.  After Harbaugh took over the program we find out that our practices under Hoke basically consisted of a few players doing something periodically with a lot of talking about what happened and why with the rest of the team just watching which definitely explained why the results on the field were so poor. 

And this year.  With everything on the line, with a chance at a B1G title, a slot in the final four and a chance to get the OSU monkey FINALLY off our back we absolutely shit the bed in Columbus and play our worst game of the year. And our own resident insider UMBig11 went from unabashed optimism about the program to sounding a lot like me this year with his posts and predictions.

We always find out after the fact.  I wonder what it is this time cause it's definitely something.

Don't know whether she "hates Michigan football", but you'd better cover your ears if she gets angry.

And now woefully undersized.

I feel like the answer is yes, because for the same reason going on job interviews for jobs you don’t really want is a good thing solely for the experience.

Eventually to compete at the top level you’re going to have to get kids who are iffy to commit. Michigan is winning some of those 5-star recruiting battles, but just hasn’t been able to win at a 5-star level on the field to get them to continue to stay. Winning fixes a whole lot of internal complaining and doubts.

Thanks for being here, all the same.

10-2, ranked 7 nationally. STFU

Mediocre top 10 program, yep /s

how miserable does your life have to be to create a brand new user name just to make that useless comment?  haha

Or Solomon didn't want to be here?  Maybe he was miserable last year because he was hurt and so it tainted his feelings about being in Ann Arbor?  Seems like a plausible third possibility.

(I'm not ruling out the possibilities that you propose, but those don't seem to be the only options.) 

It could also be that UM fans dramatically overinflate how good their team's recruits are.

Solomon was a legit 5 star kid, but in 10 games he made 19 tackles and had 0 sacks.

Singleton tore his ACL in high school and came in with question marks. He's sitting out a year to go play at Rutgers now.

Hudson was presumed to be some OL savior, despite being recruited as a DL by most everyone. He's going to Cincinnati. 

Asiasi transferred for what is widely reported as personal reasons and his family was quite complimentary of the UM staff. He transferred "back home."

Keith Washington...seriously, we're upset about a 3 star CB transfer?

Solomon leaving isn't ideal, but my God this fan base looks for any reason at all to implode upon itself. I sincerely hope most of the whiny little children on this board didn't go to UM; I'd like to think the mental toughness required to earn a degree would weed out some of this nonsense.