ILP will you ever learn?

ILP curse for Army is confirmed.

Everything is Dave Brandon's fault.

How's Toys R Us doing Dave? You ****ing imbecile piece of ****?

I mean I'm not really saying that much. This is going to be the best Michigan team since the 2008 bowl game vs Florida when everyone was healthy. ND is not gonna be as good as last year and we have them at home.
Penn state flat out sux now and Michigan State is finally an autowin. It's a super easy schedule. That said, we're still gonna lose to Ohio State and we'll still get outcoached in some important pointless bowl game and finish out 11-2. I'm perfectly fine with that. Not trying to pretend Michigan is more than what they are.

Lol Vegas loves Sparty pls self perma

Relax, we aren’t completely doomed until ILP places large real money wagers on Michigan to win.

Michigan reg season over 9.5 wins is seriously one of the greatest locks of our generation. We can sleepwalk our way to 10-2 in the regular season and you know I'm right. Plus the nightmare scenario of a QB injury doesn't even worry me. McCaffrey can get us to 10-2 easily also.

I will not discuss Army for the same reason I don't talk about UFOs and ghosts. It's beneath me.

At another forum someone said it was 10.5, but 9.5 is really really good.

To an extent over/unders are kinda whatever you want them to be. If you choose O9.5 you'll have to pay steep odds of around -180 last I checked. It's still free money.

Michigan Over 9.5 isn't the best bet this season.

Shea Patterson 30-1 to win the Heisman is the best bet of the season.

-Gattis is going to revamp the offense and have massive success doing it
-Patterson will put up huge numbers for the B1G and Michigan historically
-He'll get a big bump from Media Traditionalists who will gush about a QB putting up these numbers in a "Harbaugh Offense"
-Heisman voters/narratives love guys who were relatively under the radar to start the season. They'll look for reasons to downgrade Tua/Lawrence and find another hero

If Michigan is in the playoff conversation, it's because Patterson and the offense have a big season. We're going off at like +300 to +350 to make the Playoffs, and if we do, Patterson probably wins the Heisman 25-40% of the time.

Sounds like it’s parlay time

So are we going to be any good or what?

I think we're going to be really freaking good.

I feel like I get scared every time I see this thread bumped that it's going to be some training camp injury. I think the offense is going to be much better and the defense will be good enough. We've got a lot of tough games this year, but if the offense can improve under Gattis we can definitely win 10-11 games.

For as much as its felt like we've underperformed under Harbaugh, 9-3, 10-2, 8-4, 10-2 is a pretty damn good record in a competitive conference.

I'll go with pretty good.

I think there are enough deficiencies on defense, primarily DT and CB, that we'll see a step back there and it will be grim if there are more injuriies. And as confident as I want to be in a veteran QB, OL and WRs, show me. I think Gattis will be good, but show me.

We will be undefeated going into the Ohio State game which is pretty damn good iyam.

It's a reasonable feeling.

2015: Should've went 11-2. Utah loss and tOSU loss are understandable. Damn punt block miracle.

2016: Should've went 13-1. Can't lose to Iowa as a 21.5 favorite and the Ohio State game was rigged. We still get crushed in the playoffs tho.

2017: Should've went 9-4. All regular season losses are acceptable given how many players we lost but the South Carolina collapse was not, but I barely care, and by barely I mean I really don't.

2018: Should've went 12-1. We had the talent last year to beat anyone except Ohio State, Bama, Clemson, Georgia, and Oklahoma. ******ed "conservative" play cost us. We passed the ball fewer times than Wisconsin last year. That's all that needs to be said.

Some games we were just on the wrong side of variance (MSU 15, OSU 16, FSU 16). IOWA 16 is arguably in the "wrong side of variance" category too. At Iowa, at night, with the wind usually as it is + we only had an average QB at best despite his off the chart stats going into that game. The recipe for an upset was all there. Just needed a bad turnover to throw in the mix and we did that too. Same argument could be made for South Carolina. Bad QB play + bad turnovers sunk our ship. I'm not counting the Florida bowl game last year. Lost too many key players + too many key injuries. Although, like the Ohio State/ND game last year, the conservative/******ed play on offense vs Florida was nothing short of disgusting. I still can't get over that last drive before the Half. Unconscionable.

Over the last 4 years, the only game we clearly gave away was ND 2018. That's actually not that bad. Coaches are not gods after all. And the only reason to remain bitter has now been remedied: The fact that we were running an offense that was at least a decade outdated. I'm not a big fan of Harbaugh. I actually seriously think he's partially ******ed. But it's hard not to admire what he did this year. He basically looked in the mirror and decided to throw out an offense that literally made him famous. This guy has no ego. He just wants to win. That's kind've exceptional.

The key to the future will come down to running better/recruiting better at QB. I'm not saying we need a superstar every year. I'm not asking for Mayfield/Murray, Haskins, Tua, Fields, etc. But we can't have any more SP8s or Okorn's. Okorn doesn't need to be discussed but SP8 was an average QB at best with close to zero mobility, and zero WIM factor, 2016 was over before it began becuz of him.

But thank god we're finally out of this QB rut. Our top 2 QBs are way better than SP8. We just gotta keep the QB train going now. Add to that a modern offensive approach and we're positioned to have more 11-2/12-1 years going forward. Now is a time to feel really good about the state of Michigan football as long as one can accept one small brutal truth: ND 2012/2018 is our ceiling.

Army and Notre Dame say

more like get

In seriousness looking forward to my first trip to the Big House next month for the Army game.

You can't give away a game that was never yours.

People are overrating Army because of the Oklahoma game. Army has a significant mismatch against a team that has tailored their defense to defend Air Raid and Air Raid lookalikes. Michigan just has too much size and the LB's are much more well versed in run defense.

They're a really good team, but I think Michigan will be a different animal for them to face than 2018 Oklahoma.

Yeah the OMG Army talk is just flat out ridiculous and honestly insulting.

Edit: And to give this some perspective, I was one of the few Michigan fans who were legit scared of App St in 2007. I literally had nightmares of that game in the off-season and wasn't surprised at all when we lost. There's no reason whatsoever to be scared of Army. It's ****ing Army.

Agreed and I think more of the consternation about playing Army has to do with the opportunity cost of having to spend time preparing specifically for the triple option when no one else on our schedule runs anything like that. Obviously hard to know years in advance when these get scheduled but I’d much prefer playing some crappy team that runs a weirdo proto-air raid (like SMU last year) where you can tinker with some coverages and stuff for later in the year.

It's almost time! LFG