when will we be good again?

THIS ARTICLE HAS A SPONSOR: If you’re looking for someone who can talk about Michigan football—or, you know, life—without getting overly hysterical about short-term randomness and bubbles, talk to Nick Hopwood, our MGoFinancial Planner from Peak Wealth Management.

Our deal is Nick is the guy I go to for financial strategies, and he gets to ask us Michigan questions on your behalf. Anytime it’s a Nick question, we’ll let you know. Anytime you’ve got a financial question, let Nick know. And when you’re ready to figure out how you’re going to plan your retirement and pay for your kids’ college when you just got done paying for your own, don’t wait to do something about that.

-------------------------------

Legal disclosure in tiny font: Calling Nick our official financial planner is not intended as financial advice; Nick is an advertiser who financially supports MGoBlog. MGoBlog is not responsible for any advice or other communication provided to an investor by any financial advisor, and makes no representations or warranties as to the suitability of any particular financial advisor and/or investment for a specific investor.

--------------------------------

Nick’s Question:

Are we on track? What is, what isn't, what's ahead.

Reasonable expectations. [Patrick Barron]

Adam: Of course the program is on track. What are the legitimate complaints from the people who think it's off track? They point to the record against Michigan State and Ohio State or fret about the lack of development of the offense, but those two things are presented devoid of context, which makes them utterly devoid of meaning.

A glimpse at the future [Bryan Fuller]

The offense has had trouble developing because two quarterbacks have been whisked off to the hospital, the other one didn't develop the way they thought he would when they brought him in three years ago, the starting left tackle got injured last October and hasn't been back since, the receiver who looked like he might at least muddy the waters with regard to the "freshmen receivers suck" rule broke a bone in his foot, things are still stabilizing at right tackle after a midseason starter switch, Crawford and Perry and Higdon and Isaac have all missed bits of time due to injuries, the staff is still finding which gap-blocked and zone-blocked runs work well with the Frankenline, pass protection woes have forced Michigan to use a bunch of max protect and two-man routes, and the new passing game coordinator has had to alter his playbook three times to fit the quarterback who was going to start and then the one who split snaps with him during fall camp and lost the job and then the one who didn't get any snaps with the ones until said first starter was in a back brace.

That was the longest sentence I've ever written on this blog; that was intentional. Do not tell me the offense is off track.

The rivalry game complaining doesn't make sense to me. They've fallen to the fluke of all flukes and a stupid spot and have failed to be competitive in one half of one MSU or OSU game since Harbaugh was hired. Competitiveness is where I draw my line in the sand. They were able to hang with both rivals in year one, decidedly defeated one and went toe-to-toe with the other in year two, and managed to stay competitive with one while throwing in a monsoon with an offense that was functionally more frightening than a Teddy Ruxpin.

I don't know what the people are expecting who truly think this program is off track. Some years you've got a golden horeshoe in your butt. Some years you can't catch a break. Look at the young players gaining in-game experience and the track record of the staff and there's hope yet.

--------------------------------

[After THE JUMP, David @s Ace and Brian. Brave boy]

[Bill Rapai]

Friday, January 20, 2017

Michigan 0, Michigan State 3

1st period

Saliba Goal

UM 0 MSU 1 PPG 03:03 Assists: Ebbing & Hirose

State moves the puck off the boards to the area behind the net. It’s a good idea, as it’s the start of moving the puck from low to high and stressing the defense.

State does just that, threading the puck back up to the point. Cutler Martin’s in good position to pressure the point and the Michigan PK handles the vertical stretch as well as can be expected.

The shot to the front of the net is somehow threaded through traffic, and the outcome (a stopped shot with a tantalizing rebound to the side) is to be expected. Perhaps most concerning is that the netfront skater got into position without so much as a stick check, simply gliding from his space behind the net to the area right in front of Lafontaine.

De Jong notices that there’s a State skater in front of the crease after the puck’s been deflected, and now he’s between a rock and a hard place: there are two guys to defend, one of which has the puck and has decided to shoot. De Jong is too far away to impede the shot, and Lafontaine’s not stopping this without making a highlight-reel save given the dearth of time between the rebound and shot.

[After THE JUMP: GIF as metaphor and a sneaky good shootout goal]

While I was chatting with Brian last week he happened to pull up the top 7 composite recruits from the 2013 season. I followed and…

Woof. Green has obvious vision problems and hasn't emerged from a pile of guys among whom the most statistically effective last year was Drake Johnson. Dymonte Thomas and Shane Morris are already juniors and to date still seem to be at least a year's worth of good coaching away from ready.

That leaves us the offensive line class. Kugler seems to be on track to start when Glasgow surrenders his job—I've heard the same suite of nice things you have. Bosch transferred after performing about how you'd expect a true freshman thrust into a Borges-coached OL would. Fox hasn't been mentioned since a staff ago. Dawson we have only a little more data, much of that getting owned by Maurice Hurst in the spring game (if Hurst does that against Utah's OL I'll happily rescind that as a criticism).

On the other hand we caution all the time about giving up on OL when they're too young.

So when do you know about an offensive lineman?

This is a question I've been interested in a long time, going back to an article one of my Daily colleagues did on OL recruiting to highlight the injuries plaguing the classes Michigan took while I was there. I could never find the article but in January 2013 I tried to recreate some of that information, plus a 12-year update. I did a thing about a year ago on growth tracks to reset expectations for those 2012 and 2013 line classes. Let's check in again, this time with columns.

The towers shrink because players currently on the roster are included in the data, and obviously our information on them is incomplete. "Not available" is a catch-all for transfers, dismissals, guys playing defense, injuries and medicals and whatnot. "Excellent" is basically all-conference-ish, "Solid" is that, "Liability" are guys who were starting but the fan consensus was they shouldn't be or wouldn't but for things like the 2008 depth chart or gross Borges incompetence.

This time I differentiated between "backups" and "two-deep" (an imperfect thing from memory and pouring through old Wolverine annuals). The former are guys buried on the depth chart and unlikely to play; the latter are only the top backups we are relatively certain would have played if they weren't behind an established starter. It's not about being technically on the two-deep, more like the first one or two guys in if an OL goes down—Erik Magnusson last year, or Leo Henige forever.

Things:

• Redshirting is overwhelmingly the normal thing to do as a freshman.
• Only a handful of players are capable of starting (shades of yellow) as redshirt freshmen. If you take the yellow chunk from there and size it against the 4th and 5th years you can see only about a third of the eventually useful players are demonstrably so at that age. Sing the praises of any 2014s already playing; don't give up on any who are not.
• By RS Soph there is a big yellow expansion. The mysterious "backups" region has shrunk considerably. You have a fairly good sense of who these guys are by the end of this year.
• There is very little difference—just a slight improvement—between RS Juniors and 5th year seniors. The backups disappear into unrenewed 5ths.

If you're using this imperfect data set of 82 players, many of whom didn't complete their careers for non-ability-related reasons, to get a feel for when to judge an offensive linemen, you could say it's a half-life. Don't judge a (redshirt) freshman unless he's already playing well, but after their third year in the program if he's not on the two-deep the chances of ever doing so decrease exponentially.

What this means for the 2012-'14 OL classes

Be excited for: Mason Cole.

Be extremely content with: Mags, Kalis and Braden if they seem to be playing well this year.

Keep an eye out for: Kugler, Logan Tuley-Tillman, and David Dawson. These are 2013 guys mentioned as probable two-deep contributors, though our current scouting has Kugler pretty much ready to play, LTT half-way there, and Dawson probably not ready yet. Further data received on them this year will speak volumes about their futures.

Be patient with: Juwann Bushell-Beatty. If he pops up this year he's probably going to be awesome; if he's buried there's plenty of time that this doesn't matter.

Getting late: Bars, Fox, Samuelson. With Bars at least we've heard past mentions of him competing, though he was always kind of the last guy in that 2012 class. He may be on the Huyge track; if he's not on the two-deep this (his redshirt junior) year it doesn't seem very likely he'll be a starter in 2016. Fox has been hurt so much in his career (just going off of game reports) if he's not medicaled he probably deserves some extra time to get caught up. Samuelson I've heard nothing about; even when I ask people with insider-y info I get nothing.