I'm very disturbed about the fact that I'm seeing things which I saw during the eras of Rich Rodriguez and Brady Hoke, things I had hoped I would never see again. Repeated mental mistakes, and really bad ones at that. A complete inability to adjust to circumstances and adversity. I hate losing, but I can accept the fact that players and coaches have bad days, mentally and physically--that's part of the game. However, when a team looks as if it is a group of random guys who just got together on the sandlot and started playing without any adherence to basic fundamentals and football concepts, well, that's really bad.
For example, we had six flags for offsides infractions in the first half today. Six. I don't know whether anyone keeps track of the average number of times offsides is called in a game, but one to two times per team per game would seem about right from my sixty years plus of football watching--maybe three if it's a bad day. I have never seen six in a half, or even close to that, and it occurred not in a stadium with 100,000 screaming fans who made it difficult to hear the snap count, but rather in a friends and family only five hundred person crowd. Nor was it just guys peering into the backfield and going on anticipation--one was called on Carlo Kemp, whose position has him facing and a foot from the ball being snapped.
Similarly, over the past two weeks, we have given up well over a dozen explosive passing plays. Sometimes, guys win fifty/fifty balls, and that happens; however, when seventy to eighty percent of those plays occur over a defender whose back is to the QB when the catch is made, that's just inexcusable. It's card to cover a fast wideout sprinting down the field, but turning your head to look back at the ball is a basic tenet of coaching instruction, something which starts in pee-wee football. Are we not emphasizing this? Did we recruit DBs who cannot process this? Either way (or possibly both ways), this is just silly--we have gone entire seasons in my memory without this many bombs being completed against us. And even when we seemingly spend part of a play defending well, penalties like the one on Brad Hawkins on third and ten where he grabbed a receiver in a busted play situation which was never going to be successful are just beyond the pale.
The offense hasn't been immune from these inexplicable situations either. The painful five minute march against MSU, down ten with only five and a half minutes to go, is a classic example. Another is our insistence on virtually always snapping the ball on Milton's third clap--the other team is unlikely to jump offsides, or not get a head start on the play when this happens, though based on the first half today, our defense might still jump offsides.
This is not fun to watch. Not at all. And we are at a crossroads as a program. Jim's contract is up in two years, and the way recruiting works, he either has to be extended or coerced into retirement at the end of the season--he cannot be in a position where the guys he is recruiting for '22 could be playing for a guy in his last contract season. The athletic department is going to lose close to one hundred million dollars this year from non-attendance. Do we continue to pay Jim nine million (or even a real chunk of that) in the face of the economic issues AND the performance on the field? Or has Jim, who was a spectacular coach for a full decade at Stanford, with the 49ers, and for his first two years at Michigan, earned the right to turn things around (and if so, does he want to)? Lot's of questions to be answered over the next month or two.
On the bright side, it's almost basketball season.
For example, we had six flags for offsides infractions in the first half today. Six. I don't know whether anyone keeps track of the average number of times offsides is called in a game, but one to two times per team per game would seem about right from my sixty years plus of football watching--maybe three if it's a bad day. I have never seen six in a half, or even close to that, and it occurred not in a stadium with 100,000 screaming fans who made it difficult to hear the snap count, but rather in a friends and family only five hundred person crowd. Nor was it just guys peering into the backfield and going on anticipation--one was called on Carlo Kemp, whose position has him facing and a foot from the ball being snapped.
Similarly, over the past two weeks, we have given up well over a dozen explosive passing plays. Sometimes, guys win fifty/fifty balls, and that happens; however, when seventy to eighty percent of those plays occur over a defender whose back is to the QB when the catch is made, that's just inexcusable. It's card to cover a fast wideout sprinting down the field, but turning your head to look back at the ball is a basic tenet of coaching instruction, something which starts in pee-wee football. Are we not emphasizing this? Did we recruit DBs who cannot process this? Either way (or possibly both ways), this is just silly--we have gone entire seasons in my memory without this many bombs being completed against us. And even when we seemingly spend part of a play defending well, penalties like the one on Brad Hawkins on third and ten where he grabbed a receiver in a busted play situation which was never going to be successful are just beyond the pale.
The offense hasn't been immune from these inexplicable situations either. The painful five minute march against MSU, down ten with only five and a half minutes to go, is a classic example. Another is our insistence on virtually always snapping the ball on Milton's third clap--the other team is unlikely to jump offsides, or not get a head start on the play when this happens, though based on the first half today, our defense might still jump offsides.
This is not fun to watch. Not at all. And we are at a crossroads as a program. Jim's contract is up in two years, and the way recruiting works, he either has to be extended or coerced into retirement at the end of the season--he cannot be in a position where the guys he is recruiting for '22 could be playing for a guy in his last contract season. The athletic department is going to lose close to one hundred million dollars this year from non-attendance. Do we continue to pay Jim nine million (or even a real chunk of that) in the face of the economic issues AND the performance on the field? Or has Jim, who was a spectacular coach for a full decade at Stanford, with the 49ers, and for his first two years at Michigan, earned the right to turn things around (and if so, does he want to)? Lot's of questions to be answered over the next month or two.
On the bright side, it's almost basketball season.
