Wolverine247 Board

Thanks for the input.

What do you think of Fitz right now? Too much dancing? Time to give Rawls a chance?

I think it looked much better than it has in the past. I agree with you that those three have proven they can make plays in traffic, and Denard is clearly becoming more and more confident in them.

My one worry is that it never really comes easily for Michigan in the passing game. Even when receivers are wide open, Denard isn't consistently accurate enough to make the defense pay by putting it on the money and enabling his receiver to make a play after the catch. The accuracy issue worries me because against better defenses, those windows will be much tighter, allowing for less margin for error.

The great thing is that with as athletic as Denard is, I think Michigan can still have a dangerous offense as long as Borges puts him in position to succeed.

Denard had 235 yards on the ground today? Holy crap, it did not seem like that much. If that's true, it's his 2nd most ever (behind ND in 2010) and the 7th most in Michigan history.

I would say yes. I don't know if it was the time off, or he just has a hard time with the way the blocks are being set up. But he doesn't seem to ever pick or find a seam and hit it. He dances around looking for a bigger hole that never comes. With his size and strength he can find a small gap and hit it for 3-4 easily. I like what Rawls did even though it was when the game was over and Purdue had thrown it in.

My thoughts: UM took Purdue to the woodshed. That is what happens when you use Denard correctly. Let him and the RB run the ball over and over again to set up the pass. The defense like I said in week 1 is great. Mattison will not let these Big 10 teams run the ball, they will have to beat up passing. Teams will have to put together drives and string together successful plays to score. I love what I saw and think its a recipe for a Big 10 championship. Keep it up BLUE

I was quite happy with the effort, the coverage was a little loose at times but when they did throw it wasn't often for many yards and we didn't allow much yac. The DL looked pretty good, stuffed the run pretty well and got some pressure. LB's were flowing to the ball and making plays sideline to sideline. We finally went with an offensive gameplan that works for Denard. The OL still needs work as they did not consistently get a push on run plays but they do seem to improving week to week so hopefully that will continue. Outside of that there were a few bad throws by Denard and the the miss by Gardener when the ball hit his hands but all in all the team has made major improvements and dominated a team thats looked like one of the better in the B1G. If we can continue this upward trend a B1G championship is a very good possibility.

Sorry for missing this earlier. Michigan really struggled running the ball with anyone other than Denard. While everyone shares some blame in that, I think it has more to do with the offensive line than with the backs. The backs have to be able to trust that the hole will be there, and I don't think Michigan's offensive line is consistently creating displacement at the point of attack so as to earn that trust. Denard, being a freak of an athlete, is able to make something out of nothing, or a lot out of a little. But in order for Michigan to successfully run the ball with the running backs, I think the offensive line needs to take the next step.

I am about the watch at least some of the game again. I think there were some holes there where Fitz could of gotten some yards but just doesn't hit the hole and take what he can get. Now i am not saying there are huge holes to run through but I think some of the problems in the running game are on the RBs.

Guys, Fitz is slow. Like maybe the slowest back in the big ten slow. Go back and look at film from last season. He's a lot bigger and as a result a lot slower. Compound that with the fact that he's going east and west and usually goes down on first contact and we see the result. It's a simple matter of physical limitations. He's not the same player he was last year and to continue to throw away play after play based on what he did last year is hurting the team. It's time to go to the bullpin.

It sure looks like it is setting up for that.

It definitely could end up that way. However, I'm still not sold on OSU this year. I think Wisconsin and Penn State will both give them a run for their money.

The offense is definitely improving, but I thought it was more a case of Nebraska's defense not being very good last night. I think Wisconsin and Penn State will both play better defensively against the Buckeyes.

And like you said, the defense isn't overly impressive by any means at this point.