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1/5/97

Obviously another disappointing loss. This is a game we should have won, pretty much dominating from start to finish. Unfortunately, the offense couldn't score, despite accumulating over 400 yards.

Fred Jackson

The defense looked great (though Alabama is pretty sad offensively). They gave up the one big play at the end of the game, but that was a desperation situation; they were forced to gamble and put 8 or 9 men at the line, which does result in occasional big plays. If the interception for a TD hadn't occurred and we had continued our "standard" defensive scheme, I don't think Alabama would have scored at all on offense (remember the FG was due to the -2 yard punt).

Were we outcoached in the Alabama game? I don't think so, though I know many will disagree. Michigan executed, in nearly every phase of the game (OK, not the kicking game), better than Alabama. Would anyone take Alabama's offensive coaches over ours? I definitely wouldn't. In general I feel that Michigan's coaches put the players where they needed to be in order to win the game. Alabama's players made two big plays to put the ball in the end-zone. Michigan made only one, in a meaningless situation, despite 6 or 7 opportunities. That was the difference in the game.

I have received at least 20 e-mails suggesting that our coaching staff is terrible because they are wasting all of this talent we have accumulated with our great recruiting classes. I have said this about 20 times in the last year, but it is worth repeating. We clearly do not have the offensive talent necessary to win consistently. We do on defense, but because of great performances, few notice how young our defense really is. This is a reflection of two things.

1. Recruiting class rankings are grossly inaccurate.

Ray Jackson

don't

Will Carr

Damon Denson

Because of departures and/or players who are not as good as everyone thought, we have a serious lack of impact players on offense. The coaching staff knows this as well as anyone. All we can hope for at this point is that experience will lead to an improvement (it usually does - senior dominated teams are the ones that win), and that the coaches will recruit players that will have the talent to really make a difference.

If you look at it, the only team we lost to that has significantly less talent is Purdue (that was inexcusable, in my mind). PSU and Alabama were fairly even matchups. NW may not have more overall talent, but they have great players at the skill positions (Autry and Bates) and a senior QB. Colorado and OSU probably have more overall talent, but somehow we managed to beat those teams (could we have outcoached them? Hmmm...).

So what does this all mean? I'll summarize it as follows:

1. We should have beat Purdue.

2. We could have beat PSU, NW, and Alabama.

3. We should have lost to OSU and Colorado.

Inconsistent, isn't it? Perhaps the sign of a young team...or one with not quite enough talent but good coaches...or one with great talent and bad coaches. I'll leave it to you to make up your mind.

Does this mean I'm satsified with an 8-4 season? Definitely not. I want to win every game, but perhaps we should take a step back and realize that we all had our expectations raised (too high) because we won at Colorado. The offensive talent is just not there right now. The coaches must address this, but we will have no way to judge their success in the short-term.

By the way, please don't e-mail me to complain about the above...I know many will disagree, but I don't have the time right now to argue about it (as some of you may have noticed, I'm getting behind in answering e-mail), unless you don't want any recruiting updates for the next two months. I'll be focusing on recruiting and being made manic/depressive by our basketball team's performance.

12/12/96

Jarrett Irons

Charles Woodson

William Carr

The Detroit News

Scott Dreisbach

The University of Michigan Athletics Site

12/8/96

John Kolesar

Woody Widenhofer

Lloyd Carr

12/6/96

Greg Mattison

Bob Davie

12/3/96

Michigan's football bust was last night. The awards:

MVP: Rod Payne

Best lineman: Rod Payne

Best linebacker: Jarrett Irons

Spirit award: Damon Denson

Senior scholar: Brian Griese

Jarrett Irons

Charles Woodson

11/26/96

Rod Payne

Jerame Tuman

Damon Denson

Charles Woodson

Will Carr

Jarrett Irons

David Bowens

It's looking like Michigan has a good shot at playing in the Outback Bowl on New Years' Day. Iowa is lobbying hard, however, on the merits of a better conference record; the overall records, however, are the same, and Michigan may win out due to more national appeal and big wins over Colorado and OSU. It probably won't be decided until after the SEC and Big 12 play their conference championship games.

11/24/96

An admittedly unexpected win over the Buckeyes has made my week. All of us fans had questions about this team's ability to win against OSU, but Michigan clearly wanted this game more than the Buckeyes. It certainly salvages the season - the difference between 8-3 and 7-4 seems huge, as does a 5-3 vs. 4-4 record in the Big 10. Not that anybody is satisfied with an 8-3 record, but it's better than what I expected after the horrible performances of the prior 2 weeks.

Obviously, this game has been analyzed to death. A few things that I haven't heard mentioned elsewhere:

The Buckeyes constantly blitz their safeties, as happened on the TD pass to Streets. What happened to that 3-step drop and throw to one of the two tight ends streaking down the middle of the field (like the first TD to Tuman vs. MSU)? It seems like that play would be enormously successful against those plays where the defense blitzes one or both safeties. That play has created huge TD's for Michigan against attacking defenses in the past; I would love to see it used more, at least until someone actually stops it.

Tyrone Wheatley

Chris Howard

Clarence Williams

Orlando Pace

Glen Steele

James Hall

All year long, everybody raved about how well OSU's offense had played despite the loss of their skill players. However, for the last several weeks, OSU has struggled offensively, but managed enough to win their games. Against an excellent defense, the losses finally caught up with the Buckeyes. The Michigan DL was too good to be completely dominated by the oustanding OSU OL, and they couldn't hide the lack of skill position experience/talent behind Orlando Pace and company.

Gary Moeller

major

Lloyd Carr

Brian Griese

11/19/96

Chuck Winters

Well, another disappointing performance on Saturday. It seems as if the team, particularly the offense and special teams, has regressed after taking some strides forward earlier in the season. The complete collapse of the special teams is beyond my comprehension, but at least this part of the game reflects very poorly on the coaching staff (more on this below).

Scott Dreisbach

Jarrett Irons

Jim Hermann

While I have been a staunch defender of the coaching staff, now I'm really starting to wonder. Offensively, they are clearly too set in their ways. I was encouraged a few weeks ago, but now I'm convinced that the staff does not have the capability of adjusting their system to fit the personnel. While it is possible that they can recruit to their strengths, this will take at least 2-3 years to fully implement, and I don't think anyone is willing to wait through 3 more seasons with 4 or 5 losses. Time to make a change on offense - they have two games (OSU and yet another second-tier bowl game) to either prove that they have the vision to change the offense, or they must get a new coordinator who does. Also, there needs to be some reassignment of at least some of the coaching duties: a new special teams coach would be a great start. The OL may be another position where a change would be helpful, although this is a difficult position for laymen such as myself to assess; thus, I'm not sure if the lack of consistently good play has been due to lack of talent, intensity, coaching, or some combination of the three.

Lloyd Carr

John Cooper

Lloyd Carr

Barry Alvarez

Cam Cameron

11/4/96

Kind of a strange game on Saturday. Both teams made some mistakes - Michigan was penalized for about 100 yards, but managed to avoid turning the ball over; MSU didn't, which was probably the difference in the game. This is the first time in quite a while that Michigan really went for the kill - it was great to see them throw the ball into the endzone after both turnovers at the end of the half, rather than sitting on the ball and settling for the field goal.

Scott Dreisbach

Fred Jackson

The defense played fairly well, making the big plays (4 interceptions - they finally managed to catch the ball), although they did give up a fair amount of yardage through the air. The vaunted MSU running attack was pretty much shut down, though they were forced to throw when they got behind. The defensive line has not managed to consistently pressure the QB for the last few games, although when they did get to Schultz, they forced the bad throw, leading directly to two interceptions.

Greg Mattison

David Bowens

10/29/96

Zach Adami

The Minnesota game was quite a turnaround. Granted, it was against Minnesota, but the struggles previously were against another weak team in Indiana, so it's a step forward. A few notes:

The offense broke out with the big play, largely due to the accuracy of Dreisbach throwing the ball downfield. Nice to see him back on target.

The offense was still not very diverse against Minnesota, but it didn't need to be. Once again, I got the sense that the offensive staff held back some plays. The majority of the passing plays, for example, were play-action bootlegs to the right, with different receiver options at different times (two WR's deep, one TE underneath and one deep, and various other combinations). These routes are difficult to defend, especially if the offense is running the ball well. However, there was not much in the way of pocket passing, though I think that Dreisbach can throw well from the pocket; it will be interesting to see if there is more variety in the play calling against MSU.

The running game was better - obviously, any time you can get some big plays, you're happy. I wouldn't mind seeing how Chris Howard does with about 20 carries a game, but he didn't need that many against Minnesota.

The long TD pass at the end of the game was definitely out of character for Carr. In the past, he's had his QB take a knee deep in enemy territory at the end of the game, but those games were generally closer and the starters were still playing. I think it would have been better to throw an intermediate route, but it is hard to tell the backups not to try and get the most out of their time, especially since they have not had many opportunities to play this year. I'm pretty sure that Brian Griese and Marcus Knight (the true freshman WR who caught the TD) are happy and will practice very well this week.

Although the defense only gave up 10 points, I was a bit surprised at the way they let Minnesota march up and down the field (Lloyd Carr didn't look happy about it at halftime either). Although our propensity for the big play limited our time of possession somewhat, Minnesota was able to throw effectively and kept the ball for 5 or 6 minutes more than Michigan.

I think that Minnesota had some of their success because Michigan didn't seem to blitz much; I can't remember Jarrett Irons blitzing at all. This frequently gave their QB enough time to throw the shorter routes. Of course, the defense did get burned by blitzing on the play that set up Minnesota's TD; perhaps the "D" backed off after that because they knew that they could get to the QB on occasion (enough to halt several drives) without blitzing. A lack of pressure from the DL could be a disaster against a good team like MSU - their QB is very accurate when given time and will pick us apart if we don't pressure him, and it's hard to blitz against a balanced offense that can make the big play.

I continue to be amazed by the athleticism and speed of David Bowens. He has already tied the single-season sack record for a Michigan player (11) and is constantly chasing (and catching) plays, even when they run away from him. On several occasions this year, he has run down a play from behind and forced a fumble from a surprised opposing ball carrier - he did it again versus Minnesota, though we didn't manage to recover the ball.

The defensive players still can't catch. If they could, we would have had 5 interceptions against the Gophers, and the game would have been REALLY ugly. Dropped interceptions could be crucial turning points in games against tougher opponents.

10/25/96

Jarrett Irons

Steve King

John Partchenko

Scott Dreisbach

10/15/96

Jarrett Irons

Sam Sword

Rob Swett

Will Carr

Glen Steele

Lloyd Carr

John Anes

Tommy Hendricks

Will Carr

10/9/96

Alright, Michigan fans, calm down a bit. It's ridiculous that so many people are calling for Carr's head after one loss, no matter how disappointing it was to blow a 4th quarter lead. Last week, and after Colorado, the coaching was awesome. Now, it's horrible. Judge the performance at the end of the season, not after one loss, and remember what you were expecting at the start of the year (most people were predicting between 7-4 and 9-2, if you'll recall). Anyways, I'm not going to rehash the comments that have been made elsewhere, but I will make a couple of observations.

First of all, for those who are questioning the 4th quarter play-calling, I agree that it was very conservative - and should have been changed when they realized that Northwestern was stacking the line. However, imagine this scenario. Dreisbach drops back to throw on first down, and throws an incompletion. They then run once, are in third and long, pass the ball, and fail to get the first down. How many fans would complain about not running the ball to run out the clock? Knowing Michigan fans, everyone would say "How could you not run the ball when you know you've got a great defense"?

While the play-calling wasn't ideal, the blame for this loss cannot be placed entirely on the coaches. The players had at least 10 chances to put the game away; if they had made ONE of these plays, the game was over. A few examples: not downing the punt at the one yard line; not holding on the long kickoff return by Shaw; not giving up the 4th and 9; not making the sack on Schnur on the play prior to the 4th and 9 (they let him get away) to set up a 4th and 14 or 15; not fumbling; and many more. Northwestern got a couple of breaks (like the blocked FG somehow going through the uprights), and made the plays they needed to win. We didn't. It's that simple.

The other thing to note, for those of you calling for Fred Jackson to be fired, is that the offense has made tremendous strides, especially in the passing game. Yes, Stan Parrish has helped, but since none of us sit in on practice, it's ridiculous to say that he's the only reason this has happened. Wait and see - we all knew there would be offensive struggles, especially during the first 6 or 7 games. If Michigan goes 10-1 or 9-2 in the regular season, will we all still want the coaches fired?

Lastly, stop whining...you all sound like Notre Dame fans. Support the team that is out there - it's young, and will get better. I've heard several comments that "Michigan gets whatever players they want, and has a top recruiting class every year, and should never lose more than one game". That's absolutely not true. Note that it's only been two years since Michigan has revamped it's recruiting strategy. There are only a few contributors from the recruiting classes of 4 and 5 years ago - which were highly rated, but had many defections. Those are the classes that dictate how a team does. The best players on this team, outside of Payne, Irons, and Carr, are all true or redshirt sophomores (Woodson, Bowens, Taylor, Williams, Dreisbach, Streets, Tuman, etc.). Most of these players will be around for two more years, and that's when this team should be at it's best.

go blue!