jwinslow;1532307; said:
I can honestly see either team winning this, I just feel that Notre Dame is a more complete team at this point. Will Tater survive a day's worth of meetings with Te'o? Can UM stop a strong running game?
It's impossible to read these teams after week one. Both played utterly atrocious defenses. ND's defensive performance was more impressive than UM's, but the latter was expected to be much weaker.ND has three strong WRs. UM does not have 3 cbs to match, they have 1 talented vet, 1 talented but streaky youngster, and then a lot of guys who really aren't ready (Floyd, Turner, etc). Behind them are two young, undersized safeties. I look for Kamara or Rudolph to do big things out of the slot.
I don't know if I am reading your post correctly, but if you are implying that Notre Dame is a strong running team and that this will be a test for Michigan, you are sadly mistaken. Notre Dame's running game looked pretty pedestrian, as usual, against a very weak defense. Nevada had one of the very worst total and rush defenses in the country last season, and the absolute worst pass defense.
As far as ND's defense against the run goes, Nevada's RB's only got the football 19 times, and in those 19 times they ran for 115 yards for 6.1 yards per carry with a long of only 18 yards. This suggests that when Nevada was handing it off to the backs, they were able to consistently get 4-6 yards per carry almost every time. I am quite confident that Michigan will be able to do the same to that ND defense in the Big House.
I also think you have our CB's mixed up. To me it looked like we had 1 talented young CB (Cissoko) and 1 streaky vet (Warren). Cissoko played a much better overall game than Warren. By far. Warren was streaky in that game against WMU. Cissoko was covering WR's like a glove, and he was sticking the backs nicely in run support. Warren looked great at times, and he's a very talented individual with 1st round NFL potential, but he played too aggressive and out of control for a JR who has started since he was a true frosh.
Once Cissoko left the game with an injury, WMU was finally able to get some rythm in the passing game going, and JT Floyd and Troy Woolfolk got killed over the top for a 73 yard TD pass from Hiller to Nunez.
If we have any chance of slowing down ND's passing attack next week, Warren is going to have to pull his head out of his ass and step his game up big-time and Cissoko is going to have to get healthy. JT Floyd is not very fast, and ontop of that he looks out of position at CB. Floyd will get abused over and over and over again by Golden Tate if he has to start in place of an injured Cissoko.
I think next week you might start to see a lot of Justin Turner. Turner is raw but he's probably the most talented CB we've got on the roster, and that's saying a lot because Warren and Cissoko are both very talented players.
