What Did We Learn? - Michigan

Man, there is an awful lot of coping in this thread. Saying we almost won if not for a play or two...this isn't Pop Warner. There are no such things as moral victories. There won't be an asterisk next to the score.

If we're being honest, if Michigan had a competent coach, they call a timeout and make us punt at the end of the 2nd quarter; no hail mary touchdown. And then there's the o-line; they were atrocious. Teddy was the biggest violator, but Corcoran wasn't great either. Pritchett was underwhelming, to put it lightly.

To sum up, we need a massive upgrade in talent. We aren't beating anyone worth a damn without doing so. Cincinnati, Houston Christian and Akron do not count.
 
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Street Novelist said:
Man, there is an awful lot of coping in this thread. Saying we almost won if not for a play or two...this isn't Pop Warner. There are no such things as moral victories. There won't be an asterisk next to the score.

If we're being honest, if Michigan had a competent coach, they call a timeout and make us punt at the end of the 2nd quarter; no hail mary touchdown. And then there's the o-line; they were atrocious. Teddy was the biggest violator, but Corcoran wasn't great either. Pritchard was underwhelming, to put it lightly.

To sum up, we need a massive upgrade in talent. We aren't beating anyone worth a damn without doing so. Cincinnati, Houston Christian and Akron do not count.
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24 pages in, such great insight. Nobody should be allowed to see a single positive thing. Smh...

News flash. 1995 was 30 years ago.

I think if we are all honest about our evaluation of the team, we would all agree our current team would likely beat any of the Riley or Frost coached teams. That's improvement. It's ok to be a little positive.
 
Hilltop said:
24 pages in, such great insight. Nobody should be allowed to see a single positive thing. Smh...

News flash. 1995 was 30 years ago.

I think if we are all honest about our evaluation of the team, we would all agree our current team would likely beat any of the Riley or Frost coached teams. That's improvement. It's ok to be a little positive.
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LOL. You're the one living in the past. Why are you bringing up 1995? I'm talking about our current team.
 
Husker_In_WI said:
Buford absolutely has to get a piece of the RB, but there was also a stunt that made this one worse. You can't even see McCullough who is supposed to be coming inside of Davis here - this is how our OL needs to deal with stunts, just knock them off the ball because they aren't moving forward. But if McCullough got where he was supposed to go (easier said than done) or we weren't stunting, the back probably has to pick his way through a little slower. He just gets completely washed away, which is kind of understandable as a lighter edge. But I don't think it's necessarily Buford gap by design, the DL didn't get there and then Buford failed to clean it up.
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Edit: You were correct on the scrape exchange to the playside. Obvious from the endzone view. McCullough fails to get inside and that definitely contributes to the hole being as big as it was.

The scrape exchange or twist on the backside is the real killer. Typically that DE is the unblocked man and by design he's crashing down and blowing up the play with Jeudy exchanging to take the QB. On this play, Michigan makes a BOB call and has the RT block against the flow of the zone scheme. NU must have blown up a few zone reads previously for them to make that call.

I stand corrected, not 100% on Buford, but I still have to give him the blame for the housecall.
 
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Also, a lack of development in OL, DL, and RB. I could see some changes needing to happen. I think HCMR will get fired before the OL coach is replaced. RB? He has had his chance. I suppose that the DL coach needs to be given some time.
 
DrinkinwitTerrellFarley said:
95% of the teams in the country would love Dylan as their starting QB and he is getting better and truly cares about the program and the community. I think it's been a good investment so far.
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Just following the theme of your post.

Isn’t ironic that in all the great things DR has done for the program that his maximum potential may be significantly limited by his uncle? I know there’s this “family is everything” mantra that gets tossed around, but maybe it doesn’t apply to football.

And then again it was one bad game. Maybe it’s an outlier
 
krc1995 said:
Just following the theme of your post.

Isn’t ironic that in all the great things DR has done for the program that his maximum potential may be significantly limited by his uncle? I know there’s this “family is everything” mantra that gets tossed around, but maybe it doesn’t apply to football.

And then again it was one bad game. Maybe it’s an outlier
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I'm disappointed in the OL this year, but I'd say there had been steady improvement up to this year. And honestly Tackle recruiting is just really hard - if it were up to me, I'd probably just roll with Gottula at LT and Pritchett at RT. But I'm not the one who has to playcall around false starts, or deal with the team culture consequences of playing guys who are making mental errors. I don't think Donovan has been a game-changer as an OL coach, but I think he's been fine. Kinda more on the NIL side that we haven't been able to pull a top-tier tackle. That we haven't been able to develop one is on him, but that's not easy and you could argue Gottula counts even if he's been shaky to start this year.

I wouldn't go so far as to call it an outlier, but I do think it will end the season as the worst or 2nd worst performance we see on the OL. Michigan's DL is not what is was last year but it's still really, really good. Our OL needs to improve, and it sounds like Rhule is pushing the coaches to use the bye week to end the position battles and settle on who should play which will help. But we're also not going to see a DL with the depth and quality of edge players in particular until Penn State. I want to see what this team looks like against a few more Big Ten teams before totally giving up on the OL/DL.
 
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