The BTN Crew All Picked UM to Finish 3rd

Most sports writers/analysts are complete idiots who have neither the ability nor the desire to scratch beneath the surface.  Give them a plausible line that others are saying, and they will all follow behind lemming style.  I'm actually delighted that the sportswriters see so little in us.  They know nothing, but their words can be a real motivation to our boys.

Picking us 3rd in the division is a safe pick, and it's not exactly hot take city over there. They're also basing this analysis off of what they saw in the first week of fall camp. I'm going to guess that, given our youth, we are the most improved team since they saw us. 

We are breaking in a bunch of freshman/sophomore receivers.  Our QB last year had accuracy issues that doomed the tail end of our season.  With an unproven passing attack, you want to learn on the running game, but our OL has not been dominant in at least 10 years and none of our RBs have been the lead back.  

I'm buying a 3rd place finish and a 9-3 record until the offense proves it's capable of moving the ball and scoring points.

Meh. It's the easy pick to make. Pretty constant with all "analysts". 

I'm personally predicting a 2nd place Big Ten finish.

Bring it on

...this is me when I watch Dave Wannstedt:

"I stayed at The Clown Village Inn last night"

-Dinardo

we could possibly finish. The Penn State bandwagon is full and ready to crash and burn. The division will come down to the last game.

Get offended all you want but if you had to lay down the rent money for the month are you really picking Michigan to win the B10?  I'm not.  

But Nick Saban was right...why even play the games?  

 

BTW first time poster, Michigan football fan since 1980. i am delighted to see a Bo protegé leading the team, and especially delighted it's Jim Harbaugh. The creativity, deception, speed, and brutality of his offensive philosophy is exactly what the program needed.

I think 3rd place is far too negative, and PSU is overrated. Their one offensive strength plays right into the teeth of Michigan's defense.  Wiscy is always tough at Camp Randall, but defeat is not a foregone conclusion.  

But at this point, all I want this team to really do is beat the hell out of Ohio State. Everything else is gravy.

I understand the logic but cannot understand how everyone picked the same. I did not watch it but OP makes it sound like everyone picked the same way. Now that is one big groupthink.

If that involves beating OSU, then so be it. 

While the BTN crew might be good at some things, predicting game outcomes or win totals doesn't seem to be one of them.  

I read an article a few days ago talking about sharp bets in Vegas, and one mentioned was taking the under on the prediction of 9.5 wins for Penn State. If they only win 9 games (or fewer), there's little chance they will finish in the top 2 of the Big Ten East.

Unless I was just hearing things , I heard Denardo last night say that last years MSU was still the most talented Dantonio team next to his 2015 team. Unmmm, a 3-9 team was more talented than their Rose Bowl or Cotton Bowl winning team or those teams with Cousins that won 10 plus games ?!

This is pretty understandable.  PSU absolutely feels like a candidate to finish below preseason expectations, but it's still a top-15 outfit at worst.  OSU is OSU.  Michigan being #2/#3 would make 100% sense.  The problem Michigan has is that the B1G East is maybe the best division in football (the ACC Atlantic is probably deeper all around but doesn't have 3 elite teams at the top), and so being a top-10 team may only get you into the third slot.

That said, I'm optimistic this season will finish well and be a great springboard for 2018.  And who knows, maybe Michigan catches fire and sneaks into the conference title game.  I certainly wouldn't be shocked.

Maybe they picked us to finish 3rd because Harbaugh has had us finish 3rd in each of his two seasons in A2. A third straight 3rd place finish would be ridiculous

We've got them all right where we want them, the same geniuses who did not forsee PSU last year winning the B1G will miss again.  The schedule lines up right, we have a 2nd year starting QB, and the talent level is much higher even if the experience is not, but that grows by leaps and bounds with each game of this season.  The experience will be there by the time we play games 11 and 12 being at Wisc, and TOSU at home.  Florida game will tell us a lot about where we are, and PSU game will tell us how good this team can be.

BTN predictions? Yawn.

Probably sounds objectively right if you were to do a "blind tasting".

Anyway, I'd always rather Michigan exceed expectations than fail to live up to them.