First the good: 1) Mid-construction stadium. Easy to manage if everyone continues to use "their" gate and avoids walking the concourse. North concourse editions are beautiful---new MDen, big concession stands out of the way of traffic, and two new, for now, 'secret' extra women's restrooms (NO waiting!!!!). Inside the stadium the additions are perfect! They don't intrude on the character of the bowl, and in fact, add nicely to the interior intimidation factor. Sunset did come early, but given the wok-like nature of the bowl in a cloudless 90 degree day, I don't think that is a negative. Talk to everyone in November. It'll be freakin' freezing by noon!2) Crowd noise. Really. Especially in the 3rd quarter when everyone was down in the mouth and the heart about the missing defense and the high-school caliber offense. I like that the team didn't quit, nor did the fans (at least those who could stand the heat---literally/figuratively).
3) The band.
4) At least now we know what we have and can make adjustments/coach kids up?????
The bad: 1) The defense---supposedly this year's savior???? I'm missing
Ron English right about now. I'm sorry, but a new scheme that is supposed to be used to seeing the spread in practice SHOULD be able to stop the damn thing. The only thing that I can think of is that it's the players....I mean these are many of the same guys as before. Seriously---Morgan Trent? a force in the secondary??? please. And I can't tell you how many times Obie Ezeh had his BACK turned to the play, took the wrong angle, or just got plain pancaked. I'll be very interested to see Brian's UFR2) Play calling. After the first quarter I too could tell what was coming next.
The ugly: 1) Quarterback. Either one of them. Inaccurate, immobile, inexperienced, in trouble. I know they are young and that they are total noobs, but I at least thought their mechanics would be better than they were.
2) Overall execution. bleck.
Overall: I saw flashes of fun and brilliance if we had the right personnel. I saw Rich Rod's stubbornness and gambler mentality. But, um, why doesn't he talk to anyone on the sidelines??? Like does he coach via headset??? He rarely spoke with the players. Weird. I didn't expect a win and I don't think we got drubbed. I just think it's gonna be a long ride this season and it will still be fun a lot of the time and really frustrating many times. Change is hard......I just want to see improvement at this point.Sweetest moment?? After Lloyd Carr received his award at half-time he chose to walk up and out of the stadium thru the student section. The students gave him a rousing welcome and Lloyd returned the love by pausing to take pictures, talk, sign things etc---I think it took him another 10 minutes to get out of the bowl.
Cool moment??? The flyover. All pilots were Michigan Grads. Air Force bitches. Air Force. oh--and they looked REALLY hot on the sidelines in their jump suits with Michigan hats. mmmmm men in unis.......
And finally, new tradition: In honor of the shotgun, we did (and will) shotgun beers before heading to the stadium.
DISCUSS.
Posts
10 comments:
what happened to this conditioning program we've heard so much about? barwis proved himself to be overrated like every other coach on that sideline/booth yesterday. worst than that is he is going to wreck your your traditions. he's already given you WVU colors. you are navy blue and yellow now. how could the alum, etc. allow this to happen????
One game - and yes, the sky is still hanging in there.
All the conditioning in the world isn't going to help get a slow footed QB to make good decisions in this offense.
This is going to take some time.
this had nothing to do with conditioning
what game were you watching???
so i'm watching the dolphins v. the saints on NFL net and i'm just wondering how long it will take for the appy state thing to die? when discussing Chad Henne's success in the NFL, the Net felt compelled to once again bring up the Appy game......
will it be one year?
10 years?
that dog is dead....enough
t-9, i was merely referring to physical look of the players. the defense should have been tired. offense was lucky to break a sweat. glass half full says be lucky to not have been beaten worse. had it not been for them basically shutting down the offense and penalities in the second half, it could have been real ugly.
.... But it wasn't and remarkably they lost by 2 points after failing to convert a 2 point conversion to tie. Would they have lost in OT, most definitely but the fact that they were able to make a comeback is something. They went into the game not knowing what they had at all and now they know a little more. They know that Threet is the QB no matter how Sheridan looks in practice. They know that their defense has black holes in the secondary and will need to work extra hard in practice this week. And they know that their line is awful from a traditional running standpoint but actually I thought the QBs had a lot of time to throw. Utah is a great team and will probably win at least 10 games this season and go to a higher profile bowl and MI still played respectfully.
I really don't know why everyone is bagging on the defense. The D hel Utah to 4 field goals, even though they wer constantly starting on the UM side of the field. There were ADJUSTMENTS. Show me one game where English made adjustmensts(see: The Horror, Oregon, Rose Bowl). The second half started with 3 possesions on the UM side. How many points did Utah score ? 3. The defense was ACCELERATING in the second half. There's your conditioning.
The QB situation .... well.... it's scary.
T9,
The "shotgunning" beers tradition is the best suggestion I've heard in years.
Overall, everyone needs to take a collective deep breath & hold off jumping.
The D struiggled in 1st half & then looked great in 2nd. Yeah, da Utes throttled back in 3rd, but they were dead serious about getting 1st downs in the 4th quarter & couldn't budge the ball.
The O line & both QBs looked bad. Didn't we expect some of that?
Next week is when we really need to worry or celebrate. Utah is a pretty good team. Miami is not.
We'll either see 2 halves from the D, or we have a lot worry about.
We'll either see some running & better decisions by QBs, or more carlos brown/justin feagin.
Finally, the D looked GREAT in the 4th. We played our best football all day over the last 15 minutes. The conditioning was real obvious to me.
yes, I too would not encourage jumping, firing, booing, nor quitting.
all I hope for next week is some SERIOUS improvement. And I expect it, in all honesty. You don't know what you've got as a team til ya see 'em play. And the kids don't know what to expect nor what is expected from them til they actually get to play.
This is a time when one would look for senior leadership...'ceptin, well, we ain't got none.
So, I wanna see ol' Richie coach 'em up.
After Barwis made 'em all puke up.
GO BLUE
You failed to mention that the cheerleaders were looking rather fetching in their non-soccer mom outfits.
I'm sure no-one else was paying attention to that either.
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