fantastic brady article at The Athletic.
pay-only, but highly recommended.
love that they interview aaron shea - he was one of my favorites, back in the day.
November 14th, 2019 at 4:03 PM ^
Why is the Atlantic writing articles about Brady Hoke?
And why would you read one?
November 14th, 2019 at 4:05 PM ^
My favorite parts were Aaron Shea's quotes. He seemed to be Brady's closest friend at Michigan.
November 14th, 2019 at 4:19 PM ^
Brady’s competitive spirit is the stuff of legends. This excerpt had me laughing (Brady playing DB -and trying as hard as possible to lockdown Tai Streets and Charles Woodson ?):
Shea: Intramural basketball, we lost to his team. He was with Jon Jansen. I had Tai Streets and myself. We lost the championship game, and they went zone defense on us. Who goes zone defense in a f-ing rec league? That’s how he is. He would never play me one on one. He’d say, “I just don’t want you to get hurt.” He would play me in PIG, and he had this shot – he would bank a baseline 3-pointer. Think about that. That’s a hard shot. Where I come from, if you make the shot, you can’t take the same shot twice. But in California, he said they don’t play those rules, so he would just sit there and beat me on this damn shot over and over.
Streets: They did play zone. There’s no way they should have beat us. Same thing in tennis. He could play tennis, and we’d play one-on-one and he’d win in that, unfortunately. Then in miniature golf, he’d beat us in that. I had the lead one time, and he came and won it. It pissed me off. He’s an awesome competitor. The tennis thing, he would talk junk, and I’d be like, man, this guy is not about to beat me. He would talk a little stuff and win, and it would make you so mad because he’s so unathletic and slow. He just gets it done, man.
Larry Foote, linebacker: He was nothing but a little scrawny nerd, but he was always smooth with the ladies.
Shea: We would do this thing called “quarterback, wide receiver, DB,” and we would rotate. You’d have guys like Charles Woodson, myself, Tai Streets, Dave Terrell, great athletes. We would go around – (one guy plays) quarterback, (one plays) wide receiver (and one plays) DB – and every time Tommy would be the DB guarding me, I would be just like, “9 route, throw it up.’ But Tommy would be like, “I know what you’re going to do,” and he’d play like 20 yards back. He knew I didn’t just want to do a 5-yard hitch. We’d clown each other. Those stupid little games we’d play at Schembechler Hall would be so competitive. He’d be out there trying to lock down Tai Streets, Charles Woodson, and taking it seriously.
November 14th, 2019 at 4:33 PM ^
I still contend that Lloyd's dumbest decision as head coach was ever playing Drew Henson over Brady. The entire team knew Tom was the better QB and it showed on the field.
Still feel like it cost us the MSU and Illinois game in the 1999 season. I know we got up big on Illinois in the 2nd half, but the team let up from there. Feel like it was part of the hangover from the MSU game. Just my opinion, but it could have been another national title season had Lloyd just went with Brady all season.
November 14th, 2019 at 4:38 PM ^
I disagree but respect your opinion.
November 14th, 2019 at 4:40 PM ^
I don't disagree with the sentiment. Though I imagine there were other "Lloydball" decisions that were worse. Even at the time, it felt like they were trying to keep Henson engaged and happy so he didn't go play baseball. If it weren't for that, I don't think they would have given him so much quality playing time. Problem is, he played 2/3 of a season as a starter and then... went to go play baseball.
Discussed further here:
https://mgoblog.com/diaries/psychology-big-game-after-big-loss#comment-243602456
Did playing Henson cost Michigan those two games? MSU, yeah probably, especially that he got the 3rd quarter just because of one 2nd quarter play. Illinois, one can technically make the case, but snapping the ball over Brady's head probably deserves more blame.
November 14th, 2019 at 4:45 PM ^
Agreed. This opens up an old wound. There was a ton of pressure to play Henson at the time and Lloyd caved. The whole thing was a cluster fuck. And the reward he got for getting him playing time was a big Eff U in the end. Lloyds biggest mistake ever.
Close runner up was going for 2 in the 3rd qtr. against App St. 2 XP's in the last 17 minutes of that game puts us tied when going for the game winner instead of down 2. Game goes to OT. Consensus philosophy at the time is you don't chase those points until 4th qtr.
November 14th, 2019 at 7:21 PM ^
6 SB rings says it was just more motivation for TB12.
You never know.
November 14th, 2019 at 6:45 PM ^
Hoke was ok.
November 15th, 2019 at 2:21 AM ^
Oh, thought you meant Joe.
November 16th, 2019 at 8:34 AM ^
Would like to have seen this kind of action - Brady vs.1997 defense. He had the same attitude in his rookie year at New England.
Jansen: I do know the defense has talked at length about one of the reasons they were so good – obviously they had Charles Woodson and some great players – is they were prepared for every game because of the looks they got at practice. The level of competition from our scout team was, at times and most of the time, better than the teams that we were playing.
Loeffler: He was always kicking the first-team defense’s ass. You just knew the kid was going to be great.