Has your season outlook changed in either direction after first game?

There are times when I hope for the best, but, like Mel Brooks in his movie The Twelve Chairs, expect the worst. 

Rarely make predictions and almost never know what to expect from a college team in almost any sport. It comes from being a Boston Red Sox fan for over 60 years. Besides, months, weeks, days, even hours in advance, who can accurately predict injuries, illnesses, suspensions for team rules violations, weather conditions or how referees will call a game? Like Ben Mason said in one of his pre-season interviews, I “expect the unexpected”. I'm hoping to be pleasantly surprised.

Yeah, first game and all, but in recent years we haven't seen quantum leaps during the season very often. So...

Uh oh:

1. Still a lot of question marks. Some will inevitably be answered in ways we won't like.

2. Looked like spring 'game' level of execution on both sides of the ball.

3. Seems like we're in for another year of key players being hurt/dinged up some/most of the season.

4. Certainly did not look dominant on either side of the ball against a very overmatched opponent.

5. Couldn't punch it in from the 1 against a D line where we had about 50 pound average weight advantage.

6. More gimmick plays that didn't work at all.

7. Hardly a fast-paced offense. No huddle and still snapping the ball many times with less than five seconds on the clock. Plus delay of game and illegal substitution penalties? Just huddle and get it right, maybe?

Oh good:

1. Charbonnet.

2. Vincent Gray

Temper the oh-goods with the skills and size of the opponent.

Damn, some people need to take a breath. 

There are some obvious misses and playing a team like MTSU:

Two tackles with 2-3 players on a QB and WR negates probably at least 11 points from MTSU.

An easy as can be INT miss negated another easy 7 points - so probably 18 points differential there, and if even one of the missed TD drops was brought in, it could very easily have been 54-10 game. A few issues though are to be expected and I honestly also do not think Michigan put out a 100% motivated team against an expected win in MTSU.

I would say the interior D line is the most concerning piece as MTSU played hyper aggressive and for the most part the line and protections did well.

I am wayyy less confident in the defense right now. The offense will score, they have a good o line and too many good skilled position players not to, although I think QB is the weak link on the offense, still not bad just I feel like it’s behind where the rest of the offense is. But that defense did not give me any confidence that they can stop PSU, OSU, ND, or even Wisconsin. Sparty still has a god awful offense so I still think we’ll score enough to win that day. Hopefully it was just an off day for the D and they round into full form come Wisconsin. Also got to be ready this week, obviously. 

Lastly, can we still go under center when we are inside the 3 please? It’s an automatic TD against almost anyone with our o line and BVS or mason taking it in. That shotgun power run doesn’t work on the goal line very often. 

We played a sloppy first game and only beat our overmatched opponent by 19 points.  Clearly we're doomed.  {rolls eyes}

Not at all. I actually thought Michigan looked pretty good for their opener and much sharper than last year albeit that was against ND. The month of October is what defines a football season for me and you can see teams really evolve as they get better or as they endure significant injuries. Michigan plays a brutal schedule and their division is tough. Penn State, Michigan State, Ohio State, and then playing Wisky and Iowa with Notre Dame thrown in the mix. Super tough. Michigan is going to have a great season. The offense is spreading the ball around to its play makers instead of bottling up their capabilities like was done to Patterson last year and our entire receiver corp. The defense will be more or a bend but not break defense with their coverage package of course being exposed with a better QB/WR corp. I get real nervous when the LB has to run to the flats to cover the back. Teams like OSU, PSU, and ND will really try to exploit Glasgow and Devin Gill in the passing game as well as Hawkins. That will be all about matching up their speediest against those defenders. Teams like Wisky and Army this weekend are going to run straight at the DL period. Over all, Michigan is pretty solid across the board. Good enough to win it? Simply not talented enough to beat Clemson, Alabama, Oklahoma, and we will see with Ohio State. The Bucks having a good runner at QB means trouble for Michigan traditionally.  

No.

No

Didn't change anything one way or the other. Still 10-2, or 9-3 if we have key injuries.

Monkeys aren't killed this season.

Too early to tell.

Ask again after week 6 when they've worked out a lot of the kinks on offense and guys like Vincent Gray and Dax Hill have had time to get up to speed.

Nope! But! I think escaping with anything less than 2 losses is going to be a near impossible chance just due to strength of schedule. They are transitioning too much for me to believe they're elite (new offense, and many replacements on defense). Of course with a healthy senior QB (KNOCK ON ALL THE WOOD IN EXISTENCE) and a very dangerous WR corps, the ceiling is definitely a playoff birth.

Anyway, I don't care about the national championship. I just want to get to (and win) the conference title game. And beat OSU. Both I feel are right there for this team this year. The most important games are then going to be OSU, PSU, and MSU (in that order). If we win those, I think we're probably in the CCG regardless of what happens against ND, Iowa, and Wisconsin. 

Nope...if anything I feel a little stronger about how I feel.   We should win one, lose one against Wisconsin and Penn State (probably win against Wisconsin and lose against Penn State).  We will beat Sparty.  Will lose to Ohio State (maybe if I say this the reverse will happen).  And Notre Dame is a push.   10-2, 9-3.

We’ll know a ton about this team come 9/21 at Wisconsin, until then it is all projections.

I thought they were a CFP contender before the season and I still think that.  If anything, I'm more confident about our chances.  This offense (minus the 2-QB stuff) looks capable of scoring 30+ points on any defense we face this year, including Sparty.  If you can spread their defense out and attack the perimeter, we have advantages there.

There was only one issue on offense and that was not calling a TO after Johnson's catch in the 2-minute drill.  Once I realized that they were trying to spike the ball to prevent a review, that erased my only issue.

It’s the same or more optimistic. The schedule is hard, if we stay healthy at key and thin positions we could be great.

I knew MTSU would be tough, they were a bowl team last year. 

RB, CB were question marks that have been answered.

i think we will able to go over the top of defenses at will given the WRs. 

A little less because the defense wasn't as good as they should be against a really undersized offense.  Offense was about where I expected.

One thing that has changed is that I think Wisconsin and Penn State are a lot better than I thought they'd be.  Ohio State and MSU about where I expected them to be.  Iowa is really good too.  So this schedule is tougher than I initially thought.

I knew MTSU lost their whole team from last season and their roster was filled with GLIAC sized players.  They are going to be really bad this season and we should have beat them by 50+.

I'm negative about the execution. I don't concede as much for "first game issues," because I think that you can practice into a higher level of polish than we saw out there.

BUT, I definitely buy that nothing negative that we saw has significant ongoing impact.

The good that we saw is very good, and I expect it to build.

So, while perhaps negative about the game itself, I still see us winning the CFP

Yes, more concerned (and collecting down votes as a result).  In week one, we were 8th in both total offense and 8th in total defense across the B1G.  If week one doesn't make you hit the breaks on the pre-season hype then not sure anything would.  On defense, we performed only ahead of Rutgers and Indiana compared to the rest of the teams on our schedule. 

http://www.cfbstats.com/2019/leader/827/team/defense/split01/category10/sort01.html

I am not yet sure what to make of all this.  The offense is pretty far away from "the sky is the limit" and the defense definitely doesn't have "9-10 capable guys in the DL rotation" ... remarks that were coming out of fall camp from the program.  Can we adjust to the DL hits and get super human efforts from the LBs to cover the gaps?  Going to test Don Brown's abilities to adjust and remain effective enough to stay competitive until the offense is on track.  Wisconsin will be a huge challenge and afterwards the time to re-evaluate expectations.  That bye week is fortunate timing for the team and a chance to pull it all together before league play. 

Not really. I think the issues on offense (drops and fumbles) are fixable and I liked how the offense looked. It will only get better. I feel a little better about the defense than coming into the season as well. The CB situation is looking better since Gray looked good and Thomas is back. My only concern is DT, which should be better when Jeter and Dwumfour are back

We're #7

I didn’t go into this season with any expectations, too many new faces on defense and a new offense to watch develop.  I figured it would take 3-4 games to have a reasonable take on what sort of a team we had.  No reason to have changed that opinion.

I find it odd that our fans are looking at MTSU last year as a measure for how good they might be this season.  They returned almost no one off that team and not only lost most important skill players, they lost almost all of their size off both lines.

That MTSU starting 2 DTs that went 250 and 272 lbs.  Their LBs were 214, 214, and 205 lbs.  Their O line had two tackles 6 feet 2, and was tiny going about 275, 285, 270, 290, and 305 across it.  When you have a line that small, your D Line should wreck it play after play.

MTSU was a lower level MAC team last Saturday, we should have blown them out by 50.

I actually was encouraged. In terms of feelings ball, it seems to be the style of team that improved during the year; lots of good teams start sloppy and get better, because they complexity of their systems give them room for growth. We all know of our November woe; it’ll be nice to see what the team can do with a ceiling that certainly ‘feels’ higher.

There's a lot of takes in this thread, some good, some bad. We need something to unify us and to support the team this year. We've waited all year for football and it's finally here!

To help bring unity, I wanted to include Jennifer in this conversation. Go Blue!

via GIPHY

I have concerns with the dline.  They look small, and the Wisconsin, ND, and Ohio O-lines make me very nervous, but I still think they end up 9-3 or 10-2 just as I did before.

Given how under-sized MTSU was on both lines I thought our O-line and D-line would dominate.  They didn't and that has me very concerned.  

Changing the scheme isn't going to dramatically improve our O and we should have been able to put up more than 500 yards against MTSU.  That we only put up 450 concerns me.  

My gut says 7-5 but my mind says 9-3.   Hopefully this was just week-1 issues, adapting to a new Offense, etc.  

Not really.  I think Wisconsin is a bit better than I expected, ND a bit worse.  MSU looks even more one-sided, and if anything I'm less impressed by OSU than I thought I'd be.

But it's still a 10-ish win team with the potential to be better.

Everything means nothing. Jump ship now. Give up. Don't come back. One game tells us everything that we need to know. 

I'd say the team that played MTSU is an 8-4 team that loses to Wiscy, PSU, ND and OSU.  I don't expect they will stay that team.  It remains to be seen how much better they can get.

All I know is I feel warm and tingly being a Michigan football fan today.  You could always be a Tennessee football fan.  I see a total tire fire erupting in Knoxvile before season's end after their opening game against Georgia State.

I have the same (possibly irrational) expectations - Big Ten champs and playoff appearance!

I'm excited to see how the offense develops but early indications are encouraging. I'm really excited that Charbonnet seems to be ahead of the freshman RB curve - could be a huge year for him. And between Ambry being healthy enough to play and play well, and the Vincent Gray hype seeming legitimate (based on one game, I know), I feel much better about our CB situation. I'm still a little nervous about DT depth, especially if Dwumfour and Jeter do not get back to 100% and stay there, and the freshmen don't at least contribute.

Nope. 

Not really.  Could still see us going 10-2 and lose bowl game or 7-5 and lose bowl game, losing to OSU in both cases.  

I didn't know what to expect from Gattis before game 1.  He certainly talked a big game and seemed to know what he was talking about.  But the proof is in the pudding and game 1 showed me an offense that made mistakes but has a ton of upside.  The mistakes are correctable with practice.  I'm not sure about the defense yet but I think overall my outlook is still 1 to 2 losses with a great shot at 12-0.

The offense looked better (RB, run/pass distribution, and a few excellent pass plays and RPOs, making up for an OL that didn't seem to live up to the hype), and the defense was roughly a push (DL worse, CB better). Still not enough to get me from 9-3 to 10-2. We could even end up at 8-4 if the offense ends up going conservative in big games.

But I'll say 9-3. No change.

10-2 still

Down after the first game  , and coupled with what the other schools did . I could be up next week if we blowout Army and the other schools have a down week. Call me  fickle , but I try to remain positive and hopeful .

From an eastern direction to a western direction