With no opponent to preview, we went over all the happenings on the recruiting trail for the past month as well as looking into the future. Enjoy:

 

 Recruiting Podcast for Sept. 18th [18:25m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Posted under Blogcast, Recruiting

I’ve decided this will be a semi-regular feature. I really couldn’t think of anything for Miami but there’s plenty in this game.

The Weather is Straight out of The Odyssey. You know how Odysseus and a few of his men get stuck in Cyclops’s cave? They took some timber, sharpened an end and blinded Cyclops and then escaped by lashing themselves to the undersides of his sheep, so they slip out without being detected. Well, unfortunately for them Cyclops was Poseidon’s son, and Poseidon controls the weather on the ocean. Poseidon was angry that they did that to his son and whipped up a storm that sunk every boat save Odysseus’ and knocked his off into the edge of the world. I’m not sure what giant creature Rich Rodriguez blinded, but whichever deity controls the weather in South Bend sure as hell was pissed. The kicker is that this malevolent deity waited until its team was up by double digits before unleashing its wrath. Crafty…

Jimmy Clausen is Portia from The Merchant of Venice. Portia is definitely the hero of this play, and Jimmy Clausen was arguably the hero of the game on Saturday. I would personally say Michigan’s slippery hands were the hero, but if you want a person, Jimmy will do. The short version of this joke is that Portia is a women who dresses up as a man to save the day. I mean, have you seen Clausen’s hair? The longer story, is that she went to save Antonio who was in danger of losing a pound of flesh as he guaranteed his friend’s, Basonio, loan. Basonio is inept at his job, but still manages to land Portia, a wealthy heiress, by performing an arbitrary task. Weis, on the same token, is an inept coach who managed to land a very highly regarded (albeit feminine) recruit, most likely by consuming two whole turkeys. I’m not sure who Antonio would be. Maybe Jack Swarbick, Notre Dame’s Atheltic Director. The main components of Antonio are loyalty, a basic level of competancy and a strong hatred of jews, so maybe? I don’t judge.

Finally…

The Game in General is The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. The main character, Jurgis Rudkus, is a Lithuanian immigrant fresh off the boat (well, that plus the trip to Chicago). He has an indomitable love for the American dream of pulling himself up by the bootstraps. Jurgis could be Michigan in general. Stepping bravely into new uncharted lands with a firm belief that, despite toil and tribulations, there is a higher goal that will inevitably be achieved. Early on in the novel, tragedy strikes quickly in the form of unscrupulous guests taking advantage of a wedding party and even taking what few donations were given leaving the family with nothing. Similarly, right out of the gate some players coughed up the ball and Michigan was left with a 21 point debt.

Although the main point of The Jungle may have been an evisceration of capitalism in favor of socialism (which some may agree with), the main thing I remember about the novel is a couple good things happening to Jurgis and then some massive tragedy coming out of left field. For example:

1. Jurgis gets a job
2. The women of the family were able to scrounge and make a nice meal
3. Jurgis‘ son drowns in the mud while Jurgis is working.

In the game, most of what happened was good: McGuffie looked dominant, Threet looked acceptable++ and the receivers were making plays, but then there would be a hope killing turnover. Eventually it was too much for Jurgis (Rodriguez) to deal with and he just gave up (put in Sheridan*). The last hundred or so pages are basically socialist propaganda which, if you’ve been over to Wolverine Liberation Army since the game, you got as well. Sometimes these are just eerie…

*Reports are Threet came out with cramps, which seems like a logical answer.

Posted under Analysis

So… that was a full-on Yakety Sax performance. Even with the threat of sounding like a huge homer, there was a lot of good in the game.

• Threet looked like a solid QB. Between the throws down the field and how he took off on third and long for a first and goal, he made a lot of good decisions and the execution was there.
• McGuffie is the real deal. I thought Shaw may have been the better TB after Miami, but McGuff was absolutely filthy all day.
• The fade is a hard pass to defense
• Stevie Brown made one or two mistakes. He also made a couple plays.
• Special teams FTL!
• Notre Dame spends it’s TV and Bowl money on the refs.

There will be more in depth analysis when I watch the game sober. Is it to mean to make a yakety sax montage for Michigan? I’m serious, it might be cathartic. Let me know.

UPDATE: Can I legitimately make fun of Weis for getting Paterno’d when Michigan got housed? I have ideas…

Posted under Analysis

Jimmy Clausen is sporting a new ‘do and was showing it off against SDSU. Check it out:

Posted under Video

Unfortunately, we were not able to secure a phone interview with a representative from Notre Dame. Instead of having a polite, respectful interview with a member of another school’s media, we took a different approach. Enjoy:

Special thanks to Comrade Dex from Wolverine Liberation Army. Keep fighting the good the fight.

 

 Ripping on Notre Dame [25:17m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Posted under Blogcast

Mike Gundy is sick and tired of Big Ten coaches telling lies and misleading not only the public, but also unwitting recruits. He’s here to set the record straight. Enjoy:

Posted under Video

Some of our unfiltered thoughts from the game:

• Tim and I both agreed that Threet looked much better than Sheridan again. He made better reads, better throws (for the most part), and even looked more authoritative on his runs. With a repertoire of two half games for each, I think Steven Threet should be the starting quarterback. I wasn’t watching the broadcast, so I don’t know why they were rotating; I think it was to give each guy a shot against the same team (again).
• Mark Ortmann came out in the third quarter, but the injury was treated with an icepack on his elbow. It didn’t appear to be too serious, and God help us all if it is.
• The gameplan seemed to be almost the exact same as last week. Even the first play was the exact same (of course, Odoms had much more success on it today than he did against Utah). Are the coaches holding back tricks for later games, and keeping it vanilla (a la DeBord), or is this everything they can do with quarterbacks who can barely throw and run?
• Shaw was running well, then disappeared. Anyone watch the broadcast and hear why that might have been? In Shaw’s stead, McGuffie was the best running back. I’m surprised we didn’t see more of Grady when they ran from the I-form. Minor was, well, Minor. That is neither good nor bad.
• The fans faded during the course of the game. When the team gave them something to be really excited about, they responded. However, the fan momentum wasn’t really maintained, and the third quarter was pretty quiet.
• The half-rolls that Miami was using on offense was pretty effective (once they went to it – nice adjustment by the Miami coaching staff). It prevents a fairly dominant D-line from getting to the quarterback. We’ll see if other teams go to that sort of strategy, and how Shafer reacts.
• This offense hasn’t been making too many big plays (aside from a couple of runs getting blown open and the Odoms screen), but when you watch them play, it is clear that they have big-play potential, and are just a slight improvement in execution away from making something very interesting happen. As the experience across the board improves (especially if Zirbel and Ortmann can get/stay healthy), and more of the playbook is installed, this offense may be adequate down the road.
• The offensive line was again a weak point. We can hope for improvement and the return of Zirbel, and they could be good (enough) by the end of the year.
• Obi Ezeh was again a badass in terms of making tackles, and seemed to defend the pass better this week (albeit against worse competition). He could be a really special player down the line.

Anything to add?

Posted under Analysis

This is Tim’s conversation with Dan Kukla of The Miami Student previewing the upcoming game. Enjoy:

 

 Previewing the Miami RedHawks [19:22m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Posted under Blogcast

Having taken advantage of one of the more “liberal” offerings of LS&A, political science major with a minor in philosophy to be specific, I constantly try to validate the classes I took by using what I learned in “real life.” So… a college football blog isn’t quite “real life,” but it’s close, so I’m going to break down portions of the Utah game using a wide swath of Western culture (no offense to Eastern culture, but I didn’t get much of it).

• Nick Sheridan is Hector of Troy: Their histories are a stretch to match, although one was a son of king, the other a son of coach. They were both intelligent, gritty and determined, and somewhat respected. Hector died fighting a battle he had no chance of winning, a one on one duel against Achilles. Sheridan, apparently, had no chance of being an effective quarterback. The Utes did not proceed to drag Nick Sheridan back to their encampment behind their chariot, but they embarrassed him all the same.
• The Offensivee Line is the (Spartans at Thermopylae)^-1: Oh, inverted, uh metaphor. I think the weird part was that the offensive line was as effective standing still trying to draw an offsides call as they were trying to block. While the Spartans valiantly stood at the pass and held off the oncoming horde to give the Greeks enough time to prepare a their Navy for a decisive victory, the Michigan offensive line could not hold off the Utes for [insert QB] to get to the mesh point with [insert RB]². (Note: just because Michigan State fans have latched on to the movie 300 does not mean Michigan fans have to ignore the city-state)
• The Second Half Defense is the French Army under Napoleon pre-1812: The Napoleonic army was very modern for it’s time and had very well trained soldiers that used rather advanced tactics. He was rarely defeated in battle and wreaked havoc on his enemies. Scott Shafer is taller and every bit the tactician. The defense in the second half played lights out and looked to really confuse the Utah offense. Many times faking retreat and flanking hard.
• The First Half Defense is All Other French Armies: The Utes marched right through Michigan’s Arc de Triomphe at will.
• Stephen Threet is Lennie from Of Mice and Men: I’m not calling Threet mildly mentally disabled. From everything I have heard he is an exceptionally intelligent, nice guy, but bear with me here. Lennie was fairly lovable. George always talked about leaving him on his own, but never could bear to abandon the adorable lurch. Something about Lennie kept George around. Lennie was also fairly effective at his various jobs, but didn’t have the higher level subtleties down. Seems fairly accurate right? Now, there’s an obvious difference in scale, but Lennie accidentally choked a women to death and his best friend ended up killing him, while Threet accidentally overthrew some passes and ended up losing the game (Note: he is not solely responsible for losing the game, but he did not win, so therefore…)

So there you have it. Hopefully this isn’t an example of Michigan arrogance…

If enough people like this, it could become a weekly thing.

Posted under Analysis

At halftime, I was trying to think of what I would post about the game. I made a note to find someone getting hit with a football in the nuts on youtube. Unfortunately that was somewhat hard to find (I was a little surprised). I settled on this:

I’m not sure what happened at halftime, (whatever it was, I’m sure Nick Sheridan didn’t feel well after…), but the defense played like it should have all game. In the second half, Utah only had drive over 10 yards (the first of the half where they got a first down on their first play and then got stymied). That’s dominant, but I’m not sure how good Utah is, and how much those low yardage totals are because of the dumb Utah penalties.

The first half was absolutely horrible. It looked like we had a walk-on sophomore starting, no offensive line talent and running backs who were running scared. Seriously, is Nick Sheridan the Jason Gingell of quarter backing? I have to think Gingell was really good in practice. Luckily it only to the staff a half and not 3-4 games to pull Sheridan. The defense seemed to worry more about keeping Johnson’s jersey clean than covering anything between the hashes.

The worst call of the game, and I called it before it happened, was trying to get some points before halftime. Sure it’s ballsy. Nobody could have predicted the defense coming alive like it did, but I could sure as hell predict Sheridan throwing an interception. That was the difference in the game.

Tim has a more thorough recap coming up tomorrow or Monday.

Posted under Analysis