Utah fan checking in.

RE: Utah fan checking in. (displacedute)

Fri, 23 May 2008 13:26:21 GMT

ORIGINAL: minifry6

Utah scares me, but im so glad Urban is gone cause he has the creativity, and the brass in decision making that could beat Michigan. I think Michigan will be fine and win the game. It will be closer than most expect, but we should win.

I think based on talent alone there's no question Michigan is far more talented than Utah. We've got some good players, your team is full of future NFL players. But your team is young, and we're pretty experienced at every spot except DL, and you're going through a coaching transition, which is always tough. I think the game could go either way, but I'm certainly ready for a Michigan victory.

RE: Utah fan checking in. (minifry6)

Fri, 23 May 2008 01:52:55 GMT

This is a funny post to me this year. Does anyone remember the AppSt folks that came along last year and said they had a shot? And we ALL intelligently dismissed everything they said. Except for the posters who are kind, said "true you have a point" but thought to themselves, "AppSt yeah right". We are a much more accepting and objective group this year. I am proud of the strides we have taken.

As for the who invented what form of offense, I dont think anyone can objectively point out who invented what. What I can say, is thanks to coaches like Urban, and RRod, and Spurrier, it is coaches like that who have changed the college football program completely. People said Spurrier wouldnt be able to run his Fun and Gun in the SEC. The same people said that Urbans spread offense wouldnt work in the fast SEC roughly 7 years after Spurrier brought a new offense. Now the media, and mostly OSU fans are saying RRod high school spread option wont work in the Big10. I think it took Spurrier 2-3 years to win his first national title? Urban took 2. RRod took the backhills of WVU and let people in the world and the SEC: see georgia fake punt (whoever thinks lloyd wouldnt have made the same call is downright foolish haha) know that his offense is BCS allowed. Because of coaches like Urban, and RRod, 3 unknown programs all are on everyones watch list.

Utah scares me, but im so glad Urban is gone cause he has the creativity, and the brass in decision making that could beat Michigan. I think Michigan will be fine and win the game. It will be closer than most expect, but we should win.

RE: Utah fan checking in. (egami)

Thu, 22 May 2008 16:50:02 GMT

ORIGINAL: YtownBlue

ORIGINAL: displacedute

ORIGINAL: egami

That's what I was guessing...hopefully you find a pair to plug that gap. It seems like there is less issue plugging in young players on the D line versus the O line, generally, so you'll probably survive that ok.

I agree. You have to depend on the other players a lot more on the OL than on DL. Our coach has said in the past that there are two potential problems with a unit: "Lack of talent and lack of experience. You never want to have both." Right now we've got lack of experience on the DL, but hopefully not lack of talent.

Right now, Michigan has a lack of experience & depth on the O-line so this area might be a scratch

True, but he actually said experience and talent, not depth (actually, that's the way I read it first too), and we do still have two 3-star recruits and two 4-star recruits on our roster. And, actually, we are ok depth-wise as well. I think we have about 12 o-line left on roster.

RE: Utah fan checking in. (YtownBlue)

Thu, 22 May 2008 16:34:37 GMT

ORIGINAL: displacedute

ORIGINAL: egami

That's what I was guessing...hopefully you find a pair to plug that gap. It seems like there is less issue plugging in young players on the D line versus the O line, generally, so you'll probably survive that ok.

I agree. You have to depend on the other players a lot more on the OL than on DL. Our coach has said in the past that there are two potential problems with a unit: "Lack of talent and lack of experience. You never want to have both." Right now we've got lack of experience on the DL, but hopefully not lack of talent.

Right now, Michigan has a lack of experience & depth on the O-line so this area might be a scratch

RE: Utah fan checking in. (displacedute)

Thu, 22 May 2008 14:34:46 GMT

ORIGINAL: egami

That's what I was guessing...hopefully you find a pair to plug that gap. It seems like there is less issue plugging in young players on the D line versus the O line, generally, so you'll probably survive that ok.

I agree. You have to depend on the other players a lot more on the OL than on DL. Our coach has said in the past that there are two potential problems with a unit: "Lack of talent and lack of experience. You never want to have both." Right now we've got lack of experience on the DL, but hopefully not lack of talent.

RE: Utah fan checking in. (egami)

Wed, 21 May 2008 13:20:51 GMT

That's what I was guessing...hopefully you find a pair to plug that gap. It seems like there is less issue plugging in young players on the D line versus the O line, generally, so you'll probably survive that ok.

RE: Utah fan checking in. (Chad Sexington)

Wed, 21 May 2008 12:51:45 GMT

4-3

RE: Utah fan checking in. (egami)

Wed, 21 May 2008 12:15:16 GMT

What D do you guys typically run?

RE: Utah fan checking in. (displacedute)

Wed, 21 May 2008 12:02:25 GMT

ORIGINAL: YtownBlue

I saw this on another board

Utah has had two DTs leave the team over the last 2 weeks. Isley Filagia, who was a projected starter at Nose and Zeke Wiley, who played some last year. They are very inexperienced and thin at DT.

That's true, to some extent. Filiaga was in the projected 2-deep but was not projected as the starter. And we are thin at DT, which is why we signed three of them. I just hope they're ready to play. We signed some very good kids (Kruger, Siliaga, and Kaufusi). Kruger is a 4*, Kaufusi is ready to play right now. I hope Siliaga has been working hard this offseason, because he needs to lose some fat and add some muscle if he wants to see the field this year.

Either way, we were going to be weak at DT. We have a couple of players who have really stepped up, but it's certainly a question mark (the biggest one, IMO) right now.

RE: Utah fan checking in. (YtownBlue)

Wed, 21 May 2008 11:39:34 GMT

I saw this on another board

FYI, Utah has had two DTs from their two deep
Reply

leave the team over the last 2 weeks. Isley Filagia, who was a projected starter at Nose and Zeke Wiley, who played some last year. They are very inexperienced and thin at DT.

RE: Utah fan checking in. (egami)

Tue, 20 May 2008 08:47:32 GMT

Ok, I called out Utah fan, so I'll play the flip side fairly...

RR nor Urban Meyer are the "founders" of the Spread Option. We've discussed most of this already, but this door swings both directions. Look at the timing of their coaching careers in D1. Meyer started running Spread Option with BGSU pretty much the same time RR started implementing it at WVU. Honestly, both coaches pretty much "popularized" it at the D1 level and were successful with it and are pioneers in that regard, but these types of offenses were running in the lower ranks of college football in 1990's...just because the phrase wasn't coined, or wasn't wide spread, doesn't mean it didn't exist.

RE: Utah fan checking in. (wolverine318)

Tue, 20 May 2008 08:29:27 GMT

ORIGINAL: section43row50

Rich Rodriguez is the founding father of the spread offense. this is a fact.

Not to nitpick, but RR is founding father of the Spread Option. The spread has been around plenty longer than RR has been running it.

RE: Utah fan checking in. (egami)

Tue, 20 May 2008 08:23:42 GMT

ORIGINAL: displacedute

ORIGINAL: egami

In fairness, you called me a 14-year-old girl. Bastard, hurt my inner being. :p

True, and I apologize. Still, you "lol"'d me first, and as I mentioned, I hate that. Call it even?

lol, liek no!

RE: Utah fan checking in. (DownInFront417)

Tue, 20 May 2008 01:25:27 GMT

Rich Rodriguez is the founding father of the spread offense. this is a fact.

meyer just jumped on the bandwagon and picked it up along the way.

RE: Utah fan checking in. (displacedute)

Mon, 19 May 2008 17:51:22 GMT

ORIGINAL: egami

In fairness, you called me a 14-year-old girl. Bastard, hurt my inner being. :p

True, and I apologize. Still, you "lol"'d me first, and as I mentioned, I hate that. Call it even?

RE: Utah fan checking in. (egami)

Mon, 19 May 2008 15:57:53 GMT

ORIGINAL: displacedute

ORIGINAL: wolverine318

Really I dont get your problem with LOL, this is the internets.

Yeah, it's just when it's made offhand to dismiss another person that it bugs me. I would have just preferred it if egami had put down his thoughts, since all of the posts after the first one have been really good and informative and well-thought-out.

That and I am kind of a grammar nazi. It's a character flaw, and I'm working on it.

As for your coach, you're right in that I should have expected a defense of Rich. I still think of him as the WVU coach, so I wasn't expecting it, but he's YOUR coach now and I completely understand and respect you and egami's decision to defend him. I'd probably have reacted in a similar manner, without the "lol".

And I feel the same way you do about the game. I wouldn't be surprised if it goes either way. Part of playing Michigan is that you know you're going to be facing superior talent, and part of playing coach Rich is you know you're going to be facing an excellent coach. Hopefully he just hasn't been able to get his excellent talent ready yet because of the transition and we can steal one, but it'll be very difficult.

In fairness, you called me a 14-year-old girl. Bastard, hurt my inner being. :p

RE: Utah fan checking in. (egami)

Mon, 19 May 2008 15:53:14 GMT

ORIGINAL: Chad Sexington

ORIGINAL: egami

Like I said, no doubt Urban put his stamp on the offense and popularized it, I am not going to argue that he wasn't one of the pioneers of the modernized, popularized Spread Option. And, yes, I am fully aware of the distinction between the Spread and the Spread Option.

Again, the point was merely to emphasize that Utah wasn't the first team doing it. Granted the phrase wasn't hardly coined, but what VT did with Vick under Beamer that Mora was attracted to do with Vick in the NFL was, in its elementary form, Spread Option.

Yes, Urban has his twists, RR has his twists and even different yet...take Texas Tech and Mike Leach and his wide splits on his o-line and what he's been doing since 2000 with the Spread. No question every coach has their stamp.

Lloyd Carr/DeBord's stamp was an offense that would lull one team to sleep...the problem is, sometime that team was his own....

OK, maybe I should just shut up because I can't really remember watching a lot of the Beamer and Vick show, but wasn't that mostly just Vick scrambling to throw? I mean I don't really remember a lot of the inside stuff that Urban uses or much of the receiver reverses. I just remember Vick running around and defenses being forced to locate him and that would open up the passing lanes.

With Urban, the ground game from the backfield was pound it up the middle. The option was a lot of inside handoffs and QB decision on which hole to hit. The kicker or wild card was all the reverses and fake reverse inside passes.

Anyway, the passing game that RichRod used at WVU looked a lot like the UTAH offense in '04, but not so much the ground attack.

Regardless, UTAH no longer uses that offense, in it's pure form, but has seen it from Meyer from the defensive perspective.

I am not bored enough to go back and watch enough VT tape to discern, but there is some merit to your claim. I think there were visions of a passing QB in Vick, but I think those tended to dissipate as time went on and they implemented more of that approach.

All I am saying is...people talk about D1 this, D1 that and all credit gets established there, but the fact is when I played ball in lowly D3 in the mid to late 90's we saw run first, option offenses on almost half our schedule.

Look at what Mike Leach is doing in Texas with the wide split o-line...been done already in D2 and D3. Some of these trends actually trickle up the scale because the higher you get the more conservative and safe coaches tend to be.

I think the main thing Urban, Rodriguez and others did was have the balls to take it to D1 more than anything...

RE: Utah fan checking in. (displacedute)

Mon, 19 May 2008 15:46:20 GMT

ORIGINAL: wolverine318

Really I dont get your problem with LOL, this is the internets.

Yeah, it's just when it's made offhand to dismiss another person that it bugs me. I would have just preferred it if egami had put down his thoughts, since all of the posts after the first one have been really good and informative and well-thought-out.

That and I am kind of a grammar nazi. It's a character flaw, and I'm working on it.

As for your coach, you're right in that I should have expected a defense of Rich. I still think of him as the WVU coach, so I wasn't expecting it, but he's YOUR coach now and I completely understand and respect you and egami's decision to defend him. I'd probably have reacted in a similar manner, without the "lol".

And I feel the same way you do about the game. I wouldn't be surprised if it goes either way. Part of playing Michigan is that you know you're going to be facing superior talent, and part of playing coach Rich is you know you're going to be facing an excellent coach. Hopefully he just hasn't been able to get his excellent talent ready yet because of the transition and we can steal one, but it'll be very difficult.

RE: Utah fan checking in. (Chad Sexington)

Mon, 19 May 2008 15:41:29 GMT

ORIGINAL: egami

Like I said, no doubt Urban put his stamp on the offense and popularized it, I am not going to argue that he wasn't one of the pioneers of the modernized, popularized Spread Option. And, yes, I am fully aware of the distinction between the Spread and the Spread Option.

Again, the point was merely to emphasize that Utah wasn't the first team doing it. Granted the phrase wasn't hardly coined, but what VT did with Vick under Beamer that Mora was attracted to do with Vick in the NFL was, in its elementary form, Spread Option.

Yes, Urban has his twists, RR has his twists and even different yet...take Texas Tech and Mike Leach and his wide splits on his o-line and what he's been doing since 2000 with the Spread. No question every coach has their stamp.

Lloyd Carr/DeBord's stamp was an offense that would lull one team to sleep...the problem is, sometime that team was his own....

OK, maybe I should just shut up because I can't really remember watching a lot of the Beamer and Vick show, but wasn't that mostly just Vick scrambling to throw? I mean I don't really remember a lot of the inside stuff that Urban uses or much of the receiver reverses. I just remember Vick running around and defenses being forced to locate him and that would open up the passing lanes.

With Urban, the ground game from the backfield was pound it up the middle. The option was a lot of inside handoffs and QB decision on which hole to hit. The kicker or wild card was all the reverses and fake reverse inside passes.

Anyway, the passing game that RichRod used at WVU looked a lot like the UTAH offense in '04, but not so much the ground attack.

Regardless, UTAH no longer uses that offense, in it's pure form, but has seen it from Meyer from the defensive perspective.

RE: Utah fan checking in. (egami)

Mon, 19 May 2008 15:27:55 GMT

ORIGINAL: displacedute

ORIGINAL: egami

If he stated emphatically that he pioneered the Spread Option, then he's a moron. It's that plain and simple.

Egami,

I've heard Urban mention coach Rich when talking about the "spread offense" which liked to spread the defense but force them to respect an inside running threat and a mobile QB. In fact, I think he's done that in interviews before. It's the "option" side of the offense that I think Urban takes credit for, which has been implemented in several other places, including WVU and Northwestern.

When people say "spread offense" I think they tend to include places like LSU, BYU, etc. None of those teams run any option, but they do spread the ball around a lot. Now coach Rich runs a spread option now, but IIRC that's not what he ran at Tulane or Clemson (and I remember the Tulane team pretty well, although not the Clemson team).

Either way, both coaches are clearly great offensive minds and very very good at their jobs. If coach Rich has UM's offense running anywhere close to WVU's offense, and with your defense loaded, I don't see many teams beating you, Utah included.

Like I said, no doubt Urban put his stamp on the offense and popularized it, I am not going to argue that he wasn't one of the pioneers of the modernized, popularized Spread Option. And, yes, I am fully aware of the distinction between the Spread and the Spread Option.

Again, the point was merely to emphasize that Utah wasn't the first team doing it. Granted the phrase wasn't hardly coined, but what VT did with Vick under Beamer that Mora was attracted to do with Vick in the NFL was, in its elementary form, Spread Option.

Yes, Urban has his twists, RR has his twists and even different yet...take Texas Tech and Mike Leach and his wide splits on his o-line and what he's been doing since 2000 with the Spread. No question every coach has their stamp.

Lloyd Carr/DeBord's stamp was an offense that would lull one team to sleep...the problem is, sometime that team was his own....