If you watch the video his feet are on the ice when he makes initial contact with the player, he basically just trips over the player. You'd like to see him go in with more control but this is just an unfortunate scenario where the player falls as Trouba is about to hit him.
This is huge-- Truscott had his struggles this year and he's not my favorite player, but we don't have anyone on the roster or in the pipeline with his defensive skill and size. All of our other defensemen are smaller and more offensive focused.
It depends a lot on whether we get good news/confirmations that Hughes, Eernisse, Casey, and Edwards are all coming back. If so they are potentially returning 10 of their top 15 players with 3-5 impact freshmen and 2-3 impact transfers that could help offset the loss of Brindley, Duke, Nazar, and Warren (Holtz is probably easier to replace).
This is very interesting, I wonder if this suggests they think Casey or Edwards is gone? Nice pickup, but somewhat redundant skillset/size to Casey, Edwards, T. Duke, and even Fantilli.
Oh definitely. I still don't understand why Miles and Orrico are on the roster. They're undersized without the talent or upside of guys like Casey or Edwards. At least with big guys like Holtz they can develop into smart defensive experts by their junior or senior years. I just don't see a world where Miles or Orrico provide any value to the D corps. The good news is most of the incoming freshmen are bigger and have decent physicality in their game.
He's definitely a long shot and probably more likely to try to make an NHL roster than stay, but he does technically have one year of eligibility left.
I said this in another thread but what happens with Casey/Edwards/Truscott is much more important for next year's team than what happens with the forwards.
Michigan may lose 4-5 of their top scorers but still have at least 6-7 guys who could slot into a top-9 role, plus 2-3 incoming freshmen who could add some good secondary scoring right away (Gridin, Hage, Humphreys).
Contrast that with the defense, which could also lose most of their top 6 and doesn't really have anyone coming in who could immediately eat up top-4 D minutes.
The one thing Naurato seems to be doing a better job of than most is the transfer portal. Eernisse, Warren, Barzo, T. Duke, and Pletzke all contributed to this team's run. T. Duke was kinda a weird pickup with so many other undersized offensive defensemen on the roster, but all the other pickups have been excellent. We'll see what happens this year, they could use a top-4 defensive defensemen and obviously a goalie or two.
Also, I'm way more worried about defense next year than offense. Even if Brindley and McGroarty both leave, you still have Hughes, Schifsky, Moldenhauer, 2-3 talented incoming freshmen, Eernisse, Hallum, Estapa, Draper, and Rowe. If you lose Truscott and 1 of Casey/Edwards you might not have 6 playable defensemen next year without major transfer portal reinforcements.
This one wasn't that surprising, especially given how strong he finished the season. I was more suprised about Nazar given how much time he missed and how inconsistent he's been. In terms of odds of people staying, I'd say there are 5 tiers:
Already gone: Duke and Nazar plus grad transfers (Barzo, Warren, & Pletzke)
Have a tough decision to make: Brindley and McGroarty
Less likely to leave because NJ is stacked with young defensemen: Casey and Edwards
Young guys probably coming back (but weirder things have happened): Hughes, Moldenhauer, Schifsky, Eernisse, T. Duke, etc.
Older guys who it'll be interesting to see what they decide with NIL, playing time considerations, and young guys coming in: Truscott, Holtz, Lapointe, and Noah West (who I believe have a covid year left) plus Estapa and maybe Hallum
Projecting Michigan's record is damn near impossible with new coaches at Washington, MSU, Indiana and no Caleb Williams at USC. Those teams could be better than expected or they could all be Year 0 rebuilds.
But I have to imagine that Michigan's defense and an offense led by Orji/Edwards should be able to win at least 7-8 games even if Orji can't throw the ball downfield. Whoever scores 17+ points probably wins most games this season.
The problem with the WR room and QB passing is that if both are weaknesses neither can make up for the other. If you have a young QB with iffy accuracy a stud WR who can haul down 50/50 balls can go a long way towards covering up those mistakes.
I don't know basketball rules as well, if a coach challenges a scoring play how far back prior to the play can they review? Is it just the few seconds around the scoring attempt, or could they review a foul that happened many seconds before the play happened (e.g., an uncalled foul on a pick earlier in the sequence)?
Technically, those are two different scenarios. In the offsides scenario the rule is in place largely because the offsides is presumed to have contributed to the goal. In the UM goal scenario they're two independent events and I would be fine with applying different time limits and rules to those two scenarios.
Again, you're thinking about this all wrong. Let's take another hockey example: player injury.
If a player on team A is hurt and can't get off the ice and team B has possession of the puck in their offensive zone, the refs would let play continue until a scoring chance is unlikely, for instance if a player from team B skates behind the net with the puck.
Therefore, according to the rule book, an opportunity to score has ended once an attacking player goes behind the goal line! No one would say that is the case during a single football play.
The difference is the time scale. In your example all of those attempts happened sequentially within 5-10 seconds of the touchdown.
Hockey doesn't have as well defined starts/ends to plays but there are plenty of examples of rules in hockey where stuff that happens long before a scoring chance isn't deemed to have directly impacted the scoring chance. The offsides review rule is an aberration that deviates from virtually all other rules in college hockey and should be adjusted to be in line with how the rules book treats almost all other events.
A masochist might point out that there's also a 4% chance Omaha falls to the 4-line, in which case you have two 1 seeds that can't play in a regional that is close to their campus because a 4-seed from their conference is hosting that regional...
To follow up on my own comment: if you want to make the judgment less subjective (whether it was a clear scoring chance or not) then I don't think 15 seconds is enough time. I'd say 20 seconds or the defensive team possesses the puck between the offsides & goal should nullify an chance to challenge the goal.
Strongly disagree. Minnesota had at least a half dozen opportunities to possess the puck and exit the zone between the offsides and the goal. It'd be like allowing a football coach to challenge a TD because a player's knee was actually down 5 plays prior to the touchdown. There's a reason once the ball is snapped you can't review the previous play in football, and hockey needs a similar statute of limitations.
They should apply the same logic as penalty shots. Let's say a forward steals a puck from a defenseman at the point and as he's skating by the D-man he gets tripped. Is that a penalty, and did it directly impact a potential scoring chance? Yes and Yes, but no ref would call a penalty shot because you can't say it impacted an actual scoring chance when the infraction was 150 feet from the attacking goal. Same thing if a defender pushes a net off during a scrum in front of the net. The ref may call a penalty shot if they deem the play prevented a CLEAR scoring opportunity, but also could just call a 2-minute minor if they don't think the attacking team had a clear scoring chance (for instance, if the defense actually possessed the puck at the time of the infraction).
Same logic should apply to offsides reviews for goals.
I think this is fair if you only care about a National title. But it also creates a less joyful, all or nothing experience where any close game is accompanied by hand wringing.
That's a fair question. I'm not sure if there was animosity but also doesn't feel like there was as overtly a positive/supportive relationship as what we have seen for Pearson and Howard.
Maybe Beilein was such a good guy he didn't need that kind of overt support but also feels like Warde has been more likely to stick his neck out for guys accused of fostering toxic cultures than guys who seem to foster really positive cultures.
Maybe I'm over-interpreting stuff and Warde is certainly not the first AD/GM that Harbaugh has had a bad relationship with, but the pattern here seems to be that Warde has really gone to bat/supported guys who have fostered questionable team cultures (Pearson and Juwan) and not clicked with or actively butted heads with guys who were known for fostering really positive team cultures (Beilein and Harbaugh).
There could be a lot of things going on, but to paraphrase Brian, it gives me "is this a good dude" concerns on top of other concerns about his ability to make important decisions.
I agree with this take! Even if JJ leaves and Orji is Milroe Lite it still feels like they should be able to win at least 8 games with that defense and facing some weak non-conference and Big Ten opponents.
It's really hard to project how tough our schedule is right now. Certainly harder than 2022 or 2023, but the 3 west coast schools are all losing their top QB, RB, and WR plus multiple other offensive starters, and only Oregon has added any impact transfers so far. Those teams were highly reliant on explosive offenses and if they can't replace that production they will be in for a rough first year in the Big Ten. My guess is Michigan is still favored in ~9 games, with Texas, OSU, and 1-2 of UW/OU/USC being the underdog games.
I think Brian's column suggested/implied that Paige, Q. Johnson, & Stewart are likely to come back, and it also seems like Jaden McBurrows and Zeke Berry saw more playing time at DB this season than Jones & Hillman, so if you slot all of those guys in your projected starting defensive lineup consists of 9+ returning guys who saw substantial playing time this year plus Barham who started for Maryland. That feels like a top 10 defense again if you can find someone decent to fill in at CB2.
As for the offense, it'd be shocking if Hinton and Mullings didn't come back as they're the next in line for significant playing time bumps at OL and RB. The biggest question marks are definitely JJ, a bigger outside WR, and OL depth. It feels like you could address 2 of those 3 in the portal to get the offense up to a top-25 offense.
As for win total, a lot of it depends on how much of a drop off Washington, Oregon, and USC experience losing their starting QBs and other important pieces (e.g., Deboer going to Bama, UW and Oregon losing multiple additional offensive starts on top of their QBs). But even with your worst case scenario they should be favored against at least 7 teams (Fresno State, Arkansas State, Minnesota, Illinois, MSU, Indiana, and Northwestern), underdogs versus Texas and OSU, and TBD versus UW, OU, and USC. In my mind this still feels like a 9-10 win team if Harbaugh comes back and potentially a 10-11 win team if Harbaugh and JJ come back.
In the pro column for Sherrone, he did a solid job filling in for Harbaugh this year and he'd have the best shot at maintaining the current team culture and keeping guys from transferring if Harbaugh leaves.
With that as your baseline, there are very few external candidates that are enough of a home run that they'd be an obvious upgrade over Sherrone Moore.
Tier 1: Kalen Deboer and Chris Kliemann are the only ones who have won a Power 5 championship and would be the most likely to step in and be able to win games immediately.
Tier 2: Lance Leipold, Jedd Fisch, Eli Drinkwitz had great seasons this year but prior to 2023 none of them had won more than 6 games in a season at a Power 5 school. They may have a better track record than Sherrone Moore but I wouldn't say they're a substantially safer bet to be able to maintain Michigan's status as a top-5 team in CFB.
Tier 3: With virtually anyone else you'd have to assume there'd be some attrition and the new coach would have a hard time winning more than 8 or 9 games in year 1. I'd prefer Moore or Minter over pretty much anyone outside the top two tiers.
What an amazing talent, we're so lucky he decided to come back!
One of the most impressive aspects of his season this year is how consistent he was-- I saw a stat that he and Derrick Henry are the only players in CFB history to score touchdowns in 15 games in a single season. That's some pretty illustrious company!
While it's nice that they acknowledge that our d-line is the best in college football, the fact that they say every other facet is just "sort of good" is laughable given that a) Will Johnson shut down their generational talent WR until he got hurt and also shut down Bama's WRs, b) our coaching staff continually out-coaches them and just outcoached one of the greatest coaches of all time, and c) Zak Zinter, Blake Corum, and Mike Sainristil were named All-Americans this year.
Seems like we have a least a few facets of our team that are WELL above average.
It's also worth calliing out that the only prediction algorithm that predicts a big Washington win (logistic regression) has the worst prediction accuracy of all the systems that Prediction Tracker shows.
That is a fair clarification, I should have said Michigan is favored by 4 or 4.5 points, not that they were +4 or +4.5.
In my defense, the way Prediction Tracker records this is actually that Michigan is +4.0 or +4.5 because they are predicted to score 4-4.5 more points than their opponent.
Quick note: a lot of these rankings haven't been updated yet to include the results of last night's games. Given how both of those games played out I can't imagine the consensus here changes much, but it's possible a few of the toss-ups flip from slightly favoring one team to slightly favoring the other team.
If there's one thing we've learned, it's that Harbaugh coached teams have an aversion for taking the easy yards. This just feels like exhibit Z for that.
The number of QBs who started for a Power 5 team and are now in the transfer portal is pretty wild.
Riley Leonard (Duke), DJ Uiagalelei (Oregon State), Will Rogers (Mississippi State), KJ Jefferson (Arkansas), Tyler Van Dyke (Miami), Dante Moore (UCLA), Will Howard (Kansas State), Nate Johnson (Utah), Athan Kaliakmanis (Minnesota), the 3 MSU guys, and I'm sure I'm missing a few others.
Don't get me wrong, not all of those guys are actually good, but that's still a lot of QB talent in the portal.
And I think that could work well, honestly. Maybe you don't need to keep 2 safeties high, but if they run a bunch of confusing switch coverages Deacon Hill is gonna throw a half dozen or more potential pick 6 passes. And then all you need to do is dial up a few more of the Sainristil or Barrett blitzes from early in the year and you're golden.
To me this suggests the limitations of having a QB part of the run game (unless your QB is Jayden Daniels). If a linebacker or safety cheating to the weakside is enough to prevent a QB keep, you're saying we don't have confidence our QB could beat that player 1:1 or we're not willing to get our QB hit for a 3-5 yard gain.
The threat certainly opens up stuff on the frontside and it was great to see how that contributed to Blake's TD run, but Michigan still seems hesitant to truly utilize the QB run in any scenario it's not an obvious win.
I wonder if the new coach is planning on bringing any guys with him from Oregon State... probably not Uigalelei since I doubt he would have immediate eligibility after he's already transferred once, but maybe one of the other QBs is a solid prospect?
The thing for me is this-- the ball can move and a player can still be determined to have maintained control of the ball. If you watch the ball as he crosses the goal line, he has firm control with two hands, even if the ball is jostling slightly. It's a judgment call and certainly not 100%, but anyone who says "the ball was moving therefore it wasn't a catch" doesn't understand the rules.
This comment thread is so quiet! I wonder why-- did something else happen today?
JK, but these are always my favorite articles and it's great to get some actual football content!
I love the big packages and couldn't agree more with the point about throwing more on 1st down when Penn State wasn't bringing pressure as consistently.
I'm not saying this is what happened, but if I were Michigan, I would want ways to minimize the likelihood of future overreach by the commissioner. If so, then it's possible that part of this was some conversation about clarifying/updating the sportsmanship policy rules in the future to more clearly delineate appeals processes and boundaries around what the commissioner can and can't do.
That is a gaping loophole that needs to be revisited.
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If you watch the video his feet are on the ice when he makes initial contact with the player, he basically just trips over the player. You'd like to see him go in with more control but this is just an unfortunate scenario where the player falls as Trouba is about to hit him.
This is huge-- Truscott had his struggles this year and he's not my favorite player, but we don't have anyone on the roster or in the pipeline with his defensive skill and size. All of our other defensemen are smaller and more offensive focused.
It depends a lot on whether we get good news/confirmations that Hughes, Eernisse, Casey, and Edwards are all coming back. If so they are potentially returning 10 of their top 15 players with 3-5 impact freshmen and 2-3 impact transfers that could help offset the loss of Brindley, Duke, Nazar, and Warren (Holtz is probably easier to replace).
This is very interesting, I wonder if this suggests they think Casey or Edwards is gone? Nice pickup, but somewhat redundant skillset/size to Casey, Edwards, T. Duke, and even Fantilli.
Oh definitely. I still don't understand why Miles and Orrico are on the roster. They're undersized without the talent or upside of guys like Casey or Edwards. At least with big guys like Holtz they can develop into smart defensive experts by their junior or senior years. I just don't see a world where Miles or Orrico provide any value to the D corps. The good news is most of the incoming freshmen are bigger and have decent physicality in their game.
He's definitely a long shot and probably more likely to try to make an NHL roster than stay, but he does technically have one year of eligibility left.
You forgot Schifsky and Estapa, so there's actually a lot of line combos that could work for the top 9.
I said this in another thread but what happens with Casey/Edwards/Truscott is much more important for next year's team than what happens with the forwards.
Michigan may lose 4-5 of their top scorers but still have at least 6-7 guys who could slot into a top-9 role, plus 2-3 incoming freshmen who could add some good secondary scoring right away (Gridin, Hage, Humphreys).
Contrast that with the defense, which could also lose most of their top 6 and doesn't really have anyone coming in who could immediately eat up top-4 D minutes.
8 (!!!) game winning goals this season!
The one thing Naurato seems to be doing a better job of than most is the transfer portal. Eernisse, Warren, Barzo, T. Duke, and Pletzke all contributed to this team's run. T. Duke was kinda a weird pickup with so many other undersized offensive defensemen on the roster, but all the other pickups have been excellent. We'll see what happens this year, they could use a top-4 defensive defensemen and obviously a goalie or two.
Also, I'm way more worried about defense next year than offense. Even if Brindley and McGroarty both leave, you still have Hughes, Schifsky, Moldenhauer, 2-3 talented incoming freshmen, Eernisse, Hallum, Estapa, Draper, and Rowe. If you lose Truscott and 1 of Casey/Edwards you might not have 6 playable defensemen next year without major transfer portal reinforcements.
This one wasn't that surprising, especially given how strong he finished the season. I was more suprised about Nazar given how much time he missed and how inconsistent he's been. In terms of odds of people staying, I'd say there are 5 tiers:
Projecting Michigan's record is damn near impossible with new coaches at Washington, MSU, Indiana and no Caleb Williams at USC. Those teams could be better than expected or they could all be Year 0 rebuilds.
But I have to imagine that Michigan's defense and an offense led by Orji/Edwards should be able to win at least 7-8 games even if Orji can't throw the ball downfield. Whoever scores 17+ points probably wins most games this season.
The problem with the WR room and QB passing is that if both are weaknesses neither can make up for the other. If you have a young QB with iffy accuracy a stud WR who can haul down 50/50 balls can go a long way towards covering up those mistakes.
I don't know basketball rules as well, if a coach challenges a scoring play how far back prior to the play can they review? Is it just the few seconds around the scoring attempt, or could they review a foul that happened many seconds before the play happened (e.g., an uncalled foul on a pick earlier in the sequence)?
Technically, those are two different scenarios. In the offsides scenario the rule is in place largely because the offsides is presumed to have contributed to the goal. In the UM goal scenario they're two independent events and I would be fine with applying different time limits and rules to those two scenarios.
Again, you're thinking about this all wrong. Let's take another hockey example: player injury.
If a player on team A is hurt and can't get off the ice and team B has possession of the puck in their offensive zone, the refs would let play continue until a scoring chance is unlikely, for instance if a player from team B skates behind the net with the puck.
Therefore, according to the rule book, an opportunity to score has ended once an attacking player goes behind the goal line! No one would say that is the case during a single football play.
The difference is the time scale. In your example all of those attempts happened sequentially within 5-10 seconds of the touchdown.
Hockey doesn't have as well defined starts/ends to plays but there are plenty of examples of rules in hockey where stuff that happens long before a scoring chance isn't deemed to have directly impacted the scoring chance. The offsides review rule is an aberration that deviates from virtually all other rules in college hockey and should be adjusted to be in line with how the rules book treats almost all other events.
A masochist might point out that there's also a 4% chance Omaha falls to the 4-line, in which case you have two 1 seeds that can't play in a regional that is close to their campus because a 4-seed from their conference is hosting that regional...
To follow up on my own comment: if you want to make the judgment less subjective (whether it was a clear scoring chance or not) then I don't think 15 seconds is enough time. I'd say 20 seconds or the defensive team possesses the puck between the offsides & goal should nullify an chance to challenge the goal.
Strongly disagree. Minnesota had at least a half dozen opportunities to possess the puck and exit the zone between the offsides and the goal. It'd be like allowing a football coach to challenge a TD because a player's knee was actually down 5 plays prior to the touchdown. There's a reason once the ball is snapped you can't review the previous play in football, and hockey needs a similar statute of limitations.
They should apply the same logic as penalty shots. Let's say a forward steals a puck from a defenseman at the point and as he's skating by the D-man he gets tripped. Is that a penalty, and did it directly impact a potential scoring chance? Yes and Yes, but no ref would call a penalty shot because you can't say it impacted an actual scoring chance when the infraction was 150 feet from the attacking goal. Same thing if a defender pushes a net off during a scrum in front of the net. The ref may call a penalty shot if they deem the play prevented a CLEAR scoring opportunity, but also could just call a 2-minute minor if they don't think the attacking team had a clear scoring chance (for instance, if the defense actually possessed the puck at the time of the infraction).
Same logic should apply to offsides reviews for goals.
I think this is fair if you only care about a National title. But it also creates a less joyful, all or nothing experience where any close game is accompanied by hand wringing.
That's a fair question. I'm not sure if there was animosity but also doesn't feel like there was as overtly a positive/supportive relationship as what we have seen for Pearson and Howard.
Maybe Beilein was such a good guy he didn't need that kind of overt support but also feels like Warde has been more likely to stick his neck out for guys accused of fostering toxic cultures than guys who seem to foster really positive cultures.
Maybe I'm over-interpreting stuff and Warde is certainly not the first AD/GM that Harbaugh has had a bad relationship with, but the pattern here seems to be that Warde has really gone to bat/supported guys who have fostered questionable team cultures (Pearson and Juwan) and not clicked with or actively butted heads with guys who were known for fostering really positive team cultures (Beilein and Harbaugh).
There could be a lot of things going on, but to paraphrase Brian, it gives me "is this a good dude" concerns on top of other concerns about his ability to make important decisions.
I agree with this take! Even if JJ leaves and Orji is Milroe Lite it still feels like they should be able to win at least 8 games with that defense and facing some weak non-conference and Big Ten opponents.
It's really hard to project how tough our schedule is right now. Certainly harder than 2022 or 2023, but the 3 west coast schools are all losing their top QB, RB, and WR plus multiple other offensive starters, and only Oregon has added any impact transfers so far. Those teams were highly reliant on explosive offenses and if they can't replace that production they will be in for a rough first year in the Big Ten. My guess is Michigan is still favored in ~9 games, with Texas, OSU, and 1-2 of UW/OU/USC being the underdog games.
I think Brian's column suggested/implied that Paige, Q. Johnson, & Stewart are likely to come back, and it also seems like Jaden McBurrows and Zeke Berry saw more playing time at DB this season than Jones & Hillman, so if you slot all of those guys in your projected starting defensive lineup consists of 9+ returning guys who saw substantial playing time this year plus Barham who started for Maryland. That feels like a top 10 defense again if you can find someone decent to fill in at CB2.
As for the offense, it'd be shocking if Hinton and Mullings didn't come back as they're the next in line for significant playing time bumps at OL and RB. The biggest question marks are definitely JJ, a bigger outside WR, and OL depth. It feels like you could address 2 of those 3 in the portal to get the offense up to a top-25 offense.
As for win total, a lot of it depends on how much of a drop off Washington, Oregon, and USC experience losing their starting QBs and other important pieces (e.g., Deboer going to Bama, UW and Oregon losing multiple additional offensive starts on top of their QBs). But even with your worst case scenario they should be favored against at least 7 teams (Fresno State, Arkansas State, Minnesota, Illinois, MSU, Indiana, and Northwestern), underdogs versus Texas and OSU, and TBD versus UW, OU, and USC. In my mind this still feels like a 9-10 win team if Harbaugh comes back and potentially a 10-11 win team if Harbaugh and JJ come back.
In the pro column for Sherrone, he did a solid job filling in for Harbaugh this year and he'd have the best shot at maintaining the current team culture and keeping guys from transferring if Harbaugh leaves.
With that as your baseline, there are very few external candidates that are enough of a home run that they'd be an obvious upgrade over Sherrone Moore.
Tier 1: Kalen Deboer and Chris Kliemann are the only ones who have won a Power 5 championship and would be the most likely to step in and be able to win games immediately.
Tier 2: Lance Leipold, Jedd Fisch, Eli Drinkwitz had great seasons this year but prior to 2023 none of them had won more than 6 games in a season at a Power 5 school. They may have a better track record than Sherrone Moore but I wouldn't say they're a substantially safer bet to be able to maintain Michigan's status as a top-5 team in CFB.
Tier 3: With virtually anyone else you'd have to assume there'd be some attrition and the new coach would have a hard time winning more than 8 or 9 games in year 1. I'd prefer Moore or Minter over pretty much anyone outside the top two tiers.
That's a fair point. It still means he's one of the best RBs of the past decade.
What an amazing talent, we're so lucky he decided to come back!
One of the most impressive aspects of his season this year is how consistent he was-- I saw a stat that he and Derrick Henry are the only players in CFB history to score touchdowns in 15 games in a single season. That's some pretty illustrious company!
While it's nice that they acknowledge that our d-line is the best in college football, the fact that they say every other facet is just "sort of good" is laughable given that a) Will Johnson shut down their generational talent WR until he got hurt and also shut down Bama's WRs, b) our coaching staff continually out-coaches them and just outcoached one of the greatest coaches of all time, and c) Zak Zinter, Blake Corum, and Mike Sainristil were named All-Americans this year.
Seems like we have a least a few facets of our team that are WELL above average.
It's also worth calliing out that the only prediction algorithm that predicts a big Washington win (logistic regression) has the worst prediction accuracy of all the systems that Prediction Tracker shows.
That is a fair clarification, I should have said Michigan is favored by 4 or 4.5 points, not that they were +4 or +4.5.
In my defense, the way Prediction Tracker records this is actually that Michigan is +4.0 or +4.5 because they are predicted to score 4-4.5 more points than their opponent.
Quick note: a lot of these rankings haven't been updated yet to include the results of last night's games. Given how both of those games played out I can't imagine the consensus here changes much, but it's possible a few of the toss-ups flip from slightly favoring one team to slightly favoring the other team.
If there's one thing we've learned, it's that Harbaugh coached teams have an aversion for taking the easy yards. This just feels like exhibit Z for that.
The number of QBs who started for a Power 5 team and are now in the transfer portal is pretty wild.
Riley Leonard (Duke), DJ Uiagalelei (Oregon State), Will Rogers (Mississippi State), KJ Jefferson (Arkansas), Tyler Van Dyke (Miami), Dante Moore (UCLA), Will Howard (Kansas State), Nate Johnson (Utah), Athan Kaliakmanis (Minnesota), the 3 MSU guys, and I'm sure I'm missing a few others.
Don't get me wrong, not all of those guys are actually good, but that's still a lot of QB talent in the portal.
And I think that could work well, honestly. Maybe you don't need to keep 2 safeties high, but if they run a bunch of confusing switch coverages Deacon Hill is gonna throw a half dozen or more potential pick 6 passes. And then all you need to do is dial up a few more of the Sainristil or Barrett blitzes from early in the year and you're golden.
(Double post)
Thanks! I am just late to the party I guess.
This cracked me up too, but also... Moore should get paid a lot more!
Top 5 assistant coaches in FBS all make ~2 million per year, Sherrone Moore makes ~1.2 million per year.
JTT and Chop Robinson making first team tells you how much the voters actually watch games. Didn’t Chop Robinson miss like half the season?
That was very well done! I got chills from the Zinter injury-Corum TD sequence.
My next favorite part though was they didn't even bother to hint at whether there was any controversy over Wilson's TD.
To me this suggests the limitations of having a QB part of the run game (unless your QB is Jayden Daniels). If a linebacker or safety cheating to the weakside is enough to prevent a QB keep, you're saying we don't have confidence our QB could beat that player 1:1 or we're not willing to get our QB hit for a 3-5 yard gain.
The threat certainly opens up stuff on the frontside and it was great to see how that contributed to Blake's TD run, but Michigan still seems hesitant to truly utilize the QB run in any scenario it's not an obvious win.
Yeah just looked at Oregon State's 247 page and Aidan Chiles was a solid prospect out of HS
https://247sports.com/player/aidan-chiles-46115766/
I wonder if the new coach is planning on bringing any guys with him from Oregon State... probably not Uigalelei since I doubt he would have immediate eligibility after he's already transferred once, but maybe one of the other QBs is a solid prospect?
Was about to post the same sentiment. Sherrone Moore is my favorite here but damn Phil Parker has done a tremendous job coaching that defense.
The thing for me is this-- the ball can move and a player can still be determined to have maintained control of the ball. If you watch the ball as he crosses the goal line, he has firm control with two hands, even if the ball is jostling slightly. It's a judgment call and certainly not 100%, but anyone who says "the ball was moving therefore it wasn't a catch" doesn't understand the rules.
This comment thread is so quiet! I wonder why-- did something else happen today?
JK, but these are always my favorite articles and it's great to get some actual football content!
I love the big packages and couldn't agree more with the point about throwing more on 1st down when Penn State wasn't bringing pressure as consistently.
+1. Even if this were legal it'd be dumb from an effort to reward ratio perspective. So much work for minimal advantage.
I'm not saying this is what happened, but if I were Michigan, I would want ways to minimize the likelihood of future overreach by the commissioner. If so, then it's possible that part of this was some conversation about clarifying/updating the sportsmanship policy rules in the future to more clearly delineate appeals processes and boundaries around what the commissioner can and can't do.
That is a gaping loophole that needs to be revisited.