Michigan is the problem at Michigan
October 3rd, 2014 at 1:55 AM ^
October 3rd, 2014 at 2:01 AM ^
October 3rd, 2014 at 2:05 AM ^
So, what you're saying is, a football team didn't gain as many yards against good teams as they did against bad teams? No kidding.
October 3rd, 2014 at 2:08 AM ^
October 3rd, 2014 at 2:16 AM ^
Who mustered a mere 24 against a RR defense??? Your argument is burying you.
October 3rd, 2014 at 2:18 AM ^
October 3rd, 2014 at 2:23 AM ^
The problem with Rich Rod at Michigan wasn't Rich Rod, it was Michigan.
Rich Rod is great. Michigan stinks.
October 3rd, 2014 at 4:23 AM ^
Our offense was terrible against big teams because we changed the whole gameplan against the power teams .... we tried to slow the game down hoping that our defense wouldn't get wiped into the dirt... it never worked, it just made the offense as ineffective as the defense.
They were actively trying to slow the game down to keep the D off the field thinking they could still score... nope..
You're looking at it with a very myopic point of view. A good defense would have been exactly what he has in arizona now, just possibly BETTER.
October 3rd, 2014 at 8:59 AM ^
What is this revisionist gibberish? This is completely made up.
October 3rd, 2014 at 10:09 AM ^
. . All of these coaches are not bad coaches. Including RR and Hoke et al...
I don't know what is going on here - because something is amiss.
I will say this in both coaching regimes, the one constant was this BLOG going off the deep end on a regular basis.
Are we helping anything with our consistent mass Hysteria? What good is it doing...?
I hate losing, but think of it this way:
We can have a contingent argue that RR should have had another year at least
- AND -
we will also have a contingent argue that Hoke should have another year to complete his contract.
There will be strong arguments to the contrary of both of these positiions.
Maybe, maybe - it might be worth while to go a different route than what we did with RR, give support to this staff and this team and see through the difficult times?
October 3rd, 2014 at 1:47 PM ^
No one can argue Hoke has not been given much more support than RRod with a straight face:
1. massively increased contracts for his assistants
2. previous coach helping by telling kids to stay vs. LC encouraging kids to leave
3. famous football alumni coming out of the woodwork in Hoke's corner
4. no Freep jihad
He's also been given year 4 despite each year of his tenure being worse than the last. 4 is enough, he should not get 5.
October 3rd, 2014 at 7:05 AM ^
michgoblue: Is it really fair to judge the guy on only 3 yrs of a drastic transition? Hoke regressed and we made excuses for him and gave hime a 4th year. RR sucked out of the gate but was improving, was unsupported, and run out of town after 3. The K State bowl was as pathetic as the MSU bowl. "He didn't do those things at Michigan". Gee, how were those situations different?
October 3rd, 2014 at 3:43 AM ^
Now our offense looks awful against good and bad teams! *sigh*!
October 3rd, 2014 at 2:05 AM ^
Do you have any understanding of the roster he had in his final year? Denard was a sophmore and they were ranked the top 5 offense according to FEI.
Are you saying FEI is wrong and you're right? All the other bullshit you're talking about were problems created by the AD and past Michigan Men undermining him left and right.
October 3rd, 2014 at 2:12 AM ^
As for RichRod's problems being all created by older Michigan men, who is responsible for the worst defense in M history? Did Brandon coach the defense? Did Lloyd? No. Also, who is responsible for taking 1 (!!!) f'ing lineman over 2 classes?? Was that Brandon and Lloyd, as well?
I will readily concede that rich got a tough deal here, but let's not glorify the past just because the present sucks.
October 3rd, 2014 at 2:21 AM ^
The team was littered with underclassmen at the most important positions. Of course there were going to be growing pains. Firing a coach after 3 years, before any of his recruits are even Jr's, is an atrocity. He never had a chance. Denard was a SO setting records in his first full year as a starter. Wonder what he could have done as a Jr with a 2nd year under his belt.
And how do you explain his success EVERYWHERE else except for here? He had a 3 year lapse where he forgot how to coach?
October 3rd, 2014 at 2:55 AM ^
Way to not address any of his points.
October 3rd, 2014 at 3:08 AM ^
They needed to be answered? Ok.
1) Yes - I saw the OSU game
2) Yes - I saw the bowl game
3) Yes - that looked like a top offense....with incredible youth and inexperience that caused the majority of problems and would have been ironed out with 1 more year of coaching.
Better?
October 3rd, 2014 at 3:36 AM ^
If by "success EVERYWHERE" you mean, 6-8 win seaons, then sure. RR has never had massive success outside of 3 year stretch at WV when Pat White was his QB. Out of 20 year career as a head coach, RR has only had five seasons where he has won more than 8 games - and three of seaons came with Pat White as his quaterback. The rest of his career has been between bad and mediocre.
October 3rd, 2014 at 6:32 PM ^
And let's keep in mind that Mallett left because RR supposedly only wanted Pat White type QBs even though he said he could adapt to the QBs skill set. Look at Arizona's performance last night: Anu Solomon passed much more than he ran.
Imagine if Mallet and Manningham had been talked into staying and supporting the program. RR would probably have had a much better first and second year -- even with a lousy defense. But no, our revered Michigan Man Lloyd Carr did everything possible to get players to transfer out, cleaning out an already bare cupboard of talent.
October 3rd, 2014 at 4:27 AM ^
I'll say it again, They intentionally ran the offense slower ESPECIALLY in that game to try to keep the shitty defense off the field. They had problems keeping up against mediocre teams because the offense would score so quickly. Adjusting the offense to try to run slowly backfired.
It's pretty simple, go back and watch the games that we won, then watch the game against OSU. The offensive pace was drastically different. Low tempo game with high tempo players.
Not a failing of RR, it was a failing of the school to not give him the tools to be able to develop a good enough defense to get some 3 and outs and stay off the field. With the offensive efficiency of those teams, a good defense would have been the thing of legends. I really don't see how someone who posts on this board can look past how differently those games were played and the reasons that they didn't work.
October 3rd, 2014 at 7:16 AM ^
And let's not ignore that tough deal as we vilify RR.
October 3rd, 2014 at 7:20 AM ^
You do realize that FEI adjusts for the crappy teams?
October 3rd, 2014 at 1:57 AM ^
there is a strong chance he is still coach. I say strong and not "certain" because the "Michigan Men" would have still despised him and undermined him at every turn, and because the team Lloyd left him was still going to be a rotten husk.
Dave Brandon, Brady Hoke, and the rest of the football/athletics leadership are all incompetent hacks, but this is what our program inbreeding has done to us.
October 3rd, 2014 at 1:56 AM ^
Rich Rod won big at #WVU and is working wonders at #Arizona. Maybe the issue at Michigan was Michigan, not him.
— Bruce Feldman (@BruceFeldmanCFB) October 3, 2014
October 3rd, 2014 at 2:11 AM ^
He kind of plagiarized that one, no?
October 3rd, 2014 at 2:39 AM ^
Another of his tweets: "Amazing what Rich Rod has done w this #Arizona team especially since most of his best players are freshmen & sophomores."
Oh, but Michigan is so young. That's why we get embarassed by mediocre teams. It's RR's fault.
October 3rd, 2014 at 1:56 AM ^
As someone who was very vocal about Rich Rod getting screwed by the arrogant, duplicitous David Brandon, I thoroughly enjoyed this. But it also really pisses me off thinking of what Rich Rod could have done witn Denard and Devin.
Fire David Brandon Now.
October 3rd, 2014 at 1:56 AM ^
after Rich was hired at AZ when I declared that Rodriguez would get Arizona to a Rose Bowl before Hoke got Michigan to one.
I love the smell of vindication in the middle of the night.
The fact that that man could not succeed here means that we were the problem, not him. We need to admit that and get it right next time.
October 3rd, 2014 at 2:56 AM ^
October 3rd, 2014 at 4:02 AM ^
Yea but he said it while it happened. That's not hindsight, it was him being right.
October 3rd, 2014 at 6:35 PM ^
Yeah, I bet: the taste of crow getting stuck in your throat?
October 3rd, 2014 at 1:56 AM ^
I was the biggest supporter of RR out there and didn't care about all the Michigan Man bullshit. However his constant recruting of borderline academic qualifiers and crazy attrition made it seem like he just wasn't a fit at a school like Michigan. His recruiting in Year 4 was set to improve so maybe he would have figured it out with a little more time, and we should have given him the chance to do so. Also fuck DB
October 3rd, 2014 at 2:46 AM ^
hindsight is 20/20
October 3rd, 2014 at 1:57 AM ^
Look at the positives.
Since we won't make a bowl, and if we did it would be the pizza bowl, there is a 0% chance we will have to see the sluaghter that would be Arizona-Michigan.
October 3rd, 2014 at 1:59 AM ^
The old adage "shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in 3 generations"
Bo built it.
Lloyd maintained it.
Hoke destroyed it.
The problem is that the weird cousin Dave thought he was smart enough as the Grandpa Bo's kids, Gary and Lloyd, to take the helm. But when Dave was deeded the business, he hired an idiot friend, lost market share, saw competitors make better products.
Eventually, Dave had to give up and realize the business failed. Creditors would still lend money because they were "loan to own" vultures, but the equity was tired of meager returns.
Good-bye Dave.
October 3rd, 2014 at 2:18 AM ^
Cuz it could be either.
October 3rd, 2014 at 1:59 AM ^
Rich Rod's team played MANBALL better than Michigan does. Their defense was better than Michigan's is. So why exactly did David Brandon feel he had to replace Rich Rod?
October 3rd, 2014 at 2:05 AM ^
Just because Hoke is horrible doesn't mean that RichRod was good. He wasn't. Obviously much of that was on our fractured fan base and the media, but he bears a ton of the blame as well. Intimately, in 2010, keeping him as coach was untenable. A change was needed. Wish it was a better one, though.
October 3rd, 2014 at 1:59 AM ^
Arizona winning at Oregon is the rare event that will piss off both Michigan and Michigan State fans.
— Dave Hogg (@Stareagle) October 3, 2014
October 3rd, 2014 at 2:05 AM ^
... I'm actually happy. I think we had to fire Rich Rod, but I will always root for him to be successful. I think he got a raw deal from the start here.
Why the fuck did he hire Gergg!?!?
October 3rd, 2014 at 2:21 AM ^
He was given very little money for a DC, and had little assurances for thr future, so the DC was coming into a situation that might only last a short period. With these restrictions, you get guys like Gerg.
October 3rd, 2014 at 2:01 AM ^
Yup.
If we don't get a Harbaugh, Sumlin, or Vince Lombardi, we need to get someone who can run the spread. We need to get over the MANBALL bullshit.
I admit, I was someone who wanted Rodriguez gone and loved seeing the 4-3 and power-I but man, Rodriguez's offense is ridiculous. And it would work wonders in the Big Ten right now. Who would stop it? Hell, we put up 41 on Ohio State with our shit offense, imagine Rodriguez running zone read all day on them. And if he had Casteel... things would be much different.
This sucks.
October 3rd, 2014 at 2:58 AM ^
were trying to tell you back then.......
October 3rd, 2014 at 7:19 AM ^
Not defending the current regime at all, but Dantuzzi made that offense look pretty average in 2010.
October 3rd, 2014 at 6:39 PM ^
None of those guys would come here to coach just because of the bullshit. If they did come it would be with condiions: no AD presence ANYWHERE in the football facility, let alone letting watch tape with the coordinators, for starters.
October 3rd, 2014 at 2:00 AM ^
But all that said, the premise of the OP is dead on. The evidence seems pretty conclusive. Imagine RR here now--there's no way Devin isn't tearing up the B1G, right? Of course he would.
Still a couple of days before we lose to Rutgers. More can still go wrong.
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October 3rd, 2014 at 2:01 AM ^