Michigan Football, Team 137, 2016 Season.

[lineygoblue]

That would be great Mike but I still see the pollsters using the QB situation against us. There's going to be a lot of very good teams out there next season.

[Mike]

Our D is legitimately one of the best in the country and we return a ton on both sides of the ball. If O'Korn looks good in the spring game, Michigan will be in the middle of the top 10 and rightfully so.

[lineygoblue]

I think this will be a Spring Game that I will really want to see.

[Prime2]

The "Iowa Bump" is nice but means very little. Given the playoff format, I doubt we have the depth to beat Bama or Clemson (both corrupt programs mind you) but that is the way it is.

I think the success of our season will be measured by beating MSU & Ohio A & M, on the road mind you. Anything less is a failure, anything more a bonus.

[hack]

I think talent's post is a legit conversational prompt. The eye test on Rudock shows a metric shit-ton of in-season development. If the stats talent posted are also a reasonable measure, then he must have been fucking awful two years ago. That 126.5 rating must be what most crap QBs are rated at, and 141.5 what very good ones are typically rated at. I don't know the statistic enough to know. Is true?

Clearly though Rudock over the course of the season benefitted from the improvements of everybody else too. He threw some bad balls early but undeniably Chesson made similarly huge strides, which suggests Rudock wasn't as bad against Utah as the numbers say. I do recall at least one long ball against Utah as a good throw Chesson lost in the air. Flipside, Smith's fade into ineffectiveness for the second half of the season makes Rudock's increased effectiveness more impressive, as it came with shrinking bits of help from the running game.

Either way, a lot of moving parts here. Worth dissecting further if we really want to know who to praise for how the season went. But, hey -- if everyone's making improvements across all the position groups, as was the case this year, who cares about how to exactly precisely attribute it?

[iam416]

M's WRs definitely improved.

I'm interested in Rudock's development as it potentially describes 2016. Rudock, in of himself, does not interest me. He didn't interest me at Iowa. Didn't interest me at M. Won't interest me in the NFL unless he happens to hold a clipboard for the Stillers.

HOWEVER, the line of reasoning re 2016 that I was reading had to do with O'Korn and JH's ability to develop QBs with Rudock being Exhibit A (I guess I should also look at Stanford for QB progression). With QB play so critical to M's aspirations, I think it useful, at least for me, to think about the likelihood that O'Korn will be what a number of people think he will be.

CFB can be very difficult to assess because of scheduling variance. The difference between MSU, Utah and OSU vs Rutgers, Indiana and loads others is massive. That's why, for my money, I think Rudock's best game was against Ohio State. Given the level of competition and the complete lack of a running threat, I thought he was really good. Michigan's entire pass game was really good. As I suggested, I think the major reason is coaching with experience being another important factor along with growing familiarity with the new team.

That said, if you tout the growth of the passing game, I think you have to speak about, at best, stagnation of the running game. I thought the M running game was just plain awful when I watched them play. When they played OSU, I considered any hand off a wasted down -- even if they were trying to gimmick up Peppers.

Anyway, for what your hopes are for this team, the offense has to be considerably better than it was last season. And personally, I'm of the opinion some of its deficiencies won't be cured by a year of experience. TIFWIW.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Projected S&P for 2016. Look at the recurring impact numbers for M and osu. Surprising.

http://www.sbnation.com/college-football/2016/2/8/10922288/2016-college-football-rankings-projections

[Jeff Buchanan]

I thought a healthy Smith and what appeared to be a light bulb came on event for the collective OL v. Florida bodes well for M's run game. Smith is not going to be a 30 carries back. There's going to be a ton of rotation and Kareem Walker is going to get some carries along with Peppers, Johnson and others.

I'm as enthusiastic as I've been in a decade for M's run game mostly because the OL for 2016 should be impressive barring early injuries and is in their second season with Harbughfense.

[iam416]

Projected S&P for 2016. Look at the recurring impact numbers for M and osu. Surprising.

As I said, prohibitive favorites to win the B10 East.

I'm not sure why anyone thinks Ohio State will be any good. They'll make the preseason top 10 on brand name + UFM's past results. They'll lose 3-4 games with a defensive back 7 that is both stunningly inexperienced AND thin.

M should have one of the great defenses of all-time.

[iam416]

I thought a healthy Smith and what appeared to be a light bulb came on event for the collective OL v. Florida bodes well for M's run game

Honestly, I'm not sure how much you read into a bowl game especially against that Florida team...which was just plain awful. I mean, Smith more or less just got more carries than he usually does. I certainly get why you'd want to look at that one, though, as opposed to others.

I'm as enthusiastic as I've been in a decade for M's run game mostly because the OL for 2016 should be impressive barring early injuries and is in their second season with Harbughfense

That's one area of the team I'm not sure experience will help too much.

But, I guess we'll see. Won't be the first, second or third time I've been wrong!

[drok]

It's going to be hard to look at Ruddock's progress this year, which I think was substantial, and use that as an indication of what O'Korn is going to do. They are such different players from each other. But we've seen Harbaugh transform QB's at enough stops now, that I think the result will at least be solid.

I am not nearly as optimistic about the OL as Jeff is. I think it's a really thin unit and a poorly timed injury could be catastrophic. I don't see them being more than a B grade unit. I do think that the Deveon Smith we saw in the Florida game was real. The Florida defense was legit and the OL didn't open any more holes than usual, but he saw those holes that he wasn't seeing all year and seemed more capable of making the necessary cuts to hit those holes. Not sure if that was the result of a healed nagging injury or the light going on, but I hope to see that continue.

[hack]

It's convincint to me that Harbaugh's appearance coincides with much-improved QB play nearly everywhere he goes. Has there been an example of any QBs that stagnated or regressed under him? My best is that the QB ratings talent shared aren't capturing the whole story, which is so often the case with statistics. The truth is probably between the two extremes on Rudock.

[drok]

Here's a look at the impact of returning starters. Pretty interesting bit about OL further down in the post:

http://www.sbnation.com/college-football/2016/2/5/10921918/2016-ncaa-football-returning-starters-experience-lsu-ohio-state-tennessee-stanford

[The Oracle]

Well, Kaepernick was terrible 2 years ago, but who knows if that was: the NFL catching on to the gimmick, his new contract, him just not being that good, the workings behind the scenes in that shit hole front office. That's about it though.

[Tslisher]

Teams that will be ranked ahead of Michigan next season. ... in no particular order, Alabama, LSU, Ohio State, Clemson, Baylor, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Florida State, old Miss, and there are probably more. Michigan will likely be rated somewhere in the top 15 my guess is anywhere from 12 - 15

IDK Liney - I wouldn't put Baylor, Texas Tech and possibly Old Miss in that list. Given what we have coming back, I'd say around 8 - 10 is probably realistic. Our schedule sets us up well too. We've pretty much got the first half of the season to fine tune things and get a new quarterback in sync.