Maybe next year - finale

Well, it's over once more - College football with the Michigan Wolverines. Saturdays just aren't the same when the games aren't on. We did marginally better this year than last. 5-7 rather than 3-9. We added more notches in Coach Rodriguez's belt: the first coach in Wolverine history to lose BOTH of his first two games played against OSU, the first coach since the 60's to post two losing seasons in a row. The list just seems to go on. I hear that the Athletic Director was asked point blank if he was considering firing the coach and the AD just laughed. Roriguez was asked if he was worried about getting fired, and he reponded that he has a 6 year contract, and this is only year two, so no he's not getting fired. I guess we, the fans, will have to give him at least one more year to pull the team together - we don't have any say in the matter. I must admit to a particularly strong sense of being underwhelmed by him. I've heard that he doesn't have all the "pieces of the puzzle" yet. I've heard that a good coach MAKES the pieces of the puzzle - haven't seen much of that so far in his career.

Tate Forcier was disappointing today - he threw 5 interceptions. Never seen the man do that poorly before. I also heard rumours that he may be transferring. If he does that, I'll lose much of my respect for him. I find it hard to respect quitters. That man has an amazing talent; he should stick with the team and be part of its ressurection. He will be a tremendous foundation on which to begin rebuilding Wolverine football.

I do agree that we have not seen much depth of bench from Michigan in the last couple years. The talking heads attributed this to his only having one recruiting season so far. We really need to see some support for Forcier. He can scramble well, he has an arm like a cannon, he stays very cool under pressure, but he's only one person on a team of 11 on the field at one time. He can't do it all. We need to see some SIZE on the offensive line, some speed and good hands in the backfield and the receivers. We have a couple of receivers that do pretty well. But when they get tired and are off the field, there's nobody left to do the job. And ALL of the team seems to be inconsistent. Sometimes the quarterback gets lots of time to throw, and sometimes there's no time at all. And this is all within the same game!

All I can say, is next year had better be better. The coach will have even more trouble with his recruiting if he can't pull together more wins, and if he can't recruit, he'll lose more and have more trouble recruiting, and so on. With the players he'll be keeping, he has to build some depth.

Maybe next year.