Secondary depth is less of a concern after today. Glasgow will be contributing a lot this season.
Need the 2 safeties to stay healthy, but plenty of CBs and athletes for Brown to build a secondary.
Especially if the DL lives up to its capability. Add Solomon, Luigi and Hudson (expect Deron to RS but who knows) for summer workouts and fall camp - DL could be explosive and deep.
Also mor LB talent coming ...
D looked good but if QB play doesn't somehow take a huge step forward this team will be lucky to go 8-4.
Normal spring game day overreaction. Can always count on those.
To win 7 or less games the QB would have to be Steven Threet. Talk about an exaggeration.
Speight essentially played against the starting defense. Gary, Bush, Hurst, Kinnel, McCray, Mone were all on the other side. I'm thinking he will be fine.
Even if he was going up against the ones his passes and decisions were terrible.
That's what top 5 defenses do. They pressure quarterbacks and force bad decisions. Peters barely saw any pressure all day, and made a terrible decision himself.
Not sure what that means. Speight's fine because he played kinda meh but it was against a quality D?
Sure, our defense figures to be excellent if guys stay healthy, even given the inexperience. But if the long term goal is to win the B1G and contend for national championships then you need a QB who can perform at least fairly well against a very good D. Maybe Speight can do that; but if so he still needs to prove it.
I think Speight will definitely be better, stronger and smarter this year. But you make a good point and it's fair to point out that he had a chance to practice against the nation's best defense last year.
Having high expectations for him, if he is the starter, is warranted.
Yeah, OSU and Wisconsin will have excellent defenses. If we want to win the big games on our schedule we're gonna have to beat good defenses, which Speight hasn't proven that he can do.
He beat Wisconsin last year pretty convincingly, save for 3 missed field goals.
Our defense flat out dominated Wisconsin, in fact Speight is the only reason Wisconsin scored any points.
This either or logic makes no sense. So that Wisconsin wheel wasn't the defense's fault? Did Speight not throw a perfect ball to Darboh? Speight played well enough to beat them by two scores, but we missed three field goals. He can play well enough to beat them again.
The defense beat wisconsin last year.
You are looking at Speight in a vacuum. He was out there with half an offensive line and a bunch of new receivers who likely ran some poor routes. There's only so much you can do.
I saw very few plays where he could be comfortable in the pocket and wait for things to develop. He may have that trouble this year anyway, but he will have a better Oline group protecting him, and won't be facing a DL that good very often, if ever.
As of right now I still expect Speight to start, but he didn't look good today from what I saw and Peters looked quite good. It's not just that Peters is "the other guy" now, people have seen him show up on the field.
This looks like a long-running QB controversy now, until one of them just locks up the job with great play. Which might not be possible in 2017.
Agreed. Peters throws a very nice ball and has nice athleticism and mobility. I find it really hard to believe Speight has already earned the starting job.
No guarantees of course that the starter goes 12+ games and never gets dinged, especially given that our OL aren't world-beaters and Speight has been and may yet still be hurting. He wasn't 100% against OSU (and quite possibly any game after Colorado,) and missed the Indiana game. No reason to think something similar couldn't play out in 2017.
So even if Speight starts vs UF, I'm happy to see how good Peters looked, along with O'Korn seeming to have developed. It looked like John's fundamentals have come a long way. It's spring, but I also remember last spring and the Indiana game. Seems like a better player today. We have better options and probably two if not three guys (depending on whether you think O'Korn has improved) that could conceivably take the field this year and win a game for us.
At least we've seen Speight be productive so we know it's possible. If Peters had looked bad, we'd have no idea. Instead, there's reason for optimism now.
one thing is for sure: for the first time in at least 10 years, I feel confident in our top TWO quarterbacks. should anything happen to the starter, I have full faith in the backup.
There will be no QB controversy. Whoever JH says is staring will start and we won't be calling for anyone's head.
aww. you must be new here
Run game looked great - but does that mean run D needs work? Passing game was iffy but there I attribute it to the DL/DBs looking really good, as well as the wind. Agree that it looks like a budding QB controversy.
You're going to see our first team DL got worked on at least several plays. Wasn't always the first team LBs and safeties, but our OL got the RB to the second level (unless the DL did their.jobs and the busts were on the LBs). I'm hoping that means the OL was bad most of the game but has some potential to grow. At least in the run game. Pass pro was abysmal. Hopefully Evans has gotten better at that or he's going to be off the field on a lot of passing downs, eliminating his ability to actually catch some passes.
Walker ran well, he never had much of an opening. Really kept his legs churning and picked up something positive.
I like Walker a lot. I think he'll get a bunch of carries this season.
his TD that called back was a pretty nice run
The amount of positive vibes here for Peters are significant. This definitely heightens the competition. Jim Harbaugh says "meritocracy," and I believe it. The best man plays.
I am encouraged because JH is not an idiot. If Peters truly has passed Speight, he will see the field. We will know soon enough. I do think that the quality of Michigan's defense, especially the starting DL, makes a huge difference. I also am very encouraged by the improvement of the LB corps, which has been somewhat meh for years.
I haven't seen any comments on Robo . . . did he play? I also am waiting to see more about DPJ.
The one downer for me is the OL. I still think we need another year or two before that unit is up to snuff. I'd like to be wrong though.
Robo played. He was OK I think, though it's probably not a good sign that Hewlett ran over him on his way to that big gainer late in the game.
I think Speight will start vs Florida no matter what because he has earned Harbaugh' trust to manage a game. I don't think that's the kind of game you give a sophomore his first start.
I suspect we will see Peters in mop up duty vs Cincinnati and air force and from there a decision may be made based upon game performance.
I think it's going to be darn near impossible for Peters to jump Speight based only on practice.
It's too bad it was so windy. Don't know if we got a great assessment of what the offense can do. Given the built-in advantage of Brown's DL 2.0 featuring Supergary, it's rather easy to feel pessimistic about the offense right now. After a while, saying "take care of the damned football" over and over becomes pointless. They know.
Speights performance was underwhelming, it's still his job to lose but no matter what anyone says chulk this one up for Peters. If this continues don't be surprised when it happens
where can I get Jon Hansen's blazer?!?!
That dude.
He made the muppets, what, do you not like the muppets???
April 16th, 2017 at 11:35 AM ^
Close, but that woud be Jim Henson.
I think a few of us remember him......
We have a lot of good TE's. Eubanks and Gentry looked good.
It's no question Peters looked better. He was more mobile / athletic, decisive and precise. In Harbaugh I trust and if anyone doubts whether or not he will pull the trigger see Alex Smith / Colin Kaepernick.
Faster and quicker than I remember.
Bush will be fun to watch.
Shouldn't that last comment be on the Pornhub post from yesterday?
How good is #7 - oooh, I like him
Anywhere to catch a replay?
I'm sure something will get posted sometime tonight.
God Toby. Shut up.
I'm irrationally excited that Glasgow is pushing and has pushed his way seemingly almost to a starting position. Last year's buzz, the coaches' positive comments, and this game are not enough to make me feel as relatively optimistic about the safety position as I do now, but alas. It is something at least, to go from Kinnel and Metellus and nothing to those two and another guy. If his name were anything other than Glasgow I think I'd be panicking, which means I should probably be doing exactly that. But again alas, this is my primary takeaway from the first viewing: we probably have 3 guys who can play safety, and survive with far enough into the season for them to gain experience enough to face the primary foes.
Might have overlooked another comment on this but Nordin looked damn good too.
Thomas in the #1 jersey with the Italian flag on his helmet was my favorite part of the game. (I'm half Italian and the T in ST3 stands for Thomas.)
Probably less than half Italian if you really think about it.