Phil Steele Pre-Season Rank: Michigan 12th
Is anyone else fine with this? I mean, beyond the whole 'pre-season rankings are meaningless.' Top 15, with Michigan's schedule, is striking distance for top 4 when it counts, especially with the Game to end the season. It'll allow the young guys and QB to get settled in and generally reduce the pressure (though I'm not sure Harbaugh is a fan of that).
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#12 is perfect
6.) OSU
7.) Michigan
He thinks both LSU and Alabama will make the playoffs. I don't think both will.
that will be a rare occurence. Presumably that mean that either the PAC 12 or BIG would not get a team in. A good portion of this playoff is strictly about money. It would not be wise to relegate the CFP to a "meh" type event for a huge portion of the country.
If (a) Bama and LSU both make the playoff, and (b) Houston runs the table and gets in, that would mean that among the B1G, ACC, Big 12, and Pac 12, three would be left out. I would hate to see the B1G left out, but the wailing and gnashing of teeth would be a lot of fun.
Fuck pre season ranking all together. This is the kind of shit that ND fans jerk each other off over. Can we try and not be like those douchebags please?
..and talking college football. They dont sound to bad to me.
How is this guy paid money to make predictions?
Or was yours a rhetorical question?
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The weirdest part about it is that Phil Steele must have an actual time machine, because his website was clearly imported from 1996.
on like the Ocho or something, and he actually picks games against the spread every week and does pretty well. He got my attention one week last year when he was something like 10-2 against the spread.
As it is a silly pre-season poll that means absolutely nothing. No need to get one's panties in a wad over it. Jimmy and his guys are going to shock the world in 2016 and beyond.
and with washington at 8 and stanford at 10, his picking ability appears to be severely challenged as well.
it's okay to be #12 in a meaningless ranking though, so in the end, nothing to see here. move on. and don't read alleged collie molestor's rankings.
that as fans, it does not matter what we "are looking ahead" to because we obviously don't have an impact on the results but I think this is getting just a little bit ahead of ourselves. I would expect us to beat both Penn State and Wisconsin at home but both of those teams are capable opponents and beating them in back to back weeks will not be a cake walk.
We're lacking a returning starter at QB, we have a not-too-talented Oline that's thin to boot, and no #1 caliber RB. If all you're doing is projecting before the season starts and not going by any actual games, those are significant flaws.
And not that it matters. If we beat PSU and Wisconsin at home, as we should if we're even the 12th best team in the country, we'll start off 7-0 and be solidly in the top 10, maybe top 5. Which again won't matter, because we'll make or break our season based on how we do against Sparty, Iowa and OSU.
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We have a lot of questions on offense. Despite the dearly departed Rudock having the second most single-season passing yards in UM history, our passing offense last year only ranked 52nd among all FBS teams. Our running attack was 79th, overall offense ended at 69th. Rudock is gone, we're still apparently shuffling our OL looking for consistency, and we can only hope Jehu fully recovers from his leg injury. Our D almost certainly will end up in the top 10, but offensive consistency is a concern.
Did I miss something? Did Rudock die?
All the rankings at this point are mere guesses, of course, but if we ask the question a smidgen differently and ask if a #12 preseason poll ranking would be shocking to anyone right now, then at least for me, that's a "no". I would take it though - I have a suspicion we are placed somewhere around the floor of the Top 10 in a poll or two and that seems to matter to the psyche of the people that do the actual voting. That is to say, it seems more likely we could only improve in their mind, and a good showing in the run-up to the tough portion of the conference schedule probably means less variability in our ranking if we stumble once. That's just speculation based on past poll behavior though.
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No big deal. Anywhere from 5-12 is about right for us. Need to prove we have a QB to everyone else but us. Our "D" is top 10 and our OL is still slightly suspect. No problems at RB or WR. I am ready to get after it!
LB play last year was horrible, end play wasn't much better. Too many blown assignments on inside reads and an inability to keep the edge. We may have great DB's and interior lineman, but if we don't get better LB/DE play we are going to suffer.
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I would rather have us under rated than over rated. I want our team to have someting to prove!
Let's prove we are great on the field rather than in the polls. The only polls that matter come from the championship bowl committee the second half of the season.
Let's just play and we can shut him up.
Phil Steele has no imagination whatsoever. He basically copies and pastes last years final standings into next years prediction. If anybody ever did a pre-post season comparison of his team and all american predictions you'd start wondering why the hell he's even paid money.
I don't understand the hype either. He's terrible.
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We don't know who our QB is yet. We also don't know who is going to make tackles if ballcarriers make it past our DLINE (which isn't likely but you get the point). I guess technically Jabrill can make all the tackles but #12 is a good starting point.
Still pushing those magazines. Not surprising given that his website has to be one of the oddest looking things on the internets. Very 1990.
be in the 10-15 area pre-season. People putting us in the top 4 is a little optimistic to start the season. Definitely think they can get there, but need to just win games and not get ahead of ourselves. But with a new QB anything can happen.
in my stool.
I really don't get why people are concerned with the QB situation. Yeah, it'll be a first year starter at UM. So what? Saban wins playoff games with first year starters at Alabama, and he couldn't coach a QB if his stinkin' life depended on it! Whoever wins a QB battle under Harbaugh will be, not only ready to play, but the best QB on the team. And with Harbaugh as his coach, he'll be better than most QB's in college football. I just refuse to lose one second of my life through 'concern' for QB under Harbaugh.
There is also a good diary that was posted about a week ago studying teams with 1st year starters getting into the NC game and ultimately winning. The TL;DR version was that this happens far more frequently than you would think.
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We bitch when we are ranked too high (like #3), so in fairness I guess we should bitch when we are ranked too low.
12th is too low. We should not be behind Tenn and Wash. We should be in the top 10, somewhere between 5th and 10th.
/End Obligatory Bitch.