get a madden kid ffs

Previously: Podcast 14.0A, 14.0B, 14.0C. The Story. Quarterback. Running Back. Wide Receiver. Tight End. Offensive Tackle. Interior OL. Defensive Interior. Edge. Linebacker. Cornerback. Safety. Special Teams.

1. We demand a quarterback prognostication.

Well, here's Harbaugh breaking it down:

The way I've been evaluating them is them being able to be a passer. By passer: arm talent, who can make all the throws. Both of them have the arm talent to make all the throws and it comes down to accuracy, timing, decision making, taking what the defense gives you as a passer. Cade is a little bit ahead there at this point.

Then the next category is playmaker. The guy that can turn water into wine, using his athleticism, his speed, arm talent. Runner, scrambler, plays smart, makes a play when there's no play to be made. Running ability, moves the chains as a runner. Augments the running game. Risk/reward, turn a one-yard loss into a positive play, but doesn't make the bad play worse, avoids the fumbles, the interceptions, the sacks. I have JJ ahead in that category.

And then field general — coach on the field, facilitator to the other playmakers and the offensive line. You trust them to handle the ball and every play. Is a ball protector, fix the calls, the formation, the protections, gets the checks right. Leads the unit drive-by-drive and points per possession really is what you're looking for. They're both pretty even there in that category. Maybe Cade the slight advantage there.

You can read this any way you want: McNamara wins 2/3 categories: McNamara. McCarthy is clearly ahead in playmaking while McNamara is only a "little bit ahead" or has a "slight advantage" in the other two. Meanwhile chatter from inside the program has been a muddle, with one guy ahead one day and the other ahead the next day. Alex's summary from early in camp:

What we're hearing: Right now Cade McNamara and JJ McCarthy are locked in an extremely tight duel, according to just about anyone who has offered insight. We've heard all kinds of phrases to describe it, "50-50", "a battle", "reps split down the middle". That appears to be the most factual description, while different insiders have consulted their own sources to try and interpret what it means, with Balas' source trotting out the ole "Cade will start the year, but JJ will pull through mid-season" theory ($). Those who have gone through the hassle of trying to describe individual practices are mostly rehashing what we know, that Cade has limitations with his arm and (occasionally) accuracy, while JJ makes the back-breaking naive error trying to do too much in between stretches of brilliance.

And from later in camp:

Let's start with McNamara. In his corner, we have an insider on the record flat out saying that Cade is the starter ($). Every update on the QB battle, no matter who the author is, has the same points about McNamara: 1.) he has made real improvements to his game, 2.) he protects the ball and has a good feel for the offense, and 3.) he "leads scoring drives" ($). Dependability and consistency also get brought up in reference to Cade.

As for JJ McCarthy, we hear a lot about the boom or bust moments. We hear that he's improved from last season and is on track to be an All-American during his Michigan career ($) but that right now he still has too many moments where he tries to do too much ($). Where Cade is talked about in reference to his consistency, JJ is described with the term "upside". This is all more of the same, but what is new in JJ's corner is a take from Sam Webb, claiming that McCarthy had an excellent scrimmage over the weekend, one that has left the QB room far from settled ($). Sam describes how McCarthy started fall camp with rust from his injured spring and has needed time to catch up.

In all my many years of trying to decipher camp chatter I don't think I've ever come across a situation like this where things are genuinely up in the air. I believe that the two quarterbacks are neck-and-neck to the point where nobody from Jim Harbaugh on down knows who the starting quarterback is going to be.

Our inside baseball says this is because both guys are doing well—really well. The main dynamic is that McCarthy continually threatens to push past McNamara by doing absurd things and then throws an interception. McNamara has "come very far" and the ball rarely hits the turf when either guy is throwing. So… I mean… I don't know. I genuinely do not have an assertion to make here. I put a gun to my own head for the Stupid Predictions below and ended up changing my prediction from one guy to the other, complete with explanations, four times.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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The header. Via the University of Michigan Heritage project, that's Eugene Waxman, age 5, acting in his capacity as a "drum minor" in 1949.

A real-life Madden kid. John Harbaugh's got Lamar Jackson and—slightly less important—a guy in the booth punching stuff into a fourth down bot:

One thing Harbaugh has taken a close look at is how he can best give the Ravens an edge with his in-game decision-making. For years, he’s had a staffer in the booth communicating win probabilities to him during games. First, it was Matt Weiss, who has since become the running backs coach. This season, it’s football analyst (that’s his official title) Daniel Stern, a 25-year-old behavioral economics major who grew up in Baltimore, got his degree from Yale and is in his fourth season with the Ravens.

During the week, Stern, Harbaugh and other members of the Ravens coaching staff come up with a plan for how they want to approach each game from a strategic perspective. They decide on a set of rules that will give them the best chance to win, and Stern reminds Harbaugh of those rules on the headset during the game. At the beginning of that drive against the Seahawks, they talked about how they wanted to be aggressive in short yardage. But with a third-and-15 run play called, it seemed unlikely that they were going to be in short yardage. Jackson, as he’s done all season, exceeded expectations with his run. The numbers said to go for it, but it wasn’t a no-brainer.

“There was definitely an advantage to going for it in that situation, mathematically it was the correct thing to do,” Stern says weeks later. “But if it had been fourth-and-4 or fourth-and-5, then it wouldn’t have been the correct thing to do. It was fourth-and-2, I think it was either a long 2 or a regular 2. It definitely wasn’t one-and-a-half. It definitely was a full 2 yards.”

Hopefully the brothers get together and this osmoses its way over to Ann Arbor.

[After THE JUMP: math]

11/17/2018 – Michigan 31, Indiana 20 – 10-1, 8-0 Big Ten

Indiana was defeated. It was annoying, as per usual. The method was different this time. 

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It's here, again. Football Armageddon. The last time I called a game Football Armageddon it was 12 years ago, when Michigan and Ohio State were both undefeated. Michigan ripped off a slick touchdown drive to start things off, and in the Ohio State student section I thought to myself "we're a third of the way home."

This was incorrect. Michigan's defense played three inside linebackers the whole game against Troy Smith, gave up 500 yards and 42 points, and blew an opportunity to get the ball back when Shawn Crable hit Smith in the helmet on a scramble. The 2006 defense featured Alan Branch, Lamarr Woodley, Leon Hall, David Harris, four guys with decade-long NFL careers. They whooped up on everyone, but within were the seeds of the past decade of Michigan football. Michigan had one cornerback: Hall. Morgan Trent couldn't change direction with a sail and a headwind, and when the starters got pulled against Ball State two weeks prior the Cardinals mounted a comeback that ended in Michigan's redzone down only 8.

The two corners who came in against Ball State were Chris Richards, the defensive coordinator's godson, and Johnny Sears, a kid from Fresno who'd never played a varsity game when Michigan offered him. They saw him at practice. (Practice! We're talking about practice!) Eight months later Michigan would field Sears as a starter in The Horror, in which a cut-rate Troy Smith exploited the same tactical naivete Smith had to hand Michigan the worst upset of all time.

Football Armageddon really was Armageddon for Michigan, not because of anything Ohio State did to them in that one game but because they'd fallen behind the curve out of their own arrogance. Michigan's recruiting was increasingly lazy, dependent on guys who bothered to come to camp and random, uninformed guesses about players based on not enough scouting. They'd get about half a class of well-regarded and then pluck random dudes out of the ether for the rest. They'd singularly failed to adapt to the prevalence of the spread across college football, kicking off the Ohio State dominance that extends to the modern day.

When Lloyd Carr retired he asked the athletic director to interview the two sturdiest branches on his coaching tree: his coordinators. One, Ron English, had never been a head coach and was the architect of the Horror. The other, Mike DeBord, was 12-34 at Central Michigan before quitting because he wasn't a head coach. These were the options to keep it in the family.

2006 Michigan was Indiana Jones on a rope bridge. Ohio State was the guy with the machete leering from the safety of land, but it didn't create the situation.

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Incredibly, improbably, amazingly: Ohio State looks like it might be on a bridge of its own devising. Michigan's culture caught up to them in a slow-motion avalanche that took half a decade. OSU's got blown up in a week by Brett McMurphy and Urban Meyer's callous disregard for anything but winning.

Since Zach Smith was exposed, Ohio State's house has morphed from bricks to cards. Every week (except Michigan State) brings a new sordid depth to their defensive issues. With JT Barrett off to pick up YAC in the Estonian league, the offense frequently fails to convert buckets of yards into points. There was a fourth and goal wide receiver screen against Purdue. Not incidentally, a 5-6 Purdue team that's going into the Bucket game looking for a bowl berth boatraced OSU 49-20.

The nature of the series with Michigan has already changed in the post-Durkin landscape. Michigan lost by a literal inch the last time they were in Columbus despite Wilton Speight fumbling on the goal line and throwing two miserable interceptions. Last's game was 21 Michigan players outplaying the opposition and the third-string quarterback tossing up a 14.3 QBR. This isn't Michigan scrapping and clawing because "throw the records out" and we'll go for two at the end of the game because we know what's what. It's Michigan getting hit by a red shell rounding the last corner.

They're there. They're good enough. They're legitimately elite by any metric you want to poke. Now they just have to do the damn thing. The consequences of failure do not bear thinking about. It's armageddon, again. Ohio State is a rope over an abyss. Sharpen your knives.

AWARDS

[Fuller]

you're the man now, dog

#1 Devin Bush. Michigan lined him up next to Gary for a blitz and that seemed unfair and also please continue doing that forever. Twelve tackles, one of them to destroy a fake punt, and one critical fourth down PBU. Run issues were mostly things he was trying to mitigate and not things that could be plausibly put on him. Update: still good.

#2 Shea Patterson. Another game of almost ten yards an attempt. There were some hiccups, but the interception was an open guy on an RPO and it sailed because he got clobbered. The Gentry throw in the endzone… not so much. But the one after escaping the pocket, yeah buddy. Also chipped in 68 yards rushing. Which is a lot of yards.

#3 Rashan Gary. Had half that sack mentioned above plus a thunderous speed to power rush; 7 other tackles besides when Michigan really needed DL to step up.

Honorable mention: Zach Gentry had two big receptions and got interfered with twice… but maybe probably should have grabbed that ball in the endzone. Higdon had a workmanlike performance with some key broken tackles on short stuff.

KFaTAotW Standings.

10: Chase Winovich (#1 ND, #3 SMU, #1 NW, T2 MSU, T1 PSU), Shea Patterson (#3 WMU, #1 Maryland, #3 PSU, #1 Rutgers, #2 Indiana).
7: Devin Bush(#3 ND, #1 Nebraska, #1 Indiana).
5: Karan Higdon (#1 WMU, #3 Nebraska, #3 Wisconsin), Donovan Peoples-Jones(T1 SMU, #3 MSU, #2 Rutgers), Rashan Gary(#2 WMU, #2 Nebraska, #3 Indiana).
4: David Long(#2 Wisconsin, T1 Michigan State), Josh Uche (T2 NW, T2 MSU, T1 PSU), Jon Runyan Jr (T1 Wisconsin, T2 PSU), Zach Gentry(T1 SMU, #2 Maryland, T3 Rutgers).
3:  Juwann Bushell-Beatty(T1 Wisconsin), Jon Runyan Jr(T1 Wisconsin).
2: Ambry Thomas (#2 ND), Josh Metellus(#2 SMU), Brandon Watson(T1 MSU), Lavert Hill(T1 MSU).
1: Will Hart (#3 NW), Mike Dwumfour (T2 NW), Kwity Paye (T2 NW), Khaleke Hudson(#3 Maryland), Ben Bredeson(T2 PSU), Nico Collins(T3 Rutgers).

Who's Got It Better Than Us(?) Of The Week

Nick Eubanks scores his first touchdown at Michigan. An important moment in the game, sure. But his reaction afterward was a prayer to his late mom.

Honorable mention: Post-game news about Edwards and Winovich is positive. Moody hits a field goal X6. Rashan Gary stops Indiana's last drive before it starts.

​MARCUS HALL EPIC DOUBLE BIRD OF THE WEEK.

Berkeley Edwards suffers the scariest injury in Michigan Stadium in living memory after a cheap targeting hit on a kickoff return. Edwards is probably going to be fine, per Braylon, and he's tweeting, so… that's a mixed blessing. But mostly good!

Honorable mention: Chase Winovich is knocked out after a different cheap shot and is maybe unavailable for next week. The end of half debacle.

[After THE JUMP: cheap shots, other]