WTKA Roundtable 2/15/2018: Duncan Robinson is Thanked at the End Comment Count

Seth

WTKA cover 2018-02-15

Things discussed:

  • Sam tries to ship Brian and the Lanifornicator. Brian: this is Greg Robinson-bad.
  • Question Enos had last year is who calls the plays? McElwain’s suggestion is going to be “let’s hump a shark.”
  • Craig: Michigan is going to have another hellbeast defense; offense has non-freshman receivers, good tight ends
  • Offensive tackle is the biggest question mark. This offseason they forgot to address the problem of can’t block anybody.
  • Warriner influence: he was a very good offensive line coach—not so much an OC.
  • Grant Newsome: Craig says he’ll be the starting LT and James Hudson is at RT; nobody else thinks Newsome will be back.
  • Sam is bullish on Drew Singleton—he’s a SAM (Furbush’s job) but think they’ll get him on the field in different roles next year. Paye and Vilain are gonna be able to get Winovich some breaks. Jeter is playing DT now.
  • Get Brian to McElwain’s presser?
  • Way to go Duncan Robinson!

You can catch the entire episode on Michigan Insider's podcast stream on Audioboom.

Segment two is here. Segment three is here.

THE USUAL LINKS

Will McElwain turn the Michigan offense into a barracuda or will they continue to flounder?

Comments

mrkid

February 16th, 2018 at 7:47 AM ^

I would love to know what data Brian is working from to compare the Jim McElwain hire to the Greg Robinson hire.

I have to hat tip /u/Don for commenting in another thread and posting Greg Robinson's track record and it was abysmal before getting hired at Michigan. Jim McElwain's track record is not bad outside of Florida.

Brian used to be rational and thought out in his analysis but it appears Michigan football has broken him and now he's just throwing out feelings. It's like he's one of us now.

bronxblue

February 16th, 2018 at 9:06 AM ^

Brian seems to be working from the "he was bad as a HC at Florida" combined with his somewhat-sudden distaste for basically the entire offense. It was commented on yesterday, but at this point it feels like nothing except Drevno and Hamilton shot out a cannon will make anyone happy.

Raymond_RedWings

February 16th, 2018 at 7:55 AM ^

Newsome was the OT who, last year, was minutes away from losing his leg, wasn’t he? Do we expect him to be the same player when/if he returns? I would think his mobility will be hindered.

Also, I read someone comment that we would be mixing the read option into the offense next year. Is this true?

SC Wolverine

February 16th, 2018 at 10:13 AM ^

No kidding.  The fact is that this is not something McElwain did.  It's something he reacted to badly, showing that it got under his skin.  When a decent person realizes that something unfair is getting under the skin of somebody, he stops talking about it.  Brian is not acting like a decent person.  He's a great writer, but if he doesn't let go of this I'm just going to skip his articles. The fact that one has a privileged platform to comment on people does not relieve him of the obligation to be a decent person.  All that Harbaugh asked when he first came back to UM was that everybody who is for Michigan be for Michigan.  If McElwain is going to be a coach at Michigan we have to be for him at least to the point of not engaging in gratuitious ridicule.

lbpeley

February 16th, 2018 at 8:42 AM ^

absolutely jumped the shark. It actually did about a week after the story came out.

I don't listen to podcasts. What's the proper pronunciation of McElwain? 

Mackelwain?

Mick-ELwain?

Mick-ELwin?

Blue in PA

February 16th, 2018 at 8:46 AM ^

I just hope our offense plays with a.................  porpoise.   I would be nice to sea improvement, anything short of that is hard to fathom.

 

 

SC Wolverine

February 16th, 2018 at 10:19 AM ^

Brian's take on the OT problem is also ridiculous.  Yes, our OTs were bad last year to the point of sabotaging our whole offense (along with the QB).  And, yes, it is disappointing that we did not get NPF and OSU did.  But Brian's response is that Harbaugh has done nothing in the off season to address the problem.  Is that reasonable?  How about the following: continue to coach Hudson, Stueber, and other guys on the roster; furiously pursuing an NFL bound grad transfer to the point that we at least have a decent shot at getting him (yes, he's probably going to Texas), and we actually did recruit OT's this year.  It looks like we're also forcing Drevno to focus exclusively on the O-line this year, something that Brian heralded him for when he first came here.  

The fact that we did not get an elite OT recruit has zero impact on the 2018 season, which is the big thing that matters.  But, no, Harbaugh has not done nothing.  Very few teams, if any, have no issues that need to be addressed at this point in the year.  So, while O-line stinkiness has been really frustrating, let's not throw in the white towel on a team that is in great to good shape in almost all position groups.

TK

February 16th, 2018 at 10:19 AM ^

I’m not surprised Brian is shoveling dirt on Michigan’s offense. Brian has long been a pro style-man ball hater and had quite the affinity for Rich Rods exciting basketball on grass (even though it always bogged down against defenses with a pulse). I think he tolerated Harbaughs style because it worked reasonably well the first two years. First year of struggles and I’m not surprised he pushed the eject button.

champswest

February 16th, 2018 at 10:27 AM ^

big fan of Harbaugh’s offense either. I don’t know if the system is weak or just lacks the personal to make it work, but teams don’t seem to have too much trouble stopping it.

Gobgoblue

February 16th, 2018 at 10:37 AM ^

that agrees with Brian's doom and gloom of the OL and OC situation.  The only thing I don't get is he's currently calling the OL atrocious, but during the season he was one of the first people to start the drumbeat that the run-blocking was actually going quite well and due for a breakout.  Which it did.  So we sucked at pass-pro, yes, but we weren't all around terrible?

 

Just wondering why he's forgetting that part. 

LKLIII

February 16th, 2018 at 12:27 PM ^

The way I viewed out offense last year was this:



It was across the board atrocious early in the season to the point where her couldn't put even bad teams away early. Then our run game improved significantly so that we could crush bad teams and reasonably beat OK teams. But since our passing game never developed we'd get bogged down against good to great teams due to being one dimensional. Then the USC bowl game was just s shit show mostly due to self inflicted wounds/TOs on offense and special teams.

LKLIII

February 16th, 2018 at 12:30 PM ^

I'll also say that as fun as our offense was to watch in 2015 and 2016, it was very bipolar. We'd like obliterate bad to average teams then I feel like we'd hit brick walls against the good ones. Basically our offense never played "up to" our toughest opponents.