OSU violations and Hoke's expectations
The OSU stuff doesn't change my expectations of Hoke at all. Both are independent; OSU is just providing some great schadenfreude. A BCS bowl is not unreasonable at all. It should be an expectation within three years.
Hoke is expected to win the B1G every year.
I think the idea that UM will beat OSU in recruiting because of the Tressel situation is simply wishful thinking. Maybe we will get a few more recruits for a year or so. Maybe not. A lot may depend on the sanctions to the program.
Are you suggesting that it's basically impossible for Michigan to outrecruit OSU? History certainly argues against that.
I had the same from RR. I love what Hoke is doing and unlike some people here (cough*Brian*sough), I don't spend my waking hours trying to put him down, but Hoke does NOT get a free pass for being a legacy. It is BCS bowl within 3 years or the door.
And its that line of thinking that put Notre Dame in the shithole they are currently in [admittedly possibly climbing out of after ~20 or so years of ineptitude]
Even if JT was still the head man @ OSU, and the recent challenges they're facing never transpired I would by all means expect Hoke to have Michigan in a BCS bowl in 3 yrs. I won’t go as far as saying now that JT’s gone he should be in a BCS bowl in less time, but the path in my opinion is a little easier.
James Ross, RJS, Bolden, etc. will only be sophomores in 2013. OSU will be very talented for the next several years even if it's hit with severe sanctions. Nebraska and Wisconsin should be very tough to beat too. I see Michigan's roster as having too many holes to expect the team to have a BCS-bowl season until 2014. I'm not saying it won't happen but I don't think it will be fair to expect it.
I expect Brady Hoke to coach his first game as Michigan's head coach on Sept. 3rd. I expect that 13 or 14 weeks after that we might have enough information to project 3 years down the line.
With all of the talent that we have coming back and Ohio State imploding anything less than 10 wins will be a huge disappointment.
We had 7 wins last year. From what I read Hoke is a fantastic coach so he should easily collect 3 more wins than Rodriguez (especially since the players will all have one more year in the weight room and a lot of experience as underclassmen the past few years).
I think Hoke is going to be able to put together strong classes every year as it would seem that he has great relationships everywhere.
OSU is a bit of a mystery. The state produces talent year in and year out and many of those talented youngsters are born and raised on OSU football. Hoke has again stated that he will concentrate his effiorts in the Midwset especially in places like OHIO. If OSU has the kind of sanctions that it should they will have a hard time drawing top of of state Talent. We will be the team on the rise and it will literally be between us and them for their only really solid recruiting area for the next several years. If we can put together a solid season this year like 8 or 9 wins with a good showing in conference play, and they implode and only win 7 or 8 it could really be devastating to them.
Games they could/should lose this year . . .
@ Miami - Obviously Miami has had a change as well, but under completely different circumstances and much more time to build unity and focus. AND IT WILL BE 1 Million DEGREES. . . Quite a pickel for Fickel . . . sorry I just had to!
Michigan State - this would be the one time that State should thoeretically have an advantage even though is at OSU. A relativly experience MSU team with something to prove and OSU coming off playing two/three horrible teams, and having an inexperienced QB to start Big10 play.
@ Nebraska - enough said.
Wisconsin - this one in my opinion could go either way as Wisconsin will be having a new QB as well. I think these teams will be mirror images of eachother this year with new QB's, predominantly running the ball, playing good D, and needing their QB to not throw picks and just make 2 or 3 plays a game.
Penn State - Tricky game as one of their QB's should have some experience by this time and its at home. Momentum will have a lot to do with this one as OSU may have already lost 3 or 4 by now and be feeling a little down. PSU strikes me as another team with something to prove this year. Between the 2 QB's one will have emerged and they will beat OSU 23 to 20 or some such thing.
MICHIGAN WOLVERINES - I wont go into this one too much. All I will say is that it is at AA and if we have any momentum at all I thik we get them. Its been a LOOOOONG time.
The MSU game is in East Lansing.
Ohio State's schedule. They host the Spartan's on Oct. 1
I don't know that I change any of my own expectations at all, but I think without a doubt this is going to benefit Hoke's ramp-up. I believe we are definitely going to get some recruits that we might have lost out on to JT. Furthermore, I think the recruits with the best parents are going to push their kids to UM over TSIO, and recruits with good parents are desirable. The Pryor's of the world (lets be honest, TP has probably received some shitty parenting to turn in to such a knucklehead) can keep going somewhere else.
Have truly taken over MGoBlog.
to out-recruiting tosu is beating tosu with some frequency. Success attracts recruits. Failure not so much.
If Al Borges can figure out how to drive the Shelby GT he has inherited without turning it into a Focus, Michigan has a chance to go 10-2 or even 11-1 and go to a BCS game this year. Otherwise, three years is a good timetable. The 2013 schedule sets up well, and there will be enough bodies on defense by then.
We know the defense is in good hands now. We know Brady Hoke can lead and recruit. The rest is up to the offense. For better or worse, Al Borges will decide where the team goes in the foreseeable future. It can be an average of 3.67 losses per season as it was in Carr's last three years, or it can be competing for national championships more years than not, as it should be from a school that calls itself "the leaders and best."
If I get a vote, it's "leaders and best."
Now that the B1G has a conf championship I personally think that the 2 teams that go to that game will probably end up in a BCS Bowl. That being said, I think that within 2 years you will have Michigan in the Rose Bowl and Nebraska in an at large Bowl.
Believe you will see TOSU lose a statistically significant greater amout of talent to Michigan, PSU, and then ND. I could see ND and PSU swapping spots if something happens that is uncoordinated with respect to JoePa. What this does for Hoke et al is a surge in talent on average that they would not have gotten had TOSU been on the straight-and-narrow and strong. This turmoil can't help Michigan on the field this year. Some dividends in 12. 13 - 19 will benefit quite a bit in my opinion. This improvement in overall "mix" should yield at least one win more per season in the out years.
BCS by 13.
We've won six Big Ten games in three years. Top to bottom, the league is as tough as it has ever been, especially with Nebraska arriving. I can't see speculating on a BCS berth until we show we can finish .500 or better in our own conference. Michigan State was one of the weakest Big Ten champs the league has seen in 10 years (granted, they didn't play OSU, but they were unmasked by Alabama), and the Spartans dominated us. We couldn't get a hand on their running backs.
Like everyone, I love what I'm seeing out of the new staff, but let's see who lines up at linebacker and in the secondary before we get carried away. On the D-line, is Will Campbell any good? Who backs up him and Martin, talent or just a couple of bodies?
To me, suggesting that we could go to a BCS game this year, with this defense, when we lost to the six best teams we played last year, well, that's quite a reach. In Denard's senior season, I can see us making a run. If we even find ourselves even PLAYING for a berth in the first Big Ten title game this year, that would be a tremendous season.
I do have one expectation I feel confident about: Hoke's team will get better as the season goes along and will end the collapses we've been suffering through.
I am not saying that Michigan will be in a BCS bowl this year, but what where State's expectations last year coming off a 6-7 year? They would have been in a BCS bowl with their 11-1 record if not for the bad luck having having 2 other teams with huge fan bases with the same record in their conference. Despite their defense last year, Michigan has as good if not better talent than State had a year ago.
On defense, I think State had more talent than we did last year. Our secondary was pretty bad and the linebackers were nothing to get excited about.
If MSU and Wisconsin play at the end of the season or in the Big Ten Title game (which would have been the match up had the new format existed last season), Wisconsin is a double-digit favorite. They were very fortunate to play them at the time of the year that they did.
They didn't play OSU. If OSU is anywhere near as good as Iowa . . .
They were outplayed against Purdue, NW, and ND. They easily coulda blown it against PSU as well.
Bottom line, they were 11-1 in the regular season, so whatever, it is what it is. 11-1 by any way accomplished is something to be proud of. Howeva, I just can't agree with saying they had bad luck last year.
State got every bounce to go their way last year and they did not have to play OSU. The bad luck comment referred that they just happened to have their best year in decades at the same time OSU and Wisconsin had good years. I think State will be solid this year and years to come, but there is no way they are repeating last year's record anytime soon. My point was that things are never as bad as they seem and never as good as they seem(see Ohio St.) . State's defense was not good in 2009, especially the secondary, and they did a 180 last year. Why can't Michigan do the same?
where Stan, Ogre and the Alpha Betas were lifting weights? Stan was trying to get Ogre all upset and after a string of insults finished by calling Ogre "nice." Ogre freaks out, yells and then curls (what he previously couldn't lift one more time) like a 100 times in a row.
In this analogy, I'm Ogre. An unreasonable meathead who heard one word, and flipped out. I knew it when I was doing it. Nothing against you or your overall point. I just couldn't stand there holding fake weights and not respond after hearing "bad luck."
Most people had a basement of 8-4 for them, and that was with us beating them. Mainly because their schedule was really easy. I think even Rosenberg had them going 10-2, and he doesn't know anything. If a bunch of teams aren't as good as expected, anyone (including us) could have a shot, but it's not as easy as MSU had it.
I'm still saying we'll go as far as the defense takes us. I have no doubt in Mattisons abilities, what remains to be seen is if that talent on the field can deliver. Reality is that if they still consistantly look lost, cannot make open field tackles & get physically pushed around by the Wisconsins of the world. It really matters not what the offense does. Our record will be similar to last year. 7-5.
I dont believe that will be the case though. I think the defense will improve drastically this year and we'll see the W's to go with it. Offensively I'll gladly take 75% of last years production delivered on a consistent basis from game to game and if we lose some games 21-17 so be it. We can at least say we were in it. In other words, as long as nobody can run the ball 20+ times in a row on us, I could give a damn what the offense does. I'd rather lose 14-10 and be pining for that turnover or field position advantage we needed than lose 56-42 and have to pray on every possesion that we dont turn it over because we cant stop them even if they play their whole bench.
A BCS bid within three years is more than fair. Take a look at the list of elite coaches out there and see how long it took them to achieve their breakthrough season. It very frequently occurred in year 2 or 3. That said, their first seasons were often rocky, so expectations for 2011 should be tempered.
I hope everyone will at least acknowledge what you said about first seasons. I start to worry about future negativity and disappointment when I see people predict 11-1 for this year.
There is no rational reason to expect this staff to go 11-1 in its first year. If it happens, we can party in the streets. I'll drive to Ann Arbor and am good for a keg to get things started.
But the 3-year reality check is staring right at us: 15-22 overall, 6-18 in the Big Ten. That's not just a lot of tough breaks, that's bad football. Until we start beating good teams again, it's foolhardy to just EXPECT VICTORY because we've got new coaches.
Regardless of RR's post-firing revisionist spin, this team was not about to turn the corner -- the defense got worse every year the past three, dropping to a stunning level of poor play. This is a year to hopefully reverse the defensive slide and get the ship righted. Anything beyond that is gravy because the roster still needs help. It's easy to sit here and point to all these teams we COULD beat, but, you know, those teams are sitting there looking at us and thinking the same thing. I mean, San Diego State thinks they have a great shot at beating us. Not saying they will, but the team Hoke left behind is not bad.
The difference that I am expecting to see under Brady Hoke is that I believe we will actually improve as the season goes on. RR had his strongest games at the beginning, and then the wheels came off. For whatever reason, we collapsed as we got to the Big 10 games. With Hoke, I am expecting that we will continue to compete in the Big 10 games instead of just rolling over. The Hoke era should involve fighting for 12 games, not being competitive for six, and then just imploding.
As far as ND, I think Brian Kelly is a great coach, so he may reverse this trend, BUT, look how many coaches have entered ND with great fanfare since Lou Holtz left. Then consider that several of them had their best seasons in their first year or two. It's probably reasonable to wait and see how they perform before proclaiming them top ten material. After all, the last ten or so times that was predicted turned out to be a bust . . .
I totally agree with the statement that we will get better as the year goes on this year, and thats what was missing with RR. Yes we had a great offense with a dynamic playmaker, but that really was about it.
I think that one of the biggest if not thee biggest improvement for this coming Fall will be the play of our special teams units especially our kicking game. Hagerup looked good in the Spring Game with several really nice punts. If this Wilie kid is anywhere near a good kicker and can show some ability to show stability imagine the help that would be. How bad was playcalling in key spots and on 4th downs last year because we couldnt kick a 20yd FG!! Its a momentum killer and really hurt us bad. If we have a kicking game all other parts of the team will play better . . . its a mind game, but it is what it is.
A comment: "I think that one of the biggest if not thee biggest improvement for this coming Fall will be the play of our special teams units especially our kicking game."
Remember that Brady Hoke has an excellent reputation for developing teams that are very solid in the basics. Tackling, fielding punts, kicking field goals, punt coverage, . . . etc.
Special teams SHOULD show a significant improvement this year.