Morris's cannon, by me.
Before getting into last week's game, Best and Worst this week spent about 1,000 words on exorcising demons, spinning a tale of Michigan's decline with the rise of offense based on athletes in space. Once the 2014 ASU game was in hand, it occurred to me that this is where Michigan ought to have been 7 years ago. By 2007 the college football world had witnessed the spread's effectiveness in all its forms, and had time to adjust their schemes, recruit for it, and develop those recruits. The prep sites already identified dual-threat and pro-style quarterbacks separately, and the nationally #1 2008 recruit was absolutely the former.
One part of The Horror story is that Opening Day of 2007 was Michigan's first after switching to zone blocking. [Correction: I have been going around remembering this wrong for years. M went zone in 2006.] Our metrics for evaluating that weren't as good back then, but from memory the blocking that day was about on par with last Saturday's—a work in progress with some obvious successes—except the unit was 20% more senior Jake Long. The biggest difference in the two game plans is once 2007 App State began cheating to stop zone left, DeBord never punished them for it by taking the easy WR screen-type yards. On Saturday, Nussmeier absolutely did, and while that certainly wasn't 2007 Appalachian State out there, it wasn't so hard to imagine if it had been.
Which brings me to the above gif, a sort of preview of things to come in 2015. It was indeed a rollout from a two-TE formation that required a quarterback to make a play that required amazing awareness, footwork and arm strength, but not running speed. It seems the armistice between spread zealots and the MANBALLers will be this: the 2007 offense except with sensible constraints, the 2007 defense except with five times as many functional LBs and DBs, and the 2007 outcomes except we won't lose to teams with a major talent disadvantage. So long as it's successful there will be peace, and so long as the players do amazing things they will be gif'd. Both sides of the fanbase have decided we'd rather eat some lemons that go through bad ideas and bad fits any more.
This is COrrEct. From Inside the Box Score:
I Attended the Beth MOOOwins school of jOUrnalism this sUmmer. According to Beth, the key to doing play-by-play is to randomly Over-anunciate your vOwels. That's the key to doing a Beth MOwins imitAYtion. Just blAst the occAsional vOwel at mAx vOlume. Especially the O's, she loves her O's.
I tend to imagine ESPN has some kid sitting behind Mowins in the booth and the kid is kicking her chair and rocking it back and forth as she talks. In answer to what does Joey Galloway bring to the game: something that's far more annoying than Beth Mowins.
Preach!. Sharik showed that Alabama, whose special teams players might be All-Conference starters already at other schools, was 112th in net punting because they dinosaur. Purdue, who recruits so terribly that Urban Meyer complained it was hurting the conference, was 2nd. [UPDATE: apparently we read that wrong. HT to johnthesavage.]
Etc. Wallpaper. Program on a lanyard. Highs and lows around the B1Garound the B1G.
[After the jump: videos of MGoBlog posters eating lemons]
PEOPLE ON MGOBOARD EATING LEMONS
This week Joe Bolden started over Desmond Morgan and for a moment there it seemed Brian was going to tray to get out of eating a lemon for betting against this happening. It was at this moment that the board got all fruity. A recap of lemon threads:
Jon06 asks how do we make Brian eat it?
Darker Blue suggested a cream pie recipe.
Sinofheschafer suggested a boycott.
Cope created an ice bucket-like MGoBlog Lemon Challenge:
…and nominated people to eat lemons or give to the blog.
Then JClay ate a lemon. Darker Blue ate a lemon, apparently having left his airplane on in the other room. Wolverine Devotee ate a lemon. TRSaunders ate a lemon. LSAClassof2000 ate a lemon. MGrowOld puréed them with three shots of tequila while his wife juggled in the background. Brian and Ace eat theirs Sunday.
A SEAT FROM THE SCHEMBECHLERS
Bo's kids are out there on the internet conversing with unsuspecting collectors and giving their mothers get-well presents.
ETC. Alum96 had a nice and short breakdown on the remainder of Michigan's schedule if BiSB's snarky thing is too much for you. The students showed up on time.
Your Moment of Zen:
Very well done hype video by Luke D'Mello: