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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…

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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.  

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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.

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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.  





Pictures From the Party Before Wisconsin Took Michigan to Pound Town

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The Growing List of Who's Got it Better Than Us

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(Photo: Andy Manis, AP)

(Photo: Andy Manis, AP)

Well, that sucked. And this suck is becoming the norm. Michigan is 2-3 in their last 5 games, with those three losses being OSU 62-39, Florida 41-15, and Saturday’s 35-14 drubbing at the hands of the Badgers. Even the two wins in there sucked, and we chalked it up to whatever we could throw at the wall and make stick: Not showing the whole playbook, MTSU/Army are good, injuries, etc.

I’m really not certain what that was we saw Saturday. What could possibly be the reason Michigan came out so flat, so ill-prepared, so un-motivated? It was like turning back to clock to that helpless Rich Rod feeling. A team that has so much potential and talent, and it’s clearly being wasted by either lack of motivation or massive gaps in gameplan vs our opponents. Either way, the problem is at the top, where at best Jim has some scheme issues that are aggravated by injury and player turnover, and at worse he’s lost the team. The time to criticize has come, and that’s very difficult for me. It’s like stomping on the grave of Bo Schembechler. The process and the plan and the making of better men as outlined and executed with the best of intentions by Coach Harbaugh, has not worked in years 1-4 when it comes to producing championships. Early signs are that in year 5, without some kind of miraculous turn around, championships will be the least of the Wolverines problems.

I can get past the National aspirations, and understand the shortcomings associated with geography when it comes to competing at the Alabama and Clemson level. I can even recognize the head start Ohio State has had with building an elite program. What I can’t wrap my head around is getting housed by basically any other Big Ten team. So here I am, not able to wrap my head around Wisconsin looking light years ahead with a team comprised of people from basically Wisconsin.

The yearly progression of hype-to-hate maintains the fanbase’s shitty demeanor, sparking attempts to FIRE HARBAUGH and perhaps inspire the team through shitty threats and words of discouragement on twitter. And it’s tough to try to say it’s not warranted. This team has learned how to quit. You see it game after game.

In order to succeed, in order to survive, they need to learn how to come back. In a Drive. In a Quarter. In a Game. In a Season.

Michigan needs to finish.