mike zordich beatings will continue until morale improves

10/24/2020 – Michigan 49, Minnesota 24 – 1-0

That wasn't how it was supposed to go at all.

Even the most optimistic Michigan fan in the world would concede that Joe Milton was at times likely to resemble a certain character in a book I have read one million times. Harbaugh is the elephant.

Watch Me Throw The Ball, Mo Willems

This didn't happen, even a little. The worst thing Joe Milton did in his first start at Michigan was attempt to hit a very covered seam route near the end of the first half. That was high; if anyone was getting to it, it would be Erick All. Twin Cities-area cows are unscathed today, as are the chestplates of Minnesota linebackers. The weirdos trying to peer in from outside the stadium did not get plunked.

It is possible that the next-worst thing was Milton rolling out after maybe-probably missing an open Giles Jackson on a post and then casually flipping a 50-yard improv throw while rolling opposite his throwing arm:

He was only foiled by Jackson's diminutive stature.

These were minor blips around an ocean of calm. By halftime a mainstay of charts and graphs twitter was losing all perspective:

I don’t want to jinx it but Joe Milton could end up being the coolest Michigan football player of all time

— Manuel Excel (@colintj) October 25, 2020

This man has already been told to rein it in by the twitter police. But, like Kirk Herbstreit suggesting that Ben Mason taking a drive-killing penalty was good because it was rad, there is something correct in there. Ben Mason blocking a guy into the hockey arena is rad, and Joe Milton did exude a calmness that radiates through the stadium and into your television and then into you.

Consider this: season openers are dumb, and coronavirus college football is even dumber, and new quarterbacks only compound these issues. Michigan's offense was impervious to this. They took only one what-are-we-doing timeout, that because of a late substitution. They perfectly executed a one-minute drill. They punted once.

[After THE JUMP: give me all of that JT Barrett ground game]

chomp chomp chomp chomp. [Fuller]

This is the defense section: I had to split these up for length which means the offense bits are here.

So Let’s Start With More on the Offense

Yeah so the McElwain presser on Monday opened up a bunch of questions about who’s in charge of the offense. Let’s clear that up with a bit of Bo knowledge and some CK2 references, because everybody who covers Michigan football must understand those at least.

I think Harbaugh told us how he’s going to do it when he said Bo didn’t have an OC, and everybody—or at least everybody who didn’t buy HTTV 2015—missed the reference. Indeed, when Harbaugh was playing here, Bo had a defensive coordinator (Gary Moeller) and more or less allowed Mo to run his duchy. But there was no like position on offense. Instead Bo had a “quarterbacks coach,” Jerry Hanlon, Bo’s right hand man going back to their Miami days. Hanlon coordinated the offensive staff, and called the plays from the box, but never got the title. They also had two offensive-minded former head coaches on staff in Alex Agase and Elliot Uzelac, not to mention Bo was an offensive (line) coach at heart. With all of those vassals with kingship claims, hierarchy was less important than council positions.

That’s how I think it’s going to work now. Pep is your Hanlon—he’s got his job and if he cares what you call it he won’t say so publicly. McElwain is Uzelac—he’ll contribute his thoughts while getting back to position coaching and waiting for an OC job. Warinner is Agase, the guy we know all too well from a long career on opposite sidelines, here because he became available and we need him. They’re not Pep’s vassals because Harbaugh holds the Duke of O title himself, but Pep is the Marshall, and leads the armies.

There. Now the offensive staff makes sense, or if it doesn’t make sense at least now you know it’s only because you don’t know enough about Bo and CK2, and you need to rectify that.

Oh, and Sam’s apologizing to anyone he sees for not being hype enough on Joe Milton, with the why at the link($).

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Defense in General

Really would like to know how solving your problems with aggression works in baseball [Patrick Barron]

The thing about Michigan’s defense is they return all but two starters from an excellent unit, and the coordinator has put out three top five defenses in three years—one with Boston College talent—so sunshine is to be expected. At places used to such riches they’ve learned to ask more about strategies for using the varied abilities they’ve collected. We haven’t learned to do this yet, so this is going to be mostly chatter about backup battles.

What we want to hear: Now that some of Dr. Blitz’s weapons are coming into their second and third years, how are they being incorporated into the defense?

What we’re hearing: This week new linebackers coach Al Washington met with the press. Washington played at BC and later coached (running backs and special teams) with Don Brown there. He was part of Fickell’s staff at Cincy that gave Michigan fits by going to a 3-4/4-3 under front and gap-switching a ton. He has been put in charge of Brown’s Swiss army knife position: the Vipers, SAMs, Edges, and whatnot, right when third year Brown hybrids like Josh Uche and Khaleke Hudson are coming into their own. Adam, our presser guy, has a one-week-old so he wasn’t there to ask our questions, and now I’ve got a beef with the Michigan press corps for wasting this opportunity for knife talk to instead lob questions about Mt. Rushmore. But we got one thing out of it:

He said this might be his fastest defense ever. What have you seen of the talent level out there?

“Man, I’ll tell you what, I made the comparison of somebody dropping a steak in a tank of piranhas. You see the quarterback drop back and it’s like…man, it’s overwhelming. So, speed is lightning quick, they’re physical, and they’re smart. That, to me, is probably the biggest thing.

“These guys get it. This is a lot of—I think he had two new starters last year. Ten new starters, excuse me. So, a lot of these kids are coming back and they know it. They have a mastery of it and so that just makes them even faster. They’re tough. They take pride in what they do. It’s a great group. A special group.”

Piranhas it is.

What it means: If a Minnesota Twins fan complains ask him what state Ron Gardenhire collects a check in.

[After the JUMP: The Piranhas]