Welcome. Everything is Fine.

There’s probably a great post to be written using The Good Place as a metaphor for Michigan Football, and Ted Danson is Urban Meyer being nice but really is the devil and some other clever shit. Unfortunately for you, my less than 100 readers, I am not that guy. But hey, submit your own Michigan fan fiction to me anytime. Moving on…

Michigan dismantled Rutgers on Saturday, 52-0, giving us everything we expected to see…ON AUGUST 31st.  If you are looking for hope, perhaps you can conjure a scenario where this whole early season debacle is just a delay. A delay with a bright future and strong finish and Beat Ohio and all that rah rah jazz.  Hell, maybe this whole program direction is just predicated on delays.

Delayed getting hungry Harbaugh when we hired Hoke

Delay in preparation for the Utes in ’15, and ND in ’18.

Delay in ousting Drev and Pep.

Delay in adding a little zone D prior to OSU ’18.

And the big delay elephant in the room: year five, no rings.

Oh, and probably should have kept a little slice of last year’s Offensive game plan around in case of extreme difficulty implementing the new one prior to commencing the Big Ten slate. Welp.

Delay.

And so instead of being primed and prepped for the middle meat of the 2019 season, Michigan enters a gauntlet of a month with their team perhaps just starting to find its way, and that’s only based on looking somewhat organized against a team that dismissed their coach a few hours later.  

Unfortunately, there’s just no time to get it together anymore for Michigan.  October commences with an Iowa team with just 15 wins against Michigan in over a hundred years…but nearly half of which have happened in the last 20 years.  With the schedule gaps of the Big 14, they have sporadically owned Michigan in the 21st century.  

A couple weeks later Michigan heads to Happy Valley for a white out, to a venue that hasn’t been kind to the Wolverines since Lloyd roamed the sidelines.  Then a Notre Dame team that took Georgia to its limits and is desperately looking to avoid a playoff-eliminating 2nd loss comes to town.  Doesn’t look great.

So ya, no expectations, that’s your ticket to sanity.  And no real vision of what’s going to happen the next time this team gets punched in the mouth.  We just don’t know anymore.

But we do know this:  Iowa will be throwing blows.  Michigan has shown little ability to be able to fight back in the face of adversity since last year’s Northwestern comeback.  How do they learn to take a punch and give it back?  Well, I figure we pay the world’s most dedicated Michigan Man $7 million to figure that out, and there’s nothing we can do but cheer (occasionally) and watch.  

Yep, still basically hanging my hat on magical bullshit.  

Play Along at Home with the Rutgers Birds and Bubbles Playlist

Grrrrrs

Ahhh, the bye week.  I enjoyed mine.  You?  

Anybody see that Rutgers game?  That's how you earn a week off:  Run for nearly 500 yards through the 1 and 2 hole.  Don't allow your opponent to get any yards at all.  

Do you have any idea how much easier it is to implement new things and make improvements when you're winning like this?  Me neither.  Can't remember the last time we had a regime that learned from its mistakes let alone created wrinkles to improve on success.  I've got a feeling we are going to see some shit over these next 9 games that is going to make you feel like you never saw the first 6.  Yep, that's 15 games.  Do the math. 

Thanksgiving is coming.   

It's a main course of "avoiding letdowns" and "not looking ahead" for us at this point, with a side dish of "padding some stats" and "Jabril for Heisman" talk.  Meanwhile Jim assures us that each week is approached with that same enthusiasm...which is not so unknown anymore (just ask Rutgers).  The "game" in New Jersey was statistical and historical annihilation, the kind of anomaly that skews total season statistics, and conjures such phrases as "running up the score" even when you only go to the air three times in the second half.

It is my pleasure to announce my dear friends that Michigan, for perhaps the first time since the 90's, has established the proverbial run.  

So yes, it's us and them now.  

It feels very much like 2006 through this point in the season, though then we had a signature road win against #2 Notre Dame.  This years signature road win will have to wait until Columbus.  Even though Sparty may try to Sparty, and Iowa is still wearing App State shirts and pretending we're rivals, neither is good enough be a "signature," nor smart enough to write their signature (rim shot).

There's a couple of small bumps in the road along the way, and there will be a scare or two I'm sure, but we seem to be on a collision course to face off for the coveted spot of "better than everybody else except Alabama," which when looked back on in 50 years by the participation award generation might just get us a trophy.  And sure, the West with upstart Nebraska and not-going-quietly Iowa might pose some threat, but it's tough to not see The Game as a play-in game for the playoffs.

Apologies for the pictureless, disjointed and brief posting.  I've got things to do.  Cocktails, Southern charm, and ass-whuppin's are on the menu for Saturday.  See you there.