Utah 25 Michigan 23 (Final)

[jwinslow]

How bad of an idea would it be to start Cissoko next game? Worked out fine with Warren last year

Warren arrived with a lot more polish. Have Cissoko line up on the sidelines and tee off on whoever is still on UM's staff requiring LBs to cover slot WRs. Once he's out for the count, slide Cissoko into that defensive role... that is if he's ready to play (which I'm not sure he is).

 

[NFBuck]

Warren is the real deal. I always thought Marlin jackson and Leon Hall were overrated, but that kid is good.

Oh, Morgan Trent.

Cissoko probably couldn't be much worse, but his army aa game showing would indicate to me he's not really ready. I didn't notice, but did he see the field today?

 

[Sportsbuck28]

Yeah, well, I don't think Shafer's dumb enough to put him in zone coverage against 6'5" wideouts. JMO though. Cissoko is a damn good corner, especially in press man to man. Zone? Some work to do. Judging one's talent by a few plays in an all-star game is sketchy at best.

He was in man to man against Dan Buckner when he got mossed.

And yes, it is hard to judge his performance by a few plays especially when you factor in the different rules, but the fact that he played so poorly can't be a good sign.

 

[brutus2002]

Sniper you are right Warren is a bright spot and Ezeh seems to be solid but the back 7 as a whole is bad...really bad. If Utah doesn't make some stupid penalties and idiotic mistakes this is a 2+ TD win for Utah.

Here is what is scary for you guys Johnson, Taylor, and Jamison gone after this season!!! I was underwhelmed by your D-line anyways I can only imagine it next year.

I think the Michigan faithful as a whole are starting to realize that they don't have as good of a defense as they thought. Like I said 140-150+ penalty yards really hurt Utah. They could have score 35+ if they were not so sloppy.

 

[SNIPER26]

He was in man to man against Dan Buckner when he got mossed.

And yes, it is hard to judge his performance by a few plays especially when you factor in the different rules, but the fact that he played so poorly can't be a good sign.

Buckner is 6'4". If a DC thinks it's a good idea to have a 5'9" (maybe) corner cover a 6'4" guy, they shouldn't have a job.

 

[SNIPER26]

Warren arrived with a lot more polish. Have Cissoko line up on the sidelines and tee off on whoever is still on UM's staff requiring LBs to cover slot WRs. Once he's out for the count, slide Cissoko into that defensive role... that is if he's ready to play (which I'm not sure he is).

I'd say he's more ready to cover a slot WR than say, Austin Panter and the potpourri of shit we have at LB not named Obi Ezeh.

And Warren is officially my favorite player on the team. He's got All-American written all over him. Unfortunately for him, he's got two good corners ahead of him to even get All Big 10 honors.

 

[SNIPER26]

Sniper you are right Warren is a bright spot and Ezeh seems to be solid but the back 7 as a whole is bad...really bad. If Utah doesn't make some stupid penalties and idiotic mistakes this is a 2+ TD win for Utah.

Here is what is scary for you guys Johnson, Taylor, and Jamison gone after this season!!! I was underwhelmed by your D-line anyways I can only imagine it next year.

7 sacks underwhelm you? High expectations, I suppose.

 

[Sportsbuck28]

Buckner is 6'4". If a DC thinks it's a good idea to have a 5'9" (maybe) corner cover a 6'4" guy, they shouldn't have a job.

Which is exactly why he's not ready to play.. he'd be up against a guy at least 6-0 and possibly even a flexed out TE.

 

[WaitingforKickoff]

Prior experience from the Cooper years?

Quite the opposite. The losses from the Cooper years became more difficult to bear as the teams he fielded got more promising. Luckily for you, I don't think this will be a problem.

 

[NastyDogg72]

I honestly don't know what to think now. I, like most who live and breath college football, felt that scUM would have more talent than at least 8 of the teams they lined up against this season. I included today in those 8 games.

The way the game played out today was unexpected. Just two days ago I expected an 8 win season out of TSUN, now I am not so sure. I still think the talent is there but trying to circle the wagons and pull out a recovery like last year this season would be a tough task with all the first year players on the roster.

Now before today I felt that scUM would win 7 of the 8 games where they had the better talent and 1 upset over a "better" team. Maybe today was the 1 game that they lose to a less talented team. Major improvement is needed in some key areas if this team is going to have some success this season, I guess only time will tell.

Sniper, Chris and Hail. Just wondering, what would you guys see as a successful first season under Rich Rod?

 

[brutus2002]

7 sacks...maybe we were watching a different game. The QB for Utah made several mental mistakes...He could have avoided at least 2-3 of those. I'm not the one that ranked your sorry D-line top 10 in the country. You guys are supposed to have a better D-line than we do...yeah right. The only thing that stopped Utah today was Utah. If you half the penalty yardage Utah has 400+ yards of offense...definately more if some penalties were avoided that stalled drives. Good luck half way throught the season when your "vaunted" D-line starts to get banged up. BTW the Barwis hype is pathetic. The best conditioned out of position defensers in america.

 

[SNIPER26]

BTW the Barwis hype is pathetic. The best conditioned out of position defensers in america.

Barwis doesn't coach them, now does he? Yes, the Barwis hype is overdone. A lot. But Barwis has nothing to do with them being out of position.

 

[MrsB]

Today tsun showed that they will be lucky to win half their games. In honesty I think they had the wrong QB in. You can't have a QB that can't run in RR's offense.

Look for a change.

 

[SNIPER26]

Sniper, Chris and Hail. Just wondering, what would you guys see as a successful first season under Rich Rod?

6-7 wins. I've set low expectations, and I set them before today. The man's a coach, not a miracle worker. There's little talent on the OL (Schilling is meh, the rest suck). There's not one QB that can run his offense at the moment, as Threet and Sheridouche suck, and Feagin must really suck right now if he can't beat out these chumps in an offense designed for his style of play. The D is good. They were out there WAY too long today. Warren, well, I'd have to say he could be, COULD be, our best pure cover corner since a young lad named Charles Woodson (Hallowed be thy name!) roamed the secondary. Ezeh's game today was partly some good plays , partly some cleaning up downfield but all in all good. He's significantly better than last year. The guy had never played LB until last year, so I'd say he's developing well. I wish Jonas Mouton idn't suck right now, or he'd be a nice fit at WLB. This is gonna sound stupid, but whatever, but Carlos Brown is probably our best option at QB. I still think we're going bowling, but who knows?

 

[ChisAto]

Sniper, Chris and Hail. Just wondering, what would you guys see as a successful first season under Rich Rod?

I'll admit, my tune for most of the off-season was 8 wins, but damn that seems like a dream right now. I'll say if Sheridan plays ANY considerable minutes for the rest of the season I'll be surprised with 5 wins. Threet sucks less then Sheridan, and he has a helluva more arm on him so he HAS to play.. Every time Sheridan threw downfield I wanted to throw my remote into the [censored]ing TV. With Threet I'll be (not really) happy with 6-7 wins. Motor City Bowl FTW.

I think the Michigan faithful as a whole are starting to realize that they don't have as good of a defense as they thought. Like I said 140-150+ penalty yards really hurt Utah. They could have score 35+ if they were not so sloppy.

For the non-kool aid drinkers who were calling this a defense of 1997 proportions, we knew we were going to give up yards to Utah. I didn't expect to give up (essentially) 300 passing yards in the first half, but I didn't expect no 10-30 150 yards 5 INT shut down the whole world defense. As was stated numerous times by Sniper, we ran the 4-3 base defense against 4 and 5 WR sets and time and time again they hit those slot guys for the easy passes. I'm guessing they don't believe true frosh Cissoko, sophomore Woolfork, and true frosh JT Floyd are ready or they woulda been out there in the slot..

In the second half we adjusted a little bit and brought some more DBs onto the field, but we can't really say they massively improved because I believe it was more-so Utah shutting down their offense then us shutting them down. I mean look, Brian Johnson threw it 10 times in the entire second half.. (He threw 11 times on their first two drives of the game!) For the love of me I didn't see why they decided to stop passing. If they passed the ball, they woulda moved down the field and put the game away earlier..

You guys have a DL that is very capable of putting pressure on the QB, but they still looked pretty vulnerable against the run from what I saw. The safeties didn't look very good and while I agree Warren is a very good corner, Morgan Trent's presence negates that.

Yes that is true... Once Utah had established the pass they had a few running lanes that opened up later in the game.. And what's new? A whole year of practice and Stevie Brown STILL takes [censored]ty angles on WRs.. I guess Barwis just wanted him to look more in shape doing it.

At least Threet has an arm, but his decision making was pretty lousy and he was missing open recievers. Maybe Carlos Brown is the best option at QB after all.

I'll take Threet over Sheridan 10 out of 10 times in this game. I didn't really blame Threet for being so horrible though.. He came into a bad situation, and his O-line play wasn't helping. He HAS to be the starter the rest of the season or we're in [more] trouble then we're already in.

BTW, FWIW we should have lost some where around 35-10 but they just doing stupid [censored] and getting stupid penalties to keep us in the game.