I wanted to do a little research to show the level of ineptness in our passing offense. I didn't intend this to be a case study on how "OMG OUR QBs SUK" but rather to show how we will improve next year. I wanted to take Rich Rod, who we all know as a good football coach, and compare him with two other highly successful football coaches at major schools in their first years, Nick Saban and Urban Meyer. I wanted to compare QB play amongst all three schools and use that as an overview of how the team did. Now... Let's take Saban (7-6 in his first year at Alabama), Meyer (9-3 in his first year at Florida), RR (3-9 in his first year at Michigan) and then compare QBs. In Saban's first year he had QB John Parker Wilson, while Florida had QB Chris Leak, and finally Michigan ran with a combo of Steve Threet and Nick Sheridan. ----------------------------------- In Meyer's first year Chris Leak: Threw for 2600+ yards 20TDs to 6INTs Completing nearly 63% of his passes He also rushed for 6TDs Had 4 games where his completion percentage was above 75% 8 games with over 200 passing yards 7 games with multiple TD passes He only had 2 games where he threw more INTs than TDs and they won 1 of them ---------------------------------- Now John Parker Wilson for Saban in 07: Threw for 2800+ yards 18TDs to 12INTs Completed 55% of his passes Rushed for 5TDs 4 games where he completed over 65% of his passes 7 games with 200+ passing yards including multiple 300+ 6 games with multiple TD passes 5 games where he threw more INTs than TDs and they won 2 of them ------------------------------------ Steve Threet and Nick Sheridan combined: Threw for 1718 yards 11TDs to 12INTs Completed 48.8% of their passes Rushed for 2 TDs Had 2 legitimate games where they completed over 60% of their passes (By legitimate i mean threw over 20 passes, games like Threet's 7-11 against Toledo or Sheridan's 4-5 against Utah are too small of sample sizes) Had 2 games where they threw more than 200+ yards Combined for 3 games with 2 TD passes Combined for 5 games in which Michigan threw more INTS than TDs and won only 1 of those games In the 3 games Sheridan threw more than 20 passes his completion percentage was 24% (32of83). In the 5 games Threet threw over 20 passes his completion percentage was 49.6% (68of137) --------------------------------- Imagine if instead of John Parker Wilson, Nick Saban has a combo of Threet+Sheridan. Alabama does not win more than 3 games that year. Next, imagine the same scenario at Florida and Urban Meyer's team does not win more than 5 games. Now you begin to understand to hole that Rich Rod was in as a result of his quarterbacks. You give 2008 U of M a player akin to Chris Leak, and the team dramatically improves. Think of how close these games were: Utah Toledo MSU Illinois (up until the implosion) ND (until Sheridan INTfest) With improved or decent QB play, we could have potentially won each of those games. It may be viewed as somewhat of a stretch for the Illinios game, but if you insert even an underrated QB like Chris Leak at the QB position things begin to look different for UofM in almost all of those games. Which is why next year if Tate or Shav have even decent seasons, the win total could improve dramatically (3 or so games). I'm definitely not expecting more than 7 wins next year and would be happy to be bowl eligible, but I'm cautiously optimistic that a combo of healthy Sophomore Threet + Tate/Beav will provide us with decent QB play. EDIT: I suppose I should mention that all of these numbers were either taken from the MGoBlue Football Statistics Database or ESPN.