Where were you when Brian finally lost it on MGoRoundtable?

Submitted by TheCube on November 21st, 2019 at 10:32 PM

It’s been weeks in the making but Brian finally just went in on Sam always quoting Al Borges for offensive analysis. Sam didn’t hold back either throwing some haymakers back. You could cut the tension with a knife. I’m sure it was awkward af for Craig, Ira and Ed. 
 

 

I was driving back from work when it streamed on my Apple podcast app. Safe to say my jaw dropped since the round table is usually pretty PG in terms of harsh criticisms. 

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Gorgeous Borges denard Sam v Brian Ed Craig

NYC Fan3

November 21st, 2019 at 10:54 PM ^

The same Brian who told Ed his models were stupid for predicting Minnesota as a 55% chance of winning the Big Ten West.  Hope he didn’t bet on Minnesota vs Iowa like he talked about last week.

Joined: 01/01/2018

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andrewG

November 22nd, 2019 at 12:01 AM ^

While Borges, as a veteran coach, certainly knows more about football in general, it doesn't mean he knows more about every aspect of football. You need someone to recruit, teach technique, manage the rigorous demands of a student athlete, etc.? Borges would certainly better than Brian in all regards, and immeasurably so. You need someone to provide tactical analysis? There's at least a reasonable case to be made the Brian's ability in this area surpasses Borges's.

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LJ

November 22nd, 2019 at 8:08 AM ^

You seriously think a blogger who has never played a down of football in his life knows more about football tactical analysis than a guy who has been doing nothing but football for probably 80 hours  a week for 30+ years (most of that as a coordinator), and who has been more successful at it than 99.9% of other football coaches?

What planet are you living on?

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spiff

November 22nd, 2019 at 8:31 AM ^

Maybe, but let's not get it twisted. Football is not particle physics. Brian is also not some random blogger. He has broken down every play of every Michigan game for the last several years. 

Does he have as much experience as Borges? No. But does he have enough knowledge to legitimately critique a professional football coach? Probably.

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LJ

November 22nd, 2019 at 11:08 AM ^

I agree he can critique, but I don't agree that he's going to have a better understanding than Borges as to what is going on schematically.

Here's my real beef with Brian's takes on scheme.  He sees an issue: for example, we don't take the easy yards on bubble screens and punish defenders playing inside to stop the run.  He attributes the problem to poor scheme: why won't they just take the easy yards?  That solution is so obvious, there can be no doubt that the coaches considered it.  But there are likely many other issues at play that we don't have information to assess.  Maybe the players don't execute the screens well.  Maybe it doesn't fit in with what we're trying to do in the larger picture.

It's like I'm making a homemade meal for Brian.  I make a nice steak, but there are no potatoes to go with it, and potatoes would really make the dish so much better.  Brian says, "This idiot chef!  Why doesn't he just put potatoes on the plate, and this would be an A+ meal instead of a B- meal?"  But he doesn't recognize that I don't have the butter I need to make the potatoes, or I told the sous chef to make them and he didn't show up for work or screwed them up.  It's not because I don't recognize potatoes go well with steak.  Duh, every chef knows that on Day 1.  It's that getting the steak and potatoes well-prepared and on the plate together is much harder than just snapping my fingers and saying, "okay guys, let's serve potatoes to complement that steak."

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yvgeni

November 22nd, 2019 at 12:03 PM ^

He attributes the problem to poor scheme: why won't they just take the easy yards?  That solution is so obvious, there can be no doubt that the coaches considered it.  But there are likely many other issues at play that we don't have information to assess.  Maybe the players don't execute the screens well.  Maybe it doesn't fit in with what we're trying to do in the larger picture.

?? THIS!

so many times this....

 

Joined: 06/30/2008

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LJ

November 22nd, 2019 at 10:55 AM ^

You don't have to play it to understand it, but I think playing it helps you understand it, because you've had real coaches explain responsibilities, technique, etc.  I'm sure the fact that Brian never played increased his learning curve for scheme.

I'm also not saying Borges was one of the best offensive coordinators in the game.  I'm saying that any coach at a power 5 school has risen among the ranks of nearly all football coaches, many of whom would also love to rise to that level, and knows a lot about football and scheme to get there.

Joined: 07/05/2008

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wolverine1987

November 22nd, 2019 at 8:16 AM ^

Objectively wrong, sorry. There is literally zero case to be made for that. 

Now if you want to make a case for what kind of play should be called in a certain situation that might be a discussion. Because where coaches go wrong isn't in their knowledge, which is superior to all of us, but in how they apply it to make decisions

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Gulogulo37

November 22nd, 2019 at 7:01 AM ^

Sorry but that argument is pretty weak. And Sam made the same argument on air. I thought Brian destroyed it pretty well talking about putting Denard under center. Are you going to say that was a good idea because Al knows more about football than anyone here? He's not beyond criticism.

It's also worth noting that although they largely stayed out of it, Ed and Craig definitely seemed to side more with Brian. The argument Sam made wasn't even about football concepts, it was about why the offense is running the plays they are. And everyone was pretty baffled by how hard Sam was going after it. Plus, this wasn't mentioned on the broadcast, but do people keep forgetting Gattis wasn't the OC at Alabama last year?

And I should point out I'm not just trying to be Brian's lap dog here. Brian can definitely be abrasive. I feel like he's just joking when he knocks Craig, but he's definitely a jerk to Ed quite often. And it's gotten much better, but listening to him and Seth on podcasts together used to be brutal. It was pretty bad with Dave sometimes too, but that's also gotten much better. Same goes for his relationship with Space Coyote, who basically never posts here anymore. Also also, fix your damn site Brian. I had to edit typos in this post a couple times and each time I get taken to the last page and have to page back and scroll down all over again.

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reshp1

November 22nd, 2019 at 9:47 AM ^

The first paragraph is like the epitome of the Dunning Kruger Effect. A career professional competing against other professionals isn't successful so the commentator that picks apart the performance in hindsight must know better. Do you honestly believe if Brian was made OC for a game there wouldn't be a pile of things for us laymen to pick apart in hindsight? No, Al isn't beyond criticism, but when it comes down to breaking down plays I'm going to trust his analysis over Brian's every time.

Your last two paragraphs are spot on though. 

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EastCoast_Wolv…

November 22nd, 2019 at 10:41 AM ^

Haven't listened to the podcast yet so maybe I'm missing a crucial detail to the argument. Were Brian and Sam debating whether Al is a good playcaller or whether you should trust a mediocre playcaller to provide good analysis of play-calling? Because if it's the latter, then whether Brian would be a better playcaller than Al is immaterial in my opinion. To use an example from education (which also applies to coaching), being good at X doesn't mean you'll be good at teaching X (or coaching X). So if Al isn't even good at X (play-calling), why would we assume that he is a good teacher/analyst/coach of X (play-calling)? There is a lot more evidence that Brian is good at play-calling analysis than that Al is good a play-calling analysis.

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Jason80

November 22nd, 2019 at 1:51 PM ^

What evidence? Because Brian runs a blog, puts out his UFR that is subjective to his criteria and then he is praised for his brilliance by his blog fans/sycophants? Bloggers all over the world have sycophants that kiss their ass, that doesnt make them experts on what they opine about it merely means that some of the public doing the reading want to show genuine appreciation or gain favor by kissing ass.

Does Brian have 31 yrs experience as an OC? Did Auburn University pay Brian to be an offensive analyst in 2017? Was he just too busy and they had to settle on Al? Which year was Brian nominated for the Broyles Award?

Now you can think Al was a mediocre OC, but assuming his football analysis is superceded by you favorite blogger is a laughter. This is the same blogger that botches about a certain OC at Michigan, despite the program winning 80% of those games and a MNC because we didnt run the offense he wants. Then we got his type of guy and we see how that turned out.

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LeCheezus

November 22nd, 2019 at 8:26 AM ^

This isn't the point, and I don't think Brian ever said he knew more than Borges.  The problem is that for the entire season, Al Borges has been given a level of reverence that Sam doesn't give other guests.  He isn't just another opinion on the show, he is the Offensive X's and O's Jesus Christ.  Sam has been using what he says to support his opinions, (program) narratives, etc.  On top of that, he does it every other segment for the entire show, every day.  What's the problem with that?  Well, Al Borges (some of which Brian pointed out)

- Put Denard Robinson under center and ran a weird spread/power hybrid that didn't make sense and was largely ineffective

- Never coached (started) a QB that he recruited

- Obviously is out of coaching, whether by choice or not we don't know

People that know and remember these things get tired of hearing "WELL, AL WATCHED THE TAPE 5 TIMES AND HE SAYS" every 5 minutes.

Couple this with the fact that after 10 minutes of arguing Sam finally came up with the whole reason behind his semantics argument - He (and probably the program) want you to know that Gattis has always been calling the plays so he deserves all of the credit for the offense taking off over the last few games...oh but Gattis deserves little or no credit for the poor offense at the beginning of the season because that was turnovers and poor execution.  I absolutely love Sam, but sometimes he gets cornered on his program talking points and this is what happens.

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redjugador24

November 22nd, 2019 at 9:20 AM ^

Serious question.  Why is it unfair to give Gattis credit now, but also give him a bit of a pass for the mess that was the entire first 3 games and parts of the next 4?  Without a doubt fumbles and sloppy execution repeatedly killed drives and lost leverage for the playcallers on both sides of the ball, so it's hard to assess whether or not the X's and O's were working.  Personally, I think Patterson was too injured to be effective and that caused many of the turnovers and bad reads early on.  He may have been legitimately concerned about losing the starting gig if he sat a few weeks and McCaffrey led the team to wins through the easier part of the schedule.  

I didn't get to watch the Wisconsin game until several days later, and against my better judgment chose to still watch it after coming on here and reading all the "sky is falling" threads.  If we don't turn the ball over in the first half (especially in the red zone), that's probably a tie or we're down 1 score heading into half time.  We were moving the ball when we weren't dropping it on the ground. The wheels never would have fallen off in that game and who knows what may have transpired in the 2nd half of that game and over the next few weeks as a result.  Honestly, that game was not NEARLY as bad as "everyone" here made it out to be if not for the early turnovers.  

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TdK71

November 22nd, 2019 at 9:54 AM ^

I was at the Madison Debacle and on our 1st drive of the the game you know the one where Shea hits Ronnie Bell for 68 yards down to the Wisky, 10 and the 1st thing we did was call timeout when we should have had the next play ready to go. Instead we end up turning over the ball and the momentum mountain became too much to overcome.

I felt strongly that had we scored a touchdown there to tie the game we might have had a puncher's chance in that game.

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LeCheezus

November 22nd, 2019 at 10:12 AM ^

I'm not worried about fair or unfair.  I just don't think it matters that much - the offense was bad, it has gotten better, and I'm sure the whole staff (Gattis obviously included) had a part both the good and the bad.  Whether this is 100% Gattis or a collaborative effort just doesn't seem that relevant.  Why it matters so much to Sam, and why he feels the need to build up Gattis to the point of the argument we just witnessed, only he or the program can answer.

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