About Last Night: Recap Western

Why is Hoke  not pointing at the clouds, making them break up?

If I recall correctly, it was around, oh I dunno, 6ish when my mind was super excited that the event that is a Michigan football Saturday would carry right up to or into the Oregon v. LSU game that I cared nothing about. I was outside firing up the grille in Grand Rapids, waiting for the rain to stop. Then something strange happened and it was just like, over, done, no mas. "Wait, what?"

I'm glad I had the foresight to record the game on my television at home. I was going to need to watch again. After the two delays and the beverages I began to forget all the things I had just watched and began looking for affirmation from my friends that the game was actually over and also trying to collect bits of what all I had just seen. Did Michigan ever have the ball? Denard really didn't take one of his runs a bazillion yards to the house? Our defense ran those blitz things and scored a touchdown?...wait, did you say, TWO touchdowns!?

I went back and watched the game. After just less than 3 full quarters the opener was over. Brady Hoke started his career 1-0. Minimal was seen/learned from the offense. The defense showed some things that were known and some things that were a pleasant surprise. Observations?... Observations.

Offense:
This section is going to look just like the game. Abbreviated. For those of you worried about the move out of the spread, Michigan ran about from the gun, 70% of the time. Al Borges would like you to believe that will not be the ratio that we as fans shall see the remainder of the season.

 “No, no … no. The game had no balance to it with regard to that. If we had played a fourth quarter, we would have been right about where we wanted it.”

I don't buy it. But with only 39 plays to judge off, I'm going to be smart here and hold off on judgement. One thing I can take away from the game, was my ever growing love-fest for Fitz Toussaint. He was just shy of 7 ypc and had that nice 43 yd scamper. He looked like that dude I saw in his High School highlight tape that made me giddy (please stay healthy). Shaw also impressed on his run. Until something shows me we need to worry, we should all feel good about our running-back situation.  

Just like the game, I'm going to hold off on Denard until after the ND game. From what I saw he made one questionable throw but managed the other 38 plays well. Last years opener gave us 80 something plays to go off of.

Defense:

Those first two drives made me nauseous. Just like last year. There were no deep balls, just methodical dumps down the field doing exactly what every lowly team in college football would've done last year. Then something, dare I say aMAIZEing, happened. 1:53 into the video.

Yes, that was the defense about to get scored on, running that thing our defense used to know as a blitz, causing a turnover and completely changing the outlook of a game. I know, I'll give you a second to comprehend that run-on sentence... You good? Alright on with it we go. 

Until Michigan's secondary and linebacking corps are substantially better Michigan is going to have to figure out ways to get pressure on the QB something GERG, as we all know, struggled with. Well, this dude Mattison gets it yo. If it's not working don't keep doing it. Bringing 4 down lineman wasn't working and so Mattison went blitz happy and Alex Carder's back was finding that luscious Michigan field turf regularly.  

The defense went from getting torched on 3 consecutive drives, to shutting down the Bronco attack. Jordan Kovacs isn't a walk on anymore and if anyone should question this. He will personally do this to your face.

If you need to see it at full speed here you go.

This defense is going to be scary and I think it will take a few games until we know exactly who to suspect we'll see on the field that'll be scaring us. JT Floyd was supposed to start but he didn't Frank Clark was supposed to be the freshman on the field most, but correct me if I am wrong, Brennen Beyer was that guy. Also Carvin Johnson got some time back at safety and then Marvin Robinson showed up on the field. That'll be an interesting battle to see play out. Last player note is Big Will Campbell did see the field but did nothing of note. I think until he's not here I am always going to cross my fingers he finds whatever it is to make him the second coming of 2006 Alan Branch.

The most encouraging thing for this unit is, we have a coordinator in place who seems pretty good at making in-game adjustments and isn't just hoping the other team screws up.

Special Teams:
UGHH... It's always something isn't it? One of these times the special teams will win us a game and my head will explode.

Good Feeling To Take Home With You:
Congrats to Brady Hoke. Who, even in the biggest moment of his career followed his team out of the tunnel and made it about the 115 of them and not himself. I wanna give the dude a big hug.

Quickies: The Committee In The Backfield

The Low Down: Did Denard Robinson count as a running back last year? No? Shoot... Unlike the days yore, Michigan's running back situation was more of a running back by committee last season. If you would've asked Fred Jackson he would've said the committee had the same skill set but only better than this committee...
 

Remember these guys?

We know this not to be true... So what was the committee?
Presumed starter last year, I guess was, scat-back extrordinaire Vincent Smith. He did lead the team in rushing yards outside of Shoelace. Behind him was Brandon Minor version 2.0, Mike Shaw, who ran with rage right into lingering injuries. The 3rd back in the mix was meaty freshman, Stephen Hopkins. Next up, was high-school highlight tape super-star, Fitz Toussaint. Toussaint has been victim of the nagging injury plague seemingly, since his arrival on campus. He did take his first career carry 61 yds and followed it up with a TD on his next run. The official MGoBlue website lists his position last year as "superback", so that must be good... Lastly, we had Mike Cox who's career stat-line looks like one helluva good game: 19 carries 169 yds 2 TD's... The big problem with Cox, has been his lack of knowledge on the playbook.

If the committee was one, the committee back would've come in 19th in the country with 1297 yds on 264 carries. Not to shabby... The problem in my mind is that's 4 dudes who totaled just a smidgen under 400 yds less than your quarterback. But, then my mind is all like, "Denard though?"... "Denard..." Rich Rodriguez was fighting for his job and he needed to do what he had to do to win. None of the backs stood out more than the others so he stuck with what worked, Denard left, Denard right, Denard pass, Denard left, so on and so forth...

1 Year Later:
MANBALL!!! 1 RUNNING BACK!!! I wanted to stop here, but better judgement said I'd be selling you short.

Since Brady Hoke came in, he has placed an emphasis on this team establishing a power run game with a feature back to take the work load. I would suspect that of the 264 carries all the running backs combined got last year, Hoke and Borges would like to see about all of those go to 1 guy. The rest of the carries that don't go to Denard will be divided up between everybody else.

General consensus back in the spring was probably that you'd see Michael Cox or Stephen Hopkins take charge by the fall as the lead back. Both are bigger, stronger, bruising backs. Cox, who committed to this style of play for Lloyd Carr, was definitely excited to be back to running downhill...

“When I came in, I committed to coach Carr, and I committed to this type of system,” Cox said. “I'm definitely happy to be back in the system that I came here for.”

Much has seemed to change from then till now however. Michigan brought in two pretty highly-regarded recruits in consensus 4* Justice Hayes and under-the-radar 3* Thomas Rawls. Hayes was more fit for the spread and is likely to be a slot-type player for Michigan. He likely won't see the field for Michigan this year as a running back, but fall-camp reports suggest that, he could return punts or kicks. Rawls is like Mark Ingram only better. What say you Fred Jackson?

“Honestly, I did get a chance to watch Mark Ingram a few times,” Jackson said. “Mark is probably one of the best guys ever to come through here. Mark was great, but there’s something about this kid Thomas. If I was to compare them as high school backs, give me Thomas Rawls.”

So there's that... And then there's this..
Fitz Toussaint apparently blew up at the scrimmage last Saturday causing the internetz to go into an uproar and as recent as 8-23 Shaw is the projected default starter due to consistency.Vincent Smith is also pretty much locked into a 3rd down back. He's a great blocker and causes some matchup problems out of the backfield, with his pass catching abilities. There hasn't been much news on Cox or Hopkins, so with those guys we'll see.

I Know I'm Forgetting Something... OHH YAH... Fullback... Guess What? We will use one this year. John McColgan will be it and  I suspect that he will be relieved by Stephen Hopkins (maybe Steve Watson too) from time to time. 

Expectations: What is them?
Umm...

Seriously, I want to sound smart here and say X, Y, & Z are for sure going to happen, but really if you have an idea, maybe you could email me and I'll post it. So, since this is my blog and nobody takes me seriously I am just going to take what I do know and mix it in with my best educated guess.

EDIT: I had this post about ready to go, got busy, and over the weekend Michigan had their scrimmage. Brady Hoke announced Shaw would most likely be the starter, more than likely backed up by Fitz.

So before the presser, I would've said Shaw starts by default, maybe gets backed up Fitz and only that because of practice hype. Thanks for reaffirming my thoughts Brady, I appreciate it.  Yeah, Shaw will start, how long his body can take the pounding of being the man at running-back, is yet to be determined. I like Fitz backing him up and taking over if Shaw goes down, if only for the reason I've had an affinity for Fitz since the first time I saw the gold that was his high-school highlight tape.

How good the offense looks early will be very important for the stat line of the RB's, If the offense struggles early, how long until Denard starts to see more and more designed runs? The offensive line in my opinion, should still be very solid and create many of  those running lanes for the backs. I will make my ridiculous prediction now and say that by the end of the season whomever our starting tailback is will amass over 1,000 yds by the end of the season. If I had to boldly predict who that'll be, I'd say Toussaint. That's my story and I am sticking to it. Next up, the wide receivers. As always, Go Blue!