I have been sitting back this year with muted hopes for several reasons.   From the chaos of the pandemic to the ham-handed Big Ten Leadership screwed up things with regards to playing football. Include the list of players that left early for the pros or opted out and eventually did not come back.  Then there was concern about these kids and would they, as a team, be able to stay healthy both from a football standpoint, as well as avoiding a COVID outbreak.

With all of that taken into account, game one was a pleasant surprise, offensively seemed to have found an identity, the defense which lacked playing experience was playing with speed, energy, and passion.  I walked away with two questions, 1) would the offense continue to improve, as the season moved along. 2) would the defense be able to continue to play the same way and improve through learning from their mistakes and fixing them.  

They say the biggest step for athletes that change level (HS - College - Pro) is from year one to year two. It is during that time between the seasons that you see who gets it. Freshmen and rookies are for the most part playing based upon talent and instinct, it is when you get to that second year that you see who has learned things like personal health, training habits, time management, all the things you hear from the announcers about learning how to be a pro. The same thing happens in college as well, I do not care what college, it is rare for players at certain positions to walk onto campus and not only start but star at the major college level. Yes, there are exceptions but most are at running back or receiver, and occasionally a defensive player will flash, like Devin Bush however, most people forget he only played in 7 games as a true freshman. Quarterback is and has always been the unicorn position and, OL is another where freshmen rarely start, and yet Mason Cole was one such Unicorn.  

So on to game two which would have been game five or six during the normal season, and also a "rivalry" game. I do not take that into account this year because of the Jumanji chaos of the year has thrown everything into a blender and hit puree. That being said, my two questions from the first game were answered with a resounding NO on both accounts. The offensive performance did not improve from game one.  For some unexplained reason, it regressed and in some cases badly. The reasons for the regression have been speculated upon since Halloween and are as dead as the proverbial horse. Also, the defense did not learn a single thing from their mistakes and they kept repeating the same mistakes, over and over again, thus allowing an average team and QB to look like a national champion offense. One of the most significant differences between MSU in week two and the rest of this season - ZERO TURNOVERS - look at the numbers, MSU TO's 7, 0, 3, 4, and they even turned the ball over versus Bye this week. The outlier game two against UM. They played a near-perfect game, Michigan did not and it cost them.  I chalk the loss up to several issues that were correctable; lack of short field, lack of chunk plays, predictable offensive play-calling. Finally too many mistakes on defense, most of which were on pass defense, and were things that MSU saw in the Minnesota game and exploited all game long.

Now on to game three, and the team starts a run of three games against teams with a significant advantage when it comes to actual in-game experience. The same two questions were still at the forefront of any evaluation that I was making of this team, the players themselves, and the coaches.  If I remember this was the week when the news broke that the coaching staff is functioning one man short and, that coach was one who was supposed to be coaching one of the youngest groups on the team (Defensive Backs) -1 for learning and improvement.  Taking all of that into account at the end of the game, both questions were still answered no.  The no was not as emphatic as the MSU game, yet with the history of IU insanity and other crazy things, losing to a well-coached football team, that is heavy on the upperclassmen at the critical positions,  maybe frustrating but happens on occasion. I mean how many times has a perfect season or near-perfect season been blown up by an Iowa, or Northwestern squad that matched that description over the past 25 plus years.

Game four again produced a pair of emphatic no answers to my questions and by now I was starting to see a regression in the QB position, and the OL was becoming an experiment in making something out of duct tape and baling wire, just to survive.  Cade came on and did provide some spark, but the Badgers just played better and it was that simple.   Harbaugh made no excuses and admitted that they needed to go back to the basics and find out what works and what does not, and build on it from there. 

Finally, we come to the Chaos in Piscataway, and if anyone honestly believed that the previous five years were going to be any indication of what was going to happen I have some really dry land in south-central Florida that I can sell you cheap.  Rutgers came in playing hard, for a new coach, with a bunch of transfer players that came there looking for a new start.  It is amazing what happens with a change in environment for some people, that being said of the 2 UM transfers, nether produced anything beyond ok stats.  Yes, it would have been nice to have Dwumfour in the DT rotation but it is what it is, in football, there are several aspects of the game that are nearly impossible to predict with any level of accuracy, including injuries, and turnovers being the 2 most obvious.  Hindsight is 20/20 and fate has a perfect record against all of us.   So what were the answers to my questions from game one after this game?  Both were a yes, but it was the second half of the game where they changed to a yes.  At halftime, they were both still no because it was for the most part a repeat of the IU game.  

So why all of this to examine the quarterback situation?  Well, it is because what I saw in the second half of the Rutgers game was what I was expecting to see in some shape or form in the MSU game and moving forward.  I saw an offense that was forcing the defense to not only defend the whole width of the field; but also the length which was the reason for some of the success.  It was the change at QB that I believe was the difference and it is more about being game speed ready than physical attributes.  If you compare Joe and Cade, it is like comparing Chris Webber to Duncan Robinson.  Webber was all world with his physical skills and could have walked on to an NBA court after High School, yet his game was that of a two skill player, dunking and rebounding.  Robinson on the other side of things most likely would never have even sniffed the NBA if not for spending four years working on his game to become what he is today, one of the best pure shooters in the league.  

Cade is not the physical specimen that Joe is. However, I believe after looking at their high school statistics Cade was closer from day one to being a game-ready Quarterback for a division 1 program.    Just look at the numbers:  

HS numbers:
Joe - 3 years 549 attempts 260 Completions 3975 yards. 47% completion percentage.
Cade - 4 years 1324 attempts 770 completions 12084 yards 58% completion percentage.

Even taking Cade's freshman year out of the equation, he still has more completed passes than Joe attempted in the same time frame. Cade was closer to being college-ready despite being 6' 1 and 203, versus Joe and his 6' 6 and 220 as seniors. I could throw Justin Fields numbers in there as well, in 2 years he had better yards and completion % than Joe did. 

Nothing against Joe but he was a raw talent and still is today.  It was said multiple times in the game as Cade was successful at something, that Joe would do the same thing in practice, but for whatever reason,  he has not been able to take the wow from the weekdays to Saturday. That is what the coaches have been looking for and is what is needed to be a successful quarterback.  Cade may never be a Heisman Candidate, but two of the greatest winners at Michigan in the past 25 years at QB were not either, and all the third one did was come in as a freshman and reset the standards for passing numbers over four years.  Brady and Greise were the first two I listed and Henne is the third, and all 3 had the benefit of a team that was a lot older and more experienced than this one is especially where it counts for a quarterback, offensive line, and receivers.   And Henne did come in and beat out two upperclassmen who had little to no in-game experience. That being said, is Cade the answer long term? The jury is and will still be out on that one till the last game of the season. 

I can give a perfect example of 2 pro QB's that mirror Cade and Joe and their game skills. Look at the Texans and Patriots game this weekend. In the pregame segment, James Lofton compared Watson and Newton as QB's.  He commented that both were outstanding athletes, but one was a passer who could run and, one was a runner who could throw.  It is not hard to know who Lofton was talking about with the descriptions, and I see the same thing with the Michigan quarterbacks, there is the runner who can throw (Joe) and a passer who can run (Cade).  

In taking a more in-depth look at Joe, his two most significant weaknesses are his touch and reading coverages, both of which are skills that he can learn and improve upon.  The challenge is making that improvement while being the starter and compounded by the Offensive Line becoming a merry-go-round of starters after the second game.   There were times when instead of sitting back and running the offense, I saw him hesitate when making attempting throws that required a level of touch.  Then other times he would display what I call the gunslinger mentality (Brett Farve), which is believing that his arm talent would allow him to do things that others could not, there was no in-between.  Along those lines, his mistakes were errors of inexperience. He would do things like not seeing the LB dropping into the first window for the deep slant, or forcing a pass in to double/triple coverage, or not putting enough air under the ball on a deep pass and dropping it in the bucket as Russel Wilson does so well.  Those are mistakes that Cade did not make in the second half of the game.  

Then there is the passer who can run (Cade), and as it has said before 12K passing yards and 1300 attempts is a lot of reps.  Add on top of that a 6th place in the Elite 11 passing camp and, you have a quarterback, that has done time in the crucible of high-level competition and come out the other side more prepared for the next level.  In high school, Cade attempted almost as many passes as Henne did in his four years as QB at Michigan and even though Nevada High School Football is not in the top 5 to 10 in the country when it comes to overall talent levels, there is still something to be said for the value of the number of repetitions that Cade experienced.  I do not know any coach that will tell you that time on the practice field is equal to actual in-game experience, you cannot put a quantifiable value on any of that.  

I think that right now Cade is more prepared on the mental and fine skill side than Joe happens to be, that may change, it may not but commpetition in practice will force both of them to continue to perform at a high level and hopefully will help raise the bar for the whole team.

With all of this, what do I see for the last three games?  Best case 2-1 worst case 1-2 3-0 is a dream ending.  I believe a win next week versus PSU will happen, for several reasons, first and foremost, James Franklin's team is a glorious dumpster fire on the offensive side of the ball and in even more of a mess than Michigan is.  I see a possible win versus Maryland, depending upon how much our defense improves.  I am not expecting a turnaround to the level of 2017 and 2018, however, the defense needs to start turning the ball over more to give shorter fields, and more three and outs and FG attempts need to be in the offering.  

With regards to the OSU game, give me a dartboard, and blindfold me I do not have a single solitary clue as to what will happen.  This game could be a shoot out of epic proportions because both defenses are struggling, just look IU put up 35 against them and yet the difference in the game was a pick-six by the Buckeyes.  Or it could simply be the final match that completes the total dumpster fire of a season the likes of which Michigan has not seen since I was a newborn baby back in 1967 when they went 4-6 and lost to MSU, Indiana, Navy, Minnesota, and OSU.  Only time will tell and the one thing that I will promise is that the discussions about this program will be varried and interesting for the rest of this seasson and long into 2021, no matter the results.