What I think -- Week 6 (not for the faint of heart)
FYI -- there is a telltale stat below in bold you don't want to miss.
Halfway through his third season in 2010, Rich Rodriguez brought a 5-win Michigan team to Happy Valley for a night game against a Penn State squad struggling to find itself after a rough start to the season. This was considered a winnable road game and a chance for the Michigan program to take its next step back to relevance on national television.
Michigan promptly lost, 41-31.
Michigan’s electrifying quarterback, Denard Robinson, was far and away their only offensive threat—accounting for 391 of the team’s 423 total yards. But he completed only 11-of-23 passes in the game and was unable to sustain drives as the Nittany Lions held the ball for twice as long, and got a season-salvaging win. Meanwhile, the Wolverines were still left searching for their missing identity. Outside the mercurial exploits of their quarterback, there wasn’t really anything else they could hang their hat on.
Sound familiar?
As Brady Hoke said when he arrived on campus, “this is Michigan fergodsakes.” As Brady Hoke has repeatedly said, Michigan measures success on a pass/fail basis. It’s championship or bust.
Yet despite competing during perhaps the three weakest seasons of Big Ten football ever seen around these parts, and with rival Ohio State suffering through the transition of three head coaches during a tumultuous 24-month span, the Wolverines look no closer to ending their longest championship drought since 1950-64 than they did the day Rodriguez was fired.
In fact, if you look carefully at the team and the numbers, the reality is this looks an awful lot like Rodriguez-era football, albeit with a top-notch defensive coordinator. For all of his problems (some people not wanting him to fit in, his unwillingness sometimes to fit in, etc.) does anybody think Rodriguez would’ve gone 8-16 in the Big Ten if he had Greg Mattison coaching the defense? Probably not. There’s a far better chance he’d still be the coach here.
With the exception of his rehabilitation of former Rodriguez recruits Brendan Gibbons (who has been great until missing three straight potential winning field goals on Saturday night) and Jeremy Gallon, you’d be hard-pressed to find a single place where Hoke has actually put his stamp on the program halfway through his third year.
The team still can’t move the line of scrimmage. The offense is still the bearded-lady act with the quarterback doing everything (Devin Gardner accounted for 361 of Michigan’s 389 total yards Saturday night), and that includes making most of the key plays and most of the key mistakes. We’re at the point now that our starting quarterback is good for at least two turnovers per game—right as rain.
He reminds me so much of Demetrius Brown from back in the day, who in terms of arm strength and athleticism might be the most overall talented quarterback at Michigan in my lifetime other than Drew Henson. When Brown was good, he was very good. But when he was bad, he was very bad. A turnover waiting to happen. It’s why Brown was eventually benched for Michael Taylor, who wasn’t as talented but was a much-better decision maker and game manager.
Apparently on this team everyone else can get benched for making bad plays except for Gardner. Yes, I know he was great in the second half, but if he doesn’t throw two inexcusable interceptions in the first half (again) he probably doesn’t have to be. Penn State had 21 points at halftime, but only one legitimate offensive scoring drive thanks to Gardner mistakes. He got away with a third turnover right before half when the defense bailed him out.
And keep in mind this is happening against two of the worst of the worst – Akron and Connecticut – and the artist formerly known as Pedophile State University. A PSU team decimated by sanctions dominated the line of scrimmage against a team who’s had three top 12 recruiting classes (two in the top 5) in the past four years according to Scout.com. Penn State has only had one, and two of its classes weren’t even ranked in the top 40.
As far as I can tell Hoke has recruited only two players so far that have made an impact at Michigan—Blake Countess and Devin Funchess. Others, like James Ross and Frank Clark, have been solid contributors but hardly impact players. By far the strongest NFL prospect on the team, Taylor Lewan, is a Rodriguez-era recruit. Despite their many flaws, and Gardner’s are at the point he is hurting the team each week, who knows where Hoke would be had Rodriguez not left him his spread quarterback gems Robinson and Gardner waiting in the wings.
The most disappointing unit on the team is unquestionably a defensive line loaded with athleticism and depth the likes of which Michigan supposedly hasn’t had for years. But until the second half on Saturday night it had been missing in action against every foe not named Central Michigan, and then it got ran on for the Nittany Lions’ decisive drive in overtime. Who coaches that unit?
You guessed it. Brady Hoke.
How about those awful, and killer, delay of game penalties down the stretch on Saturday night? You have a head coach standing there on the sidelines with no head set on during much of the game, so clearly he’s not distracted by Xs and Os. So what is he doing while the play clock is winding down? Why isn’t he aware of it? There’s nothing stopping him from calling timeout to avoid those momentum-killing penalties. Those were two glaring examples of game management miscues on the road that have been a hallmark of Hoke’s regime, where playing on the road is playing Russian roulette in a winged helmet.
And I say all of this as someone that loves Hoke on a personal level. But we’re not running for Mr. Congeniality here. We’re playing for championships. This is the era of “dynamic ticket pricing” and paying the cost of a 1980s era game ticket for a plain old t-shirt just because it says “Michigan” on it.
This is the era of do or do not, there is no try. Case in point: nowadays you know where a coaching regime is at by the end of their third year. According to my research, there’s not a single current head coach at a BCS Conference School that has gone on to win a division or conference title after failing to win one by his third season.
Not a single one.
Hoke is halfway through his third season.
And this team is still no closer to the physical style of football he wants to play than it was when he arrived. He’s done a good job of coaching up Rodriguez’s recruits, but that’s a nice way of pointing out he still hasn’t put his own mark on the program. We still need a gimmicky quarterback to move the ball. We still need gimmicky defensive schemes most times to stop it from being moved on us.
Either we’re proving recruiting rankings aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on or something is wrong. Where are all these highly-recruited offensive linemen? UCLA starts a freshman and three sophomores up front, and came into this weekend 5th in the nation in scoring while averaging over 200 yards rushing per game. By the way, Sagarin ranked UCLA’s schedule the 66th toughest in the country so far, and Michigan’s 122nd.
We’re wasting an opportunity here when Ohio State and Penn State was mired in scandal. Soon we’ll be joining them within the same division. Now the Buckeyes have the best coach in the country not named Nick Saban, and the Nittany Lions have a coach who could have his pick of jobs – college or pro – and scholarship reductions being prematurely restored.
Look at this season so far. Tell me who on our team is better right now than they were when the season started? I can’t think of a single player other than perhaps Funchess, but he also dropped a touchdown pass we needed on Saturday night and still can’t block worth a lick.
And we still have the toughest second-half schedule in the Big Ten to go.
Even if Gibbons makes one of those three game-winning field goal attempts at Beaver Stadium, all that happens is we go from just another Big Ten team to the worst 6-0 program in America. It would’ve been a gimmicky win that was at-best a temporary salve. Sort of like Rodriguez’s 67-65 “thriller” versus Illinois in 2010.
Michigan and Penn State each scored 34 points in regulation, but neither team had more than 320 total yards. What does that tell you? It tells you that wasn’t good football being played out there by two highly-skilled teams. That was sloppy, mistake-prone football played on a dramatic stage.
That wasn’t “man ball.” That was barely hand-ball.
Hoke has two weeks to figure it out. Two weeks from now he plays a game in East Lansing that could very well be a defining moment for the remainder of his coaching career. If Michigan is out-toughed by Sparty again, and Connor Cook manages the game better than Gardner does, you’ll see Michigan suddenly become a basketball school. Likability helps, but it only carries you so far.
Oh, and somebody please try telling Al Borges not to open a game by running the ball into a brick wall on first down 10 out of 12 times ever again as well
Nick Baumgardner @nickbaumgardner 
