Michigan lost a home game to a MWC team, so you can expect that I’m disappointed/angry/horrified, etc.
However, I have to say I’m actually encouraged by today’s game.
- After the defensive players realized that the season had started, and they should probably, you know, play football, that unit completely dominated.
- The offense was pretty bad. The line was decent for the players that are left one it, but they’ll need to improve over the course of the season if Michigan is going to be successful. The QB was pretty bad, but some of it was first-game jitteriness, and some was being rattled by the QB pressure. There should be an improvement by the QBs next week against a much worse defense.
- The special teams were very good. Nice to see Lopata nail a career-long FG, and see multiple kicks (an extra point and a punt) blocked. What’s scary is that I only see this unit getting better during the year.
Of course, it’s always a disappointment to lose, but I saw it coming, so it doesn’t sting as much as maybe it should. Lowered expectations lead to a happier postgame feeling. If the defense can play all year like it did in the second half, I expect this team to be top-25 quality (even if the record won’t reflect that until much later in the year). If the offense can come around, this could be a decent year in Ann Arbor.
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Yeah the defense dominated in the 2nd half, but why did it take that long? We had all offseason to prepare for Utah and they shredded us. Yeah, we made adjustments, but I also thought that Utah went conservative in 2nd half. Obi was our only good LB, as Evans and Panter were absolutely horrific.
Pryor looked good for his limited game time today; if we can’t even deal with Utah, how are we going to handle 3-4 years of Pryor?
utah didn’t go conservative, we played well on defense in the second half. also, this was just game one. just game one. the first half was shafer’s calls more than the players…you know what nvm, pointless trying to argue.