It Was Good While It Lasted
10/18/2008 – Michigan 17, Penn State 46 – 2-5, 1-2 Big Ten
The reader may have noted a certain fevered quality to Friday's posting, and for good reason: I was sort of fevered. Bestruck by a head cold that wanted to kill my brain, I was in something of a fever dream until Zoltan punted it away with about two minutes left in the first half and Andre Criswell decided that it would be a good idea to pop Derrick Williams.
From there, reality reasserted itself with a thud.
This is not a "well coached team," I guess. It's hard to pick through all the detritus associated with that term—usually it means "loses too much for the accuser's taste"—and pick out a real definition, but suffice it to say well coached teams can return kickoffs past the twenty and don't pick up stupid personal fouls on downed punts. They don't they lead the country in fumbles. By a lot of metrics this not only a talent-deficient team but a discipline-deficient team as well.
And, okay, if you are concerned about that I get it. I think the longer view suggests Rodriguez can assemble a successful football team that does indeed seem "well coached," and by "suggests" I mean "makes it obvious".
There's not a whole lot more to say about unsurprising 30-point losses. We're going to see what the future holds one way or the other. I advocate patience, etc., you know the drill.
BULLETS
- No offense to a fine young man, but NICK SHERIDAN=DEATH. The decision to start him over Threet, or play him ever while Threet is physically capable of throwing the ball, will go down as the most inexplicable one of the Rodriguez era.
- Both of Threet's elbows are torn up? WTF? This is like a single player version of the broken thumb plague of 2005.
- Obviously Brandon Minor was the major buzz coming out of the game, as he ran with power two Sam McGuffie's couldn't muster. And he didn't fumble the ball. The fumbling and the offensive line and the Notre Dame game and Minor's run of just-nagging-enough injuries makes McGuffie's insertion understandable; I think he lost his job, though.
- When Threet was on the field he was impressive, and you could see that QB off-tackle/sweep thing was something they'd worked on significantly in practice but couldn't use the week before because Threet was busted up.
- In the first half when Minor was gashing them up the middle I thought to myself "we need to have something that plays off this or they're going to adapt and shut it down"; this happened. I think the difference in future years will be the ability to go to something else when (or, preferably, just before) the opposing defense catches on to the stuff you're running. You can see there's a certain monotony in the offense.
- Commenter ShockFX is going to find his annoyance at the "Minor should play more" threads be replaced by an an entirely different one genre: "why didn't Minor play more?" Projected rage level: steady.
October 20th, 2008 at 2:14 PM ^
All this whole deal with Minor playing well tells me is that Rich Rod is a liar who told him that he could adapt his offense to any RB but then went with McGuffie...now we'll all be rooting for Minor the succeed and wont kno why he wasnt started in the frist place and will be mad at RichRod for not playing Minor in the first place...this is playing out just like in my screenplay, "Mighty Ducks 4: the Great Whyte Hope" only with black players instead...this never gets old...
October 20th, 2008 at 2:27 PM ^
Maybe my sarcasm meter is broken, but I'm going to respond like you're serious:
When you fumble 5 times in roughly 28 touches, the reason why you don't play should be self-evident. I'm glad Minor got in, and I'm glad he played well. But it's not a mystery as to why he got fewer touches.
October 21st, 2008 at 12:06 AM ^
October 21st, 2008 at 3:29 AM ^
October 20th, 2008 at 4:18 PM ^
October 20th, 2008 at 8:25 PM ^
is probably playing because he has looked decent and competed hard in practice. It's not surprising that Sheridan looks good in practice when you consider 1) it's only practice and he knows he can't get killed; and 2) he's throwing passes against our LB's and secondary. I feel bad for the kid because the team appeared to lose all confidence with him at the helm.
October 21st, 2008 at 3:29 AM ^
At some level I think that you can conflate talent deficient and discipline deficient. A bad player is going to fumble. A bad player is going to get penalties. The entire point of discipline is that a player has it hammered into him the fundamentals of the game. Good players are going to adapt to that quickly. Even talent deficient players may adapt at some point. But there are players out there who cannot pick this stuff up in the face of such superior competition. They're going to fall apart eventually.
Of course, there needs to be a distinction between bad in the moment and always bad. But there are enough players on this team who are always going to be an issue, and the only way to solve that problem is to replace them. You can start with the QB and go down the offensive line. If there are discipline issues where there clearly shouldn't be, then that's a problem. But right now I think that it's almost expected.
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