Decent Article (AA News, Baumgardner) on UM QBs in 2017
http://www.mlive.com/wolverines/index.ssf/2017/01/2017_sneak_peek_wilto…
To the chagrin of many on this board, I am sure, Baumgardner points out how hard it will be for Peters to unseat Speight. But a fun little read in this dead period...
January 16th, 2017 at 4:25 PM ^
I, for one, hope it's incredibly difficult for Peters to unseat Speight because that would mean Speight is kicking ass. I look forward to a deep rotation and competition.
January 16th, 2017 at 4:27 PM ^
And oatmeal. And sugar free butterscotch candies. Those are some other things you look forward to...
January 16th, 2017 at 4:44 PM ^
Oatmeal and "deep rotation" just seem awkward in the same post, even though the point of eating oatmeal is to get some deep rotation in your GI tract, and I am easing into that time in life where this isn't necessarily a bad thing to experience now and again.
January 16th, 2017 at 5:27 PM ^
The polite term for the technician trying to untangle the colonoscopy snake in the middle of the procedure.
January 16th, 2017 at 5:37 PM ^
...has been 80 years old for the past 40 years.
January 16th, 2017 at 6:08 PM ^
Maybe he's a vampire? Wouldn't that suck? To get turned into a vampire, but not when you are young and attractive and virile, but when you are old as fuck and wrinkled and pathetic?
January 17th, 2017 at 7:56 AM ^
January 17th, 2017 at 9:47 AM ^
He played Ragnar and Kirk Douglas played Ragnar's son, Einar. Kirk Douglas was a year older than Ernest Borgnine.
January 17th, 2017 at 3:58 PM ^
and the origin of my sig.
Funfact: Jamie Lee Curtis was conceived on location during production.
January 16th, 2017 at 6:52 PM ^
January 16th, 2017 at 4:35 PM ^
January 16th, 2017 at 6:14 PM ^
January 16th, 2017 at 6:22 PM ^
Strictly in terms of football
January 16th, 2017 at 4:27 PM ^
in an entierly BS and unfair bit of "analysis," I was reminded way, way too much of Speight when I was watching Brock Osweiler this weekend. Unfair, sure, but that's gonna stick with me.
January 16th, 2017 at 4:34 PM ^
I'm with ya. Misses too many throws, can't make plays with his legs, decision making falls off a cliff against good defenses. I really hope Peters wins. It'd be nice to have a 2nd year Peters leading us for a potential national championship run in 2018.
January 16th, 2017 at 5:03 PM ^
It's a football romanticism among fans that will probably always exist. The idea that the unknown (especially when giving considerable hype or recruiting stars) backup QB could be better than the already known.
O'Korn was "the guy" among the fanbase last offseason, and Speight beat him out. But only until O'Korn came in against Indiana and looked like a guy who had never thrown a pass in a real game before did the debate really end (even with some remaining nevery happy fringe it still exists).
I believe Speight will be our QB next year, and I believe he will be again very good. He's by all accounts a hard worker, competitor, with a very nice arm and great pocket presence. He also has a year of experience under his belt and plays the leader role very well.
Will he be truly elite? No, he isn't that level of talent and our O line issues likely won't allow the opportunity for that to happen. But, for next year I believe he is our best option and the one I have the most confidence in.
January 16th, 2017 at 5:09 PM ^
It's less pining for the backup QB and more pining for Harbaugh's hand-picked QB who, yes, came in as a significantly higher ranked recruit. I don't really care that Speight padded his stats against the likes of Maryland and UCF. Get it done against the Iowas, OSUs, and FSUs of the world and I'll have more faith in him leading this team next year. Since he didn't, I really don't. I think Peters has vastly higher upside and would love to see him get a year of experience under his belt before leading a potential national championship contender in 2018.
January 16th, 2017 at 5:19 PM ^
Agreed the Harbaugh hand picked side of the argument is persuasive. However, Peters wasn't an uber 5 star can't miss type guy. He also seems incredibly quiet/reserved and would need to beat out an established leader.
Higher upside, sure. But I'm not looking at next year or any year as a throwaway year under Harbaugh, the team has enough raw talent to complete for a B1G title in 2017.
I also think you are giving Speight a lot of blame for a guy playing in road games vs very good teams with a below average offensive line and not much of a run game to lean on.
January 16th, 2017 at 5:33 PM ^
Well, he was terrible against Iowa, there's no sugar coating it. And Iowa wasn't even that good. Against OSU he played better and proved himself to be one tough customer, but still wasted one of the best defensive efforts we'll see by handing OSU 14 of their 17 regulation points. FSU was less his fault because yeah our OL got whooped and we should've won that game if not for a special teams mistake, but still he missed throws that were there to be made. With a likely step back in defense next year we're gonna need more out of our QB play. Harbaugh can not start 0-3 against OSU, he's gonna need a QB that can win that game and I'm not sure Speight is it.
January 16th, 2017 at 5:43 PM ^
Yup, I'll put Iowa on him but not the other 2. He's hard to decipher because in those games he made some great plays and great throws, while also having periods of just being flat out inaccurate and a couple critical mistakes. His accuracy really is an enigma as it tended to go through swings even within the same games, almost drive to drive.
I guess what I really loved from Speight was his feel and movement in the pocket, and his ability to take shots and make throws. Pocket prescense is hard to teach and such a rarity in college. He always felt/looked in control, he just inexplicably would go through periods of poor accuracy.
If Peters is ready and better sure go with him, we will never really know until the season, but my opinion with the data I have right now I think Speight will be the guy still.
January 16th, 2017 at 6:14 PM ^
Feel and movement in the pocket is what you loved about him? Big f-in deal. How about consistently not delivering when the games were close at the end of the year. If he doesn't take a leap forward, I still say you have to go with the future. You're ending up pissing away a year of experience with a McCaffrey or Peters that could be a pretty damn good team in 2018. Like if he doesn't handle Florida, MSU and PSU and the team is sitting at 2 or 3 losses while he looked terrible in those games, you have to move on. I want Peters to take it.
January 16th, 2017 at 6:51 PM ^
The Iowa game plan was an abortion - every bit as bad as Meyer's game against MSU last year. In a nutshell: if you can't run up the middle, throw it deep. If you can't throw it deep, run up the middle. That was the offensive game plan. How many deep throws? About 7 or 8, and none of them were even close. Harbaugh is usually pretty good at finding something that works - see OSU first three quarters, and FSU in the second half. Iowa? His worst so far at UM... He seemed desperate to take the top off with a bomb, and forced them. Speight wasn't good, but that whole game plan sucked.
OSU he was still injured. Pretty game performance for an injured QB that couldn't throw any farther than 20 yards in the air... FSU was just a damn good defense that battered him. I thought he shook it off and played pretty well in the second half. Remember that for a bad kick off coverage, UM wins that game.
I thought Speight was pretty good for a red shirt Sophomore...
January 16th, 2017 at 9:04 PM ^
Thought he was very good for his first full year as starter. The narrative among most fans on Speight would be 180 degrees if Barrett gets called short, we win that game, then likely a big ten title and playoff berth.
But we didn't, so people want change because they did not get the result they wanted.
I hope Peters is that good and can win the job, I just think it's unlikely.
January 17th, 2017 at 1:37 AM ^
A 180 for Speight in that game would have him winning the game, because I and many others think he lost it. JT being short FTW doesn't erase the 14 points he gave up. He did a fair job this year, but we can do better at the position - quite possibly with Peters. Maybe Speight is our best option next year. That's fine then. It's a meritocracy, so this is all moot. I just don't understand why many are so high on Speight based on 2016.
January 17th, 2017 at 8:21 AM ^
"Thought he was very good for his first full year as starter."
I thought he was pretty middling.
There were about 15 other first year starters in CFB who played better.
January 16th, 2017 at 11:12 PM ^
I think that's a fair assessment. However, watching Speight it seems clear that he doesn't have a really high ceiling. Peters has a higher ceiling, the question is how fast he can close the gap to Speight who has a full season of game experience.
Now that the bloom seems to be off O'Korn, I'm sure we'll all be watching garbage time next season to see how close Peters is to overtaking Speight's handle on the position, or not.
January 17th, 2017 at 1:46 PM ^
I agree the Iowa was abysmal, but, I complete understand him trying to take the top off. You do that once, and now the secondary can't collapse in on your run-game as easily.
January 16th, 2017 at 9:17 PM ^
January 17th, 2017 at 9:35 AM ^
Landry Jones in Pittsburgh.
January 17th, 2017 at 9:46 AM ^
will bring out the best of all of the QB's and I think it will be a tight race all the way up to September. I feel Peters has a great chance to be the guy next year, but time will tell.
For people that think he can't be unseated just talk to guys like Rudock and O'Korn about loosing the starting QB role..... It happens all the time.
January 17th, 2017 at 11:09 AM ^
January 17th, 2017 at 3:17 PM ^
Harbaugh didn't prepare the #2 QB properly, IMO. Indiana was the 11th game of the season and O'Korn had practically no quality time in as QB. That is being set up for failure. Harbaugh should have had O'Korn in on multiple occasions, especially during the more one-sided games. He didn't and therefore you can't expect the backup to come in after 10 games and play anything like the starter. At the start of the 2016 season, like Michigan, Wisconsin had two QBs, neither of whom had clearly separated themselves from the other. Unlike Harbaugh, however, Paul Chryst gave about the same amount of playing time to both QBs during the season. That worked out pretty well for them. When our #1 went down, we were done.
January 16th, 2017 at 5:04 PM ^
January 16th, 2017 at 6:02 PM ^
This is a time when stats deserve a second look. What's that QBR against Iowa. OSU, and Wisconsn only?
January 16th, 2017 at 5:39 PM ^
January 16th, 2017 at 9:20 PM ^
January 16th, 2017 at 4:35 PM ^
says a lot about our QB:
"Speight's pro rating came in at a 94.7. That's really good, especially for a first-year starter. The 2,538 yards rank No. 10 on Michigan's all-time single-season list."
January 16th, 2017 at 4:43 PM ^
haven't been able to say that for quite a while, so whomever the starter is, we'll be in good shape.
January 16th, 2017 at 5:10 PM ^
And adept depth definitely depends on developing decent additions and diminishing debuting deployments.
January 16th, 2017 at 4:56 PM ^
I like Speight, he did better than I expected this season.
He gets a ton of criticism I don't think he deserves.
January 16th, 2017 at 4:57 PM ^
Pocket presence with no oline was great in most cases this year - moved around very impressively back there. That gets offset by missing open throws and some bad decisions...but do those go away if he's not worried about being killed.
January 16th, 2017 at 5:04 PM ^
I think the obvious thing we as fans point to is inconsistency against the tough teams on our schedule. He had some great moments against OSU and FSU. He had some terrible moments against Iowa, OSU, and FSU.
Most notably I think is the accuracy of the deep ball. I think we all saw in our three losses, if we can't scare a defense with a deep threat, they'll stack the box, take away our middling running game, and jump our crossing routes.
What I'm most interested in is seeing him develop chemistry with a basically brand new receiving group.
Deep threats are Crawford, Harris, Peoples-Jones, Black, and Hawkins.
That pecking order will need to be figured out quickly, so Speight can start developing chemistry with the starters.
January 16th, 2017 at 5:13 PM ^
January 16th, 2017 at 11:17 PM ^
That's where I think the comparison to Ruddock gets interesting. Ruddock started poorly, but improved and finished strong. Speight started off much stronger, but fizzled a bit at the end. Some of that may have been due to a shoulder injury, and the fact he wasn't as experienced as Ruddock.
Man, I would've loved to have had Ruddock for the FSU game. UM would've won walking away with a QB that played as well in the bowl game as Ruddock played the previous January. There's always next year...
January 17th, 2017 at 10:56 AM ^
You have to remember that first of all, Ruddock already had two years of starting experience in the B1G prior to starting for Michigan. He also had to start on the road against a good team in a tough environment, after only practicing with the team for about a month.
Speight had no starting experience before this year. He appeared to regress as the season went on because the schedule was favorable early, with all games being at home. There will always be some bumps along the way with a first year QB, and they showed up in tough road games. I still think there is enough to be optimistic about with Speight, especially after all he went through in his first year.
January 16th, 2017 at 5:17 PM ^