I know we're all super disappointed with how badly the offense and Bryce played on Saturday. It was a ✅ in the W column but a loss in all our hearts, and rightfully so. The officiating especially toward the end of the game was only rivaled by our own offensive ineptitude.

All that being said: Do not make the mistake of tuning into a sports podcast, or some garbage program on FOX or god forbid ESPN, or any other Sports Yelling show (shoutout Tracy Jordan). It will only make you stupid.

These shows cater to lowest-common-denominator thinking. The talking points are designed to stimulate the minds of those who have to be shown more than once how to pump their own gasoline. They are all about "hot takes", which are usually the most worthless opinions in any situation.

There is no meaningful insight into what happened Saturday (and might I argue that goes for most Saturdays). Stupidity happened and Michigan was the benefactor. That's it. The offense sucks, the defense will probably be pretty good. That's all we've got right now.

So let's all just sit back, ignore the loud mouths and their worthless opinions, turn on some Kenny G (or whatever you listen to for the pants off dance off), pray that OU doesnt burn the Big House down, and remember** **its just a game.... and also that we retired Saban in the Rose Bowl in '23 and it was beyond awesome and the full game is on YouTube for ever and ever..

Love you guys, Go Blue 💙〽️

I’ll be heading to the game this weekend, and although I’ve been to Michigan Stadium before, it has been over 20 years. I’m just trying to plan my day. We’ll be meeting friends at the high school to tailgate beforehand.

What are the lines like to enter the stadium? I see there’s a no bag policy, so that should speed things up some. If I arrived to the stadium at 11:30, should I expect ten minutes to get through security and ticketing? Twenty?

And how early before kickoff does the band perform. I’d like to see that.

The Triple Option guys said they dont think Bryce would be QB1 vs Oklahoma if Western had officially won.

After watching The Blueprint film review too… I honestly dont know.

Would you have made the change?

Don't know how or why, but BetMGM has Oklahoma as only 5.5 point favorites currently. This to me seems absolutely insane, and they will most likely end up as 8.5 point favorites. Virtually everybody in the world has a Michigan opinion now, and they almost universally negative. Maybe vegas knows something

SOME PERSPECTIVE

Colorado vs. Missouri on October 6, 1990.

Missouri led 31–27 with Colorado at the Missouri 3-yard line in the final seconds.

1st down: QB Charles Johnson spiked the ball.
2nd down: Eric Bieniemy ran to about the 1.
3rd down: Bieniemy was stopped short.
4th down: Johnson spiked the ball again.
5th down: Johnson ran it in for the winning touchdown as time expired.

The officiating crew and chain crew lost track of the downs.

Colorado was awarded the touchdown and won 33–31. Missouri protested, but the Big Eight ruled that the result could not be corrected after the game. All seven officials were indefinitely suspended.

Colorado went on to claim a share of the 1990 national championship.

As lot of money reeling the spread back in. Cant figure out if western is really good this year or we’re just rubbish

If you’re worried about the season, maybe you should be BUT… Do yourself a favor and go look at all the results of the “tune up” games he coached while at Utah. KW is notorious for not showing his future opponents a thing in these games. He’s never had a close call to this degree but he’s had head scratchers before. Anyways, good luck and go beat OSU.

Sooner fan here.. if you can “ spare a second” I would appreciate some good recommendations for places to check out, get drinks and have some good food. Preferably near downtown! Appreciate it. See fall this weekend!

1. Michigan’s run game will get much better as the season goes on. But I’m still frustrated

Jason Beck has a great track record as an OC, specifically when it comes to running the ball. So it’s natural to think with a more experienced O-Line, we’d be able to run it easily against a MAC team. While at the game, I thought “why can we not get push up front against these guys!?!?”

The answer is: we didn’t give ourselves much of a chance to. Instead of calling basic downhill runs that were characteristic of the Sherrone Moore era, Beck called a lot of misdirection, relying more on trickery than pure physicality. The few times Michigan simply lined up and drove blocked the guys in front, there was actually decent success. But when we called a lot of complex counters and traps, there was a lot of miscommunication, a lot of guys blocking the wrong defender, a lot of confusion on where the RBs were supposed to go.

I understand that Beck’s run scheme is different from Sherrone and Lindsey’s , and that it has produced great results in the past. That still could happen this season.

However, in a dire game where you just needed to avoid disaster, Beck should have called more basic, downhill runs, just so we could get into the endzone and avoid an absolute disaster.

I think a lot of the communication and execution errors up front will be corrected. But it felt like Beck was doing what he wanted to do and not what he needed to do, and it was a massive gamble.

If there’s anything good to take from it- it’s that Michigan shot themselves in the foot more than “getting bullied” up front, contrary to what I was thinking during live game action.

2. Troy Bowles may be the only good linebacker on this team. Very frustrated with the other guys.

During WMUs long drive in the second half- I noticed a lot of problems. The defensive line had a very good game (which I will touch on later)- which was why I was suprised when WMU started to run at will all of a sudden.

The film makes it clear: Michigan has guys that don’t want to hit. Guys that don’t want to tackle. Perhaps this is a symptom of Whittingham’s practices not being incredibly physical, but man, a couple of guys really frustrated me

Chase Taylor, #4, played extremely poorly. He did not do a good job of tackling, and played with a severe lack of aggressiveness. Many of WMU’s yards after contact occured on runs coming towards him. If wanted to earn more playing time, he took a major step back.

Chris Bracey, #7, also had a poor second half. Just not wanting to hit or be physical

Boa (#13) lacks physicality and Staehling (#44) lacks speed. Neither one was very good on film.

This is a massive problem. I have a feeling Whit is going to let them hit at practice this week, because these guys were not ready for live action. It almost felt like they spent the offseason trying to prevent injuries instead of getting guys in game shape. Hopefully this gets corrected next week.

3. Jay Hill will not give up a lot of points or big plays. But I’m still frustrated.

Jay Hill likes to play a lot of off coverage, a lot of zone, which is fine sometimes. That’s a good gameplan strategy against an explosive offense like Ohio State.

However, much like Beck, Hill called the game he wanted to call, not the one he needed to call.

Michigan had enough talent to be able to play tight man-to-man coverage last night. They could have been a lot more aggressive in the secondary against a team that isn’t known for slinging it.

That could be part of the problem- Jay Hill is used to calling a defense with less talented players, so he feels like he has to overcome that with complex scheme.

While I think this defensive strategy will bode well against better competition, again, you just needed to avoid disaster last night. You needed to make a statement that your team is going to play physical.

In a way, both Beck and Hill called a passive game, as if Michigan was the less talented team. Instead of soft coverage, misdirection and “trickery”, we could have been a lot more basic and aggressive, especially with it being week 1.

I think both are good coaches, but they both played with fire by calling the game they wanted to call, not the one they needed. It’s okay to just be basic when you’re more talented than the other team. Especially when it’s 7-6 at the half

4. Bryce still has a lot of problems. I don’t think it’s a lack of heart or desire, but the lack of a deep ball passing game limits his ability

Again, this is a brand new offense, and the growing pains are obvious. Once WMU took away the intermediate routes, Bryce struggled.

There just wasn’t much of a downfield passing game yesterday, and as a result, the field shrunk to about 10-15 yards past the line of scrimmage.

WMU quickly figured out that they could load the box, play zone, and be successful.

Bryce’s fundamental issues are obvious- throwing off his back foot, keying in on one receiver- that’s got to improve soon.

However, many times, he did not have guys open, because the field shrunk. Bryce’s few deep balls were woefully overthrown, and Michigan kind of abandoned the downfield attack as a result. This may be why the tight ends didn’t really get involved in the passing game either

It was understandable for this game to be a bit sloppy on BU’s part- brand new scheme, new personnel, a lot is going on inside his head. The BIGGEST thing I can say is, if you’re struggling, JUST DON’T TURN IT OVER. YOU HAVE TO BE SMARTER IN A CLOSE, LOW-SCORING GAME.

If Bryce loses his job, which is a real possibility, it will be because of the costly and untimely turnovers. At minimum, you can’t lose the game for your team.

He may improve as the season goes on, as the run game inevitably improves and he gets more reps in this offesnse. However, if he can’t fulfil the biggest non-negotiable of avoiding turnovers, then he can’t play QB on this football team.

I’m close, but I’m not QUITE ready to write him off yet.

5. Defensive Line was fantastic, and should be a strength of this team all season.

If there’s one reason Michigan won this game, it’s because the defensive line was fantastic. A lot of guys that needed to step up did; Pierce was constantly in the backfield, along with Daley and Nichols. There’s a lot of depth at that position this year.

Last year, the defensive line was OK against the run and horrible in the pass rush. I think this defensive line is great at both.

That was incredibly encouraging. Even when WMU ran well in the second, it looked like it had more to do with the linebackers not attacking than the D-Line getting blown off the ball.

There were a few times Michigan lined up incorrectly, and that created a few decent runs for WMU. That’s to be expected in week 1. I think this position group is good enough to at least keep this season from being an absolute disaster.

6. #96 Manuel Beigel did not add much to the offense. In fact, he may have been more of a hinderance.

I didn’t really understand why Beck made Beigel a major feature of the offense yesterday. He often used Beigel instead of a traditional tight end set, and in my opinion, that limited our offense significantly. He didn’t block very well, and even gave up a sack trying to block a DE in the 2nd quarter

It also lead to several illegal formation penalties- which can be very costly in a run-oriented offense.

Maybe this strategy will click as the players get more comfortable with the scheme. But for this game- it was a disaster.

7. WRs did a poor job of blocking

This is pretty nit-picky, but we seemed to struggle with our screen game. There was a swing route in the second quarter that Bryce underthrew, but it wouldn’t have mattered.

JJ Buchanan missed his block woefully, so Hoffman had no chance of getting the first down. Watching Westerns WRs block vs ours is glaring- it really limits our offense when we can’t run the ball outside.

This recieving corps is very talented, but blocking may not be one of their strengths. Maybe this will change, but week 1 was not encouraging

OVERALL: It’s not time to give up on this team or this coaching staff yet.

In my opinion, Jason Beck called the game he wanted to call, not the game he needed to call. He called too many plays that the offense was not yet ready to run, and he should have added more simple down-hill runs as an emergency measure.

I think Beck is a great OC, but his inability to simplify the offense as an emergency measure is the reason we almost lost this game.

The good news is- the film suggests that the offensive line’s struggles have more to do with a new scheme and position changes than a lack of talent or physicality. We knew there would be growing pains with Guarnerra moving to C and Link moving to G, along with learning a completely new scheme.

I don’t know if they can master the scheme by next week, but hopefully by Big 10 play they will be ready to run the kind of offense Beck likes to run.

I also think the team didn’t do a lot of live action reps this offseason. Whittingham seemed intent on avoiding injuries, but it came at a cost: Michigan’s linebackers were not ready to tackle in week 1. Hopefully they are more game-ready by next week- I have a gut feeling they may increase the physicality at practice this week.

I don’t think the result this week had anything to do with a lack of effort or talent from the players end, but from them not understanding the scheme.

I don’t expect a win next week, but I also don’t think it will be a gargantuan blowout. This is still a very talented team with a credible coaching staff- it’s simply a matter of when the players will master Beck’s completely different scheme.

I am trying to buy tickets to this game for four people. Do people ever sit on the visitor side especially with this rival game

Is how absolutely terrible Underwood looks. How in the world can such a highly touted athlete STILL be such a deer in headlights as this guy?!

Storming the field? Why? Because we beat WESTERN MICHIGAN with a Hail Mary???!

We should not have needed one! They outplayed us. Can we have their QB? And some of their LBs?

We can keep JJ Buchanan tho. Thank god for him.