What just happened? Did that just happen in Michigan stadium? The Oregon Ducks stroll into the Big House, push Michigan all over the field, and roll up 39 points and 630 yards? They averaged 8.3 yards PER PLAY and a lot of that was garbage kill-the-clock time.
The marching band played selections from the Beach Boys at halftime and it was a bit fitting. The last time this team lost 4 straight games was 40 years ago at the end of the Bump Elliott regime, just a year after the release of the band’s iconic and ground-breaking Pet Sounds album. It’s been nearly 40 years since Michigan has completed a season with a losing record and you better start to wonder if we’re heading there.
After two of the worst games in Michigan football history, the ridicule is starting to turn to pity. The open thread at mgoblog is about to have over 1200 comments. This is officially crisis mode.
A few quick sights and sounds from inside the stadium:
– Perhaps not as bad as the drum major dropping the baton like last week, d tackle Will Johnson bit the dust near the sideline after running under the coveted M Club banner as the team took the field.
– While big Will hitting the turf was a bad sign, to me, the worst sign was Michigan failing to cover the “muddle huddle” 2 point conversion gimmick that the Ducks ran on the Blue after their first touchdown. The play is simply a hokey unbalanced formation meant to test a defense’s awareness. It’s simply a read by the pitchman to the snapper. If the defense is covering the huddle properly, the team simply lines up for an extra point as usual. If the pitchman thinks the defense is light, he calls for the ball and attempts to run it in for the conversion. Needless to say, this bush-league gimmick worked against the confused Michigan D.
– Nike billionaire Phil Knight (above) was seen on the sideline prior to the game before heading up to the press box. As posted here, Knight was seen about town on Friday enjoying Ann Arbor. At the game, he was carrying a huge binder with game information. Scary, but I’m thinking Phil Knight was better prepared for this game than the Michigan coaching staff. The beat down might have been extra special for Knight in light of Michigan’s recent defection to Adidas.
– Ah, basketball. The sweet science. New coach John Beilein made his way up and down section 22 with a big smile. I had a chance to wish the coach good luck and shake his hand. The dude looks like he could run a marathon and needless to say his handshake nearly broke my chubby keyboard punching hands. Speaking of coaches, legendary softball coach Carol Hutchins was seen in the second half urging certain fans to not give up on this team.
– Wave Gone? Two games, no wave. Other than our punt team (both Mesko’s leg and our coverage), was there a better outcome of today’s game?
4 Comments
Van
Anyone still say Lloyd “Cooper” Carr shoud stay at Michigan? He should leave now. How worse could a new coach be? Would he lose to 2 unranked teams, oh yeah I forgot, we already did that.
Jim
Look on the bright side, we are still in contention for the Big Ten since these are out of conference loses. :)
Alvin
First, no ‘wave’ when we are losing. Why should we be celebrating when M is currently down? It would indicate we don’t give a damn who’s winning.
Second, what would firing Carr do? Seriously, no one has a good answer to this. Carr is retiring at the end of the season anyway, would the mid-season tumult/confusion help this team? Let’s just say DeBord or English won’t be around next year, whoever the new head coach is.
[Re: Wave. I guess I didn’t know it was so strategic. How about making some noise? And Firing Carr? No one really thinks Carr will be fired barring some kind of off field incident]
Bonus
since i live in boston and dont have access to all the insider intel and the overall pulse of the michigan fan base, i must risk ignorance and state the obvious here: our defense is horrendous on many levels: talent, preperation, smarts, character even. how times have changed:
http://collegefootball.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=619594
the guy (english) i thought was the heir apparent to steer the ship in years to come has overseen a defense that has provided 0 resistance in 4 straight games, all of which you can easily argue were MUST WIN games. all were embarassments.
yesterday the game could have gone either way for a while, but when the offense sputtered and choked (which i partly lloyds responsibility) and spit the bit, and the defense couldnt keep it close, then game ended about halfway through the second quarter when the squad lost its spirit and will to fight, which is unforgivable.
All that said, this isnt on carr as much as on english. had our defense been able to stop anything, we would have beaten appy state and would have gone into halftime with no less than a 1 TD deficit and spirits in tact (i can only assume).
I give you a vote of no confidence first in our defensive coordinator, and less so in our head coach.
[Bone, no doubt the defenese is probably the biggest issue but there so much confusion and poor execution in every facet….you just have to put that on Carr.]