Don't Blame Blake Thread
Ultimately, Michigan should have won this game. I think it's alright to feel physically sick (I do), but when you feel like piling on Blake just remember no one feels worse than he does. That play was one in a million and we had them beat, however it would have been nice to open things up more offensively when we had them down more. This will suck forever but the Big Ten isn't settled yet and the future is bright regardless. God must hate first year UM coaches vs Staee no matter how awesome they are.
October 17th, 2015 at 9:37 PM ^
He was probably our best player before the last play of the game. No one should have to live with this much less a college kid. You have to be a real degenerate to rag on Blake.
October 17th, 2015 at 9:41 PM ^
Well, Peppers was our best player.
October 17th, 2015 at 11:02 PM ^
October 18th, 2015 at 12:18 AM ^
He is very good at pinning the opposition inside their 20 (or 10) on punts.
What do we remember about Tyler Ecker? He mostly gets mentioned for not pitching to Breaston in the December 2005 Alamo Bowl, which also often brings up memories of Tyler staying in bounds with no timeouts for a minimal gain versus OSU in November 2005.
But Tyler had a very productive 2006 as our best tight end. No matter the (costly) situational mistakes he made in 2005, he was our best Tight End asset in 2006, and his play in 2006 made the 2006 team better.
There's no way to go back and change this, and so there's no good in lashing out at O'Neill. Blake will have to live with this for the rest of his life. Here's hoping to on-field success to balance the painful memory.
Remember what Harbaugh always says. Something to the effect of "We try to be better today than yesterday, and better tomorrow than today. That's all we can control."
Lashing out at the best punter on the team isn't going to make Michigan better today or tomorrow.
October 18th, 2015 at 7:41 AM ^
October 18th, 2015 at 1:06 AM ^
October 18th, 2015 at 2:09 AM ^
Yep why didn't we do something like that just to be safe.
October 17th, 2015 at 10:43 PM ^
I dont blame him for losing the game but I will blame him for the hangoverthats coming tomorrow.
October 17th, 2015 at 10:57 PM ^
October 17th, 2015 at 11:16 PM ^
My wife bought me 12 pack for the game. During the game, she asked me why wasn't I drinking them, and I told her that I will to celebrate the W. Still haven't touched them. I probably never will. I even got some great weed to go with it. Won't touch it. Won't enjoy either of them. I can deal with the loss. It's the kids, not to mention O'neill that I feel terrible for. They had that win. Can't help but ask, why no max protection?
October 17th, 2015 at 11:45 PM ^
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October 18th, 2015 at 12:29 AM ^
October 17th, 2015 at 11:48 PM ^
October 18th, 2015 at 1:29 AM ^
October 17th, 2015 at 9:43 PM ^
Can I blame Rudock for his inability to throw downfield goddamn passes to open receivers?
Or how about the refs, for their inability to understand what targeting is and when not to call it?
Or maybe...screw it.,.
October 17th, 2015 at 10:13 PM ^
So there's the perspective for this statement...
With the exception of Nick Sheridan, Jake Rudock is the worst UM starting QB I've seen.
October 17th, 2015 at 10:22 PM ^
He probably wouldn't start anywhere else in the Big 10. He's still the best we've got, which speaks volumes about the problems with the offense.
Be mad at the situation, but don't get mad at Jake for not being what he never was.
October 17th, 2015 at 10:28 PM ^
Just pointing out other plays that weren't made today.
With the exception of the true freshmen (about whom we know nothing as football players), Jake Rudock is the best QB Michigan has, and unlike a lot of other coachspeak, when Harbaugh says Rudock is the best QB he has, I'm inclined to believe him.
The guy is not good though. And in a game like we saw today, his play left a lot to be desired. We can complain about dropped passes, coverage breakdowns, dropped punts, etc. But if we're truly going to be honest about this, Michigan has two losses this year, one a tough game on the road but lost by 7 when Rudock threw a horrid pick 6 and overthrew open receivers for TDs on multiple occasions, then today couldn't get first downs in the fourth quarter and overthrew another wide open WR on a play that would have put the game away.
Michigan's best QB sucks. If Michigan had Connor Cook to go with their running game and defense, they're a national title contender. With Jake Rudock, they're a 3-4 loss team.
But I don't think it's blind hope at all to think that Harbaugh will soon have a better running game and defense than UM has now, and a QB better than Connor Cook to go with them.
October 18th, 2015 at 6:41 AM ^
"But I don't think it's blind hope at all to think that Harbaugh will soon have a better running game and defense than UM has now, and a QB better than Connor Cook to go with them."
We outplayed them and can look forward to better things down the road. That feels good. (unlike my head this morning)
October 17th, 2015 at 10:33 PM ^
October 18th, 2015 at 2:53 AM ^
He's saying with Rudock's weaknesses, teams will try to make us beat them with his arm and given those weaknesses, we will lose games to good teams.
October 17th, 2015 at 10:34 PM ^
Chris Zurbrugg was worse. which Jim Harbaugh was forced to notice at close range after breaking his arm in 1984.
October 18th, 2015 at 12:01 AM ^
Threet wasn't real good, nor was Forcier after the '09 Notre Dame game. But I'd take either of those two.
I've lived a spoiled life as a Michigan fan with this uninterrupted string of QBs, from Grbac to Collins to Dreisbach, to Griese, to Brady/Henson, Navarre, Henne...
Jim Harbaugh forgot more football taking a shit this morning than most of the rest of us will ever know in our lives, so if Rudock's his guy, so be it.
But at times I do envision a Michigan offense with Shane Morris using his feet in a similar way Kaepernick did for Harbaugh in San Franciso, though I know Morris is no Kaepernick.
Speight isn't the answer, and Malzone (though with an extra semester as an early enrollee) leaves a lot to be desired. For better or worse, Rudock it is. My fear since the Utah game has been that he just isn't good enough to make plays against top teams when UM will have to make plays in the passing game. Today, he confirmed my fears. I KNOW I wasn't the only one who was holding my breath and fearing the worst every time he went to throw downfield.
October 17th, 2015 at 10:51 PM ^
October 17th, 2015 at 11:51 PM ^
than Rudock, if Ruddock is even an average QB as you say.
October 17th, 2015 at 11:52 PM ^
Ah well
October 18th, 2015 at 12:18 AM ^
October 18th, 2015 at 6:42 AM ^
Counterfactual is tough, but the fact is Rudock is not very good. If there is one thing holding us back it is our QB play. I don't think many people are saying Morris would be better. We can still bitch about the situation though. We are Michigan fans, after all.
October 17th, 2015 at 10:51 PM ^
October 18th, 2015 at 12:37 AM ^
that Rudock had game-managed Michigan to victory heading into that last play.
He was 15/25 for 178 yards*, or 7.1 yds per pass attempt, with no turnovers. We didn't throw on the last series, and on our penultimate series, his third down pass should have been caught for a first down.
I'm not into blaming anyone, including Rudock.
*Adding back the 10 yds of sacks
October 17th, 2015 at 9:38 PM ^
The fact that he has already shut down his account due to death threats is unbelievably shameful. Good Lord people take this shit way too seriously.
Yeah, he kinda lost the game for us. Emphasis on game.
October 17th, 2015 at 9:40 PM ^
It's also unbelievably predictable. The LCD is always going to rear its head in anything with as big a net as Twitter.
October 17th, 2015 at 9:44 PM ^
Every fan base has idiots and unfortunately we are not imune to it. I was sure this was going to happen which was the purpose of my other thread. In reality, I knew I was only talking to a small fraction of the Michigan fans and hopefully most of the bad ones aren't on this blog.
I hope Blake realizes most of the Michigan fan base still supports him and realizes that it was by no means on him alone.
October 17th, 2015 at 9:46 PM ^
He didn't shut down his account.
October 17th, 2015 at 10:35 PM ^
My goodness, I almost tweeted some words of encouragement to him.
Yeah, that's what he needs right now: a white guy in his 40s, a 2002 grad, living in Muskegon, tweeting him lame, trite sayings - solving nothing.
Or maybe that's EXACTLY what he needs?
I guess I'll just leave him alone.
October 17th, 2015 at 9:37 PM ^
I haven't seen the replay and maybe never will have the stomach to see it again, but couldn't it be said that Sypniewski was as much to blame anyway? The snap was extremly low and looked hard to handle.
October 17th, 2015 at 9:40 PM ^
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October 17th, 2015 at 9:48 PM ^
I am not trying to "help the problem." If you are, you're wasting your time. I'm saying it's interesting that the guy who is getting all the blame may not have even been the most to blame. Maybe I'm remembering it wrong but the snap seemed very, very low. Those get mishandled often.
October 17th, 2015 at 10:16 PM ^
I watched the play (well, not the end of it -- just the actual formation, snap, fumble and "kick") multiple times on my DVR, as I couldn't believe what I saw. Even in slo-mo.
The snap was fine. Not perfect, but fine. It just bounced right of both Blake's hands. He then had a chance to fall on it (MSU was not on him at the point) but he tried to kick it. While trying to do so, he was tackled, and flung the ball to the guy who eventually scored the TD.
I even watched the 3-4 UM "middle" blockers to see what they were doing, but except for Butt, they all couldn't see that the snap was botched.
The biggest problem I have (well, beside the snap being dropped, of course) is that we had a gunner at the left (top) of the screen who literally jogged a couple of steps and then just stood there. If MSU had no one back to receive (which I've heard is true, but can't confirm), what was the point of him being up there? He should have been either a) blocking or b) doing the job of Peppers in the victory formation -- playing behind the snap in case something awful happens.
I really need to hear a good explanation from the special teams coach. UM should have been in whatever the punt equivalent of "max protect" is, and unless I'm missing something, they were not. Seems like a tremendous coach fail.
October 17th, 2015 at 10:48 PM ^
the gunner tcokehat you saw was out of the play none of the blockers sustained blocks they had no time outs to tell the guys just sustain your blocks all theyneeded was a 20 yard punt, just not prepared for the worst that could happen on that play
October 17th, 2015 at 11:02 PM ^
If no one for State was back, it should have been punting 101 to cover with the gunners "Ok, if there is no one back to return the punt, you back up as far as legally possible and as close to the punter, and block/get ready to tackle someone if there's a bad snap or catch"
A bad snap/catch is not remotely unprecedented -- hell, Oregon State almost gave us the a TD on a bad snap just a few weeks ago! And at the end of the Texas game a few weeks ago, almost the same thing happened as what happened to Blake.
I'm going to expect a War & Peace length analysis of why UM was lined up the way they were.
We seem to have made great strides in normal punting situtations, this was not normal. In the circumstance where a team is going all-out to block, I can NOT believe that was the best, safest formation.
October 18th, 2015 at 8:27 AM ^
Had no more timeouts, they should have just taken a delay of game penalty. That way they could have made sure they had the right formation once they saw what MSU was doing. Still the odds were in our favor until the perfect storm occurred. Sigh.
October 18th, 2015 at 9:02 AM ^
You're wrong. They called a time-out before the punt. The last two plays they let the clock go down to 1 second before calling time-outs.
October 18th, 2015 at 8:33 AM ^
October 17th, 2015 at 10:47 PM ^
Snap was good. Blake just seemed to panic in the heat of the moment. Should have just fell on the ball.
October 18th, 2015 at 12:27 AM ^
It was a little low. Even if Blake just holds onto the ball after he picked it up, MSU gets the ball at the ~40 into the wind with ~0:05 seconds left and still the odds stacked against them.
I'll try to say this as softly as possible, because I'm sure Jim Harbaugh believes Blake is our best punter and playing O'Neill will make the team better than playing his substitute. But the fatal error was in Blake's panicked attempt to perform a Pele Bicycle Kick Punt.
October 18th, 2015 at 12:01 AM ^
Unless you will live under a rock you WILL see the play again. Here in SW Florida it was the lead story on the 11 o'clock news with the line, 'We will be talking about this play for decades to come". Ugh
October 18th, 2015 at 7:47 AM ^
that you didn't see the replay, I watched when I got home and the snap was perfect for a quick kick. Catch and kick - he didn't even have to move the ball down - just kick it. It only need to go 10 yards and the game is over.
Go Blue!
October 17th, 2015 at 9:46 PM ^