The Mayor

February 8th, 2024 at 11:18 AM ^

Question for the gurus among us: Would it have been better to just rip the bandaid off and go with an outside hire with a big name that could attract a solid staff? I know we kept Moore because a)he’s a rising star and b) we wanted continuity. But now we have seen so many departures. I wonder if that continuity still exists.

Second question, does this staff have the good to recruit and also be prepared to coach against the likes of Texas, Oregon and also Washington and OSU on the road?

next year could be a big step back…

Joined: 10/05/2015

MGoPoints: 5348

M-Dog

February 8th, 2024 at 11:42 AM ^

Continuity was not just the staff, it was the formula: 

Amoeba Defense - dominant DL that can pressure with four, and lock down secondary - coupled with a smash mouth ball control Offense that limits possession.

To keep the continuity of the formula in place, it was deemed better to build on it from within, coupled with the Ravens pipeline, than to bring in a whole new staff that would start from scratch with a different formula.

We will see if it works.  Team 144 made it work, and Team 144 is not walking through that door.  I am a firm believer that Team 144 could not be assembled today with Michigan's current approach to NIL.  We were lucky to do it when we did.

Joined: 07/06/2008

MGoPoints: 257573

Blueblood80

February 8th, 2024 at 11:42 AM ^

Next year will be a bit of a step back and is the price of losing your HC and all of the players to the draft. How big of a step back is obviously TBD. 
I don’t get the ripping off the bandaid question. Nobody deserves to get the HC opportunity more than Moore. The hire from the outside question is what gets us back to the RR and Hoke era and maybe even worse now with the portal.

The second question is near impossible to answer at this point. 

Joined: 11/14/2016

MGoPoints: 3275

ca_prophet

February 8th, 2024 at 10:56 PM ^

Next year was always going to be a step back, for two reasons:

1.  This team was unique, and uniquely positioned.  We had so many players come back - Michigan legends - and now they're gone.  We won't really appreciate that until we look at an improved Edwards running behind a merely-pretty-good-OL, against a much harder schedule, and realizing how good we had it with Corum and an NFL road-grading unit, backed by almost-two elite defenses.

2.  Michigan went from (emotionally speaking) the Mariana Trench during 2020 to climbing Everest in 2023.  Even if we miraculously kept the band together, the odds would have been hugely against us staying there; even if we won another CFP playoff game it wouldn't feel this sweet.

Now, we're looking a steeper drop-off than before, but practically speaking it won't matter a lot unless we start shedding more players.  It was always going to be a sharp drop, but mostly because the peak was so very high.

Joined: 09/07/2010

MGoPoints: 7132