When All is Said and Done, More is Said Than Done

Sorry I'm going to break you down before we can build this back up.

The Spartan's game winning drive included controversial penaties, game clock fraud, and possibly the most terrible no-call on a holding penalty ever on a play that shouldn't have even occurred. In the end, the Michigan players walked off the field disgusted, cheated, and unsatisfied. Lloyd Carr on Michigan Replay said he expects a call from the Big Ten apologizing for the disgrace.  The horrible thing about it is that it should have never been that close. The Wolverines were out-rushed and basically out-played by their weaker neighbor. TJ Duckett ran for over 200 yards on a defense let up an average of 54 yards for the first 7 games of the season.  - 2001 UMTailgate.com

They wanted it more.  Our young team wasn't rattled by the crowd or foreign field.  They were rattled by a team that knew what this game meant.  A team that was visibly more into this rivalry, and whose passion seemed to grow with every snap.  I could see it.  They celebrated every tackle like it was a touchdown.  Someday, hopefully next year, these young players and this new coach will really understand what this rivalry means...not to us, but to State.  And if we don't drum up some semblance of OUR backs being against the wall to counteract THEIR backs which are ALWAYS up against a wall, it will be tough to compete no matter how much better we are than them position by position. - 2009 UMTailgate.com

That's right, Harbaugh will be here soon enough, wasting talent and flirting with chicks 30 years his junior at Rick's, marching the Wolverines back to high expectations and results that fall below those expectations. - 2010 UMTailgate.com

We were in it to the end, which is to say that Sparty was Sparty enough to keep us in it.  Unfortunately, Sparty was also Wolverine enough, or tough enough, to expose what we are....still mired in a few years of small and fast recruiting, small and fast player development.  We're built for slants and tricks and reads after the snap, but not for fights or wars in the trenches, and little brother proved to be too much on this day.  - 2011 UMTailgate.com

This is a disaster, and this is not a hiccup, it's our reality.  Four games remain.  None look like wins.  The offensive line is not improving, and it's worse than we ever could have imagined.  The season saver at the end of the year with the Buckeyes is so out of the realm of possibility at this point, that I can't even muster the courage to preach the underdog role I loved so much in '95 and '96.  -  2013 UMTailgate.com

State-ment Time

giphy.gif

Ah, the bye week.  Watching football, evaluating others without the pressure of trying to know and understand the future of your own team, hey maybe even attending the wedding of a friend considerate enough to get hitched when Michigan isn't playing.  For us the fans, the break is full of questions and with a new quarterback an increasingly uncertain future.  Getting meaning from any game so far has been difficult.  Anyone outside of Ann Arbor will tell you that Florida sucked and their "whole team" was suspended, Cincinnati and Air Force were garbage that we let hang around, and Purdue is Purdue (despite being a resurgent juggernaut until about 6:30PM on the 23rd when Michigan took the lead).

harbaugh-divejpg-6c8263e07390d89c.jpg

For Michigan, the break is early but opportune.  What Harbaugh calls "improvement week" will need to yield significant benefits in the form of offensive line cohesion and new quarterback to receiver timing...not that ides of August through the first quarter of the Purdue game yielded anything better from the incumbent QB.

I watched some Sparty on Saturday.  Lewerke has some efficiency to him.  For some reason I can't come to grips with our defensive backfield being good, so this scares me.  Purdue was supposed to be the test, and we passed, but I'm not sold, which is more based on the reverse Pavlovian beating I've taken in that category since the 90's than anything else.  It should be noted the game was ugly in that Big Ten way.  I feel this Saturday could be similarly ugly.  The gurus over at mytopsportsbooks.com are touting spreads that started at 2 TDs but are clearly moving in the Spartan direction and are down to 10 in most places.  That's what rivalries do I guess.  Is this a rivalry?  Regardless, ten points can carry some serious weight in a slugfest.

375797.jpg

Sparty seems to be improved, I mean, they have already matched the number of total wins (3) and Big Ten wins (1) from 2016.  Improvement from the previous year was inevitable.  The bottom is the bottom.  But can they compete with the big boys?  Transitively, they are in the conversation as PSU needed a miracle to knock off Iowa, but I don't know if Sparty is ready for the speed and aggressiveness they are about to endure.    

As always, this game will be decided by turnovers and who runs the ball better.  The first is a crapshoot and the latter, while not a super strength from an offensive standpoint, I cannot imagine Sparty getting any significant yards on the ground.  Trust in Don Brown.  Swarm to the ball.  Beat Michigan State.