OSU thoughts and season wrap-up

It could have been a lot worse. The defense played hard, and Tressel's conservatism played right into Michigan's hands, so despite a gaggle of turnovers, the final score looked somewhat respectable.
-There's no doubt that Tressel is a great coach, especially when it comes to defense and special teams. But much like Lloyd Carr, he couldn't game plan his way out of a paper bag. Our defense has glaring weaknesses at LB and at safety and every non-MAC team has taken advantage of them until OSU. But instead of spreading us out, running zone read plays and short out passes and play action passes, i.e. things that would have forced our LBs and DBs to make decisions and plays in space, Sweatervest decided to run primarily out of an I formation, straight up blocking, that allowed our D-line to get penetration. Now perhaps Tressel saw no reason to do anything on offense since he knew his defense would probably out score us, but I think that if you constantly ask your offense to do the bare minimum, when you really need them to do something, they won't produce. It's what has happened to them against USC and SEC team recently, and it might happen in the Rose Bowl if they have to try and outscore Oregon.
-Pryor is a great athlete, but he has horrible QB mechanics. He's their version of Denard Robinson, but bigger and probably faster. Tressel should look to hire an NFL QB coach to try and develop his pocket passing.
-As much as the Forcier interceptions killed us, I don't think we should try and shut him down next year. His strength is his ability to pull something out of his ass when he's scrambling, I don't want him to lose that.
-There were as many OSU fans at the game as I've ever seen. That's to be expected with the season we've had. With the proliferation of ticket websites, making it easier to sell or buy tickets to any game, I would expect similar situations in the future if we don't turn it around.
-Of all the seniors who played their last game on Saturday, perhaps the thing I'll miss the most is the press box. The next time we see Michigan on TV, it will be at a different camera angle.

-Despite the disappointing end to the season, I think it's pretty clear the Rich Rod isn't going to be fired anytime soon. Anyone who suggest otherwise is either an idiot or in sports talk radio (or more likely, both). We gave Tommy Amaker six years, there's no way, considering his considerable buyout that we fire Rich Rod anytime before the end of the 2011 season.
-Whether he should be fired or not is a different question. I don't think he should be, but I understand the point of those who suggest he should be. I think two years is not enough time to give a coach, and I think there are still considerable holes in the roster that would not be helped by a coaching change. But I also think that given the way the first two years have gone, it's not terribly likely that Rich Rod will last much beyond 2011. There aren't many cases in recent history of a coach doing as poorly in his first two years as Rich Rod has done and winning big in his third or fourth year.
-Although I think Rich Rod should stay, I wouldn't mind if our LB coach Jay Hobson were to leave. He was responsible of inside LBs and both of our veterans in those positions, Ezeh and Mouton seemed to have regressed this year.

Depth Charges

More than anything else, games like yesterday's game against Eastern are about depth - developing depth by giving backups and second and third stringers a chance to play, and using depth to avoid the inevitable letdown that comes when you play a team you're expected to beat handily.

It's clear that we have developed the depth we need to be a championship team in some areas, but are still sorely lacking in others. We have as much talent at the offensive skill positions (QB, RB, WR, TE) as anyone in the league. The depth certainly helped yesterday. Tate Forcier had his worst game of the year. He missed a number of passes. Not Threet or Sheridan missed, but turn a 20 yard gain into a 5 yard gain type misses. A number of times he passed up a sure couple of yards trying to make a big play. It seemed pretty clear that he had read some of his press clippings this week and wanted to show that he was the newest superstar. As a result, our passing game was not nearly as efficient yesterday as it was the previous two weeks. In it's place was a devastating rushing attack. From the first snap, it was clear that Carlos Brown was going to have a great game. Eastern had no answer for his speed. Michael Shaw looked almost as good.

On the other hand, it's equally clear that we are nowhere near a championship level defense, and we are amazing thin there. With the Big Ten suspending Jonas Mouton just a day before the game, we were left starting a walk-on, Kevin Leach at linebacker. What's worse, he appeared to be the better of our two inside linebackers. Obi Ezah just seems lost out there at times -- tentative, slow, and consistently out of position. EMU basically had success with two plays, a sort of counter that sucked the linebackers into the line, before the RB bounced the play around the end, and a play action waggled that got the linebacker open crossing in front of the moving QB. Both plays really took advantage of the decision making of our linebackers. Given that poor play, I was disappointed to not see more of the backups once we got up big late in the second half. If backups like Kenny Demens, Brandon Smith, and JB Fitzgerald can't get playing time against Eastern, the chance of them helping later in the year is slim to none.

Bullets:
-Eastern may have provided the game plan to beat us this year -- run, run, run, play action to the TE. Keep our D on the field.
-Denard clearly has a long way to go at QB. He made a couple of bad reads that led to our two turnovers. But he has good arm, decent mechanics, and of course could turn off the light and be in bed before it gets dark. The bar is not very high for his passing competency. He only needs to be adequate at passing to make him a quarterback capable of moving the ball against good defenses.
-I was hoping to see more of the OL backups - Omaneh, Barnum, Khoury, Mealer.
-I hope Andy Schmitt is ok. He's a good QB, and Eastern really has no chance of having any sort of season without him. I was watching him with the binoculars when he went down, it looked bad. He planted and his knee buckled.
-There were a couple of spreads this week that looked like fool's gold. Unfortunately this fool only recognized one of the three before the games were played. What's the old saying, "It's not the Xs and Os, it's the Jimmies and the Joes." In college football, most times, talent wins. That's why OSU wins 10 or 11 games every year with the world's dullest offense. There were three games where the talent gap between the two teams seemed to be at odds with the spread:
1) BYU was favored by a touchdown over Florida State. While everyone focused on BYU's win over Oklahoma and how they executed, the truth is, even as much as the 'Noles have slipped in recent years, they still have a lot more talent than BYU
2) Oklahoma was only favored over Tulsa by 18. Everyone wondered if OU could recover from the loss of Sam Bradford. But remember that a program as good as OU always has talent waiting in the wings. Given a couple of weeks, It should have been obvious that Landry Jones (the backup QB) would be just fine.
3) Florida was favored by 30 over Tennessee. With all the hype about Kiffin's comments and conjecture about how much Florida would run up the score, we lost sight of the fact that Tennessee's problem in recent years hasn't been their defense, and that they still have a fair amount of talent, with a very good defensive coordinator, Monte Kiffin.
-Watching the Texas - Tex Tech game, it appeared to me that the new enclosed end of the stadium, which was only partially completed when we went there, makes a big difference in the noise level of the stadium. Perhaps I should attend another game there.
-I think that the end might be near for the USC "dynasty" They really looked quite mediocre against the Huskies and I wouldn't be surprised to see them lose to Cal, UCLA, or even, gasp, Notre Dame. I think Carroll should really think about opening up the offense a little, there appears to be little imagination in what they do.
-Is it just me, or did it seem like Tennessee wasn't really trying to win the game against Florida, so much as just keep the score down.
-I didn't really see much of the MSU/ND game, but it looked very similar to our game against ND a week earlier, except that the absence of Michael Floyd hurt the Irish in the stretch run. I was kinda surprised how much the announcers were commenting on every penalty the Irish got. I think that they've bought into what Weis was trying to convey last week - they only lost to us because of the officials.
-The Arkansas / Georgia game was absolutely bonkers. Ryan Mallet is going to make opposing defensive coaches in the SEC sweat for three years. Of course the Razorbacks don't have enough other talent to win a title, but their games will be fun to watch.
-Ditto for the Fresno / Boise game on Friday night. Boise may have a great rushing attack and some good skill players, but they will get carved up when they play a BCS conference team on New Year's if they don't improve their rush defense. A lot. And why did Fresno keep kicking the ball deep, after giving up two kickoff returns for TDs (one that counted) and two other 60 plus yard returns? Pat Hill is vastly overrated as a coach. Did you realized that he has never won a conference title?

Peace is at hand

West Virginia's long national, er, state, nightmare is over. WVU and Rich Rod have settled their lawsuit, and it looks like the university won. RR has agreed to pay the entire $4 million dollar buyout. Or at least he will pay part of it and UofM will pay part of it.

While I'm glad this issue is now behind us, my immediate thought is to wonder what the rest of the story is. If there was an agreement by Michigan to pay a portion of this from the start, why wasn't this settled in December? What happened recently to make RR cave completely? Was it, as the article suggested, a reluctance on the part of Bill Martin and Mary Sue Coleman to testify? Did WVU threaten to bring some new info to light? I'm sure all the crazies will come out of the woodwork with their "What is Michigan hiding?" conspiracy theories. Perhaps Martin and CO. just needed time to raise the money, or perhaps they wanted to wait until the new fiscal year started (July 1), but the timing of the whole thing makes me a little nervous.

Hopefully this is the last we hear about this, and we can just focus on the fun and games.

"Sir, there are two men in white coats here to see you"

I was going to talk about the Penn State game, but then I saw a link to this unbelievable post made at The Rock Report. And by unbelievable I mean so divorced from reality as to be bordering on parody. But of course, it isn't parody, it's the mindset of much of Notre Dame's internet fan base.

The basic underlying premise of his post is the idea that the media is, or has been, waging some sort of campaign to keep Notre Dame from succeeding:

Little news flash to the media talking heads and scribes: The PR battle's over and ND won.

The media doesn't hate Notre Dame. The media doesn't love Notre Dame. Sure there are individual writers or broadcasters who have their own bias (hello Lou Holtz), but the media as a whole doesn't care about any one school or another. Multi-billion dollar conglomerates like ESPN, FOX and the AP care about one thing, Money. And ratings, advertisers, sales, i.e. anything that leads to money. As soon as something more interesting or compelling comes up, the "talking heads" will move on to something else. Suggesting that there is a media conspiracy against Notre Dame also ignores the key role that the media has played in the history of the Irish. From Grantland Rice to NBC, Notre Dame has gotten more coverage than any other program in college football history. This a paranoid delusion along the lines of those 9/11 conspiracy theories.

But the article doesn't stop there. He goes on to claim that Notre Dame has somehow turned a corner.

Thankfully, the media war is one [sic] we don't have to fight anymore. It DID matter, because our recruiting depended on it, but Mark May Inc. already lost… the critical program changes – the only things they can affect ND's future performance -- have already happened.

Supposedly the critical program changes that have occurred include:

• The hiring of Charlie Weis, who cares about the program, unlike its previous two coaches. The author spends a fair amount of the article savaging Davie and Willingham, claiming they betrayed the program because they held a passive-aggressive contempt for Notre Dame. His main evidence for this is that Willingham spoke to Washington about their coaching job before he was fired at Notre Dame. Of course, the fact that Notre Dame had already begun courting Urban Meyer when Willingham talked to Washington is not mentioned.
• The arrival of Corwin Brown, which is proof that Notre Dame is returning to glory:

Notre Dame doesn't get a talent like Corwin Brown if the coaching world thinks ND won't rise again.

Hmm, maybe Notre Dame got Corwin Brown because they were willing to pay him more as a defensive coordinator than the New York Jets were as a defensive backs coach.

• Jimmy Clausen, whose sterling 4.58 yards per attempt, 0 TD, 2 Int, and -104 yards rushing has convinced the author that "Clausen is special, and a fighter." I suppose it takes a fighter to get up after being sacked 15,000 times in three games. A brave man to line up behind the center when there is a better than 50% chance you will end the play running from a mean 300lb man determined to rip your head off.
• The outstanding recruiting classes that Weis has already put together, including the upcoming 2008 class:

I'd be more worried if we didn't' have the best incoming defensive line class (maybe in modern history) fantastic linebackers and defensive backs who already play like college juniors.

Hopefully for this guy, those defenders don't play like Notre Dame juniors, who have all the toughness of four-month-old Twinkies.

There is no mention of the possibility that Notre Dame's recent woes have more to due with the current coach than the ones that left three and six years ago. No comparison of the record of the current coach vs. his predecessors. No acknowledgement that the truly offensive output of a team coached by super-genius Weis E. Coyote might hinder future recruiting efforts.

They say that one of the definitions of insanity is watching the same thing happen again and again and expecting a different outcome. This goes beyond that. It's watching the same thing happen again and again and believing that it's not actually happening. They better be careful in South Bend on Saturday, the last time they got this many crazy people together in one place, they had to call in the ATF.