Colorado Snowflakes: General Observations

So my uncle is a prof at Michigan, and he told me that he went to observe one of his TA's sessions before last week's game. The TA took the last 5 minutes of the class to teach the students how to do the wave properly. I don't think his message got out quite right. The wave definitely started while Michigan was on offense, and isn't that a huge no-no?

Other than that I was really happy that the crowd stayed in the game even during the miserable first quarter. It certainly sounded loud from where I was sitting. 

I think the team came out without any fire and looking a little lazy. They reponded well with their backs against the wall. 

I was expecting some trickery from the underdogs with the past between the two head coaches. 

Trickery came out in the first drive! 

The biggest trick, imo, was the long ball by LuFau (sp?)  after getting injured. Nobody expected him to take a shot down the field after limping around when he sustained the injury and was in for one more play. We paid for that in the form of 7 points. 

Aside from that... Running game, still had trouble running downhill, but we have also been going up against teams that either have stacked the box to prevent downhill running or colorado, which has an absolute brick shithouse on their D-line.. They have some really good corners, but the rest of the secondary was easy to attack.  Getting past the front men was something that required a lot of speed and a lot of trying to win the war of attrition to wear them out a bit.   It was not as necessary in the end as I think it would have been had the QB injury not happened.  
 

I am not as worried about our running game right now as some people are, though it is an area of concern and we've really had trouble against teams that most think we should just plow through, those teams also have had varibles that compromise another part of their defense. 

Oh, Peppers... Can we stop talking about him being hype? I was so happy to see that kid finally get to house a return. 9 tackles 200+ yards.  The hype is reality. 

Getting victimized on slants and the deep ball was a bit shocking.  That TD bomb by Colorado to start the second half was not good.  Gotta be honest, I'm a little disappointed with the defense.  Thankfully we knocked their starting QB out of the game otherwise this may have gone to the wire.  I hope the Colorado DB's were all just really good because we had no separation and no vertical game.  Hate to be a gloomy voice on a 17 point win but this team has some work to do.

Need better QB play.

1. The spread offense can make a mediocre team good (Colorado).

2. The spread offense can make a good team elite (Louisville).

3. A quarterback injury should not make a team go from good to mediocre that quickly.

4. A win is a win.

I didn't like that the team came into the game flat. It felt like on the 1st offensive series, we had a drop and then CU made it look easy to stop us. Then on the punt return, it felt like our coverage team was only moderately interested in stopping the guy. That set them up with great field position and they only had to run a few of their scripted opening drive plays to score. That kind of set the tone for the 1st quarter. Vs high end opposition that could end the game before halftime.

I did like that the team didn't throw in the towel when Colorado looked like they were going to kick Michigan's asses all day long. I liked that Michigan won the 2nd quarter and then the 2nd half big.

Michigan got a few breaks but they also made some of these breaks by persistence and hard work. It's not like Colorado quit, they were a game bunch all the way and kept digging and Michigan had to fight hard.

I think we have identified a few key issues to work on here. The O-line needs to get better primarily in the running game, Speight needs to get better at identifying alternatives when primary targets are locked down. On D some of our secondary were shown their limitations - though Colorado has some legit weapons there, make no mistake - and that needs to be addressed given Brown's blitz-first approach.

But I also have the confidence that we'll be a better team in week 10 than we are now. I trust this staff more than the previous two staffs to develop the team. They seem to be a flexible group, willing to adjust things based on what they see. That sounds like common sense but it's far from the rule as people often mentally get locked in on something and then try to make it work regardless of evidence that it can't work.

I don't know if I buy a top 5 ranking at *this* point but I also think Colorado is clearly a team with a pulse and a team with some quality. I wouldn't be able to say they are worse than Pac teams like Arizona or Arizona St at this point and if they won 7+ games I wouldn't be shocked. You know people complain about low quality OOC opponents and here you get a team that competes and challenges our team and people panic asap

I think ya'll whine too much.  OSU took a big  f'n LOSS a couple years ago around this time in the season and still ended the season as national champs. 

Sure, dissect the game, but take away the first quarter shakiness (did people really underestimate this team again, especially with the coaches having a previous connection? These games happen. Did Alabama look like a championship team fighting it down to the last minute to a far inferior opponent?  

It was 38-7 after the first quarter. Sure, there is a lot to take from this game and some possible flaws were exposed in the team, but it's a W -- and a 38-7 run shows that we can adjust.  Having a 38-7 run look "sloppy" is pretty fucking good. 

I don't know or care where we "should be ranked." There will be very few undefeated teams at the end of the season, and almost zero teams that didn't have inferior opponents push them harder than putting up a bunch of points in the first quarter, tehn being outscored by more than  5:1 through the rest of the game. 

I am worried about some of the QB play, but hey, there's always something to worry about.  With the exception of field goal kicking, our special teams looks like something that could be special in a very good way this year. That's huge. 

Let's just all thank Mr. Peppers for being badass superhuman of the week and be happy to be 3-0, and put some faith in the players/coahces  to make sure we'll be 4-0 next Saturday 

General observation:

Looks like the insufferable section of the Michigan fanbase is out in full force again.