mgoblog - al borges en Unverified Voracity Announces Decisions <p><img title="10468054063_06b526a9d8_z" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="10468054063_06b526a9d8_z" src="" width="564" height="424" /></p> <p align="center"><a href="" target="_blank">Maize and Blue Nation</a></p> <p><strong>The day has (mostly) come</strong>. Expect a post at about 3:35 today, as Michigan has called a press conference featuring Nik Stauskas and Glenn Robinson III at 3:30 wherein they will either announce their NBA draft futures or talk about their favorite things to put on hamburgers. Here's hoping it's the latter. </p> <p>I don't think there's a huge amount of suspense with either of those two guys. Michigan is bringing in <a href="" target="_blank">Muhammed Ali Abdur-Rahkman</a> for an official this weekend, and now there are <a href="" target="_blank">multiple reports</a> that Robinson has signed with an agent or hasn't signed but is entering the draft anyway. </p> <p>The suspense is with Mitch McGary, <a href="" target="_blank">who is not announcing</a>: </p> <blockquote><p>McGary's father, Tim McGary, told MLive on Monday night that his son has no intentions to partake in the press conference and is still undecided on whether he return to U-M or not.</p> <p>&quot;He's still back and forth on it,&quot; Tim McGary said.</p> </blockquote> <p>So he's not gone; neither is he necessarily back. He has until the 27th to make that decision; the NCAA's deadline is an entirely artificial one. </p> <p>The fact that he's still debating things is obviously good. It is not as good as McGary being ready to announce a return would be; it is still good. Scout's Brian Snow has reported <a href=";f=1088&amp;t=12817330" target="_blank">a shift of opinion</a>($) in the Indiana recruiting circles he pings regularly that is positive for Michigan, so there's that. Sam Webb confirmed, insofar as it is possible to confirm an opinion on a decision that clearly hasn't been made yet. </p> <p><img title="503x400[1]" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; float: none; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-left: auto; display: block; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; margin-right: auto" border="0" alt="503x400[1]" src="" width="507" height="404" /></p> <p align="center"><em>Abdur-Rahkman, 40 in white <br />ha no but man wouldn't that be something <br />he's the guy with the ball <br />not that I had to tell you that</em></p> <p><strong>Meanwhile, MAAR</strong>. If Michigan does settle on Abdur-Rahkman as a spring take I'll be satisfied; Beilein and company have proved they can ID a diamond in the rough and, like… MAAR for four years. Misspelled Smiths tie in acronym: yes please. </p> <p>MAAR currently has a slate of mid-major offers after a senior season in which he averaged nearly 24 points a game for Central Catholic. Joe Stapleton's article linked above indicates the seriousness of Michigan's interest—Beilein calls him &quot;at least three times a week&quot;*—despite the fact that he is not just a shooter because he's not, in fact, a shooter: </p> <blockquote><p>Abdur-Rahkman would be a slight departure from the prototypical Michigan recruit in that he isn’t known for his shooting. In fact, the graduating senior said that while his shot has improved, he made his living getting to the rim and playing great man-to-man defense.</p> </blockquote> <p>A defensive stopper type would be welcome, and shooting can develop. If Michigan was to offer it doesn't seem like it'll take a whole lot of thought from MAAR: </p> <blockquote><p>“(Michigan is) definitely the top school.”</p> </blockquote> <p>Abdur-Rahkman also deviates from the Beilein model in that he's old for his class. In fact, he is <a href="" target="_blank">literally as old as you can be</a> and still play high school basketball in Pennsylvania: </p> <blockquote><p>Abdur-Rahkman turned 16 on Sept. 1 at the start of his freshman year, which means, of course, he turned 19 on Sept. 1 of this past year. The cutoff date for meeting the PIAA's age requirement is Sept. 1, meaning that had Muhammad been born on Aug. 31, he would have had to be part of the 2013 graduating class.</p> </blockquote> <p>He'll be 20 by the time he arrives on campus. Good for immediate readiness, bad for upside. Kind of like grabbing a hockey player after a couple years of JUCO.</p> <p>*[They deregulated phone calls in men's basketball, if that sounds like a violation to you. Kelvin Sampson sighs heavily at home about this.]</p> <p><strong>WELP</strong>. Here's <a href="" target="_blank">this draft evaluation</a> of Taylor Lewan from SBNation that discusses Taylor Lewan, who is of interest to us as a Michigan alum who is likely to go in the top half of the first round of the draft. </p> <blockquote><h3><b>What a shitty offense</b></h3> </blockquote> <p>Uh… what?</p> <blockquote><p>So I wanted to focus this breakdown on Taylor Lewan, not the severe annoyance I had with the way Michigan used him. But since it was the one thing that stood out to me the most while watching Lewan play, I am going to go ahead and address it right off the bat.</p> </blockquote> <p>Oh. </p> <blockquote><p>Now look, I don't profess to be some kind of expert on offenses, but some things about football I just feel like should be common sense. For instance, if you have a superior blocker at left tackle, most of your help from tight ends and running backs, whether it be run blocking or pass blocking, should go to the other four guys. It should also allow you to design plays built around his athleticism to help get your skill position players free out in space. Stuff like smoke screens (WR takes one step forward then one step back to catch the ball while his blockers lead up in front of him) or really any kind of screens, counter plays (where you pull the offensive guard and tackle from one side of the center to the other side of the center) and any number of sweep plays (runs designed to get wide outside of the offensive tackle).</p> <p>I didn't see much of that in the five games that I watched. Furthermore, why in the <i><b>HELL </b></i>did Michigan keep a tight end to Lewan's side so damn much? He obviously didn't need the help. The quarterback was right handed anyway (with bootlegs you like for the tight end to be lined up to the side of the quarterback's throwing hand), and they could have potentially had a wide receiver there instead of a tight end. It would've increased the chances of success on passing downs as well as run downs if you get the opposing defenses spread themselves out. But is that what Michigan did?</p> <p>HEEEEEELLLLLL NOOOOOOOO</p> </blockquote> <p>This very long blockquote is not the end of former NFL DE Stephen White's evisceration of last year's Michigan offense, despite it being a very long blockquote. I expect that White will be getting some very stern comments from the folks around here who fought the rearguard action for Team Borges with such heroic ferocity last season when I made statements like &quot;this is stupid,&quot; &quot;this makes no sense,&quot; and &quot;it is bad when your tailbacks run 27 times for 27 yards.&quot; </p> <p>Michigan protected Taylor Lewan with a tight end so often that it made it hard for this draft evaluator to, you know, evaluate Taylor Lewan. Meanwhile, the interior of the line was a highway to Devin Gardner's ribs. And the kicker is: <em>the tight ends couldn't even block</em>. Michigan was tossing away its main advantage on the line—dang good tackles—because of their philosophy about manballin' it. That's alarming, because that seems like it comes from the top. It's all well and good to be Stanford or Alabama if you can be that, but when you're on your way to dead last TFLs… probably not. </p> <p>We'll see. Rubber hits the road in September.</p> <p><strong>Oh, good</strong>. Putting Chad Lindsay on 27 tickets turns out to be premature, as the Alabama transfer is getting his woo on. After his visit to Michigan he hit up Louisville and Oklahoma; this week he's headed to Cal and… <a href="" target="_blank">Ohio State</a>. Oh goody. </p> <p>OSU lost four seniors off last year's line and can pitch Lindsay playing time, and you know there's nothing in the world Urban would like more than grabbing Lindsay away from Michigan even if he ends up sitting on the bench the whole year. <em>Especially</em> if he ends up sitting on the bench the whole year.</p> <p><img title="its-a-trap-what-happens-when-advertisers-dont-meet-twitters-spending-quotas[1]" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; float: none; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-left: auto; display: block; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; margin-right: auto" border="0" alt="its-a-trap-what-happens-when-advertisers-dont-meet-twitters-spending-quotas[1]" src="" width="404" height="300" /></p> <p>Get out of there while you still can, Chad. </p> <p><strong>This will help you feel better about the previous section</strong>. Someone's <a href="" target="_blank">really into Amir Williams</a> saying coach be all over his di—</p> <p><img title="BlMNHK6CIAAT05N[1]" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; float: none; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-left: auto; border-left: 0px; display: block; padding-right: 0px; margin-right: auto" border="0" alt="BlMNHK6CIAAT05N[1]" src="" width="397" height="484" /></p> <p>For pants sake, lady, can you see a camera without reflexively extending your tongue and squinting? I submit that you cannot. </p> <p><strong>Mascot of the week.</strong> The El Paso Chihuahuas' Chico has been <a href="" target="_blank">hanging with Eight Ball the Tiger</a>: </p> <p><img title="BlN9Av-CUAANIdp[1]" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="BlN9Av-CUAANIdp[1]" src="" width="564" height="422" /></p> <p>Mascots should be as frightening as possible. I approve.</p> <p><strong>YUP</strong>. It's almost like arguments against a college football playoff weren't particularly good ones.</p> <blockquote lang="en" class="twitter-tweet"><p>40 bowl games next year. Man, I am old enough to remember when the worthless suits who run CFB said a playoff would kill all the bowl games</p> <p> — jamie mac (@justcoverblog) <a href="">April 15, 2014</a></p></blockquote> <script async src="//" charset="utf-8"></script><p>Our worthless suit overlords think so little of us they kept the guy who was issuing these proclamations around to issue the exact opposite proclamations. </p> <p><strong>The Michigan Difference</strong>. Michigan PhD grad makes joke about Darren Rovell on twitter.</p> <blockquote lang="en" class="twitter-tweet"><p><a href="">@PFTCommenter</a> OK, but <a href="">@darrenrovell</a> would tell you that a swastika is just a way to build your brand ppl forget that.</p> <p> — neilla (@_neillam) <a href="">April 8, 2014</a></p></blockquote> <script async src="//" charset="utf-8"></script><p>Darren Rovell, being Darren Rovell, <a href="" target="_blank">reports this comment to some guy at Michigan</a>. Michigan's &quot;<a href="" target="_blank">informal response</a>&quot;:</p> <blockquote><p>1) &quot;Wait, so who is this guy? Is <a href=""><s>@</s><b>darrenrovell</b></a> actually famous?&quot; </p> <p>2) &quot;What did he think we were going to do? Take away your diploma?&quot; </p> </blockquote> <p>/sings fight song, waves tiny block M flag</p> <p><strong>I am always very careful about how I mis-state the word rapper</strong>. Ace informs me that <a href="" target="_blank">this gentleman with Devin Gardner</a> is noted rappist &quot;Two Chains,&quot; but I say balderdash, I say!</p> <p><img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="" width="564" height="318" /></p> <p>COUNT THE CHAINS, &quot;TWO CHAINS.&quot; His real name is Excessive Watches IV. He goes home and takes off all of that, sits down with a Forbes, and looks exactly like Carlton. Fact. E-fact. Also his rap song just cannot compete with the Charleston.</p> <p>This has been Brian pretends he's more out of touch than he is to forestall accusations of being out of touch theater. Thank you. </p> <p><strong>Thanks, bro</strong>. Horford opens up about his decision to leave to MLive; it turns out his zen <a href="" target="_blank">does not extend</a> to the rest of his family: </p> <blockquote><p>&quot;(Transferring) is something that my family has been trying to persuade me to do for four years,&quot; Horford said. &quot;So I guess naturally it's always been inevitable -- when people are telling you something all the time.&quot;</p> </blockquote> <p>I get the feeling that Horford's support system regards Horford's abilities with… uh… enthusiasm not necessarily in line with reality. The reason his playing time dropped late in the season is that he wasn't playing well. I mean… when Morgan went out I was always like WHEN CAN WE GET MORGAN BACK IN. Play better and you get more time. Or wait for Morgan to graduate and go get it like he did. </p> <p><strong>Please please please let me get what I want (fewer timeouts) this time.</strong> Timeouts are a scourge upon basketball, not only turning 60 seconds of clock time into a writhing eternity of nothingness but also reducing the chaos factor that a trailing team attempts to insert into the game late. On four seconds trying to inbound the ball? Timeout. Trapped in the corner? Timeout. Want to get your defense set? Timeout. Timeouts are used to prevent turnovers, keep the leading team in the lead, and let over-coaching guys in suits maintain as much control as possible. They result in two and a half hour&#160; games that mean you have to stream the first ten minutes of&#160; your game on ESPN3. They are miserable and should be almost entirely removed. </p> <p>They won't be, but at least the misery of them is a thing that has <a href="" target="_blank">reached the people who can do something about</a> it: </p> <blockquote><p>Everyone agreed that one of the biggest detractions of the current game is the eternity it takes to end a close one. That is largely due to the number of timeouts granted to each team, both officially (five per team per game) and unofficially (coaches are given a minute to substitute when a player fouls out). Replay reviews are viewed as a necessary evil in the quest for the right calls, but they also add to the length of an endgame situation. Coaches cherish their control of the game and thus will be loath to surrender timeouts, but fans everywhere would embrace fewer stoppages in play – especially late in a game. The NCAA said it will begin tracking the length of games next year, as it does in football.</p> <p>&quot;Length is becoming a concern,&quot; said David Worlock, NCAA associate director of men's basketball.</p> </blockquote> <p>You're going to <em>begin</em> tracking games? And you don't think there's anything wrong with the current replay setup? Argh. But yes, please, shoot timeouts into the sun. One per team per game. </p> <p>Also: </p> <blockquote><p>An elimination of live-ball timeouts, or at least limiting those calls to players instead of coaches. This would be a move toward FIBA international rules, which allow no live-ball timeouts.</p> </blockquote> <p>Yes.</p> <p>But no: </p> <blockquote><p>Reducing the shot clock to either 30 or 24 seconds. Brey said he is in favor, and there seems to be fairly wide support for a reduction of some kind – although there also is a concern about college hoops becoming an NBA copycat league. (Interestingly, Byrd said his Belmont team occasionally uses a 12-second shot clock in practice to force tempo and enhance conditioning.)</p> </blockquote> <p>With zone defenses viable and the skill level generally reduced, shortening the shot clock just results in more ugly shots. 45 to 35 was necessary, but in college 35 is fine. </p> <p><strong>Etc.:</strong> Sam Mikulak <a href="" target="_blank">in repose</a>. PSU-M <a href="" target="_blank">is at 7 PM</a> on ESPN or ESPN 2. Frighentingly quick MAAR <a href="" target="_blank">scouting video</a> from <a href="" target="_blank">UMHoops</a>.</p> <a name="more"></a> al borges al borges i don't even know basketball timeouts are awful chad lindsay glenn robinson iii jon horford lolbcs mitch mcgary muhammad ali abdur-rahkman nba draft nba draft makes me forever alone nightmare fuel nik stauskas rappists the michigan difference the only good mascot is a terrifying mascot unverified voracity Tue, 15 Apr 2014 16:08:42 +0000 Brian 86821 at Al Borges In Repose <p><img alt="8759617036_91b21de69d_z[1]" border="0" height="377" rel="lightbox" src="" title="8759617036_91b21de69d_z[1]" width="564" /></p> <p align="center"><em>happier times with Heiko</em></p> <p>Al Borges is gone from Michigan after three years. And I&#39;m&hellip; relieved. Yes. I think that&#39;s right.</p> <p>Not exactly happy, of course. A dude just got fired. This site had a bizarre frenemies relationship (see: all the tags on this post) with Borges that started with prodding about constraint plays from Heiko by my request. This developed into a press conference Odd Couple thing where Heiko would get crap from Borges and give a little bit of it back, all the while trying to gently ask about the latest debacle. The results were the most entertaining transcripts not involving Steve Spurrier ever.</p> <p>Then last winter Heiko started agitating me about getting an interview with him. I thought it was a cockamamie idea that would never get past the gatekeepers. This take would have been accurate except for one thing: Borges wanted to do it. So Heiko eventually crept his way past the border guards, was promised 15 minutes, and got 45. The <a href="">resulting</a> <a href="">interview</a> ran on the site last summer and was a fantastic glimpse into the day to day experience of being Michigan&#39;s offensive coordinator.</p> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Why is nobody else in mourning right now?</p> <p> &mdash; Heiko Yang (@Heiko25) <a href="">January 9, 2014</a></p></blockquote> <script async src="//" charset="utf-8"></script><p><em>Yesterday</em>.</p> <p>I also know that friend of the site Craig Ross did what he always does with Michigan coaches, which is badger them with paper until they are forced to respond. I don&#39;t know how he does this, but he does, and he dumped articles and questions on Borges until he eventually got a phone call one morning with Borges on the other end. A debate/harangue sort of thing occurred until Craig&mdash;Craig!&mdash;had to say goodbye because he had a mediation to oversee (the conversation made it into <a href="" target="_blank">last year&#39;s book</a>).</p> <p>Personally, I took in Borges&#39;s session at the Glazier Clinic in Detroit a couple years ago and came away impressed by his command of the material and ability to communicate concepts.</p> <p>Al Borges was not a bad guy, and helped us out. That he did so seemingly because Heiko&#39;s badgering amused him is the mark of a guy who can take some heat.</p> <p>It&#39;s just that his goddamned offense didn&#39;t work.</p> <p align="center">--------------------------------------</p> <p align="left"><strong>THINGS STARTED INAUSPICIOUSLY</strong>, as Michigan found itself down 24-7 to Notre Dame three quarters into the first night game at Michigan Stadium. Michigan had 141 yards of offense nearing the end of the third quarter <a href="">when the delirium kicked in</a>. Robinson threw off his back foot just before getting sacked, Junior Hemingway skied for balls between two defenders, Gary Gray refused to acknowledge the existence of footballs, Jeremy Gallon engaged his cloaking device, and when the dust cleared Michigan had squeezed out one of the most bonkers wins in their history.</p> <p align="left">In the aftermath, things felt ramshackle, and I said as much. Michigan returned nine starters from Rich Rodriguez&#39;s final offense, the one that had seen Robinson set records, and this was not that:</p> <blockquote><p>This isn&#39;t to blame anyone&mdash;it seems that coaches are who they are and as much as I want to, you can&#39;t hire a guy based on the two years left you&#39;ve got with Denard. But I hope I&#39;m not the only one who felt a sense of foreboding in the midst of the joy and relief. We&#39;ve seen this script the last two years, and never has it been as rickety.</p> <p>Michigan has to fix some stuff&mdash;lots of stuff&mdash;by the Big Ten season. The stakes are only Denard&#39;s career, everyone&#39;s faith in the Ethical Les Miles theory of Hoke&#39;s success, and the <em>very survival of pandas in the wild</em>. I&#39;ll take the escape. I wonder what happens when the drugs wear off and real life reasserts itself.</p> </blockquote> <p>The drugs did not really wear off for a while as the horseshoe stuck in Brady Hoke&#39;s posterior saw them through some rough spots.</p> <p>Things only came to a screeching halt when Borges unleashed the first of his incredibly terrible gameplans at Michigan State. Faced with a howling maelstrom of trash and in possession of Denard Robinson, Borges featured a gameplan consisting mostly of deep throws as he alternated between Robinson and Devin Gardner. After a stirring opening drive, Michigan went nowhere. They did eat double A gap blitz after double A gap blitz thanks to the fact that their center was telling the entire world the exact moment he&#39;d snap the ball, which he&#39;d done the year before to similar effect. Had any of Michigan&#39;s new staff even <em>watched</em> the previous year&#39;s game?</p> <p>Actually, here&#39;s a better question: were any of them <a href="">watching this one</a>?</p> <blockquote><p>For the game Michigan tried to pass at least 41 times*, averaging 2.8 yards per attempt and giving up a defensive touchdown.<br /> TWO POINT EIGHT YARDS<br /> DEFENSIVE TOUCHDOWN<br /> RUN THE FOOTBALL!!!!<br /> &hellip;</p> <p>&hellip;</p> <p>Sorry. Sorry.</p> <p>Michigan tried to run the ball 26 times and averaged&hellip; oh, Jesus&hellip; 5.2 yards per carry. Fitzgerald Toussaint got two carries, Denard twelve.</p> </blockquote> <p>That was and is flabbergastingly stupid, but Borges managed to top that just a few weeks later when he ditched the spread entirely against Iowa, running a &quot;pro-style&quot; offense because that&#39;s what he wanted to do. This was <a href="">tantamount to forfeiting</a>.</p> <blockquote><p>When Iowa punched in their final touchdown on Saturday the clock read 10:42 and Michigan had acquired 166 yards of offense. Forced into a hurry-up shotgun on their final three drives, Michigan matched their production from the first 50 minutes in the last ten.</p> </blockquote> <p>A chastened Borges went back to the spread for the duration of the season as Michigan scored 31, 45, and 40 to finish the regular season. The 40, against Ohio State, was amongst the best performances Michigan&#39;s ever had against the Buckeyes, with Robinson ripping off inverted veer runs for big gains, including the iconic touchdown run to open things.</p> <p><img alt="1_20111126133533829_600_4001_thumb[1]" border="0" height="374" rel="lightbox" src="" title="1_20111126133533829_600_4001_thumb[1]" width="560" /></p> <p>Michigan had just gutted Ohio State for 300 rushing yards while throwing 17 times. They did this despite running the veer wrong, blocking the guy who teams that actually know how to run the spread would option. It didn&#39;t matter. All they had to do was put Robinson in space against the guy they should be blocking, and magic resulted. That, and only that, concealed the rapid erosion of Michigan&#39;s ability to run the football. And when the bowl game rolled around, Virginia Tech knew how to defend a half-ass spread. Michigan managed to win that game thanks to the horseshoe; the offense played no part, acquiring under 200 yards of offense for the first time in the Borges era.</p> <p>It would not be the last time.</p> <p align="center">-------------------------------------</p> <p align="left"><strong>ROBINSON HAD SHED THE MANTLE OF INVINCIBILITY</strong> acquired over the course of 2010, when he crushed records as a still-raw true sophomore. His interception rate skyrocketed, he lost a half-yard per passing attempt and a whopping 1.3 yards per rushing attempt. That was nothing compared to what awaited the next year.</p> <p align="left">Setting aside the Alabama debacle as a game Michigan entered with no intention of winning, Borges again reverted to 1990s-style offense completely unsuited for his personnel on the infamous series of plays on which Robinson threw interception after interception.</p> <p align="left">This is where I deviate from old school hardliners who foist the blame for Robinson&#39;s panicked throws on the quarterback who&#39;d been brilliant and efficient two years ago in that very stadium, running the stuff he was good at running. Borges <a href="">had him run waggles</a> on which not one but two Notre Dame defenders came roaring up at the 5&#39;11&quot; Robinson. He made the results as bad as possible; Borges created a range of results that went only from interception to second and twenty. By that point watching Borges try to utilize Denard Robinson was like watching an otter try to bash open a clam with a shoe.</p> <blockquote><p>Michigan did not throw a pass before third down on their two grinding second-half drives before the hurry-up was called for. Do that for the next eight games and run play action off <em>plays you actually run</em> and then Denard might get back to the things he was doing in an offense that was not trying to jam him into a hole he clearly does not fit. I thought maybe we&#39;d learned that lesson after Iowa, but apparently not.</p> <p>When stressed, people making decisions find it very hard to move away from habit. Everyone reverts to their comfort zone unless they are making a concerted effort to get away from it. Even then, you fall back into old patterns. Lloyd punted. Rodriguez installed a 3-3-5 defense. Borges starts calling plays from a long-ago offense helmed by a guy who was a better passer than runner. Denard throws the ball somewhere, anywhere.</p> </blockquote> <p align="left">Robinson would go down with his elbow injury midseason, paving the way for Devin Gardner&#39;s insertion. This went better than anyone expected&mdash;including the coaches who had privately all but given up on him as a quarterback&mdash;and eventually Denard returned to the lineup as a slash player, which worked really well for about a game and a half until Ohio State figured out that <a href="">Robinson at QB always meant run</a> and played like it.</p> <blockquote><p>If you&#39;ve poked around the flaming wreckage of the Michigan internet in the aftermath of Saturday, you have undoubtedly heard the wailing and gnashing of teeth because of that. But the thing is so stark it has to be marveled at again: when Denard Robinson entered the game against Ohio State, <em>every play but one </em>was Denard Robinson doing something. Once it was fail to chip Ryan Shazier and try to get out for a screen; all other times it was run the ball, sometimes with a pitch included. The fakeout was a six-yard completion to Mike Kwiatkowski in the first quarter, and there ended any attempt at deception.</p> <p>Devin Gardner was at quarterback for three of these plays. Michigan held up a sign that said RUN or PASS, and didn&#39;t even try the token fakeout where Robinson goes over the top when the safeties suck up. Gardner ran three times. Denard passed zero. Ohio State figured it out. Surprise!</p> </blockquote> <p align="left">Most of the time the two quarterbacks weren&#39;t even on the field together.</p> <p align="left">Have I mentioned that Michigan&#39;s non-Denard running game was so bad we assumed it couldn&#39;t possibly be worse this year?</p> <p align="center">--------------------------------------</p> <p align="center"><img alt="all-dts[1]" border="0" height="315" rel="lightbox" src="" title="all-dts[1]" width="560" /></p> <p align="center"><em>four DTs and an SDE<br /> two turntables and a microphone</em></p> <p align="left">And then, this year. While the unacceptably stupid gameplans based around distaste for the only thing you can get your team to do right evaporated, that was only because Michigan could no longer do anything right at all. After the de rigueur exciting offensive performance against a Notre Dame team that got everyone&#39;s hopes high enough to crush Michigan settled into a pattern of ineptitude so vast as to be unbelievable.</p> <p align="left">Personnel issues contributed, but when the reaction to those issues was the looney-tunes decision to put Michigan&#39;s two best offensive linemen next to each other even if they both happened to be tackles, it was over. Michigan put it on film against Minnesota, wasted their bye week repping the never-before-seen tackle over offense, and proceeded to have their tailback rush for 27 yards on 27 carries. The tackle over was quickly dumped, but only after wasting three critical weeks of in-season development for a painfully young offensive line.</p> <p align="left">That that offensive line had been asked to run first the stretch and then a bunch of power before finally seeming to settle on inside zone&mdash;ie, run the full gamut of modern blocking schemes&mdash;compounded matters immensely. Borges treated a collection of pups barely out of high school like they were the 1998 Denver Broncos and reaped the whirlwind.</p> <p align="left">Except the Broncos did one thing and did it very well. Michigan did everything and in the in the end, Michigan did nothing. Two years after a broken version of the inverted veer performed well enough to put 40 points on Ohio State, Michigan had been forced away from it because the only play they could pair with it was a moderately successful QB counter. Not once in Borges&#39;s final two years could he run play action off that look, and teams eventually boa constrictored it out of the Michigan playbook.</p> <p align="left">That was emblematic of the offense as a whole: tiny unconnected packages unrelated to each other, all of which could have worked if Michigan would just execute that one thing they practiced three times last month. When things worked they worked briefly and then were held on to long after the opponent had adjusted, because Michigan never had enough in its arsenal to sustain a full game of production without its quarterback playing out of his mind.</p> <p align="left">As the tackles for loss mounted and the press conferences got shorter, &quot;we didn&#39;t execute&quot; became Borges&#39;s self-damning mantra. Michigan could not expect to execute. There is your firing in a sentence.</p> <a name="more"></a> al borges al borges denard devin gardner fusion cuisine al borges denard fusion cuisine al borges denard fusion cuisine is not made to order al borges devin gardner prostyle cuisine al borges digs the long ball al borges does not hate bubble screens but still hates me al borges evil genius al borges hates audibles al borges hates bubble screens al borges hates clarity al borges hates heroes al borges hates jump balls al borges hates me al borges hates pistol al borges hates real bubble screens al borges hates stupid al borges i don't even know al borges likes lazer screens al borges likes me al borges loves fake bubble screens al borges loves me al borges made me a hero al borges must fix you al borges pretty all right al borges road game fun times al borges russell bellomy fusion cuisine al borges should totally do this al borges too cute al borges's dad will destroy you Thu, 09 Jan 2014 18:58:00 +0000 Brian 84416 at Borges Out, Nussmeier In, Recruits React <p><a href=""><img alt="020112_SPT_Signing_Day_MRM" border="0" height="375" rel="lightbox" src="" title="020112_SPT_Signing_Day_MRM" width="564" /></a></p> <p>The firing of offensive coordinator Al Borges obviously shook things up among Michigan fans as Twitter and MGoBlog almost exploded once the news dropped. Then all that happened was a pluck-job of Alabama&rsquo;s offensive coordinator Doug Nussmeier. Again, the Michigan universe went into a frenzy. How is all of this affecting recruits? I was able to touch base with a few just to get an idea of how the decision is sitting with people who will and might wear the Maize and Blue.</p> <p><strong><u>2014 TE commit Ian Bunting</u></strong></p> <p><u>The Fire:</u> Coach Borges did help recruit me so it&rsquo;s obviously not the ideal situation but I trust that the staff is only making decisions that are in the best interest of the team. I&rsquo;m still set on Michigan though! I have no idea who the replacement could or should be. Someone who likes to pass a lot, especially to the tight ends. Maybe the New England Patriots OC? (Laughs)</p> <p><u>The Hire:</u> It&rsquo;s awesome! The OC from Bama? It&rsquo;s sweet. It&rsquo;s definitely encouraging. I just hope he likes throwing to his tight ends. I do know that he likes winning.</p> <p><u><strong>2014 RB offeree Vic Enwere</strong></u></p> <p><u>The Fire:</u> Coach Borges getting fired changes things for me a little bit. It&rsquo;s just going to take more time now to understand the new offensive approach. Coach Borges and I had a great talk when I went up there and a little bit before that too. We haven&rsquo;t really talked since my last visit. I&rsquo;m not sure if the words &ldquo;hurt Michigan&rsquo;s chances&rdquo; are accurate but it does make it a bit tougher. Uncertainty just makes it tough.</p> <p><u>The Hire:</u> I honestly never heard his name before but I am familiar with his style. Being the offensive coordinator from Alabama definitely means something though.</p> <p><u><strong>2015 OL offeree Sterling Jenkins</strong></u></p> <p><u>The Fire:</u> I definitely respect Coach Borges as a person but I hope I get to meet the new OC and I hope no one else from the staff goes. On my visit I mostly talked to Coach Borges and Coach Funk so we for sure had a relationship. Him being fired won&rsquo;t really affect me. That has been happening all over the country. Michigan won&rsquo;t hire someone who&rsquo;s not up for the job. I think they&rsquo;ll be okay, if not better from this move.</p> <p><u>The Hire:</u> I am looking forward to meeting him. He definitely has a good track record coming from Bama.</p> <p><strong><u>2015 WR offeree Christian Kirk</u></strong></p> <p><u>The Fire:</u> I never got a chance to talk to Coach Borges during the bowl practice so I don&rsquo;t really have a thought on him being fired. It doesn&rsquo;t change anything for me in regards to Michigan.</p> <p><u>The Hire:</u> Interesting! We will see what he brings to Michigan! It helps Michigan&rsquo;s case in my mind because I&rsquo;m interested to see if he can turn it around. If he decides to come in contact with me it definitely helps Michigan&rsquo;s chances.</p> <p><strong><u>2015 QB offeree David Sills:</u></strong></p> <p><u>The Fire:</u> I&rsquo;ve actually never talked to Coach Borges but I heard he was a great coach. He wasn&rsquo;t personally involved with me and my offer. I&rsquo;m not sure if I&rsquo;m going to visit Michigan or not. Having two teammates up there means Michigan will always be an option. Right now though I am still with USC.</p> <p><u>The Hire:</u> I&rsquo;m sure he will do great at Michigan. Michigan has always been attractive to me and always will be, so no real change.</p> <p><strong><u>2015 QB target Jimmy Fitzgerald:</u></strong></p> <p><u>The Fire:</u> I just heard about Coach Borges being fired. I haven&rsquo;t ever talked to him too much, Coach Mallory is my main contact. It doesn&rsquo;t really change my view on Michigan. It&rsquo;s not exactly the news I&rsquo;d like to hear but Michigan is still a very attractive school both academically and athletically.</p> <p><u>The Hire:</u> That&rsquo;s big time!</p> <p><strong><u>2015 QB target Kyle Kearns:</u></strong></p> <p><u>The Fire:</u> Wow, I didn&rsquo;t know anything about Coach Borges getting fired. I probably talked to him maybe 2 or more weeks ago. I&rsquo;m still very interested in Michigan though, I&rsquo;ll make sure to talk Coach Ferrigno about it the next time we talk.</p> <p><u>The Hire:</u> It&rsquo;s awesome. I am really good friends with Coach Nuss. I have been in contact with him since last year.</p> <p><strong><u>2015 QB target Riley Neal:</u></strong></p> <p><u>The Fire:</u> I had no idea they were thinking about firing him. I talked to Coach Borges maybe a week or two ago, but it&rsquo;s crazy that he&rsquo;s fired. Him getting fired doesn&rsquo;t really change my view on Michigan. I liked Coach Borges but I still like the program they have at Michigan. I&rsquo;m interested to see who they hire. I plan on calling one of the GA&rsquo;s here soon to see if he knows anything.</p> <p><u>The Hire:</u> I think it&rsquo;s a good hire for them. It should help Michigan in my eyes because he has won national championships and that&rsquo;s always the goal so he brings that experience in with him.</p> <p><strong><u>2015 QB target Nick Johns:</u></strong></p> <p><u>The Fire:</u> I heard about Coach Borges getting fired while I was at school. Now I&rsquo;ll just wait and see who they hire. It doesn&rsquo;t change anything for me right now. It&rsquo;s been a long time since I&rsquo;ve talked with Coach Borges. I kind of assumed he might be let go since he stopped talking to me. Hopefully Michigan will hire someone good.</p> <p><u>The Hire:</u> That&rsquo;s a great move of power on Michigan&rsquo;s part. It absolutely helps their cause in my eyes.</p> <p><strong><u>2015 QB target Alex Malzone:</u></strong></p> <p><u>The Fire:</u> Man, I had no idea Coach Borges would be fired. I have always stayed in touch with Dan Ifft and then Coach Singletary a little bit so we&rsquo;ll see who is brought in next. Obviously I&rsquo;ve started to build a relationship with Coach Borges but it&rsquo;s still Michigan football and they will bring in the right guy. I haven&rsquo;t talked to Coach Borges since my Ohio State visit. I&rsquo;m anxious to see who they hire.</p> <p><u>The Hire:</u> It&rsquo;s a great hire, I&rsquo;m excited about it. I&rsquo;ve always been high on Michigan but it is a boost in my interest. I plan on calling Coach Ifft today to see what&rsquo;s going on.</p> <p><strong><u>2015 QB target Zach Gentry</u></strong></p> <p><u>The Hire:</u> (I didn&rsquo;t hear back from Zach until news had surfaced that Nussmeier would be the replacement so we discussed only that) I think it&rsquo;s a really solid hire! He balances the running and passing game well and he makes the system easy on the quarterback. I&rsquo;d say it definitely helps Michigan in my eyes. I think it&rsquo;s important that they have a really balanced attack. they seem to have the right players coming in that can help plus solid returning offensive guys. I&rsquo;m still highly interested in Michigan. Coaching changes are going to happen everywhere. It doesn&rsquo;t take anything away from Michigan and their tradition. I think I&rsquo;ll probably try to reach out and get in touch with Coach Nussmeier and get established with him.</p> <p align="center">---------------------------------</p> <p align="center"><a href=""><img alt="Nussmeier" border="0" height="354" rel="lightbox" src="" title="Nussmeier" width="564" /></a></p> <p align="left">When you have success at the level that Alabama has, it carries a lot of weight and the reactions from commits and targets is clear evidence of that. The hiring of Nussmeier has already sent a shot of rejuvenation into the Michigan fanbase as well as potential Michigan players.</p> <p align="left">It is going to be really interesting to see how this hire affects recruiting as well. I&rsquo;m very curious to see how the 2015 quarterback situation shakes out now, as Borges sort of ran the show on that evaluation. #1 2015 QB Ricky Town was recruited to Alabama by Nussmeier and while I don&rsquo;t see him bailing on Bama, I&rsquo;m sure Nuss will get in touch with him. Intrigue all around with a splash hire like this.</p> <a name="more"></a> 2014 recruiting 2015 recruiting al borges doug nussmeier doug nussmeier doesn't have enough tags yet Thu, 09 Jan 2014 16:22:15 +0000 Brandon Brown 84394 at Al Borges Fired <p class="rtecenter"><img alt="" src="" style="width: 554px; height: 371px;" /><br /> <em>File photo</em></p> <p>Per the Athletic Department, offensive coordinator Al Borges has been fired. Here&#39;s the entirety of the press release:</p> <blockquote><p><strong>ANN ARBOR, Mich. </strong>-- University of Michigan head football coach Brady Hoke announced today (Wednesday, Jan. 8) that offensive coordinator Al Borges will not be retained for the 2014 season.</p> <p>&quot;Decisions like these are never easy,&quot; said Hoke. &quot;I have a great amount of respect for Al as a football coach and, more importantly, as a person.&nbsp; I appreciate everything he has done for Michigan Football for the past three seasons.&quot;&nbsp;</p> <p>Prior to joining U-M in 2011, Borges was a member of Hoke&#39;s staff at San Diego State in 2009 and &#39;10.</p> <p>The Wolverines will begin spring practice on <span data-term="goog_49163970" tabindex="0">Feb. 25</span> and finish with the annual Spring Game on <span data-term="goog_49163971" tabindex="0">Saturday, April 5</span>, at Michigan Stadium.</p> </blockquote> <p>The fallout will be covered in exhaustive detail in the coming days. One interesting candidate&mdash;coincidentally, from Borges&#39; former school&mdash;is rumored to have been contacted by Brady Hoke regarding the now-open position, <a href="" target="_blank">according to</a>:</p> <blockquote><p>A source tells me that Brady Hoke has reached out to UCLA offensive coordinator / quarterbacks coach Noel Mazzone and at least one NFL assistant, though Mazzone isn&#39;t likely to leave for Ann Arbor.&nbsp;</p> </blockquote> <p>Mazzone runs an &quot;uptempo no-huddle spread,&quot; <a href="" target="_blank">according to Chris Brown</a> (Smart Football); even if he&#39;s not interested in the job, moving in that direction would certainly please the people who write for this here blog. As for recruiting, it&#39;s unlikely the class of 2014 will be affected much, if at all, and there&#39;s plenty of time to make up any lost ground in the 2015 class. Again, we&#39;ll have much, much more on this in the coming days.</p> <a name="more"></a> al borges brady hoke noel mazzone Wed, 08 Jan 2014 22:54:21 +0000 Ace 84386 at Mailbag: Argument For Borges, Montgomery Departure Effect, Emo Business, Don't Play Skyrim <p align="center"><strong><img alt="099[1]" border="0" height="255" rel="lightbox" src="" title="099[1]" width="162" /><img alt="ArrestedJeffreytambor4[1]" border="0" height="254" rel="lightbox" src="" title="ArrestedJeffreytambor4[1]" width="274" /></strong></p> <p align="center"><em>Brian Sipe and Al Borges did not see eye to eye</em></p> <p><strong>Quarterback coach?</strong></p> <blockquote><p>Quarterback coach?</p> <p>-BML, Brooklyn</p> </blockquote> <p>Nope. When Borges arrived someone asked him about having a QB coach, and he said that he wasn&#39;t a fan of the setup they had at SDSU, where Brian Sipe was hired as a dedicated QB coach. That relationship was strained, it seems, and Borges now handles all that himself.</p> <p>My google-fu has failed me in an effort to find this quote, but a couple years back there was a direct statement from Borges that he prefers to work with the QBs himself, alone.</p> <p><strong>UPDATE</strong>: a commenter <a href="">comes through</a>.</p> <blockquote><p><i>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure there were times I was driving Brian nuts, because I was being driven nuts. Coaching quarterbacks is more my M.O.&rdquo;</i></p> </blockquote> <p><strong>What is the argument for Borges?</strong></p> <blockquote><h3> What is the argument for Borges?</h3> <p>Watching bowl games and I&#39;m jealous of Iowa and their dinosaur coaching staff occasionally running up tempo offense.</p> <p>Al Borges has either had the game pass him by or hasn&#39;t trusted his QBs at michigan one bit. They don&#39;t/can&#39;t run tempo, don&#39;t/can&#39;t get out of the huddle in time to gather any info on the defensive alignment pre-snap and don&#39;t/can&#39;t commit to any spread concepts that put playmakers in space and pressure defenders to make one on one plays in space.</p> <p>Michigan&#39;s offense doesn&#39;t take advantage of ANY of the benefits of modern college offenses.</p> <p>Andy<br /> Miami, FL</p> </blockquote> <p>The argument in his favor is that he does tend to have high YPA offenses when he has decent quarterbacks, and in YPA is generally regarded as the stat most predictive of victory. If you&#39;ve heard the roundtable on WTKA this year you&#39;ve heard Craig bring this up weekly, at which point I shoot him down because Michigan&#39;s running game is just so so bad this year. Then he brings it up the next week because his pet YPA stat was actually pretty accurate, and we repeat the cycle.</p> <p>Anyway. In year two at SDSU, Ryan Lindley had a 9.1 YPA, which is near-great. In three years at Michigan:</p> <ul> <li> <strong>Denard 2011</strong>: 8.4</li> <li> <strong>Denard 2012</strong>: 7.9</li> <li> <strong>Devin 2012</strong>: 9.7(!)</li> <li> <strong>Devin 2013</strong>: 8.6</li> </ul> <p>Things at Auburn were great, then increasingly grimmer. Jason Campbell cracked the 10 YPA mark in year one, then Brandon Cox went from 7.6 to 8.1 to 6.6, whereupon Borges got fired in favor of that Franklin spread guy who got fired midseason the next year, leading to Borges&#39;s current pathological worldview.</p> <p>I&#39;m not even sure how much of the Cox degradation I blame on Borges. I saw Cox live and in person in his senior year, and by that time his arm strength had degraded to Russell Bellomy-against-Nebraska levels. Meanwhile Tommy Tuberville&#39;s staff was a collection of Just In Charge Of Something For No Reasons that undermined the next guy and got fired as a unit as a result&mdash;they were Rodriguez&#39;s defensive assistants and Borges was Scott Shafer.</p> <p>This year&#39;s actually-quite-good YPA stat (23rd nationally) is impressive in context. I think you can make a case that with a functional running game, Borges can pilot an effective offense. The program is pretty dinosaur all around, but at least Borges has shown that he is looking for the knockout punch.</p> <blockquote><p>Dear Brian,</p> <p>I&#39;ve read and heard a lot about our miserable offensive line and how Coach Borges&#39;s hands are somewhat tied with such an incapable unit. But it seems to me that the larger problem is the predictability of his play calling. I don&#39;t study tape or rewatch games the way our opponents must, but even I feel like I know exactly when he&#39;s going to run the ball and when he isn&#39;t. The Nebraska players said as much after they completely shut us down. The only game that I can remember saying to myself&nbsp; &quot;I didn&#39;t expect that&quot; with regard to our ground game was against OSU, and in that match-up our O line suddenly looked average/competent against a good Buckeye unit. I feel like Borges is a guy that really believes that as long as everyone &quot;executes&quot;, it doesn&#39;t matter if the opposing defense has an idea of what&#39;s coming. I&#39;d like to hear your thoughts on this.</p> <p>Thanks again for your hard work.</p> <p>Mark</p> </blockquote> <p>When one half of your offense is totally incapable of picking up yard one in most games you do tend to get predictable. Defenses figure out the thing that you are trying to do and shut it down because they aren&#39;t worried about the other thing. The Kansas State game was a great example of that: once the Wildcats figured out what Michigan was doing and adapted to stop it there wasn&#39;t much else Michigan could execute so they had to keep doing the one thing they could do.</p> <p>This pattern is familiar from 2008, when Rodriguez would insert various tweaks and folds into his rushing offense that would work great for about a half and then die in a heap. Remember the 2008 Penn State game that was 17-14 at halftime and then ended something like 80-17 Penn State? Same thing: unleash something unexpected that really works (in that case it was MINOR RAGE), then have bupkis when opponent adjusts.</p> <p>Predictability is a hallmark of crappy offenses, but it&#39;s more a symptom than a disease.</p> <p><strong>The Jerry Montgomery effect?</strong></p> <blockquote><p>Hi Brian,</p> <p>I see a lot of Michigan fans saying they will give the defensive staff a pass for this season&#39;s defensive performance because this is the same staff responsible for vast improvements seen in the first year under Brady Hoke. But, this isn&#39;t the same staff. We lost Jerry Montgomery to Oklahoma last offseason. Our d-line was definitely disappointing this year. Could you please comment on whether Montgomery leaving was a bigger blow than anticipated? Also, could you please comment on Roy Manning&#39;s performance as the linebacker coach?</p> <p>Thanks and Go Blue!</p> </blockquote> <p>How disappointing was it, though?</p> <p>Our impressions are always colored by the most recent thing to happen and those two things were eviscerations by OSU and Kansas State, but the overall picture is less than awful. Michigan finished 35th in raw YPC without an imposing pass rush and without a whole lot of blitzing or load-the-box safety help. Their YPC allowed (3.81) was identical to last year&#39;s number, when Montgomery was around.</p> <p>On an individual level, by the time the Ohio State game rolled around Ondre Pipkins had torn his ACL and Michigan&#39;s first choice nose tackle was 285 pound Jibreel Black, which went about as well as you might expect against what was by far the nation&#39;s top rushing offense. That is a huge and obvious personnel issue caused by injury&mdash;I continue to assume that something was just not right with Quinton Washington because otherwise his deployment makes no goddamn sense at all&mdash;and youth.</p> <p>On an individual level, Michigan got strong upward ticks from everyone on the line:</p> <ul> <li> Frank Clark went from hype bust of the offseason to a solid, Tim Jamison-as-senior effort.</li> <li> Willie Henry went from obscure rotation guy to solid starter and potential future star.</li> <li> Black was considerably better than he was as a junior, though completely overmatched because of his size at certain points.</li> <li> Brennen Beyer&hellip; actually went backwards a bit, okay. But again this was Michigan&#39;s first choice SDE against OSU, a 250-pound dude.</li> </ul> <p>The lack of imposing pass rush is an issue that needs to be addressed, yes. I don&#39;t think this season was necessarily that disappointing when you look at the roster at the three interior DL spots (SDE counts as one in my book). There is a <a href="">gap akin to the interior OL on the roster</a>.</p> <p><img alt="image" border="0" height="183" rel="lightbox" src="" title="image" width="564" /></p> <p>Remove injured Pipkins and your non-freshman options at three interior DL spots that really need about six guys to rotate through are Black (285 pounds), Washington (inexplicable lack of PT), Ash (never played meaningful snaps in his life before OSU), and Heitzman (dumped from rotation in favor of 250-pound SAM). All things considered they were doing really well to hold up like they did before the season-ending collapse.</p> <p>Meanwhile, Oklahoma was 53rd in rushing D, giving up a third of a yard per attempt more than M. I don&#39;t think Montgomery was a huge blow.</p> <p>As for Manning, he&#39;s got the outside linebackers, which means SAM and only SAM. Michigan got quality play from first Beyer and then Cam Gordon; Jake Ryan was not as impactful this year but with the injury that&#39;s understandable. Tentative thumbs up in year one.</p> <p><img alt="WMNationalChampionshipTipoff2013[1]" border="0" height="287" rel="lightbox" src="" title="WMNationalChampionshipTipoff2013[1]" width="564" /></p> <p align="center"><em>It wasn&#39;t too long ago that you were ready to cut someone about something something</em></p> <p><strong>EMO QUESTION OF THE WEEK OF THE YEAR</strong></p> <blockquote><p>Brian,</p> <p>Is there a point for you at which fanhood of Michigan football is so disappointing because of things <b>besides</b> kids trying their best (e.g., Borges/Hoke insanity, almost everything Dave Brandon) that, really, at least sort of? As we as a fanbase get to consider your experience of being a fan and weigh it against our own, you shared some, I don&#39;t know, despondency or something at times this season, usually in appropriate situations. And in a time in my life when I am thinking of getting ready for my marriage, and getting something resembling a career going, and God help me I&#39;ll be a father in a few years...this football stuff just seems like a waste of time when everything besides the kids gets me as worked up as [REDACTED TOPIC OF CHOICE] does.</p> <p>Honestly, larger than the blog, which I could see continuing in a hundred ways, is there a &quot;this far and no further&quot; point in your tolerance of extraneous bullshit for the sake of the joy or whatever it is that&#39;s so incredible when the kids on the field do amazing things?</p> <p>I mean, after the 2009 Illinois game, I locked myself in a dorm and turned off my phone and didn&#39;t talk to anyone until late Sunday. As crazy and immature as that was, nothing about the disappointment of a loss has ever made me feel like I should stop following the team. But now I read about BWW Bowls and Jerryworld II and I&#39;m like...whatever, man.</p> <p>JV</p> </blockquote> <p>This is a natural consequence of aging and putting things in your life other than football that poop all over themselves when you would rather they not do that. Eventually, this will be you, wishing you weren&#39;t pooping all over yourself while watching Michigan poop all over itself in a hologram.</p> <p>Scatology!</p> <p>Anyway. It is an annual rite for person X on message board Y to declare that they just don&#39;t have the steam in them any more. I get it. To be blunt, I&#39;ve been struggling with motivation issues since about midseason and understand anyone who flips the TV off and goes bowling*.</p> <p>But, again, it is a human tendency to project most recent thing as thing that happens forever. It is not so. It was just last April that I was in the Georgia Dome, panicking about a Ke$ha song (probably, anyway; getting to the point where I can&#39;t necessarily discern which pop ing&eacute;nues is which) because it was the thing going on before the national championship game. If they had played The Final Countdown I literally would have grabbed my buddy and gone AHHHH AHHHH AHHHH until he slapped me.</p> <p>This season has been particularly enervating because of not only the suckiness of the team but its total unwatchability. As I mentioned in the post-bowl column, the 3-9 outfit was a worse team but they came by their awfulness honestly. Not that these folk didn&#39;t, but there is a special pain in rushing for negative yards consecutive weeks. It is transmitted direct to your eyeballs.</p> <p>When this is not the case, you will discover the terror of your attachment again. Probably.</p> <p>In your specific case, I&#39;ve tied my career to this and don&#39;t have the option, so I don&#39;t know man. I tend to think I might get fed up, but I&#39;m still getting hockey tickets and no one really cares if I go to hockey. Maybe I would just complain about feeling like a sucker and continue acting like a sucker.</p> <p>*[I finally broke down and played Skyrim. Do not do this. Skyrim is the kind of awful that only reveals itself after you&#39;ve set 60 hours of your life on fire listening to boring conversations and dully hacking things in the face. Their open world is beautiful and soulless, shiny on the outside but hollow in the center. Bethesda&#39;s mechanics are hopelessly broken in every single game they make, and while being able to jump across a continent in Morrowind was charmingly broken, Skyrim&#39;s mechanics invite you to a dull, iron-dagger-laden trudge through one moronically designed UI after another.</p> <p>Wait.</p> <p>Shit.</p> <p>I just played the computer version of Michigan&#39;s 2013 football season. I DID IT TO MYSELF. AGAIN.]</p> <p><strong>AAAARGH</strong></p> <blockquote><p>Obviously changes need to be made, and probably already have for all I know. I posed this idea to some friends this morning and got intrigued responses but it was ultimately dismissed as unrealistic: Michigan should hire Pat Narduzzi as head coach right now.</p> <p>He&#39;s obviously ready for a move, would clearly help Michigan&#39;s defense tremendously (and bring in a new OC who could only be an upgrade), and this would really hurt one of our division rivals who is on the verge of becoming a regular contender. I would say this move would be on par with hiring Bo (who, at the time, was an Ohio State guy, even though he was at Miami). Getting Narduzzi now is no different, except skipping the middle step of him coaching elsewhere first. Has anyone suggested this idea yet, and what do you think from the perspective of is it possible as well as is it a good move?</p> <p>Anon</p> </blockquote> <p>IT HAPPENED, JV</p> <p>IT HAPPENED RIGHT NOW WITH EVERYONE WATCHING</p> <p>OH GOD</p> <a name="more"></a> al borges defensive line emo heininger certainty principle jerry montgomery mailbag Wed, 08 Jan 2014 16:58:56 +0000 Brian 84367 at I'm A Bitter Man, I Know, But Listen Honey You're No Fun <p><strong>12/28/2013 – Michigan 14, Kansas State 31 – 7-6, 3-5 Big Ten, season mercifully over</strong></p> <p><img title="11623692184_a34ba130a1_z[1]" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="11623692184_a34ba130a1_z[1]" src="" width="564" height="376" /></p> <p align="center"><em><a href="">we are desperate lonely and underpaid</a> [Adam Glanzman]</em></p> <p>If you were disinterested in a December bowl game that kicked off at 10:15 PM, don't feel bad about it. You are far from alone. <a href="">Frank Clark</a>:</p> <blockquote><p>&quot;I think a lot of guys lost the will to play as a family. That's one thing you can't do in football. In football, you've got to stick in there and stay together as a family.</p> </blockquote> <p><a href="">James Ross</a>:</p> <blockquote><p>&quot;It was our mindset from the jump, we weren't totally into it I would say. We didn't come out with a lot of energy.&quot;</p> </blockquote> <p>For their part, the coaches didn't bother to go into the hurry-up down 18 points with 8 minutes left. As far as unconvincing attempts to look interested go, the fan is on level footing with the rest of the program. </p> <p>The coaches did go up-tempo once it was 31-6, mysteriously. You've already given up. No one is going to feel better about losing by three scores to a 7-5 Big 12 team instead of four. I guess you have to send the message that You Never Give Up despite having already given up. That's the kind of program this is. We Never Give Up (we gave up).</p> <p>That's as indicative of the current state of the Michigan football program as anything. Fail to live up to expectations, try to make it look good with meaningless hand-waving after things are decided. Michigan is just six… eight… sixteen… okay, thirty-five plays away from a really good season, you know, and Lloyd Carr's seniors are about to ride to the rescue. </p> <p align="center">--------------------------------------</p> <p>I guess it's good that Michigan conceded from the drop that they could not run the ball whatsoever, because they were right about that. Eight tailback carries on the night, and three of those were option pitches. Michigan did not repeat their mistakes from the Penn State game. </p> <p>Unfortunately, while they've learned what they cannot do they have not learned to do anything. Kansas State gave up 301 rushing yards to Oklahoma on the second to last weekend of the regular season; Michigan stared that front seven down and said &quot;no thanks, we like end-arounds.&quot; </p> <p>The most frustrating thing about this season is that any hint of progress is quickly stomped out. Michigan has a human run game against Northwestern, then gets obliterated by Iowa; they are once again human against Ohio State, then correctly assume they are helpless against Kansas State.</p> <p>Meanwhile, the defense is so incompetent against a modern packaged offense that Kansas State essentially ends the game by the second quarter. Michigan had zero answers for a play that Rich Rodriguez pioneered at this very university. Here we are, talking a big game about how This Is Michigan and playing football like it's 1989, the last time This Is Michigan actually meant This Is A Consistently Elite Football Program.</p> <p>Bo hovers over the program with speeches about the team the team the team, but his penchant for running quarterbacks and option football and running the damn ball has been discarded in favor of notions about a &quot;pro style&quot; offense that reflects the modern-day NFL in no way whatsoever. Chip Kelly's taking a team that was 4-12 last year to the playoffs with Nick Foles as his quarterback. QED. </p> <p>At the beginning of the year I <a href="">wondered aloud if Michigan was going to end up on the wrong side of history here</a>, what with their failed attempt to move to the spread traumatizing them so much that they'd mutter something about Denard Robinson holding the offense back from its true form, which is apparently lots and lots of end arounds with two tackles next to each other. And sacks. Michigan's base play this year was a tackle for loss. This was our innovation. </p> <p>I like the thing where the quarterback pulls up to throw late better. </p> <p align="center">------------------------------------</p> <p>It'll get better. I mean, you'd think so. I know that's what everyone said about the offensive line this year. But we've detailed <a href="">the various ways in which the previous coaching staff decimated this roster</a> on both lines and the fact that Hoke has collected and retained a lot of guys who will be maturing over the next couple years. Michigan won't be ripping the redshirt off an offensive lineman midseason again. </p> <p>But at some point I realized that the only thing that resembled what football used to be—fun—came when Dennis Norfleet grabbed the ball on kick returns and once when he took an end-around. He juked a guy and got nine yards and I felt a little flutter. Then the grim trudge resumed. </p> <p>Maybe the reason I hold onto Denard so hard is because he's about 90% of the fun that Michigan football has provided since Bo died. As this season descended into a lifeless backwards march, I kept thinking about my uncle's exclamation during the 2008 Fandom Endurance III Northwestern game: &quot;We do this for fun!&quot; We did even then. There was a <a href="">perverse joy in our abject stupidity</a>. Five years on, all the diamonds have been sifted from that ash. We do this out of momentum now. </p> <h3>Awards</h3> <p><strong><img title="brady-hoke-epic-double-point_thumb_31[2]" border="0" alt="brady-hoke-epic-double-point_thumb_31[2]" src="" width="204" align="right" height="248" />Brady Hoke Epic Double Point Of The Week</strong>. Obviously no one on the defense can acquire this, as the defense was completely disassembled. The offense… barely scraped over 200 yards thanks to a Shane Morris QB draw that went for 40. Jesus. Uh.</p> <p>Well, Jeremy Gallon did break the single-season receiving record and is a cool dude, so Jeremy Gallon.</p> <p><strong>Honorable mention:</strong> Shane Morris?</p> <p><strong>Epic Double Point Standings.</strong></p> <p><strong>3.0: </strong>Jeremy Gallon (ND, Indiana, K-State) <br /><strong>2.0:</strong> Devin Gardner(ND, OSU) <br /><strong>1.0:</strong> Desmond Morgan(UConn), Devin Funchess(Minnesota), Frank Clark(PSU), Matt Wile (Nebraska), James Ross (Northwestern) <br /><strong>0.5: </strong>Cam Gordon (CMU), Brennen Beyer (CMU)</p> <p><strong>Brady Hoke <a href="">Epic Double Fist-Pump</a> Of The Week.</strong> Nope.</p> <p><strong>Epic Double Fist-Pumps Past.</strong></p> <p><strong>8/31/2013: </strong>Dymonte Thomas introduces himself by blocking a punt. <br /><strong>9/7/2013: </strong>Jeremy Gallon spins through four Notre Dame defenders for a 61-yard touchdown. <br /><strong>9/14/2013:</strong> Michigan does not lose to Akron. Thanks, Thomas Gordon. <br /><strong>9/21/2013:</strong> Desmond Morgan's <a href="">leaping one-handed spear INT</a> saves Michigan's bacon against UConn. <br /><strong>10/5/2013:</strong> Fitzgerald Toussaint runs for ten yards, gets touchdown rather easily. <br /><strong>10/12/2013</strong>: Devin Funchess shoots up the middle of the field to catch a 40 yard touchdown, staking Michigan to a ten-point lead they wouldn't relinquish. (Right?) <br /><strong>10/19/2013:</strong> Thomas Gordon picks off an Indiana pass to end the Hoosiers' last drive that could have taken the lead. <br /><strong>11/2/2013:</strong> Clock expires. <br /><strong>11/9/2013:</strong> Nebraska muffs a punt through no action of Michigan's. <br /><strong>11/16/2013:</strong> Michigan executes a clock-running last-second field goal to get the game to OT. <br /><strong>11/23/2013:</strong> 404 file not found <br /><strong>11/30/2013</strong>: Michigan forces a Hyde fumble to get back in the game.</p> <p><img title="image" border="0" alt="image" src="" width="204" align="right" height="161" /><strong>MARCUS HALL EPIC DOUBLE BIRD OF THE WEEK</strong>. Michigan, down 31-12 with two minutes or so left, runs a two-point conversion that features Jeremy Gallon taking an end around and throwing the ball to a wide open dude for the score. </p> <p>First of all, you gave up already. Screw you and your two point conversion. Second, every Ohio State fan on twitter instantly said something along the lines of &quot;oh wow that totally would have worked against us.&quot; I don't think it's possible to be more disgusted with a successful two point conversion.</p> <p><strong>[AFTER THE JUMP: stuff.]</strong></p> <h3>Offense</h3> <p><img title="11623319895_3cac34e55f_z[1]" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="11623319895_3cac34e55f_z[1]" src="" width="564" height="428" /></p> <p align="center"><em>Glanzman</em></p> <p><strong>Welp</strong>. There's not much you can do when your QB is a freshman who is liable to put the ball in a defender's chest twice consecutively when you finally do have to open things up far, far too late and your tailbacks rush eight times for 16 yards. Borges did the things he could do, implementing a screen and edge-rush attack that saw Michigan mount actual drives on their first two possessions. </p> <p>Unfortunately, you can only run constraints for so long before they start getting obliterated, and once the scripted fancy new stuff was over so was the offense. The game was over once Michigan could not punch the ball in on either of their first two possessions and then punted once; down 21-6 without a prayer of a non-gimmicky offense, it was over. Gameplan took Michigan their first 120 yards, and then they had no more. On an individual game level, you can't expect much more from your offensive coordinator. </p> <p>That Michigan went into this bowl game utterly convinced they could not run the ball conventionally against a not particularly good run defense is a huge failing that you can spread out to at least three different people: Rodriguez, Funk, and Borges. Rodriguez for the roster, Funk for being the position coach, and Borges for treating this rag-tag assemblage of walk-ons and freshmen like they're the Denver Broncos and expecting they could handle every run concept ever expressed by man as they were being bounced around like gas molecules. </p> <p><strong>Statistical complaint #341.</strong> It's inane that those touch passes forward that are essentially handoffs get filed as passes. Jeremy Gallon's probably happy that is the case since without those he probably does not pass Braylon Edwards for the single-season receiving record; everybody else should be shaking their fist at the NCAA scorer in the sky in a futile attempt to get stats that make sense. Scorers should be able to judge whether a play is a run or pass and credit accordingly.</p> <p><strong>One step forward, one step back</strong>. Michigan's approach to this game was mentioned above, but to reiterate: despite being forced to start a freshman quarterback Michigan assumed they were totally incapable of moving the ball on the ground. And they were. </p> <p>I have no idea how this line improves enough next year for Michigan to be able to do anything after losing both tackles, who are going to be on NFL rosters next year. They can be better, but like the radioactive situation Rodriguez walked into the reclamation project here is a two-year job. (Yes, thanks in large part to Rodriguez.) Next year's line has no seniors and one junior. </p> <p>God willing, Michigan goes into spring practice focused on getting this unit competent at one base running play instead of three and does not try a blizzard of different combinations during the season. That might be enough to make their running game bad. Anything more is in the realm of the fantastical. </p> <p><strong>Morris eval</strong>. Could have been worse. Hosing hoser hoses, which mitigates some freshman issues since he can rifle the ball late and not get punished because the thing gets there so fast. Has accuracy issues caused by firing every ball a hundred miles an hour and predictably put two balls in K-State defenders' chests late when Michigan was forced to try to go downfield; overall an encouraging debut. Morris's wheels are a surprising asset, as well. He is not Gardner; neither is he Navarre. He could be a Connor Shaw type QB who takes the occasional carry to mess with defenses. (Hypothetically.)</p> <p>QB controversy? No. The training wheels were obvious and once taken off the punishment was immediate. Given what we've heard about practice he has Gardner's INT issues except worse, and as long as both guys improve at the same rate Gardner will still be well ahead. </p> <h3>Defense</h3> <p><img title="11624126596_c057b470d8_z[1]" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="11624126596_c057b470d8_z[1]" src="" width="564" height="375" /></p> <p align="center"><em>Glanzman</em></p> <p><strong>That was a total disaster</strong>. The season as a whole was a macrocosm of the defense in each game: pretty good for most of it, gives up one WTF touchdown midway through (Indiana), and then collapses in a heap at the end. Kansas State has an underrated offense but even so, this drive chart…</p> <ol> <li>75 yard TD </li> <li>60 yard TD </li> <li>59 yard TD </li> <li>59 yard FG miss </li> <li>33 yard drive ending in fumble one play after Tyler Lockett dropped a touchdown </li> <li>60 yard FG drive </li> <li>39 yards, punt </li> <li>7 yard TD drive </li> <li>EOG </li> </ol> <p>…is a total and comprehensive failure. Michigan did not force a punt until there were 7 minutes left in the game and things were over. This follows a game in which Michigan gave up 393 rushing yards to OSU. </p> <p>Now instead of having one solid unit that can expect to take another step forward as they age, Michigan has question marks everywhere. Mattison's reputation as salvager and hero took enormous hits over these last two games. Hooray. </p> <p><strong>Exposed</strong>. Tyler Lockett is an incredible player who was checked by essentially nobody this year; it seems like KSU decided they were going with Waters late mostly because he takes best advantage of a guy who is probably the best WR in the country. Any ideas that Blake Countess is in that league as a defensive back are now bleeding out in the gutter after Lockett ghosted in and out of Michigan's defensive backfield all night, knives at the ready. </p> <p>While Raymon Taylor struggled equally, Taylor had been targeted all year and we had some grasp of how good he was already: decent, but not Lockett good. Countess had largely been avoided and made a lot of interceptions when not avoided; this was a comedown in hype and expectation level on par with that Mattison suffered.</p> <p><strong>Spread and shred</strong>. The most brutal event of the night was K-State busting a fullback up the seam for 40 yards on a version of QB Oh Noes that put Desmond Morgan in a bind: defend the QB draw or cover the fullback. With Waters not a huge threat on the ground, the answer was &quot;cover the fullback fergodsakes&quot;; either way the Wildcats were about to get a good chunk of yards. Morgan acted like it was a run and Kansas State was on their way to their third touchdown. </p> <p>In the aftermath…</p> <blockquote lang="en" class="twitter-tweet"><p>Snyder hit them with that QB run/pass option sweep. That play is no joke. Irony is first team I saw do it was Michigan with Denard under RR</p> <p> — Smart Football (@smartfootball) <a href="">December 29, 2013</a></p></blockquote> <script async src="//" charset="utf-8"></script><p>…that was my exact thought, too. K-State just looked hard to defend in ways that Michigan is not. A lot of people were griping about Michigan's decision not to double Lockett, but when you're going up against a defense that uses the QB's legs in a way that demands attention you find yourself with limited options unless you can win certain one on one battles. Michigan could not, and as in the Ohio State game once that was the case it was over. There is no hiding weak spots against these spread to run attacks, and against Tyler Lockett every member of the secondary is a weak spot.</p> <p><strong>About that line</strong>. Dominated again. Zero pass rush and after some nice stops on the first drive, K-State had a quality day on the ground. Michigan spent much of the day stunting defensive ends into double teams, and those ended up with Clark and Ojemudia and Beyer on their back as dudes darted by. </p> <p>I will never understand the insane deployment of Quinton Washington this year; we're now deep into Announce Everyone Was Injured All Year time and there hasn't been a peep about Washington, who was a quality starter all last year and spent most of this one on the bench. Without him and Pipkins, this outfit was just too light to hope to hold up. Other than Willie Henry, who is a freshman who needs some technique work badly, the rest of the line is Black, Beyer, and Clark: defensive ends all. </p> <p>Things should get better next year, at least, with great piles of returning players and Pipkins hopefully coming back from his ACL tear. Much rests on him. I mean, much rests on him for a team that projects to finish third in their division.</p> <h3>Here</h3> <p><a href="">Inside The Boxscore</a>:</p> <blockquote><p>* Spielman said something about how he asked Mattison who his best defender was this year, and the first thing out of Mattison's mouth was &quot;Frank Clark.&quot; Against Ohio State, Frank Clark had one tackle. Against Kansas State, Frank Clark had one tackle. When your best defender is averaging 1 tackle per game in his last two, something is wrong.</p> </blockquote> <blockquote><p>* As Ace pointed out, our two leading rushers were our QB and Tight End. Our running backs should be made to watch how K-State's little Hubert ran. I get it that the offensive line generated zero push, but eventually someone has to break a tackle or make someone miss. Our 4 RBs combined for 8 carries and 13 yards. Our offense was slightly better in not giving up so many TFLs, but that's because we rarely had the ball. K-State had 5 TFLs for a total of 13 yards lost. Hey, I'm looking for positives, no matter how small.</p> </blockquote> <p><a href="">Best And Worst</a>: </p> <blockquote><p><strong>Worst:&#160; <a href="">The Coordinators</a></strong></p> <p>I’ll admit to being a bigger fan of Greg Mattison than Al Borges, so up front I want to make it clear that Al Borges called a pretty good first half of football and Mattison seemed absolutely lost in stopping a team whose passing offense was “throw to #16” and “throw to guy wide open in the middle of the field.”&#160; Borges has no functional running game, in part, because nobody seems able to block defenders, and so he went about trying ever-ludicrous methods to move the ball on the ground and the air without putting too much pressure on Shane Morris.&#160; These were all plays fans have seen before, but he wove in screens, end-arounds, sweeps, and easy middle-distance throws into a coherent gameplan that let UM move the ball pretty effectively on their first couple of drives.&#160; At the very least, he came out punching despite having one hand behind his back, and for that he deserves kudos.&#160; And in particular during that first foray into the redzone, a PI on either of Morris’s two passes to Gallon and Funchess probably would have allowed UM to score a TD and kept the game closer.&#160; The fact the offense sputtered in the 2nd half isn’t that surprising, as WR runs and delayed screens only work so often when your base offense is churning up less than a yard a carry and your WRs are being blanketed when they aren’t dropping passes from your amped-up QB.&#160; Borges has shown an ability to adapt somewhat these past couple of games, and next year it is going to need to be flexible because I have a hard time believing it will suddenly start running the ball under center for 4 ypc while airing the ball out with aplomb. </p> <p>On the other side of the ball, this “bending” defense clearly broke in the first half, as KSU had no trouble moving up and down the field despite holding penalties putting them in some poor down-and-distances.&#160; Taylor and Countess couldn’t keep Lockett even remotely contained, and it seemed virtually impossible for the team to bring pressure while also maintain their assignments, leading to long conversions after acres of open field just appeared.&#160; The defense tightened up somewhat in the 2nd half, but this defense needs to make a massive step forward next year for this team to improve on their record, and it’s now been two games in a row where the defense seems flat-footed and ill-prepared against good offenses.&#160; That needs to change, and given the youth out there (Gedeon, Thomas, and Henry seemed to get significant run) along with some improving older players like Clark and a healthy Ryan, I expect that to happen.</p> </blockquote> <p>bronxblue brings up the 2013 == death meme, and takes issue with it since the basketball team did make the NCAA final. I would like to point out that my particular version of 2013 == death is based on the Old Yeller premise, in which our once-loved dog contracts rabies, and is therefore 100% accurate except in this version of Old Yeller the dog is a cyborg with shotgun arms and continues blasting us long after our corpse has cooled.</p> <a name="more"></a> 2013 copper bowl al borges blake countess game columns i know it's over and oh it never really began but in my heart it was so real shane morris Mon, 30 Dec 2013 16:56:45 +0000 Brian 84143 at Dear Diary and Borgesian Strategy Part II <p>Selfie: Go <a href="">save Christmas again</a>.</p> <p><a href=""><img title="10897667925_cc019a7dc4_h" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="10897667925_cc019a7dc4_h" src="" width="564" height="378" /></a></p> <p align="center"><em>[Fuller]</em></p> <p><strong>Kids!</strong> Gandalf the Maize's follow-up on <a href="">which factors seem to be the most predictive</a> of offensive line play compared the r-squareds of 19 things, from o-line experience as a whole, to their recruiting stars, to the left tackle individually, depth, QB talent, how much the team goes long, etc., and found the ONLY factor with relatively high significance is…</p> <p>[drumroll…]</p> <p>.</p> <p>.</p> <p>.</p> <p><em>Interior. Offensive. Line. Experience!</em></p> <p>Let's get a DotW to the wizard, and tell Funk to put some years on his charges, RIGHT NOW.</p> <p><strong>Ron Utah </strong>followed up by showing the <a href="">relative age of Michigan's whole roster</a> versus teams of significance.</p> <p>Part II by <strong>dnak438 </strong>on Michigan's offensive regression this week went back and added 2011-12 to the <a href="">study of YPP versus opponents</a>, tracking it by dividing Michigan's yards per play each game versus the average that team gave up. The results are charts that really show the history of Al Borges's various offensive strategies:</p> <p><a href=""><img title="allthree" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="allthree" src="" width="564" height="147" /></a></p> <p>Here's the progression:</p> <p><strong>[after the jump]</strong></p> <a name="more"></a><!--break--><!--break--><p align="center"><em>------------2011------------</em></p> <p><strong>WMU, ND, EMU, SDSU:</strong> MANBALL! [Doesn't work.] Fine—(harrumph)—spread. [works.]</p> <p><strong>Minnesota:</strong> Let's use every trick play we know.</p> <p><strong>Northwestern, MSU, Purdue, Iowa, Illionis, Ohio State:</strong> We have no idea what our offense is; let's run the other team's.</p> <p><strong>Sugar Bowl:</strong> Mayday, Molk is down, secondary OL options: nil. Complete shutdown. Let's not even call plays; just run around and if you're not on your back after 8 seconds chuck it deep to Hemingway or something, I dunno.<br /> <table bordercolor="#ffffff" width="250" align="right" border="5"> <tbody> <tr class="odd"> <td bgcolor="#ffffff"><a href=""><img title="IMG_0345" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="IMG_0345" src="" width="244" height="376" /></a></td> </tr> <tr class="even"> <td><font size="2" face="Calibri">As soon as he didn't have a David Molk in the middle Borges's offenses began to fall apart. [Upchurch]</font></td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </p> <p align="center"><em>------------2012------------</em></p> <p><strong>Bama, Air Force, UMass, ND, Purdue, Illinois, MSU:</strong> Try to MANBALL while leaving Denard in the shed until it's absolutely necessary for us to score, since if he were to ever get&#160; hur…</p> <p><strong>Nebraska:</strong> DAMMIT!</p> <p><strong>Minnesota, Northwestern, Iowa, OSU, Outback Bowl:</strong> Lol we have no plan. Let's run PLAYS and put Denard in PLACES and have Devin go do stuff. [Devin goes and does stuff].</p> <p align="center"><em>------------2013------------</em></p> <p><strong>CMU, ND, Akron: </strong>Lol we have no plan. Let's run random plays and have Devin go do stuff. [Devin goes and does stuff].</p> <p><strong>UConn </strong>[Devin doesn't do stuff].</p> <p><strong>Minnesota, Penn State: </strong>Let's get rid of passing and receivers and make everyone an offensive lineman, then run into brick walls. [Defense adapts to this].</p> <p><strong>Indiana, MSU, Nebraska, Northwestern: </strong>Okay, fine, if we can't run like that let's replace two of those offensive linemen with TEs/FBs who can't block and have Gardner sit back and wait until Gallon or Funchess gets open. [Indiana decides not to cover Gallon] Whee!!!! [Everyone else does] Doh!!!!! [Defense/special teams get NW'ern to third OT] Hey, a winning strategy!!!</p> <p><strong>Iowa: </strong>Play for triple overtime when the defense is so worn out from tackling us in the backfield we can just shove them into the end zone! [Devin fumbles on game-tying drive]. Doh!</p> <p>Did this make any sense? Of course not!</p> <p><strong>Weeklies: </strong><a href="">Turnover Analysis</a> says Michigan is now +4 on the year; obviously the interceptions were a huge factor in Michigan remaining competitive against the team that lost to OSU by 10 and no that's not a sliver of irrational hope leaking through yes I know it's emo week. LSA looked at <a href="">down differentials</a> in addition to the weekly Boilerquest chart. This is depressing:</p> <p><a href=""><img title="Week12RushingOff_zps917a35ab" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; float: none; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-left: auto; display: block; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; margin-right: auto" border="0" alt="Week12RushingOff_zps917a35ab" src="" width="244" height="156" /></a></p> <p><a href="">PROGRAMS</a> HEEEYAR! <a href="">Best and Worst</a>. <a href="">Inside the Boxscore</a>.</p> <p><strong>Etc. </strong>Big Ten Hockey returns this weekend, and Gordon Berenson [NNTGB] has your <a href="">history of the conference</a> that was and is again. AC1997 showed what you already knew: before 2007 <a href="">Michigan nearly always had a major something on the line</a> going into the OSU game. We usually had a chance, too.</p> <h3>Best of the Board</h3> <p><strong>YOUR AVATAR IS THE HC FOR THE GAME</strong></p> <p>Wot is <a href="">sez on th' tin</a>. No fair changing avatars. Some coaching possibilities Michigan can look at it if it comes to that (it's not coming to that, at least not for a few years yet):</p> <p><img title="michimoby&#39;s picture" alt="michimoby&#39;s picture" src="" />: DantoniYoNoid. Positives: has a strong system that his players buy into and gets wins. Negatives: is an insane jerk whom nobody has ever liked. So basically Brian Kelly.</p> <p><img title="htownwolverine&#39;s picture" alt="htownwolverine&#39;s picture" src="" />: Skeleton Boy. Positives: thinks the read option is &quot;old school football,&quot; gives players juice boxes after practices, can relate to the &quot;Wow experience&quot; demographic that Michigan targets. Negatives: not very polished before a camera, prone to temper tantrums, wasn't planning on moving to Arizona but has made new friends and it wouldn't be nice to pull him out of school to move again.</p> <p><img title="GoBlueinMN&#39;s picture" alt="GoBlueinMN&#39;s picture" src="" />: Horace Prettyman. Positives: tough. Negatives: just learned the forward pass is legal, so expect a severe regression in route running.</p> <p><img title="a2_electricboogaloo&#39;s picture" alt="a2_electricboogaloo&#39;s picture" src="" />: Rocket Half-Novak. Positives: knows what it takes to beat rivals. Negatives: will always have that walk-on asterisk next to name.</p> <p><img title="TrppWlbrnID&#39;s picture" alt="TrppWlbrnID&#39;s picture" src="" />: NyanFett. Positives: modern, doubles as halftime show. Negatives: does just 3 things over and over and over and over and over</p> <p><img title="Giordano Bruno&#39;s picture" alt="Giordano Bruno&#39;s picture" src="" />: (Is this Guy Faukes, or V, or a member of Anonymous? I'm going with C.) Anonymous. Positives: Press conferences! Negatives: seems intelligent but doomed by lack of cohesive strategy.</p> <p><img title="Seth&#39;s picture" alt="Seth&#39;s picture" src="" />: Positives: relatively safe choice, properly attired for walking around athletic campus given AD's endless construction plans. Negatives: like we really need another rebuilding project.</p> <p>The rest of the board was <a href="">emoquest</a> and ST3 singing <a href="">a crazy song</a> and the answer to <a href="">your question</a> Erik_in_Dayton is &quot;yes,&quot; and links except for that one thread where people were like &quot;<a href="">let's think about how cute puppies are</a>.&quot;</p> <p>SOOOOO CUTE!</p> <h3>Your Moment of Zen</h3> <p>Here is <a href="">my dog</a>.</p> <p><a href=""><img title="IMG_2818" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; float: none; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-left: auto; display: block; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; margin-right: auto" border="0" alt="IMG_2818" src="" width="454" height="342" /></a></p> 2013 ohio state al borges al borges denard devin gardner fusion cuisine al borges denard fusion cuisine al borges hates clarity al borges too cute dear diary emo experience offensive line Fri, 29 Nov 2013 19:51:29 +0000 Seth 83454 at Vicious Electronic Questioning: 11W's Johnny Ginter <p class="rtecenter"><img alt="" src="" style="width: 558px; height: 381px;" /><br /> <em>Carlos Hyde, human battering ram</em></p> <p>First, on behalf of everyone here at MGoBlog, I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving; this week is the perfect time to keep in mind all we have in life to be thankful for&mdash;and yes, I hope that goes outside of the spectrum of sports, for sanity&#39;s sake.</p> <p>We&#39;ve covered the X&#39;s and O&#39;s with Eleven Warriors&#39; Ross Fulton; now it&#39;s time to cover the hate, and for that we welcome <a href="" target="_blank">11W&#39;s Johnny Ginter</a>, a man whose passion for snark nearly equals his love of the Buckeyes. Johnny has been kind enough to answer a few questions about the state of the rivalry, his outlook for this weekend, and even a totally serious query about the OSU basketball team. If you&#39;d like to hear my take on The Game, Johnny and his co-host Michael Citro had me on as the guest for <a href="" target="_blank">this week&#39;s Eleven Dubcast</a>, and you&#39;re encouraged to take a listen.</p> <p>Before we proceed, remember that this is Hate Week, because Johnny certainly does; channel your outrage responsibly. Now, let the hate flow through you...</p> <p><strong>Because of our <a href="" target="_blank">weekly Q&amp;As for 11W</a>, I know that you&#39;ve had to sit through at least most of Michigan&#39;s season. First of all, I&#39;m so sorry. This isn&#39;t a question. I just want to publicly apologize.</strong></p> <p>I really appreciate that, because I started this season as a 28 year old male in reasonably good health, and now I&#39;m a diabetic 83 year old man in a coma from eating tainted paste.</p> <p><strong>With that out of the way, I&#39;d like to hear an outsider&#39;s perspective on what&#39;s going on in Ann Arbor. What do you think the biggest issue has been to lead Michigan to this point?</strong></p> <p>The impending return of Sauron to Mordor? Truthfully I think part of the problem is that Michigan as an athletic department has a hard time negotiating college football in 2013. I think a lot of the decisions and choices that the Ohio State athletic department makes are kind of dumb and obvious from time to time, but it&#39;s undeniable that the Buckeyes have benefited from an aggressive self-marketing strategy. I don&#39;t see the same kind of things coming out of Michigan in terms of promotion that I see from Ohio State. <em>[Ed-Ace: Johnny obviously isn&#39;t signed up to any U-M email lists.]</em></p> <p>But really if I were to try and pin it down to just one thing, I think you guys are sometimes too patient, which is a nice way to say that you&#39;re cool with failure. Remember, Ohio State has a fanbase chomping at the bit to remove a defensive coordinator that has managed a side missing one of its best players, had a totally revamped defensive line at the beginning of the season, started the season with only four returning starters, and is still the 12 ranked defense in the country. That Michigan would even briefly allow the thought of keeping Al Borges to flutter through their minds is hilarious.</p> <p><strong>If you were running Michigan&#39;s program&mdash;and no, not intentionally running it into the ground&mdash;what would your next move be after this season ends?</strong></p> <p>Fire Al Borges immediately and bring in an offensive line specialist. Jim Bollman, offensive coordinator and offensive line coach is one of the most genuinely depressing sentences in the English language. His typical practice attire was white socks pulled up to his shins and a big goofy straw hat which reminded me of something someone would wear if they were trying to make a parody of an offensive line coach. It wasn&#39;t a great look, and his offensive lines typically underperformed or were just plain bad.</p> <p>Enter Ed Warinner, and two years later Ohio State boasts possibly the best offensive line in the country (with much less heralded recruits). Michigan is still loaded with talent on the offensive side of the ball, but <span>that o-line is a gigantic domino that knocks everything over once it falls down. In a bad way, though.</span></p> <p><strong>As a Buckeye fan, what kind of balance would you like to see between Ohio State winning and Michigan being competitive? I imagine the joy of winning The Game has lost some of its luster over the past&mdash;oh lord&mdash;decade or so.</strong></p> <p>I was born in 1985, so my formative years were spent sitting angrily in front of the TV, arms crossed and teeth grinding as Michigan beat Cooper over and over and over. And the reason why I highly doubt any of you guys got sick of that is because John H. Cooper assembled some absolutely incredible teams that by all accounts should&#39;ve won more than two goddamn games during his tenure.</p> <p>So yes, I want Michigan to be good. I was at the 2006 game. It was an incredible celebration of football, of Woody and Bo, of everything that&#39;s fun about this rivalry. I was also at the 2004 game, which was just really, really funny. And ultimately, I want both of those things. I want the titanic matchups and underdog games where the underdog has a legitimate shot at winning, and I want Michigan to be good. The Game means less if one side (you) isn&#39;t holding up its end of the bargain on a consistent basis.</p> <p>Which makes me angry. Which, ironically, makes the game mean more to me. So I have some feelings I need to sort through.</p> <p><strong><img alt="" src="" style="width: 250px; height: 341px; margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 5px; float: right;" />So... how&#39;s the basketball team looking this year? This is a completely serious question.</strong></p> <p>They&#39;re... okay? I mean, they&#39;re pretty much who we thought they were, minus LaQuinton Ross looking like butt. Defensively it&#39;s an excellent team with incredibly athletic guys like Aaron Craft, Lenzelle Smith, Shannon Scott, and so on. I actually think the defensive rule changes favor Ohio State because Thad Matta is really adept at getting his teams to play at a high defensive level without fouling. Aaron Craft is still probably the best on the ball defender in the game right now, even with the new foul calling regime.</p> <p>With that said, without Deshaun Thomas the Buckeyes are predictably struggling on offense. Thomas averaged close to 20 points per game last season, but the next leading scorer on the team was Aaron Craft <em>(right, Upchurch)</em>, who was putting up half that. Right now nobody is putting up even 12 points a night for Ohio State, but they do have four guys in double digits per game.</p> <p>And that&#39;s probably how it&#39;ll look for most of the season, but I&#39;m cool with it. Thad Matta is really a brilliant player&#39;s coach who has never won fewer than 20 games through 13 seasons, and his teams usually struggle with some growing pains early before figuring things out in January or February. I expect that to be the same for &#39;13-&#39;14, and really my only hope is that Matta&#39;s back and leg stay manageable and he sticks around for a long, long time.</p> <p><strong>Okay, okay, I should probably ask for your prediction for this weekend&#39;s game. Are there any matchups out there that you see favoring Michigan, and how do you see the game playing out?</strong></p> <p>There aren&#39;t a lot of favorable matchups for Michigan, but if they can scheme to isolate Funchess on a linebacker like Perry or Grant or even a d-lineman dropping back in coverage, that could yield some positive results offensively. That might open up some things for Gardner to get some yards on the ground because there&#39;s no way in hell the Ohio State defensive line is giving up anything to Toussaint or Green.</p> <p>But even if Michigan does manage to capitalize on some mistakes and score some points, you&#39;re going to need to score more than 35 to beat Ohio State, because they&#39;re going to put up at least that much. And please, don&#39;t tell me about Frank Clark and Jake Ryan. Mark Weisman averaged 5.2 yards per carry against you, and Carlos &quot;El Guapo&quot; Hyde is much, much better than Weisman. If Urban Meyer is so inclined he could just pound away with the dude a la 2007 and be done with it.</p> <p>He won&#39;t though. Instead you&#39;re probably going to see a lot of the Pistol with Dontre Wilson and Hyde in the same backfield, with some goofy stuff involving the tight ends that you haven&#39;t seen all year thrown in. I firmly believe that Meyer has been holding back quite a bit offensively just for this game, and I&#39;m really, really excited to see what he pulls out of his hat.</p> <p>This will probably be a three quarter game, but as the three and outs start to pile up and as Ohio State begins to get longer and longer touchdown plays, the game will be put increasingly out of reach for the Wolverines.</p> <p class="rtecenter"><img alt="" src="" style="width: 559px; height: 411px;" /><br /> <em>Please?</em></p> <p><strong>Is there any part of you that&#39;s worried about a 1995-type scenario this weekend?</strong></p> <p>I&#39;m writing this on Wednesday morning, so no. By Friday night I&#39;ll be at Defcon 1, so by then probably yes.</p> <p>I still firmly believe that Ohio State is going to win, because they&#39;re better coached and have the better team. That should be enough for me to rest easy. But it&#39;s The Game, baby. Rest and rationality are for the weak.</p> <p><em>Thank you to Johnny for not only taking the time to answer these questions, but providing me an enjoyable (seriously) forum each week to dicuss Michigan and interact with the good people at Eleven Warriors&mdash;well, at least the ones who don&#39;t insist on exclusively using the term &#39;scUM&#39;.</em></p> <a name="more"></a> 2013 ohio state al borges braxton miller carlos hyde vicious electronic questioning Thu, 28 Nov 2013 19:33:15 +0000 Ace 83439 at Vicious Electronic Questioning: 11W's Ross Fulton <p class="rtecenter"><img alt="" rel="lightbox" src="" /></p> <p>I hope you&#39;re all familiar with <a href="" target="_blank">Ross Fulton of Eleven Warriors</a>, who does an excellent job of breaking down the X&#39;s and O&#39;s for Ohio State and their opponents week in and week out. Ross was kind enough to answer a few scheme-centric questions about The Game, and he did so in more detail than I could&#39;ve possibly asked for&mdash;his take on Michigan&#39;s offense alone is well worth your time.</p> <p><strong>Michigan&#39;s defense was surprisingly successful against OSU last year, give or take some pounding runs by Carlos Hyde and the bomb to Devin Smith. How do you see the Buckeyes attacking Michigan on Saturday, and do you expect to see any new wrinkles in the offense that we didn&#39;t see last year?</strong></p> <p> First, thanks for the opportunity to collaborate with MGoBlog, a site I have long read and enjoyed.</p> <p> As to your question, Ohio State was able to gain yards against Michigan last season (the Buckeyes had nearly 400) but Michigan did a really nice job holding the Buckeyes to field goals in the red zone.</p> <p> The new &ldquo;wrinkles&rdquo; you will see Saturday are the primary difference between the Ohio State offense of 2012 and 2013. Last season Braxton Miller was inconsistent as a passer and a decision maker on read/packaged games. As a result, the offense would devolve at times to the Miller and Carlos Hyde run show, even when defenses were cheating slot defenders or safeties against the run.</p> <p> Fast forward to this year. Miller and Hyde are still Urban Meyer and Tom Herman&rsquo;s primary weapons. But Ohio State is far more effective at <a href="" target="_blank">constraining the defense with the screen and pass game</a>. This reflects <a href="" target="_blank">Miller&rsquo;s development</a>, as well as the improvement in the wide receiver corps, led by Corey Brown.</p> <p> Meyer and Herman&rsquo;s preferred method of operating is coming out in the First Quarter and hitting the edge with screens and packaged hitches to Devin Smith <em>(above)</em>, and then taking downfield shots off play action. For instance, one play I expect to see Saturday (and one that will probably get under Michigan fans&rsquo; craw) is a deep crossing route off inverted veer. It is very difficult for the play side safety to stay home when they see a pulling guard and the possibility of Miller or Hyde running the football. Also look for Ohio State to use Dontre Wilson as a decoy in the flat to open vertical routes.</p> <p> Then, once they establish a lead Meyer and Herman like to return to the base run game. Assuming the weather cooperates, I would expect some variation of that formula Saturday.</p> <p> <strong> Are there any personnel matchups when OSU is on offense that particularly delight/concern you?</strong></p> <p> To me, there is one schematic and one personnel matchup that will be interesting to watch. The first is between Meyer and Greg Mattison in the wide side flat. Against spread teams, Mattison generally walks his Sam linebacker out to the field and plays him in the gray area inside the slot receiver.</p> <p>Meyer and Herman love attacking the wide side field when a team does this. They will do so not only with wide receiver screens, but also the outside run game. For instance, one method they use is to run jet sweep away from the play side blocking. Miller will read that backside linebacker and if he bites down, Miller gives on the jet sweep. The Buckeyes&rsquo; slot receiver simply has to seal the linebacker inside and the Buckeyes can get easy yards, either with Hyde or Wilson.</p> <p> As a result, playing that role is a lot to ask of any defender, but I was very impressed with how Jake Ryan handled it last fall. But this is a chess match I will be watching.</p> <p>In terms of personnel, I think that Ohio State has an advantage inside against Michigan&rsquo;s undersized interior. The strongest part of the Buckeyes as a team is their offensive line. Look for Ohio State to run inside zone and power at the 3-technique bubble.</p> <p><em><strong>[Hit THE JUMP to read how Ross thinks OSU will attack Michigan defensively, his thoughts on what plagues the Michigan offense, and his prediction for The Game.]</strong></em></p> <a name="more"></a><!--break--><!--break--><p> <strong>How will Ohio State go about crushing what little is left of Michigan&#39;s offensive soul?</strong></p> <p> Bring in a celebrity guest appearance of Jim Bollman to collaborate with Al Borges on play calling?</p> <p>In all seriousness, Ohio State&rsquo;s defense has certainly been inconsistent this fall, though they had their best game last week against Indiana. The Buckeyes&rsquo; problems have been against the pass &ndash; they have been stout against the run all season.</p> <p> My guess is that Al Borges goes almost entirely with spread sets, and relies heavily on Devin Gardner in the run game &ndash; assuming that his body is still intact.</p> <p> In response, Ohio State defensive coordinator Luke Fickell will likely bet that his interior six in the Buckeyes&rsquo; 4-2-5 nickel over can stop the run without help. I think Michigan will continue to struggle if they are completely one-dimensional and it could be a long day for the Wolverine offense.</p> <p><img alt="" rel="lightbox" src="" /><br /> <strong>Alright, I&#39;ll ask a semi-hopeful question; given OSU&#39;s issues giving up big plays in the secondary, how do you think they&#39;ll try to deal with the threat of Jeremy Gallon and Devin Funchess on the outside?</strong></p> <p>This is the other interesting part of this matchup of weakness vs. weakness if you will. In my opinion Michigan&rsquo;s two best offensive skill players are outside where Ohio State has had its struggles.</p> <p> The Buckeyes have actually been fairly good at preventing explosive plays in the pass game. Where they have struggled is getting dinked and dunked to death down the field in the underneath flats.</p> <p>The Ohio State defense primarily plays cover 3. But the Buckeye weakness is in its second level defenders, with the exception of Ryan Shazier <em>(above)</em>. The result has been lots of short completions as guys fail to get proper drop depth and/or trigger on the ball.</p> <p>But this Buckeye weakness faces a Michigan team who often cannot or will not (probably more of the latter) utilize the short and medium passing game. If I&rsquo;m Michigan, I put Gardner in the shotgun and throw hitches and slants to Gallon and Funchess until Ohio State stops it, and hope they can break a tackle or two.</p> <p> By contrast, Ohio State&rsquo;s pass defense has improved as their young defensive line has developed. As soon as they have the opportunity, Ohio State slides 3-technique Michael Bennett down to nose guard to get their four best defensive linemen, namely Bennett, Adolphus Washington, Joey Bosa, and Noah Spence, on the field together. On third and long, the Buckeyes then move Shazier down as a pass rushing defensive end. I certainly think the match up of the Bennett versus Michigan&rsquo;s interior offensive line favors Ohio State. and the Buckeyes will likely count on their pass rush being their best pass defense.</p> <p> <strong> As an X&#39;s and O&#39;s guy, I&#39;d be curious to hear your thoughts about Michigan&#39;s offense. In your opinion, what&#39;s the biggest issue there, and do you think Al Borges can succeed in Ann Arbor based on what you&#39;ve seen?</strong></p> <p> I think this season for Michigan <a href="" target="_blank">has been a vicious cycle</a>. As a first principle, I think that either pro style or spread offenses can work. But in my opinion the spread offense has taken over college football because its easier to find a 19-year old that can make one or two reads and make plays with his legs than it is to find a drop back quarterback that can stand in the pocket and read through his progressions. The NFL has trouble finding 32 guys that can do that.</p> <p>Turning to Michigan, you guys have not been able to run the football. Whether Michigan&rsquo;s inability to run is a scheme or execution thing, I can&rsquo;t entirely say &ndash; it is probably some of both. I think you all have fully dissected the offensive line issues, but I do think the tailbacks have also not helped the problem. If you are going to be an I formation team you have to have someone at tailback that threatens the defense, and Michigan does not have anyone a defense game plans for (obviously Green and Smith are only freshman so they could develop into that).</p> <p>The NFL response to being unable to run is to throw, throw, and throw some more until a defense unloads the box. The problem is that Borges is unwilling or unable to do so with Gardner, likely because of turnover issues and the offensive line and tailbacks not being able to protect. Borges has thus resorted to a grab-bag offense. He&rsquo;s trying various things to see what can work, but in doing so it&rsquo;s compounding the problem because the offense is not coherent and telegraphs plays by formation.</p> <p>As to whether Borges can ultimately succeed is a tough question. On the one hand, Jim Tressel&rsquo;s offenses at times had a grab bag aspect and he obviously had a lot of success. On the other hand, Tressel micro-managed the offense as a head coach so he could make sure all aspects of the team worked together.</p> <p> Borges is obviously not the head coach, but he has a ton of responsibility by virtue of the fact that he controls the offense. As such, if he is not the right guy it is going to continue be a festering issue. If Shane Morris and Green become the type of quarterback and running back that Michigan had in the 1990&rsquo;s, then I&rsquo;m sure Borges will be fine. On the other hand, this season has been so much of an offensive mess that part of me thinks Michigan would be better off turning the page with a new offensive coordinator (and offensive line) coach.</p> <p><img alt="" rel="lightbox" src="" style="float: right; margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 5px;" /><strong>Are there certain sets of plays or an overall scheme that you think helps mitigate a major lack of experience on the interior of the offensive line? Obviously, this is pretty relevant to the previous question.</strong></p> <p> The short answer is no, and that gets to my point about vicious cycle. In Borges&rsquo; defense it is hard to hide guys that are in the middle of every play. Nevertheless, I think that Borges has failed by not taking steps to mitigate the issue. Looking at it from Ohio State&rsquo;s perspective, the guys I am concerned with for Michigan&rsquo; offense is Devin Gardner running the football and Gallon and Funchess on the outside.</p> <p> If I&rsquo;m Borges and I know that my line cannot block and has trouble with blitzes I am going to employ largely the game plan I think they should use against Ohio State &ndash; operate from the shotgun, using a primarily quick passing game to Gallon and Funchess, while running Gardner 15-20 a game. I know that exposes Gardner to hits, but not any worse than he has gotten standing in the pocket.</p> <p> I know that Borges has tried some of this, but again he has tried to have it both ways so that nothing works. I also know that I would not ask those interior linemen to do something I know they cannot do &ndash; which is pass protect for deep drops off play action and/or run the football from under center.</p> <p> <strong> Care to put forth a prediction for Saturday?</strong></p> <p> I struggle to believe that Ohio State-Michigan, at Michigan, will not be a close game. That being said, I see two teams moving in the opposite direction and I don&rsquo;t know how Michigan will run the football. I think that Michigan can make it a close game if Miller is inaccurate and/or turns the football over, but ultimately I could see a score of something like Ohio State 34-13.</p> <p><em>Thank you to Ross for going above and beyond in this Q&amp;A; you can read his posts for 11W <a href="" target="_blank">here</a> and follow him on Twitter at <a href="" target="_blank">@RossRFulton</a>&mdash;doing both is highly recommended.</em></p> 2013 ohio state al borges al borges devin gardner prostyle cuisine braxton miller carlos hyde ryan shazier urban meyer vicious electronic questioning Wed, 27 Nov 2013 19:29:32 +0000 Ace 83418 at Tuesday Presser Transcript 11-26-13: Al Borges <p><img alt="" src="" style="width: 560px; height: 373px;" /></p> <p class="rtecenter"><em>file</em></p> <p><strong>Opening remarks:</strong></p> <p>&ldquo;Another week. How are we doing?&rdquo;</p> <p><strong>&hellip;</strong></p> <p>&ldquo;Yeah?&rdquo;</p> <p><strong>What was the biggest takeaway after reviewing the film?</strong></p> <p>&ldquo;Well, individual breakdowns. We had a lot of individual breakdowns that caused a lot of three-and-outs, you know? Too much 10-man football. It&rsquo;s the same story. When we don&rsquo;t play well, we don&rsquo;t get in sync, and a lot of individual breakdowns that caused that to happen. At this point in the season, there&rsquo;s just way too much of it. We&rsquo;ve got to go back to work and see if we can get something fixed because we&rsquo;ve got the biggest game of the season coming up.&rdquo;</p> <p><strong>Brady implied that it&rsquo;s a different guy every time?</strong></p> <a name="more"></a><!--break--><!--break--><p>&ldquo;Yeah. It is. It&rsquo;s a lot of &ndash; it&rsquo;s different guys. When you go through the play kill list, a lot of guys are popping up. We&rsquo;re just not playing in sync, and that&rsquo;s my responsibility. We&rsquo;ve got to find a way in this football game and whatever games are left to get back in sync. There&rsquo;s a good offense in there. There&rsquo;s a darned good offense that hasn&rsquo;t shown up in a while.&rdquo;</p> <p><strong>Is confidence gone in a lot of guys?</strong></p> <p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know that the confidence is gone. If you&rsquo;ve gone the whole season and you&rsquo;ve never done anything to believe that you can do something, then that type of stuff can happen. But this team believes they can move the ball. As long as that&rsquo;s intact, you&rsquo;ve always got a chance.&rdquo;</p> <p><strong>Devin was extremely emotional after the game. Do you have to rework his thinking?</strong></p> <p>&ldquo;Oh yeah. We talked a lot today. So much of what you do goes on the quarterback, goes on the play calling, and goes on everything. That goes for the job. You sign up for that, you know what I mean? So you have to be strong and be able to deal with that, but it&rsquo;s certainly not all Devin Gardner&rsquo;s issue. We&rsquo;ve got a lot of individual breakdowns that are keeping up from being the type of team we can be offensively.&rdquo;</p> <p><strong>Have you seen a common reason for why the offense is out of sync? Any underlying issues?</strong></p> <p>&ldquo;No. I wish. If there was, you could address it right away, but it&rsquo;s a lot of individual breakdowns, and it&rsquo;s coming from different areas. A guy goes left when he should go right, dropped passes, I mean everything you could imagine. We found a way to mess up a lot of things. That&rsquo;s usually it. No, there is no common deal. And believe me, as coaches, we tear it up one side down the other to find out what it is because you can directly address that by pulling out a player or completely changing a scheme. Bottom line with us right now is we&rsquo;re just not in sync. We&rsquo;re not converting third downs. We played half the season, we were 49%, one of the top in the country a year ago. We could score in the red zone. We were one of the top 10, top six or seven a year ago, and we were doing that type of &ndash; and somewhere we lost it. It&rsquo;s my job to figure out where and get it fixed. We have the biggest game of the season coming up.&rdquo;</p> <p><strong>Do the individual breakdowns that happen in games happen in practice?</strong></p> <p>&ldquo;Some do, some don&rsquo;t. Some are game-specific. In general, it&rsquo;s just a lot of inexperienced players. They&rsquo;ll do it right in practice, but they get in a game and panic or do something that you never would have thought would have happened. As guys become more experienced, those things tend to go away. But some of them are happening in practice, yeah. But some of them aren&rsquo;t. As a football coach, that&rsquo;s very difficult to deal with because you want to believe you can correct the errors before they can happen, but then sometime in a game you have to &ndash; you see something that you never guessed would have happened. That happened several times last game. You go, &lsquo;Oh my god, where did that come from?&rsquo; I hope I answered that question.&rdquo;</p> <p><strong>With Devin, you said earlier this season that he rarely makes the same mistake twice. At this point in the season, is he starting to repeat his mistakes?</strong></p> <p>&ldquo;Some of it has been trying to make a play. As a play-making quarterback, which he is, and I&rsquo;ve said this before, you just need to be able to use good judgment. Give the play a chance, know when to check the ball down, know when to not take a hit that you may not have to take. And he&rsquo;s still kind of learning that. Every quarterback is always a work in progress. But he&rsquo;s not making a lot of the same mistakes. It&rsquo;s just every week it&rsquo;s a different scenario, it&rsquo;s a different game, and different people are attacking you differently. There&rsquo;s a lot of on-the-job learning, and he&rsquo;s had to deal with that quite a bit. At times, when the protection hasn&rsquo;t been as good, that has an effect on him, too. I think it would on any quarterback.&rdquo;</p> <p><strong>Is he a better quarterback now than he was at the beginning of the year?</strong></p> <p>&ldquo;In some ways, but in other ways, no. His understanding of the game has improved, but we&rsquo;re not getting the performance that he would want or anybody or want. He&rsquo;s understanding the offense better than he ever has, but you know, we just need from his position and every position a more consistent performance. That&rsquo;s keeping us from being what we can be. It&rsquo;s really an interesting thing. So many of the things that we had done well we&rsquo;re just not doing well. You know, you have to give the other team a little credit, too, but some of this stuff is not being defended as much as it&rsquo;s us being inefficient at times. We just have to keep plugging away and do what we know is the best thing to do. We work our butt off and correct each mistake and keep our head up and know that there&rsquo;s more games to be played.&rdquo;</p> <p><strong>Have there been other seasons when your offense has regressed like this?</strong></p> <p>&ldquo;Never four games in a row. I don&rsquo;t remember exactly. I&rsquo;d have to look back. But no. I don&rsquo;t ever remember us going like this. You have better offensive years than other years, because never do you have exactly the same amount of talent every single year. But we&rsquo;ve sputtered so badly in the last four games that I don&rsquo;t ever remember it being like this.&rdquo;</p> <p><strong>Greg was saying that he tunes out what fans say about the coaching staff. How do you approach that?</strong></p> <p>&ldquo;Some of the same way. If I internalized everything fans said, I&rsquo;d slit my wrists. You can&rsquo;t do that. This job is about being thick-skinned. We win games and people still complain. That&rsquo;s the nature of the job. That&rsquo;s why they pay us, and that&rsquo;s why we do what we do. We have to be beyond all that. We have to be stronger than all that, you know? I just know &ndash; and with experience, and Greg&rsquo;s done this a long time and I&rsquo;ve done this a long time, I promise you that other places I have been that my first name&rsquo;s been a cuss word, this isn&rsquo;t the first place where that&rsquo;s been like that. That&rsquo;s just what goes along with the job. You&rsquo;re never going to make everybody happy, but you do your best to help your team win. That&rsquo;s all.&rdquo;</p> <p><strong>During the Northwestern game, it seemed like the offense was taking a step forward. What happened this week?</strong></p> <p>&ldquo;Well we did not do as good a job in this game. It&rsquo;s just that simple.&rdquo;</p> <p><strong>You changed the lineup a bit &hellip;</strong></p> <p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think that was it. I just don&rsquo;t think we were very efficient. I don&rsquo;t think we were always technique-sound. I just think we had some problems up front and in a lot of different places. It wasn&rsquo;t just them. It was a lot of different things. That&rsquo;s pretty much it.&rdquo;</p> <p><strong>Is the negativity too much to avoid?</strong></p> <p>&ldquo;I just don&rsquo;t read the paper. I&rsquo;m sorry. I don&rsquo;t. I haven&rsquo;t since 1993 when I was at Boise State. I used to read the paper all the time, and then in 1992 we weren&rsquo;t very good. I had been a coordinator for about seven years, and it had gone pretty well. I didn&rsquo;t mind reading the paper. But when we were there and weren&rsquo;t very good, I remember my papers piling up in my pantry, and I wouldn&rsquo;t even look at them after a while. I haven&rsquo;t had one since 1993. I don&rsquo;t listen to talk shows. Off-season I will, because I like baseball, but during football season I don&rsquo;t listen to that stuff. If you want to be miserable &hellip; People are passionate. That&rsquo;s what makes it great, though. I did an interview for a book about coaching and the guy asked me, &lsquo;Why do you think people are the way they are?&rsquo; Because it&rsquo;s important to them! They care! That&rsquo;s why Michigan&rsquo;s great. People care, and they&rsquo;re always going to care. That&rsquo;s what you want. You want them to care. But with the caring, comes the passion, and with the passion comes the criticism, and that&rsquo;s just part of the job. That&rsquo;s the way it goes. You sign up for that.&rdquo;</p> <p><strong>Devin has taken a lot of physical hits throughout the last month. Has his confidence taken a hit?</strong></p> <p>&ldquo;You know? I don&rsquo;t think so. I don&rsquo;t really think so. I watched him last week. He&rsquo;s battling until the end, now. If his confidence is gone or lost or anything, it sure isn&rsquo;t showing up when he plays. He&rsquo;s still aggressive and competing and doing all those things. I mean, ask him, but I don&rsquo;t &ndash; if I thought his confidence was gone, I&rsquo;d put another quarterback in.</p> <p><strong>Disconnect between practice and game performance?</strong></p> <p>&ldquo;Things are moving so fast. Things move so much faster in a game than in practice, and all of a sudden that scout team wasn&rsquo;t moving quite as quick as the guys you&rsquo;re playing against, and something you&rsquo;re supposed to do, you don&rsquo;t respond. And again, it happens more to players who haven&rsquo;t played as much. Players who have played a lot, they just respond better. It&rsquo;s natural with experience. But with players who haven&rsquo;t played much, it tends to be, &lsquo;Oh god, you did something and I didn&rsquo;t expect you to do it that fast.&rsquo; Something happens, and that&rsquo;s usually it.&rdquo;</p> <p><strong>This late in the season when you don&rsquo;t have a championship to play for, are you focusing more on player development?</strong></p> <p>&ldquo;Not this game. We&rsquo;re going hell bent for leather to win.&rdquo;</p> <p><strong>Has there been in the past few weeks?</strong></p> <p>&ldquo;No. Not really. We don&rsquo;t play for the future. We&rsquo;ve always got our eye on the ball. Whoever the opponent is, we&rsquo;re going to put in the best players to help us win. That&rsquo;s it. If it develops guys, great. If it doesn&rsquo;t, we&rsquo;ll develop them later. That&rsquo;s our number one goal, and everything we do is toward that end.&rdquo;</p> <p><strong>Is the offensive line developing?</strong></p> <p>&ldquo;Yeah. Again, it&rsquo;s a work in progress. Just like so much of it. There&rsquo;s been so many guys in there. It&rsquo;s an unusual season. And that&rsquo;s reflective of our performance. It&rsquo;s an unusual season. I just don&rsquo;t remember being this late in the season and still playing different guys on the offensive line. Why don&rsquo;t we just put five guys in? Because five haven&rsquo;t established themselves yet, or goodness gracious we would. We have every other year we&rsquo;ve been in here. And everywhere else I&rsquo;ve been. We certainly don&rsquo;t like playing this shuffling game at any position really, but least of all the offensive line. But that&rsquo;s been part of our problem. It&rsquo;s been a big part of our inability to run the ball.&rdquo;</p> <p><strong>You obviously don&rsquo;t know how a season will play out, but what did you envision for this season?</strong></p> <p>&ldquo;Well you&rsquo;re always cautiously optimistic. We&rsquo;ve had reason to be, because we had games where we had one hell of an offensive team in there. But our inconsistency just killed us. As we&rsquo;ve gotten into November, it showed up more, and during the games you really need to play well, we just have not played well. We put too much pressure on our defense. At the beginning of the season, we were very optimistic, for very good reasons. Still optimistic, believe it or not. You can call me the eternal optimist. I believe we can come out the last couple games and play great offensively because I believe that&rsquo;s what we&rsquo;re capable of. It&rsquo;s not like we&rsquo;ve been terrible in every football game. In fact, at times, we&rsquo;ve been prolific. It&rsquo;s there, we just have to get it back. It&rsquo;s that simple.&rdquo;</p> <p><strong>Does the situation on Saturday lend itself to more risk taking?</strong></p> <p>&ldquo;Whatever it takes to win. We take risks, we don&rsquo;t take risks. Whatever it takes to win. At this time you&rsquo;re just trying to find a way to put a plan together that we can execute and beat the opponent.&rdquo;</p> <p><strong>Has Brady become more involved in the offense as the year has gone on?</strong></p> <p>&ldquo;Brady is always involved in the offense.&rdquo;</p> <p><strong>Has he been more involved? Has it changed?</strong></p> <p>&ldquo;Not really. No. He monitors. We sit down every week and we go through the plan, we go through personnel. Brady&rsquo;s involved more on the defensive side of the ball because that&rsquo;s his background, but Brady touches every player on this team in some way, shape or form with regard to motivation and understanding what it takes to get the job done. He&rsquo;s very very on top of what we do offensively, personnel-wise, scheme-wise, because we&rsquo;re constantly communicating. To say if he&rsquo;s doing more now than before? I don&rsquo;t know. It&rsquo;s pretty much the same.&rdquo;</p> <p><strong>You simplified your schemes for Northwestern. Have you scaled down the number of calls?</strong></p> <p>&ldquo;Oh yeah. When you&rsquo;re not executing, to get more flamboyant is probably not a very good idea. You don&rsquo;t want to be so doggone simple that it&rsquo;s simple for the other team, and that&rsquo;s where the delicate balance comes. But you have to be able to play fast. And if we&rsquo;re not playing fast, we&rsquo;ve got to find a way to play fast. The only way I really know to play fast is try to keep it as simple as you can make it so the kids will come off the ball and do the things you want them to do.&rdquo;</p> <p><strong>Why does Michigan have a chance to win this game?</strong></p> <p>&ldquo;Because anybody can win this game. That&rsquo;s been proven. And we&rsquo;re not a bad team. We&rsquo;ve played poorly at times. I&rsquo;ll be the first one to tell you that. But if this team wants to show up and go, I think we can play with anybody. We&rsquo;re playing at home in front of our crowd, our kids are fired up to play this game, and if we do what we&rsquo;re capable of doing, we can win this game. I don&rsquo;t think we have to talk ourselves into it. I don&rsquo;t think we need any of that. We just need to go out and do what we&rsquo;re capable of doing.&rdquo;</p> 2013 iowa 2013 ohio state al borges press conference transcripts actual reporting Wed, 27 Nov 2013 18:09:55 +0000 Heiko 83416 at