Mailbag: Transition Costs, Wendy's Chili, Next Year's McGrone
Bye week! Mailbag time!
I know we all thought there would be low to no transition costs because of style, but how much of the offensive struggles do you put down to transition costs within the staff (first time play caller, new OC etc)?
— Takao Yamada (@TakaoYamadaDeY) November 6, 2019
There were style transition costs, but these were mostly self-inflicted. Michigan's transition costs were larger than expected largely because they 1) went away from last year's running game for no apparent reason and 2) installed a bunch of stuff they barely or never used and then threw that away. Everyone's still waiting for that orbit motion to generate a QB pull with a pitch phase, except they ditched it.
I do think the first time play-caller stuff had an impact. Gattis moved from the box to the sideline after a couple games, which is evidence enough, but also: Michigan ran a ton of arc read stuff early in the season and almost never ran split zone, the play the arc read fakes. Speed in space was just a rumor until Penn State. It wasn't until Notre Dame that Michigan actually got sufficient RPS wins to come out significantly positive.
Also a transition cost: it feels like Gattis, who wasn't around Patterson last year, spent half the year finding out what didn't work well with him.
[After THE JUMP: slurry, but in a good way]
How much of the program shortcomings are due to the instability of the offensive coaching staff under Harbaugh? Is that instability also the main culprit for the 2019 struggles? Is the outlook better going forward into 2020+?
— Clint Derringer (@clint_derringer) November 6, 2019
About two-thirds of them. There are some personnel issues that seem unrelated to anything that can be coached up—Patterson leaving pockets. There was also the spate of fumbles that were well out of Harbaugh's historical range; that was just bad luck.
But, yes, Michigan is still finding what it wants to do midseason after panicking when their offseason plans turn out to be bad. This is seemingly every season.
Contrast that with the D. Michigan's had the same DC for four years. Chris Partridge and Mike Zordich have been around that whole time. Greg Mattison had been there the whole time until his departure last offseason. There have been a couple spots that have rotated frequently but for the duration of Brown's tenure you've had a 3-4 man core that has provided a steady hand.
When you maintain this you can shift much more easily. Michigan's defense is a lot different than it was last year, but it's all the same playbook; Michigan is now emphasizing different parts of it. They were practicing these plays last year, with the same terminology. That gives them a leg up when they evolve the D. That D currently sits 3rd in SP+ despite having a lot of personnel turnover and a lot of philosophical shift. They can do that because of the continuity with their coaching.
Meanwhile on offense: Ben McDaniels and Josh Gattis are in year one. Ed Warinner and Sherrone Moore are in year two. The only guy who's been around is Jay Harbaugh, who's a good recruiter but appears to have no strategic input. That's not a situation in which you smoothly evolve your offense because you have a core of guys who know what's worked and what hasn't worked in the past.
I do think the outlook is better going forward, largely because the limitations of turning over your offensive staff over and over again have to be clear. Also one of the main problems was Tim Drevno wandering around the offenses like Mr. Bean, knocking quality tackle recruits into neighboring states while looking for his glasses. The prospect of having Ed Warinner around for the long term is great for 5 of your 11 starters.
What player next year do you think will make the Cam McGrone level leap in terms of impact from one year to the next? My money is on Sainistril
— Kyle Shaw (@1TotallyKyle) November 6, 2019
The obvious candidate is Dax Hill, a five star who's playing well in limited snaps and is a holy lock to succeed Josh Metellus as a starting safety. The main problem with that theory is that when a safety plays well you don't see him nearly as much as you see Cam McGrone. True impact safeties are pretty rare, and it's asking a lot of Hill to be one even if he is the athletic prototype.
The second bust-out candidate on D is Michael Barrett. Barrett looked very good in the spring game and has carried that over to special teams play. He's the odds-on favorite at viper next year.
Offense is much harder to project. They get back every skill position player aside from Tru Wilson and whichever WRs enter the draft, so it'll be hard for anyone to bust out. On the OL you're looking at a number of different candidates for what's probably three jobs; the answer is thus "whoever is the best of those guys." Ryan Hayes and Nolan Rumler are the best bets to be excellent out of nowhere, or close to it in Hayes's case.
Why do we schedule athletic competitions with Appalachian State?
— UMTailgate (@umtailgate) November 6, 2019
I don't know? Surely there was another bodybag team Michigan could have scheduled that would not have caused two extended tangents about The Horror. I was expecting Warde Manuel would be much better at Dave Brandon at being a likeable human being. Check. I was hoping his athletic department would feel meaningfully different than Dave Brandon's, and I don't think that's the case.
You think Joe Milton really has a shot to be THE GUY next year and beyond? McCaffrey is superbly talented but with the portal and the ceiling I’m pulling for Milton. Curious to hear some thoughts. ALSO is there a shot Tarik Black returns for his senior year after this year?
— Eric (@bon_the_builder) November 6, 2019
Milton has a shot. He was always going to be a project you needed to check up on after two or three years in the program, and it seems like he's made good progress. However, it seems pretty clear what the depth chart pecking order looks like right now and it would be an upset if that changed next year.
I do think Michigan should have a real competition, and if Milton is at all plausible they should get him some early meaningful playing time if that's what it takes to keep him around. I do not want to go into next year with just McCaffrey, McNamara, and a currently unknown and possibly nonexistent 2020 QB commit.
On the WRs: the good thing about Michigan's inability to get their receiver troika the ball is that it increases the chance Michigan gets some of them back. Black is the most likely to come back of the three, because he's had less opportunity to demonstrate NFL skills.
I bet Collins is gone. It's impossible to hide that talent even if Michigan is trying. Peoples-Jones talks a ton about being a doctor and maybe hasn't quite proven himself in NFL eyes; solid chance he comes back. Black I think needs to come back because he won't be on NFL radars with his current level of production.
Made Polish dill pickle soup last week. But I borrowed things from a few different recipes, so I dont have a recipe, my bad.
— THE BRAK HOLE (@YinkaDoubleDare) November 6, 2019
Question: why dont they make the whole offense out of "chuck it to Collins"
I don't know.
Part Michigan's OSU problem seems to be a talent disadvantage. Will beating them require an unorthodox game plan, or will doing what Michigan has been doing, and just executing really well, give us enough of a shot?
— Ian Reynolds (@Ian_Reynolds_) November 6, 2019
I think we forget that Michigan felt like the better team for about 85% of the JT spot game and felt better at 21 of 22 spots in the O'Korn game. It's not going to take a miracle to beat Ohio State—though this year ain't looking good. It's going to require a modicum of luck and a gameplan W Michigan's had about half the time. Getting to parity is a tall order; actually winning some of these games is not nearly as impossible as Michigan's made it seem.
I've got a chili cookoff fundraiser coming up for my kid's PreK, do you think I can get away with buying large quantities of Wendy's chili and dumping it into a crock pot?
— Wade Goodell (@WadeGoodell) November 6, 2019
No. I mean, maybe. I don't know what kind of standards your kid's PreK has, but if this is a cookoff, sir, your own dignity demands real chili. Wendy's chili is not chili. It is ground beef soup. It's pretty good ground beef soup, I'll grant you, but it is not chili. Chili involves the ritual assassination of collagen molecules one by one over long periods of time until you have a pile of delicious meat gelatin. Ground beef cannot do this no matter how long you cook it.
Actual chili is stupid easy anyway. Also it may be the case for you that sometimes you walk into a grocery store and someone points as gun at you and says "this nine-pound pork shoulder is 1.50 a pound" and then you end up with nine pounds of pork shoulder. This happens to me at Busch's about every three months. Nearly free-pork shoulder disposal is an increasingly serious problem.
A chili recipe is almost beside the point but here's what I do:
- create a CHILI SLURRY, capitalized for its importance, out of good-quality dried chilis—I get mine from this place in Colorado—by steeping them in hot water for 15-20 minutes and then giving them the stick blender until it's a uniform consistency. Use a bunch of ancho/mulato chilis for a solid base without heat and then ramp it up with hotter ones as per your preference.
- cut the shoulder into long slices against the grain and brown it in an enameled dutch oven, drain most of the fat after you're done
- chop up a couple onions and throw them in, scraping so that the brown stuff ends up on the onions instead of the pot
- return pork to dutch oven, dump in a bunch of canned diced tomatoes and kidney beans (if you want) and the slurry
- cook it until the pork is falling apart, 6-ish hours
- salt to taste, maybe add some fish sauce or Worcestershire if it lacks a certain something
- hell yeah
Note that this is a great platform for heat because the rest of the chili tends to knock it off your tongue.
Beans are fine in chili. Don't even start. Don't be a prescriptivist.
November 7th, 2019 at 1:02 PM ^
November 7th, 2019 at 1:19 PM ^
You can absolutely have chili without those tasteless filler legumes.
November 7th, 2019 at 2:36 PM ^
You forgot the descriptive adder "flatulent producing".
November 7th, 2019 at 7:59 PM ^
Only if your digestive system has 0 sense of what fiber is... oh wait that's 90% of this unhealthy ass country.
November 7th, 2019 at 8:14 PM ^
You can have chili without beans, but you should have beans IMO. They're healthy, hearty, and delicious.
And I have a very regular digestive system, so beans don't make me fart my brains out like people complain. They're not just healthy because of the fiber; it's a lot of soluble fiber. There was a "blue zone" book about the healthiest groups in the world. Diet-wise, they all had beans or legumes as a significant part of their diet.
For some different flavors of chili, instead of fish sauce or Worcestershire, I've put in a stout and/or a little instant coffee or chocolate powder. I've also used Korean ssamjang, which is basically a mix of Korean red pepper paste and doenjang (miso, fermented soybeans).
November 7th, 2019 at 9:32 PM ^
Pickapeppa sauce > worstershire sauce.
Beans are OK as long as they aren’t the centerpiece. Chili is the aforementioned slurry, onions, cubed beef and pork, and enough water and heat to make the sublime gravy. The stout is also a good idea.
November 7th, 2019 at 11:00 PM ^
Mork's entire diet consists of beans. This guy knows truth.
November 7th, 2019 at 11:41 PM ^
Must have beans.
November 7th, 2019 at 1:29 PM ^
Really. If you have no beans you might as well just put it on your hot dogs.
November 7th, 2019 at 1:49 PM ^
Mobile fail as I posted this further down when it should have been a reply.
Damn Yankees.
November 7th, 2019 at 5:27 PM ^
Excellent.
Chili is beef plus hot and smoky.
I have to agree with that. I love "chili" with beans, but it probably shouldn't be called "chili" at that point. Maybe "northern chili" or something.
November 7th, 2019 at 7:35 PM ^
Northern chili is white beans and chicken with heat, according to my cousin in Harbor Springs.
November 7th, 2019 at 9:35 PM ^
Uh, the real deal is New Mexico White Chili made with fresh Hatch chilis
November 7th, 2019 at 5:04 PM ^
Objectively wrong.
Signed,
Texas
November 7th, 2019 at 5:42 PM ^
Cosigned.
Also: I don't use the soaking water that rehydrated the chiles. It's bitter. I dump it and replace beef broth for the slurry (I always make my chili with beef because Texas).
November 7th, 2019 at 6:30 PM ^
Black beans over kidneys. Game changer. Also, I always make mine with a bottle of beer.
November 7th, 2019 at 7:56 PM ^
Upvoted for black bean chili. Also white chicken chili is very good.
Go to Grand Haven. Eat at JW's at 7th and Washington. Order white chicken chili. Profit.
November 8th, 2019 at 1:56 AM ^
When I lived in Texas for years, we made our good spicy chili without beans. Texans never use beans in real chili.
November 8th, 2019 at 5:53 AM ^
No beans, they just get in the way. Sub thick cut bacon.
November 8th, 2019 at 6:40 AM ^
If you go with the beans, the key is to only use 239 of them. One more and it becomes "two-farty".
/sometimes a joke is meant to be said rather than written.
November 7th, 2019 at 1:08 PM ^
I used to work at Wendy's as a teenager. Don't ever eat their chili. EVER.
November 7th, 2019 at 1:47 PM ^
Way back in the day I used to eat a grilled chicken sandwich and the chili from Wendy's. I started getting the shits every time I ate it. Finally had to give it up. And it absolutely is beef and bean soup. Calling that chili is a stretch.
November 7th, 2019 at 1:51 PM ^
Wut? Granted this was the summer of 1980, but I worked two shifts at Wendy's before quitting and going back to being a busboy at the job I had the previous summer.
I know for the chili back then, we took whatever hamburgers sat on the grill too long (we had to have hamburgers cooking continually so that anybody walking in for one didn't have to wait) and threw them in a bucket of water, then boiled off the extra fat/grease prior to making the chili.
It was all sanitary and the chili was good.
What changed in the intervening 39 years?
November 7th, 2019 at 2:04 PM ^
And that process didn't disgust you?! We have vastly different opinions on what constitutes good chili.
November 7th, 2019 at 2:27 PM ^
No.
Which part of the process disgusts you? Using meat from the grill? Storing it in a bucket, boiling off the excess grease so you can cook it again with the rest ingredients?
November 7th, 2019 at 2:36 PM ^
Maybe we just left them on the grill longer than you did. They barely resembled meat by the time our restaurant used them.
November 7th, 2019 at 3:48 PM ^
Ok, makes sense.
November 7th, 2019 at 2:49 PM ^
Also worked at Wendy's as a teen. Agree with Garfunkel 100%.
Details of the process- you were required to keep a certain number of full and jr sized burger patties on the grill depending on the time of day.
Anything that overcooked was put into a bin that sat above the grill. Over the course of the day this bin would fill up.
At close you would take this and "rinse off" the meat in the bin with the same damn hose you used to prewash stuff you were putting through the dishwasher. Then you put all the gross, soggy patties into ziplock bag, wrote the date on it, and stuck it in the fridge. A week or 10 days later this would become the base of your chili for the day.
I was always generally impressed by the ingredients and cleanliness at Wendy's and have often told friends and family - feel safe eating there, just never, *never*, order the chili.
Cheers.
November 7th, 2019 at 2:06 PM ^
me too. worked there in the early 80s. the cooked ground beef may have been stored a day or so in the fridge before use, but that's the only real negative i can think of. beef mixed with huge cans of beans and huge cans of sauce and slow cooked. for a fast food joint, not bad, imo.
i also would take home the leftover fried chicken breasts at the end of the night. we breaded the chicken breasts ourselves then pressure cooked them. doubt they do that anymore. that is one product that is definitely much worse now than it was then.
November 7th, 2019 at 2:32 PM ^
Agreed, and I'm not sure I even have a problem with storing it in the fridge. If the fridge is at the right temperature you prevent bad things from happening.
You are absolutely right about it being good for a fast food joint. I can imagine other places defrosting stuff that is fully made and serving that.
BTW, congrats on the 20,000 point level. Did you get your Tesla and Ruth's Chris vouchers yet?
November 7th, 2019 at 3:52 PM ^
Here's some more red :-)
November 7th, 2019 at 7:26 PM ^
A lot of what's being mentioned is a matter of quality, not wholesomeness, but keeping foods refrigerated at the proper temps only slows microbial growth. Most perishable foods can be kept in refrigeration after cooking for 7 days max (assuming they aren't being taken out repeatedly for reuse). Keeping the meat in a fridge for 10 days before adding it to another food product is... Questionable... Dang, I liked Wendy's chili for dipping my fries!
November 7th, 2019 at 2:46 PM ^
I really appreciated these comments. I have never tried Wendy’s chili. Now, I know enough that if the thought ever enters my mind, I will strike it down immediately.
November 7th, 2019 at 3:50 PM ^
Try some, live dangerously!
November 7th, 2019 at 5:57 PM ^
the old 'ive worked in fast food, never eat the ______' cliche.
November 7th, 2019 at 8:22 PM ^
I worked for Little Caesars and... it was fine. Seriously I can't think of anything gross that went on. Obviously individual stores or people may be gross, but it wasn't policy to pick up food off the floor or anything.
November 7th, 2019 at 6:55 PM ^
I have a very rock solid stomach, almost no food out there gives me a stomachache or any kind of discomfort or unpleasantness if eaten in moderation. Wendy's Chili is the only thing I can think of that always gives me the worst farts I've ever had.
November 8th, 2019 at 1:59 AM ^
I stopped eating Wendy's chili after that finger was found in one bowl. Yuck, I think that was back in the 90s but it just turned me off from Wendy's.
November 8th, 2019 at 5:38 AM ^
Dear Sir:
Where exactly was this Wendy's?
- H. Lechter
November 7th, 2019 at 1:16 PM ^
Where's the beef? You need beef in chili.
November 7th, 2019 at 2:28 PM ^
You most definitely do not.
November 7th, 2019 at 5:00 PM ^
I agree. Pork chili just seems... wrong
November 7th, 2019 at 5:18 PM ^
Ground beef is blah. Use chunks of beef and short ribs
November 7th, 2019 at 7:01 PM ^
Brian's recipe is similar to mine but I'm 50/50 beef chuck roast and pork butt. Also chipotles or just Adobo sauce cause that's the best part anyways.
November 7th, 2019 at 1:24 PM ^
If you had told me Brian would be handing out recipe ideas in the crucial stretch run of the season, I think I'd have been worried. But as my friend the restaranteur says, "Everybody's gotta eat. Every day." We can eat good and obsess over football at the same time, sure! And that sounds like a solid recipe. I'm already looking at that Colorado chili company.
November 7th, 2019 at 1:55 PM ^
*restaurateur*--no "n."
The Pedantic Michigan Difference
November 7th, 2019 at 4:38 PM ^
Yes, but does your restaurateur ever used up vast amounts of nearly "free-pork" shoulder? I mean, I've bought "nearly-free" pork shoulder on sale, but I'm still trying to figure out what a "free-pork" (or one very nearly so) shoulder is.
November 8th, 2019 at 2:05 AM ^
After the Wisconsin game that happened to a lot of us.
November 7th, 2019 at 1:25 PM ^
If I'm an elite WR coming out of HS I'm not sure Michigan would be my top choice unless academics is a higher priority than getting to the NFL. Avg passing attempts per game is under 30 and you those attempts are primarily going to 5 (6 if McKeon were healthy) you're getting 5-6 targets a game. I know, uncalled PI, poor OPI calls...but Bell is the leading receiver and is averaging only 3 catches per game. If I'm Collins I'd be frustrated as hell.
Now get off my lawn
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