We are at a critical juncture in the RichRod era

Your argument above is different from the one I responded to. In your first post you said "i love how people are ok with us losing to the top 4 teams in the conference" and suggested that people who think that a top-5 finish in the B10 this year would be a good finish are also saying that a top-5 finish will always be acceptable. I was pointing out that the latter does not necessarily follow from the former.

In the post I am reponding to now, you said that winning more games isn't a sign of improvement; rather, it's who we beat that will show improvement. There is nothing particularly objectionable to me about this, but notice that you're no longer arguing about the extent to which posters on this board are happy with a 4- or 5-loss season. In addition,

• We've lost one game this year. And on the basis of this the sky is falling for you. Okay, but don't act like if people don't share your gloomy outlook they are somehow being Pollyanna and you're keeping it real.
• Recall that in 2008 we lost to Toledo (3-9), Purdue (4-8), Illinois (5-7), and Notre Dame (7-6). This year we beat everyone except State. I think we will beat Purdue and Illinois. This means that in two years we have gone from losing to bad teams to beating them. The final step is to shore up our defense and compete with the big boys. I see that as progress. You see it as UNACCEPTABLE. Agree to disagree, I guess.
• If you think MSU will lose 3 or 4 games, you're either high or they will turn into a terrible football team, which I don't think they are now. They finish with Iowa and the pu pu platter of Illinois, Purdue, Minnesota, and (apparently) PSU. They also play Northwestern, who might be pretty good. I see two losses max, for a 10-2 finish. I don't think there's any shame in losing to a team like that, given where we are on defense and the fact that our nuclear ninja dilithium QB has started all of 6 games.

One, instead of Delaware St., we chose a really good FCS team this year. The rest of the competition has been decent, certainly better than last year, and we won all of the OOC games.

Two, If you think MSU will end up 5-3 or 4-4 in the conference, your delusional. They beat one of the teams considered near the top in Wisky. They don't have OSU, and the hardest game left on their schedule is a game at Iowa. I think they lose maybe one game, possibly two if they take Illinois lightly. A better bet is for them to go unbeaten this year, considering Iowa's offense will be more or less one dimensional without a good running game.

Three, Indiana is good enough to beat Northwestern, Purdue, Penn St. and possibly Wisky(if at full strength). They could very well be a bowl team this year with at least 6 but possibly 7 or 8 wins. Their game against OSU was played without their starting RB and LT, and no depth on the line. Their offense at full strength would have shown up much better against OSU.

As for Denard going down, it seems to me that he missed most of a game and our offense shifted just fine to the strengths of the other two QB's we used. Granted, Denard has made our offense spectacular at times, but the offense runs quite well with Tate at the helm too.

You have too much negativity towards the team this year. I, and others, on the other hand, see the improvements and know we are starting to see the beginning of something special at UM for football. No reason to believe we can't get to where OSU has been, or beyond, and be a perennial top-ten team again.

But one must temper that expectation with the reality of where we were, and where we are heading. This offense is miles ahead of even last year's O. Our defense is a little worse, but that is expected if one looks realistically at the devastating losses of Warren and Woolfolk in our secondary. After Woolfolk went down, and we were looking at starting freshmen and first year position players in the secondary, the realistic expectations should have dropped as well. Could Carr have fielded a better D? Maybe. I don't think it would have been good enough to win games for us, like you seem to think, particularly with the losses and lack of recruits we had near the end of Carr's tenure.

Our O, while we lost to State, has played a decent D in ND. I wouldn't say that our O is worldbeaters, but to look at the MSU game and say that they haven't proven anything is asinine. Most people would say that Stanford's O is pretty good, yet ND held them to under their season average. We put up more yards, and nearly as many points as Stanford's did, with more TD's and 2 missed FG's. Our O is fine, even for B10 games. Denard made mistakes, of which none were attributable to MSU's D, that cost us a ton of points. That can be expected considering his youth.

.....that have no basis. For the last few years of Carr's teams, we have had to place younger and younger guys in the secondary, along with the LB corps. Given your statements, our D right now, near the end of Carr's recruits, should be filled with upperclassmen who are starting, particularly in the secondary. We would have had that, except for the Warren and Woolfolk situations. He still hadn't recruited a top-flite LB near the end of his tenure as coach, and as such, we field two LB's who switched positions. Carr hadn't shown near the end, any more desire or ability to recruit the top defensive players in the country than RR has, and RR was focused on the offense and getting his type players in as soon as possible.

My point was, that even if Carr had stayed, and even if our DC was consistent, we couldn't have expected much better out of his teams on the D side of the ball.

Given time, and you will see this next year, IMO, our defense will be competitive enough to win us games when our O isn't hitting on all cylinders.

He doesn't chase whores, he chases undergrads.  There's a difference.