I love Mitch’s articles, so this pales in comparison. In bullets:
- UM Offense: Passing game, deep threats! I hoped they’d use Rutgers to develop a more explosive dimension to the offense, because you will need that at some point to win a championship or two. From the beginning it looked like they did use the game to practice that with downfield attempts. Hope Tarik Black continues to get healthier to make that explosive threat better and at least give us breathing room for the run game. Also, must find a way to keep OL coach Ed Warinner...won’t be easy.
- UM Defense: We officially have a problem at Safety. Need help! Need Metellus! When Metellus left in the ND game, Brad Hawkins came in and allowed an embarrassing TD and other longer plays that we couldn’t recover from and made the difference in the game. Against Rutgers with Metellus injured, Hawkins took one of the worst angles I’ve seen at this level and kept us from a shutout. Also single-handedly moved us from 3rd to 4th in adjusted advanced quality because we allowed an additional 80 yards to such an awful team.
- UM Post-season: if we beat IU and lose to OSU I bet we end up as an at-large in the Peach (vs LSU or Georgia hopefully) or Fiesta (vs Oklahoma, WVU, maybe even Texas), because OSU will be left out of the playoffs and go to the Rose. I hope we don’t end up against UCF in that scenario. UCF was in the Peach last year so they’re probably in the Fiesta if they win out. So unless we have a letdown tomorrow our worst case scenario is pretty good.
- OSU game: I’m wary of how Urban has started folding Tate Martell into the offense, as Urban’s bread & butter is “power spread” rushing with a QB who moves the ball with his legs...Haskins limits that which is why Urban has been trying to call games very differently and why it hasn’t been working as well. Now they’re mixing in Tate Martell who can really run...that’s got me slightly concerned.
-Structure, Scheduling and Playoff Format: this week’s awful slate of games with the SEC all playing cupcakes and it’s got everyone offering up their ideas to improve the system. Interesting ideas I’ve heard or had, would be interested in hearing how you would mix and match any of these or throw ‘em all out
- remove conference divisions
- remove conference championship games...these are replaced with an additional round of playoff games, but the higher ranked team gets to play the game at the location of their conference’s traditional championship game
- remove conferences and play a wide-open national schedule
- required to play 10 Power 5 teams
- no FCS opponents
- replace cupcake game with 2nd bye for every team
- move start of season up 1 week. Yes, not all students will be on campus, so these are played at a bowl-like neutral field like “pre-bowls” like in basketball where we have multi-game events like the Maui invitational. People will show up. If there’s 2 or 3 games played at one site in a day, you could buy a package ticket for all of them.
- pre-season exhibition game that’s only 24-30 minutes
- spring game is another 24-30 min exhibition against another opponent
- 25 to 40 CFB power program BlueBloods separate from NCAA and pay players small weekly stipends during the season, fall camp, and spring practice
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