Michigan vs Connecticut

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Michigan
1

<p>In roughly 40 hours, Michigan will kick-off its football season against a tricky opponent with some ability and absolutely nothing to lose. Yikes! The next two weeks will give us some insight on the type of season our football team is to have this year. Are we looking at another 4-8 or 5-7 season or will our team rise to the challenge and win 7+ games? </p>

<p>During the second half of our 2009 season, I felt that our defense needed another year to grow and develop, giving our 2010 campaign promise. Unfortunately, with the losses sustained in our defensive backfield (Donovan Warren's early departure, J. T. Turner's transfer and Troy Woolfolk's injury) and the graduation of Brandon Graham, I am affraid this year's defense will be no better than last year's. Our offense should continue to improve, but in the Big 10, without a solid running game (which I don't think we have) and a strong defense, a team can only go so far. </p>

<p>This could well be RR's last year at Michigan.</p>

<p>Thoughts?</p>

2

<p>I think we’ll have a solid running game. I’d love to still have brandon minor but i think are running game will be ok. Maybe the D will ris up tp the challenge, i hope. But if they don’t it could be another long year.</p>

3

<p>I’m afraid you are correct MLD. But who knows?</p>

4

<p>The first game went better than I expected. That is not say I think Michigan will have a good season. It is too early tell at this stage, and Connecticut is good but not great team. Next week’s game in South Bend will give us a much better indication of how good this team can be. </p>

<p>Still, this is a solid Connecticut team that we beat by a significant margin. UConn went 8-5 last year, beating Notre Dame in South Bend and South Carolina in a bowl game. Connecticut also pounded Syracuse and barely lost at Pittsburgh last year. Clearly, this is a solid team. </p>

<p>Let us see if this is indeed a return to form for our Wolverines.</p>

5

<p>Totally agree. It seemed that there were quite a few dropped passes by UConn. A more accurate quarterback is going to complete those. Still, I think we played pretty well for our first game. Only one penalty!</p>

6

<p>I read in an article that last season, UConn lost 5 games by 15 points combined… and today they lost by 20. Sure, it was the first game of the season and it was on the road, but I think that is still a pretty nice statistic for us. </p>

<p>We had a few scares on special teams like the punt receiver diving forward to catch a punt and fumbling it, almost leading to a turnover. I’m sure mistakes like those will be corrected immediately. However, we also saw some pretty nice defensive plays like a forced fumble in the red zone when UConn was driving down the field and a stop in the red zone near the end of the game on a 4th down play. I think that defensively, our line is our comparative strength. However, our secondaries and backfield coverage leave a lot to be desired because I saw some UConn receivers WIDE OPEN several times.</p>

<p>I sit next to a guy in investment banking from Chicago and he said that for a while, Roy Roundtree had trouble seeing but for some reason nobody noticed. He kept dropping passes and they FINALLY got him contact lenses before the spring game last year. No idea why it took that long because eye testing should be part of any basic physical… it was good to see him perform well today. I remember he had a few pretty nice catches.</p>

<p>Tate Forcier is a solid third-string for us. In the off-season, Robinson worked his ass off, was very motivated, and showed lots of leadership whereas Forcier didn’t. Robinson attended all of the optional practices and strength & conditioning sessions whereas Forcier didn’t. Apparently, Robinson was also amazing skill-wise because people close to the football team said that if Robinson was just “decent,” throughout the off-season, then they would have had Gardener start. As we could see, Robinson was phenomenal, breaking the single-game rushing yardage record for a quarterback and coming one pass away from breaking the single-game completion record (the last incomplete pass on third down near the end was what caused him to miss the mark), going 19-22.</p>

<p>I have to say, the start to that game was pretty cool too with the fireworks and super-low flyovers. I haven’t seen anything like that in the past 15 or so years since I started watching. It was also pretty motivating to see Brock Mealer walk like that after being paralyzed; good for him. We broke the all-time football attendance record and finally, the weather was perfect so it was all in all a ****ING AMAZING day.</p>

<p>Yeah, it was the first game but I’m optimistic that we can be 4-0 or 3-1 going into the Big Ten season. I don’t think that is an unrealistic expectation given what we have seen today. A lot of the issues we saw are definitely correctable within a one-month time span. Once the Big Ten portion of the season starts, things will get interesting (in a good or bad way). I’m glad that our first away game is against Indiana. They’re ranked significantly lower than UConn but are still not a complete pushover so I think it makes a good first away game to build confidence (hopefully…).</p>

7

<p>Tate got 0 snaps: slap in the face. Gardner got >0 snaps: we need to not waste his red shirt.</p>

8

<p>giants92, even if the line can protect him as well as they did this past weekend, Denard is going to streak out past where he’s protected from defenses that will be targeting him and will get hurt or have the wind knocked out of him (hopefully only temporarily). We will need Gardener to come in because unless he (or his dad) turns him around emotionally, Tate won’t be around long.</p>