Michigan Monday: Picking Up The Pieces

We have a new normal folks and that normal is Ohio State is better at football.  It's really not even a debate.   They have had coaching changes, NCAA probation, a sexual abuse scandal, and they just keep beating Michigan year after year.   Harbaugh was quoted as saying last summer, "It's hard to beat the cheaters".  Are they cheating? maybe.   But they are getting away with it and just have better players then the Wolverines.  

Bill Belichick the best football coach of my life, said to win you have to understand your teams weakness and attack the weakness of the other team.   Michigan didn't have the advantage at any position group on Saturday.  Yes, this Michigan team has enough talent to beat 90% of the teams out there, they just don't have enough talent to beat the very elite teams.     When elite teams don't make mistakes, your not going to win the game.

Michigan's weakness on the defensive line, showed brightly against the top 2 offensive lines they saw this season: OSU and Wisconsin.   Neither game was close and Michigan must do a better job at recruiting the DT position.  I'm not excited about Ryan Day owning Don Brown, but we could've had Belichick at DC and I don't think we win that game on Saturday when OSU plays clean.

I'm also concerned about some of the higher academic schools continuing to be competitive at the highest levels.  Teams like Michigan, ND, Stanford all struggled this year.    Those 3 schools combined for 13 losses this year.  To be fair, Stanford had 8 of those losses but this could be the beginning of a trend.   Is following the recruiting rules and high academics standards to high of hill to climb to be competitive at the highest levels?  This isn't Bo vs. Woody anymore when Michigan could have 110 players on scholarship.

I know some of you maybe thinking:  How can Auburn compete with Alabama?  They are closer in talent then Michigan is to Ohio State.  Plan and simple.  I don't believe for a second that Auburn has better coaches then Michigan does.

• EPSN predicts Michigan to the Holiday Bowl to play either USC or Washington.  CBS thinks Gator Bowl against Auburn.  

• Michigan Basketball will be ranked today when the new AP Top 25 comes out.   They also get to play probably the #1 team Louisville Cardinals tomorrow. 

• House cleaning has started at a number of programs:  Texas cleared out both of their coordinators, ASU fired its OC,WR, TE coaches and Northwestern fired its OC.   BC, Ole Miss, USF, and Missouri fired their head coach.  With the Ole Miss firing,  RR is out of a job again.  He was the OC this year. 

• There were reports that Clay Helton at USC was about to be fired, those reports came up false. 

• Rutgers put the coaching golf cart in reverse and came to terms with Greg Schiano. 

• Another thing you might be thinking?  Could Don Brown in a candidate for the head coaching job at BC?  Possbily.  

from The BIG HOUSE Blog http://mbighouse.blogspot.com/2019/12/michigan-monday-picking-up-pieces.html