Wisconsin Snowflakes: The Coaching

Remember when we all talked crap about Nua lol. We may have had reason at the time but kind of funny now. 

is it just me or is mazi and hintons balls dropping? 

So proud of this team. Onward and upward!

My snowflake is, F all the haters on this board. You know who you are.

I liked that we called the "score touchdown" play in the 2nd half this week.

One more thing - flea-flicker was probably the call of the year. Perfect.

Character wins out over time. In life. In coaching college football. Go Blue. 

One of the best-coached games of the Harbaugh Era, and that is that on that 

A lot of what we needed to correct got corrected. Great coaching work. 

I've always believed in the coaches. I refuse to to go look at past threads and take names of the contingent who whine incessantly, the crew who want to can Harbaugh and Gattis et. al. But if y'all have any balls, eat some humble pie and take ownership. You know if the shoe fits.

The other thing is the transitive property. More specifically, I have secretly dreamed we could end up with only two losses (PSU and OSU.) Now, given the Wisconsin - PSU game, I'm willing to recalibrate and to dream we could end up with only one loss.

And if we win 11 and then beat OSU? That in itself would be enough for me this year. One step at a time. I don't want them to overlook any games.

Wow did we open up the playbook today.  You score 38 at Camp Randall and you have done something.  Another solid defensive performance.  Hit the QB at least 12 times, maybe more,  with no penalties for that.  Good defensive adjustments and timely blitz calls after Mertz found his 2nd quarter mojo.  Our special teams rock too.  Wisconsin was ready to play today.  They just got outplayed and outcoached.  Really like this coaching staff, especially our new coaches.  Bet the recruits like them too.  Crisp and disciplined performance.

Superb coaching today.  Go Blue !

These snowflake threads that take up much of the comment section of the blog are a bit much.  

I thought they were for those times when we lost and the purpose was chaos mitigation.  That most certainly wasn't today. 

Am I the along one feeling this way?  

So I guess Gattis remembered how to call an offense again

Our coaches suck!!!  Jim Harbaugh and Gattis because neither one of them know offense.  Or speed in outer space.  Why would anyone that was a 5 star come here and intercept opposing QB’s passes and hold opponents down on the road?  We suck!

Love the aggressiveness on 4th down. Makes life hard on the opposing defense defending all 4 downs. 

I am glad to be wrong for one game. Can’t wait to pour a whiskey later and watch the game in peace. 

All that matters is Michigan is 1-0 and Wisconsin is 0-1 on Barry Alvarez Field

The team seemed to enter the game very confident and played aggressively on both sides of the ball. I’ll give credit to the coaching staff for that. This team is different from the past few year’s.

Sure must be nice to gameplan and coach against a team that doesn't stress the D with the chance of QB runs. 

But we did what we should've done against Mertz. Loved both the O and D gameplans and execution. 

Satisfactory.

Help, I'm really confused about what I should be upset about!

Cade had a very good performance today.  He's steady and won't lose you a game. He had good pocket awareness to not get sacked. He also put a few balls not right on the receiver but where they had a chance and the defender does not.  

You see what happens to a game when a team turns out over a few times.  It gets out of hand quickly then you press more then turn it over more.  I like getting JJ in the game.  He's obviously more physically talented then Cade but it's those little things Cade is doing right now keeping him the starter. 

Game plan was much better then last week. This is the first time in forever where it actually seemed like they were saving something for a good opponent. There has been a few good game plans against OSU that terrible qb play has ruined but normally they haven't shown that they were actually saving anything and just doing the same thing. 

They could try to test the edges a little more with Corum. Dude is fast. 

Running on Wiscy is hard.  I read many comments disparaging the coaches' obsession with the inside run game, but that is where the action is.  Big beefy blockers to open holes. Wisconsin repeatedly stuffed edge runs.  Of course, good team uses a mix of inside and edge runs, as Michigan did today.  Given the opposition, our run game was outstanding.

No complaints here -- balanced, reasonably aggressive, and reasonably creative on offense. Continual improvement on D.

All is well. Don't scare us by giving us a Rutgers 2nd half again.

Oh, and play JJ more as he becomes more comfortable. Not a criticism, just a (forceful) suggestion. 

When the coaches call the game correctly, we are a legit Top 10 team - which we will be ranked seeing that five teams above us just lost. Wow, we're a top 10 team.

Good shit, Jim. 

Snowflakes is right. I hope all the snowflakes living in the BPONE, eat crow.  

Win felt great. That said (and this comes with the caveat that Wisky has a great defense), it feels like the in game offensive play calling needs to get better. There were times today when it felt like they deferred to slamming their heads into a brick wall instead of taking a shot or keeping the D more off balance. This will matter against better offenses. 

That said, the team is doing the little things much better than they have in previous years. They don't beat themselves, they don't give up big plays, they're stout against the run, and they're tough (especially mentally). This thing will get tougher, so I hope they can keep it up.

Hard to criticize the coaching based on the end result but Gattis' game plan inside the 10yd line is still a 70's vibrating game. 

Aggressive 

I still remember my fr year at Michigan and we went to Camp Randall ranked number 1 and got upset. I was so excited for the start of the season and being ranked number 1, I stayed up all night Friday and felt really tired when I had to go to work Saturday evening! 

Excellent job.  The team looked prepared, with an effective plan that they were able to execute in every phase.  Players were put in positions to succeed and not asked to do things they largely can't.

Player development also showed up today.  Numerous players (Gray and Hinton stand out) have moved from just-a-guy or liabilities to solid or better.  

Top marks for in-game aggressiveness as well.  We went for two 4th downs ... on the opening drive ... on our side of the field!  The squib kick was an excellent gamble, one that I want the staff to take more often.

So far, every sign about the staff overhaul in the offseason is pointing to success.

I laugh when I see so many praising Harbaugh when after last season the same people were gathering a crowd with pitchforks to descend on Schembechler Hall.  

Short of a small bit at the end of the 1st half this was easily the best coached game of the year. Not even close.

Now, there were still issues that I think need to be fixed to avoid multiple losses from here out. Yet, this seems like the first time that I've seen the gameplan designed to win rather than "win...IF and only IF we execute perfectly all the time". By this I mean to say that Michigan finally allowed the players to fail a few times at something without deeming those failures a reason to totally bail on the respective task. They kept going and it eventually paid off as it usually does when you have talent and are playing a worse team. Cade eventually settled and played a fine game after looking like he forgot how to throw a ball early on.

Wisconsin is shockingly bad but I'm not discounting this win at all, especially when I sincerely didn't think UM would leave with a win. It's a good win and it feels weird to say that Nebraska may be the hardest test for this team so far, lol. UM needs to go into that game with the offensive mindset that they need to score 40 as a minimum (reality or not). Keep allowing the passing game to grow and we'll see what happens. 

Anyway, good win and outside of the calls inside of the 10 (all year, tbh) I can't find much to dislike. That and the weirdness before halftime.

Defensively, I don't like the sudden decision to give a bad QB massive cushions before they've earned them. That bit where Mertz gained some consistency was purely on Michigan, IMO. He didn't suddenly become good. He was given massive cushions on the outside and I think it was UM daring him to throw UW back into the game and, I assume, wait for him to throw into zones full of guys with blue uniforms. He didn't. He took the gimme stuff UM suddenly gave him. My view is to keep doing what works against a bad QB until he makes you pay. I may be alone there with that amazing philosophy, lol.

Still, terrific defense across the board! Very happy with it and UW isn't the usual UW but it was still a great effort all around.

Generally, I loved the energy and body language of the team. That is on the coaches, too. Remember last year? Jim begging guys to celebrate like Jeb Bush asking for applause. Remember that? Remember in years before that where even in decent times the sideline just looked dead? Yeah, these players seem happy about playing ball at Michigan again and that is on coaching so kudos for that. That does SO much for a team! In a team sport a few bad apples can ruin everything and a few true leaders can overcome a lot just by keeping guys invested.

Happy to eat crow as I'm not a doomer but I did not think they'd win this game. I assumed UM would pound themselves to death and UW would luck into a few points and that would be enough for UM to lose 17-13 or something like that. Right away you knew UM was there to win.

Which reminds me of my last bit of gripe: I LOVE the 4th down decisions but I loathe that the variation in those plays is zero. If UW knows Haskins is going to be asked to hammer ahead for 1-2 every time, they'll stop it more often than not. However, if they have to worry at all about the QB keeping or a bootleg or anything it helps your cause. Variation helps you in football, lol. Going forward I'd like a bit more variation on calls inside the 10 and on 4th & short. That's about it.

Besides the W, my favorite part of this game was watching the kids all jump around. College kids being college kids. So, so, fun, and really glad the coaching staff did not discourage that.