I was pleased. I mean it is a complete fluke to have that many turnovers. We literally gave them 28 points.

A bit disappiointed in the D. Very pleased with the O (esp Threet). I know it's only ND but still.

For the future:

Losses: OSU, PSU.

Tossups: Wiscy, Ill.

Wins: the rest

Now, much more likely we lose a "win" than win a "loss" or both tossups, but we can do 7-5. Just eke that out and show improvement and I'll be ecstatic. This will be a damn strong team given time.

I am a little concerned about the O, though.

Also, this is as positive as I've been after a loss to Notre Dame. Feels very weird.

qft

The future is very bright, obviously. It's fun to watch such a young team play. It's good to see improvement from week-to-week. They are well-coached. They're not picking up a bunch of offsides/holding/false start type penalties. For the most part, the turnovers haven't been problems with execution or poor decisions. They just kept dropping the ball on the ground. I wanted to strangle Threet for throwing that backwards pass to Minor, though. sooooooooooo basic

I'm sure ND fans will not see it this way, but I saw a big contrast between the programs. I mean Charlie has had plenty of time to get his guys in there, teach them, etc. and they still pretty clearly suck. Meanwhile 3 games in Michigan is exhibiting massive improvement in every area other than D-Line play each game. They pretty clearly are going to be awesome in future years.

In short, I think its clear UM football is in much better shape than ND football, notwithstanding the score today.

You should work for fox news imo.

I'll briefly take my obligatory bragging rights after taking mountains of abuse from DVaut, etc after last year's abysmal Irish season.

UM fans have nothing to worry about. This is obv a rebuilding year. Dick Rod is an outstanding coach...I can say with confidence and somewhat dismay that UM will be a national caliber program within 2 years. Mcguffie's a freakin' stud.

LOLOLOLOL a lot of denial going on in this thread. You guys just got throttled by a pathetic ND team.

Did you watch the game?

I don't think it is really fair to harp on the D considering the turnovers.

Eh, yes and no. You're right in that 21 points came from the O. Holding ND to basically 14 points on drives longer than 12 yards or so isn't bad, even if ND isn't particularly good on offense. However, the D line did not get pressure on Jimmah. True, their line is obviously better but if our D is going to be what it needs to be for the team to be passable, that isn't going to cut it. Likewise, a bit too easy pounding the ball on the ground. If this were a team that had a solid offense, fine. But it was Notre Dame. They're much better than last year but still don't look that great on O. This is bad news for our D.

13 of our 19 receptions today by true freshmen. 27 of 42 carries by true freshmen. (27 of the 35 by running backs.) We're sooooooooo young. This season's going to be a rollercoaster ride.

Question for Michigan fans,

I've watched some bits and pieces of Michigan games this year. I understand why the offense for your team is struggling right now because of a switchover to a new scheme. However, I don't understand why your defense isn't better.

Wouldn't Lloyd Carr have left more and better defensive personnel than you currently have this year? I didn't see any major shift in defensive scheme. Why don't you have better D-Line, LBs, etc...? I thought Carr would have left more in cupboard for RR, at least on defense. Since Carr was forced to resign/retire at the end of last year.

The defense wasn't bad. They got beat deep once and there was some poor tackling on the other long play but other than that, they were fine. They only gave up 260 yards of offense. Take away the two big plays and it's like 150. They started out with ND getting the ball inside the 15 twice. One of NDs TDs was a defensive TD. It's not like they just went out and just coughed up 35 points. NDs longest drive was 7 plays. Claussen was 10-21 and they gave up 3.3 yards per carry on the ground.

They also had allowed only 246 yards and zero TDs over the previous six quarters. They had a bad first half against Utah and made a couple of big mistakes yesterday. Beyond that, I don't see a problem with the defense. I'll have to watch the game again to figure out why they couldn't get to the QB more.

Our outside LBs are pretty bad, though.

Man that was painful to watch yesterday.

Good things:

1. McGuffie
2. O-Line looked a lot better
3. Threet might need the ball to be soaking wet to throw accurately, but at least he did a lot better yesterday

Bad things:

1. Turnovers
2. Turnovers
3. Special Teams
4. Turnovers
5. Turnovers
6. D-line got absolutely no pressure on Jimmy Clausen
7. Turnovers
8. Turnovers
9. There were a lot of questionable PI calls, the ones I remember were the ones on Trent deep in the middle of the field, and the one on Donovan Warren in the back of the endzone when they called the pushoff
10. Aaand let's throw turnovers in there one more time.

I don't care... who you play... whether it's a high school team, a junior college team, a Div 1-AA team, MUCH LESS Notre Dame, when you turn the ball over 6 times, 1 for a touchdown, 2 more in position to set up touchdowns, you aren't gonna beat ANY of those teams I just listed. Any of em.

"So, uh coach, what are your chances to get into a bowl game at this point?"

"BOWL GAME... you talkin about... a BOWL GAME? BOWL GAME? At this point we're just tryin to win a damn game"

We're improving, but I don't care how wet it is out there, you can't afford to have 7 fumbles (4 lost), especially with 2 of them on handling the kickoff. I'm slightly encouraged, sadly what I'm encouraged about won't start to pay dividends until probably 2010. Unfortunately yesterday our offense might have looked better than our defense yesterday, although it's tough to say because all of those turnovers can demoralize a defense pretty quickly. We need to come back and get a big win over Wisconsin here, then rattle off a few wins over Toledo and some weaker Big 10 opponents.

Notre Dame fielded a team of sophomores. See what you want to see.

They fielded a team of sophomores who were outplayed by a team of freshmen.

You started six sophomores and one freshman, btw.

who turned the ball over a billion times

Yeah. We have one senior* on the entire offense. Not starting. Not on the two-deep. On the entire offense.

* I mean in terms of eligibility, obviously we have some 4th year juniors listed as seniors.

Though I wouldn't say that our frosh outplayed them. Looked even sans mistakes, which of course you can't take away. Regardless, it's over and you look silly arguing about how much better you were when you lost by 18.

Both teams should be very good in the near future. I don't love this rivalry (just a lot of weird stuff happens, very stressful, games never seem that well played by either team), but there will be some good games in the future.

If M is patient then they will be very dangerous by 2010. However the amount of criticism RR got even before the first game indicates that they aren't.

On this note, I'm really pissed that we signed this 20 or 30 year deal with ND. The rivalry is fine, but Martin is clear that he doesn't want to play 2 powers in one year. So we're just going to play ND and 3 cupcakes (relative cupcakes, obviously) every year for 20 years. Stale and boring. Either 2 on and 2 off so we can play other teams, or sac up and play 2 power teams in a year sometimes. Hopefully RR can exert some influence and convince him to change things up a bit, but I'm not optimistic.

Every fan base has a percentage of impatient fans. They're generally idiots who spend most of their time trying to find things to complain about. I don't see anything unusual or different happening at Michigan. He's fine.

And if you are referring to whether or not the powers-that-be are patient, LOL.

See: Lloyd Carr

Also: Ty Willingham

I don't agree, but then the people I run with are very different than the local media. The local media has been very harsh, mostly unjustifiably imo, basically deciding that their story is "RR doesn't get the tradition" and then running with it regardless of what the facts on the ground say (which is nothing new in media, journalists are lazy like that). But everyone I talk with knows this is a rebuilidng year and is very content to just see the improvement. I'm quite impressed actually. Not so much with everyone saying they are patient, but the fact that they actually ARE patient. It's the easiest thing in the world to say "we're rebuilding, I can wait a year" and then get angry when the team isn't that good, but most everyone I've talked to is amazingly patient.

I think 2005 and 2007 helped this along a bit, as we're used to sucking to some extent.

Edit: Example: Jim Carty (who did a whole series on academics and football that was supposed to be "OMG SCandal" and was in fact tamer than the Detroit Lions) wrote some big thing about how RR just isn't a Michigan Man, because, among other things, he said "Michigan football will be back" and Lloyd Carr would never say that because that means Michigan football went away ZOMG! This is dumb to begin with, but someone found a Carr quote where he said just that. I'm sure Carty won't let any of this get in the way of his point though.

I agree with this

For the people saying ND is young, isn't the entire O-line juniors with one senior? Their O-line was a lot, lot better than last year though. The whole team is improved, but not nearly as much as I (and everyone else, I guess) thought before the year.

As far as Michigan goes, I'm really pleased with the improvement so far. Cut down on the turnovers and I'm a lot more optimistic we'll be able to compete with more teams in the Big 10 than I thought after last week.

I agree... I give the Wolverines a much better shot v Wisky and Illinois than most... I think Michigan will be favored verse Illinois
@ Penn St looks rough as does @ Ohio St (but I've seen screwier things in that rivalry like Tim Biakabatuka running for a million yards)

I think, however, that some fans here are underestimating the bottom Big Ten teams

Some are saying Michigan St, @ Purdue, @ Minny, and N'western are automatic wins
I disagree with that
While Michigan will be favored in all of those games, I expect at least 2 to go down to the wire and be a battle of who screws up less.