Do we have any pictures of Mike Hart doing "The Worm" on the very last play of the game. He sneaks into camera view at the very last second doing The Worm out of the backfield.
Mike Hart is awesome AND he's keepin' it Old School!
I could be wrong, but I thought that was Manningham doing the worm. Who typically lines up deep in the victory formation?
Also, was anyone else terrified that Mallett was going to fumble the snap on those kneel-downs?
Since right now we're looking at Brown and Chambers as the starting safeties next year, and since I recall Savoy being a good safety in HS, is anyone else in favor of moving him there?
I would really like it if some nerdy dude spilled some wine on her and then she would have to remove her shirt in order for said nerdy guy to hand wash it in the sink while she does the splits on the bed and a painting of Billy Idol sings in the background. Uh, where am I?
Wow...I Hart Lee Corso.
Also, the new cheerleader uniforms.
Okay, trying again because HaloScan hates me.
Here's the Carty article:
http://www.mlive.com/wolverines/
...hopes_on_t.html
Great source of comedy so far this year (esp. see "Quarterbacks"): http://insider.espn.go.com/ncf/i..._mel&
id=3025865
Track it week by week for fun!
One question multiple choice quiz:
1. Which of these statements is true?
a.) It's a thin year for QB's
b.) Notre Dame is an NFL factory (extra credit: How many Michigan and Notre Dame players are on this list?)
c.) Mel Kiper is an idiot (albeit an idiot with a hell of a memory)
Will someone please end the great 'who did the worm?' debate of '07 already?
victoria secret should be selling those cheerleader uniforms. they got nothin' on those maize beauties... also, in a related matter, my daughter will never be a cheerleader.
"Michigan also got away with forgoing the chance to kill the game off on its final offensive possession, mainly because Anthony Morelli is not a good quarterback and Penn State's offense is fairly easily defended."
i think part of the motive for M here was that they were counting on these points for 2 reasons:
1) morelli has, not in the past nor in this game specifically, been good at QB.
2) the M D absolutely shut down the OSU offense.
i guess i disagree with brian (shudder, maybe i should rethink this?). putting the ball in anyone's hands but Mike Hart gives like a 30-75% chance of a TO. based on 1) the way the M D handled PSU that day, 2)that morelli is their QB, 3)mike hart == ~ 2E-3 %chance of a fumle, and 4) PSU had no timeouts & would be starting on the 20 (at worst)....i can't disparage this decision too much.
however, a screen pass, draw,would have been good too. i mean something not 'run left' but not '15yard crossing route between LBs' either......
Glad you saw the Dan Wetzel article, Brian. What an incredible load of garbage. Apparently he's on the bandwagon of SEC superiority and hasn't noticed that the Big 10 performs dead even with them in bowl games, if not the most nationally watched bowl games.
I need a "Zoltan: there are no corners in space" T-shirt. Thankyew.
I heard there were a lot of potential recruits at the Penn State game. Any word on whether we might see some commitments in the near future?
Mallett, Mathews, Warren, Schilling, etc. Looking good in terms of future stars...
Didn't see the Worm.
Manningham was the one lined up deep in the Victory formation, though.
That B&B quote is pretty much what I was getting at in the Lionized thread, but got all sputtering and mad suddenly.
Manningham was the one doing the word. I saw it with me own eyes. Hyar.
Brian:
Here's the link to the Carty piece and that I-AA tie-breaker rule:
http://www.mlive.com/sports/aane...ll=2&
thispage=2
Also looking (begging) for Worm footage.
G- MVictors
DanK, I have to disagree with you here, and go with Brian. Mallet threw 29 passes in that game, and 1 of those was a pick. That's not a 30-75% chance of a turnover. Granted, he may fumble the ball if he’s sacked or a receiver could fumble the ball. Let’s say, conservatively, since Mallet’s number were probably better than we could have expected, that he gets picked on 1 or 20 throws. That’s 5% interception chance. We’ll give another 5% chance that someone fumbles. Thus, 10% chance of turnover if we go, and I think that’s much higher than the real value. Now, let’s also assume that if we turn it over, they’re 50-50 to score (this also seems forgiving, since they didn’t score the whole game, with several trips to the red zone), so that’s a 5% total chance of losing because we threw. If we throw and don’t pick it up, the result is the same as if we had ran, except an extra 30-40 seconds on the clock. Now, what’s the chance of us getting the first down? Given that we converted very well on 3rd all game long, I think 20% to get it is a conservative estimate, since it was third and long. If we get it, we win right there. So, that’s a 20% chance to win right there, vs. a 5% chance to lose right there. Isn’t that worth it, unless you’re absolutely certain that the defense will stop them? I wasn’t too certain—they moved the ball down the field many times but just couldn’t finish. I maintain that running on that 3rd down was actually the risky play…our coaching isn’t too conservative, it’s that they take too many risks by not giving our offense a chance to win it.
You could break this down even further by estimating the chance the PSU scores on that last drive, but I think the point is made here. We’ve made this same mistake time and time again (Texas in the rose bowl, OSU in ’05…no, actually, every game we lost in ’05 except ND). We won this time, but we won’t win every time we give them 1 last chance to score.
dear god someone was doing the worm! get some youtube of that shit up pronto, brian.
also, when russell crowe is oggling your cheerleaders, you know the uniforms are good. note to the athletic department. perhaps we will attract more celebrities this way. you know... besides mini-me.
Schwing! How you doin'?
Also, at this point the only thing that'll keep Hart from getting 2 large is injury. Write it down.
Manningham was doing the worm.
A wide receiver is almost always the deep guy in the victory formation.
There weren't any commitments, and it's not likely that any will come soon. Several prospects were there, but most of them (Koger, Mealer, McGuffie, Moore) were already committed.
Uncommitted prospects:
Brandon Smith - Apparently loved the visit. We're definitely the leaders, but he's intent on keeping his word that he won't commit until Signing Day in February.
Nick Perry - I don't see how he couldn't have been impressed. I haven't heard any feedback, but he's a flip-flopper. One day he likes MSU, then he likes Michigan, then he's interested in USC. I don't think anybody has a great idea about what he'll do.
Spencer Adams - Apparently loved the visit. He said he was watching both the corners and the safeties, so it's unclear what position he'll play. I would assume safety because he's a safety now, but I've heard corner and it might depend on what other recruits Michigan gets. Right now he'd be a safety because of a numbers crunch at the position, but if Michigan gets commits from other safeties (Smith, Hatcher, Cooper), he might move to corner. Right now Michigan has a lot of offers out to strong safeties, and Adams would be a FS or a corner.
Marvin Robinson - A 2010 safety prospect from Florida. There were rumors that he would commit on Sunday, but that didn't happen. He camped at Michigan and it's definitely tops on his list, but he's only a sophomore and a lot of things could happen between now and February 2010.
Michigan's offense racked up 396 yards and 25 first downs. That is a huge amount of first downs. Those numbers are probably going to be near the top that PSU gives up all year. So, it wasn't moving the ball that was the problem for UM--despite the fact that someone will claim their unborn baby was correctly guessing the plays. It was scoring at the end of those drives. Some of that is on being bad at FGs. Some is probably on PSUs scheme and sure tackling avoiding big gainers by UM. Some on UM not attempting more plays with greater big play potential.
If your opponent is Athony Morelli I don't see the purpose of the argument "that would only work if your opponent was Anthony Morelli." You can only play the team you play.
Braves and Birds makes the argument that it is nonsensical to 'protect' Mallet by making him pass in obvious pass situations. He neglects to mention that by running you reduce the number of obvious pass situations. He instead espouses the argument that you should protect him by giving him greater responsibility.
If, as Brain contends, UM had underneath recievers all day, then I can see the argument. I'm not convinced passing on earlier downs would have been so easy. I am keeping an open mind.
The Big Ten tiebreaker scenario is moot anyways, because after all of the who beat who tiebreakers, the original rule is based on winning percentage in a 12 game schedule. We are always going to have more losses than OSU, Wisconsin and PSU because we already have two non-conference losses.
DanK,
Under the circumstances (freshman qb; Morelli; Penn State D), I don't have such a problem with running on the third-and-long. My problem was the two preceding downs. After the Mathews catch, the mentality should have been: we've got three (maybe four) downs to work with, what plays are going to give us the best chance of getting a first down and sealing this victory? Maybe this is overly optimistic, but I think Michigan has at least a 75% chance of converting a first down if they actually tried. I'm not sure Michigan's D has a 75% chance of stopping a Penn State offense that has 4 downs to work with and knows it needs to score (although based on their Penn State's offensive performance this could obviously be debated).
More importantly, if you rely solely on the D and Penn State scores, game over, you lose. If you try to pick up the first down, and the offense fails, you are still probably punting and the D still has a chance to win the game for you...Penn State probably just has a couple more timeouts to work with. Even in the worst case scenario of a turnover, your D still has a chance to get a stop and win the game. Unless it's a pick 6 of course...in that case you still have time left on the clock for your offense to go for a field goal to either win the game or tie. Under any of these scenarios, at least you've leaving yourself more than one way to win the game. And I can understand the argument that the conservative strategy was defensible under these particular circumstances (morelli, freshman qb, etc.), but Carr does the same thing regardless of circumstance.
or what LJ says...although again I think the playcall on third and long is more defensible than the calls on first and second down.
Where the hell did that blonde cheerleader come from? Seriously, Michigan just doesn't have girls that hot.
Bo hated the "symphony crowd"...this is not a joke:
I just called up the media office to get in touch with Jim Brandstatter. I got put on hold, and the on-hold music was classical music.
BTW: The old-new uniforms may be lopsided, but that cheerleader is certainly not. Woo hoo...
Isn't Jim Carty the same blind squirrel who wrote a story about how Jim Harbaugh "broke the code" on football players taking bogus classes? (They turned out not to be bogus classes anyway.)
What's next, Jim Harbaugh tells the world was Pamela Anderson looks like naked? Does anyone who's been paying attention NOT know that?
On the Zoltan comment, pardon my "sppelling". And I did ask for someone to put a small black hole out of bounds by the one yard line to draw the ball to it's proper place!
I thought the cheerleader holding the "Go" sign on the Michigan side was hotter, but I was unable to confirm with binocs.
ok, everyone makes good points here, and to put %ages on anything is dubious at best.
i guess, for me, it comes down to this: any strategy that takes the ball OUT of Hart's hands is one I cannot support.
If the tiebreaker rules haven't been changed since 2001, then maybe this rule is in reference to the old rule that wins against 1-AA opponents didn't count towards your minimum number of wins towards bowl eligibility. I'm not sure if that was the exact wording of the old NCAA rule (it may have been that you could only count a win against a 1-AA team every couple years or so), but it has since been eliminated with the length of the season increasing to 12 games. The rule still doesn't make any sense though, if it is indeed a rule. We don't care how team performs in the non-conference scheldule, so why would we care if teams did or did not play a 1-AA team?
Isn't the 1-AA thing likely that 1-AA games don't count towards the tiebreaker (or at least don't count as wins) and thus assuming the same record, a team with a 1-AA opponent would lose because it has a worse win percentage (or at least fewer wins that count)?
Any truth to the rumor that Michigan is using its general studies program to sneak through hotter cheerleaders who couldn't hack it in other programs?
LOL OTT!
thanks for the article links. I still think this is doubtful, and I don't think it would mean anything anyway: if there is a overall winning percentage tiebreaker, Michigan would be out because of the Oregon/App St losses anyway.
Brian... Moffatt will be playing for the U.S. NTDP *next* fall, not this fall (since it's already here :) And also, he plays for Compuware (not Honeybaked) with fellow 2010 commit Jared Knight.
I just spoke with a friend who has this year's Big Ten Football Media Guide. Mr. Carty is exactly correct: a 3-way tie between Michigan, Penn State and Ohio State at 7-1 will go to Penn State, because of the new I-AA/FCS tiebreaker.
The new tiebreakers (starting in 2006):
(1) Being ranked #1 or #2 in the BCS standings
(2) Head-to-head record
(3) Fewest games against I-AA/FCS teams
(4) Overall record
(5) Last team to receive the automatic BCS bid is eliminated
Well then Bill Martin is a fucking idiot.
The new cheerleader outfits definitely excited Mini-me. :-D
We are going USC.. Russel Crowe is our Snoopy. We are inspired by the song girls. All we need is a Heisman trophy and a Natl. Championship
Here is the last play of the Penn State game.
hahaha that video is ridiculous. if i didn't think it was impossible to somehow photo/videoshop that in there i wouldn't believe it.
it's like rick's on location at half-field of the bighouse.
i always thought manningham was supposed to be kind of shy and under the radar?
Manningham definitely had the reputation of being somewhat aloof coming into this season, and after the first two games (and his poor offensive production compared to last year), he was feeling a lot of pressure. They mentioned during the game, though, that Hart sat him down and talked to him, and ever since then he's been much more loose. Witness his celebrating during Matthews' TD against ND and his flawless execution of the worm.
I don't think Savoy will switch to safety. There are some players who coaches will do anything to get on the field. Savoy is not one of them or he would be sneaking into the lineup at WR.
He'll be a redshirt junior next year, and there's no way he overcomes people who have college experience at safety. If anything, he'd be a backup and rarely if ever see the field. If he moved, Stevie Brown, Chambers, Stewart, and others would still be ahead of him.
They tried to switch Savoy to DB this past offseason, and they chose to switch Dutch and Carlos Brown to defense instead of Savoy. Obviously Brown chose to move back to RB once Grady got hurt.
Wow that is rediculous, but I guess the logic is to provide an incentive not to schedule 1-AA oppents for as many games as possible heading into conference play. Kind of makes sense, but then again, how do they make this rule and then not disseminate it to the big 10 coaches and athletic directors. I mean really, if this was widely known, why would Michigan or Ohio State schedule a 1-AA opponent at all. There are plenty of 1-A opponents who would be better tune-ups anyway. Either way the rule should be to throw out wins against IAA opponents rather than not count the games entirely. Why can't they just make it simple and poll ESPN to break any tie-breaker scenario. I predict a huge Michigan victory over OSU this year, but I don't know if we can avoid another loss given the first two games of the season. That said, We won't have to worry about a tie-breaker, because apparently we know how to beat top 10 opponents... It's the underrateds that scare me now.
DanK, I'm completely in agreement with you re:Hart, but to me, the run, run, run approach following that final first down DOES take the ball out of Hart's hands. It puts the game entirely in the hands of the defense and all Hart can do is sit idly by and watch if Michigan will let another one slip away. And as much as Hart believes in himself, I doubt he'd have made the same playcalls if it was up to him...I think he would have given the offense the opportunity to win the game. And I think the offense (Hart especially) deserves that opportunity. If they can't do it, the defense gets their chance too.
Part of what makes no sense to me: if you're not willing to take the risk going for a first down to win the game, why take the risk on the previous first down conversion by Mathews? This is somehow a worthwhile risk, but closing out the victory is not? (To be honest, I think this was one of those schitzophrenic attempts by Carr to "learn from his mistakes." He goes against his gut instinct to call run on the pass play to Mathews, but it is just too much to ask him to do it again on the plays that follow...not when he can protect the ball, use up Penn State's remaining timeouts, and burn a little clock.)
For the last god knows how long, from everywhere, I've been hearing about how the SEC is better than the Big Ten. Back when the SEC WASN'T better, I don't remember us planting our Big Ten flag in the ground with such piss and vinegar. WTF?
sorry to change the subject. It just pisses me off.
Carr was willing to throw the ball on the previous 3rd down because PSU still had time outs. I'm not defending the decision, I would have gambled that the safeties were coming up to stuff the run and thrown it into the end zone, but I'm sure that was his logic.
yea, i think that last drive played out the way it did b/c PSU had all 3 timeouts. that drive chewed up 4.10 or so AND the 3 PSU timeouts.
MK, i hear what you're saying. but if they *do* get that last 1st down (so PSU never gets the ball at all), it's just victory formation: Hart never sees the ball again.
so, in that last drive, i'd prefer hart hart hart than anything else.
I feel so special.
Only if the cheerleaders are competitive will UM be competitive for the BCS championship. Let's see 'em take on the USC SongGirls.....
1. Compare the 3rd situations when UM ran on first down with when UM passed on first down.
2. Let's say we had a running back who could average 3.5 ypc. Generally speaking, we'd be averaging around a 3rd and 3. That's not an obvious pass situation at all.
3. On a bad day, Mike Hart averages 3.5 ypc. And was still able to do that against the (then) #1 defense in the country.
4. Going back to point #1, 3rd and long is an obvious passing situation. You are more apt to blitz the qb with less regard to a rb.
Michigan also got away with forgoing the chance to kill the game off on its final offensive possession, mainly because Anthony Morelli is not a good quarterback and Penn State's offense is fairly easily defended.
I'm not sure "got away with" is the right way to describe it. I think the playcalling at the end of the game was in express recognition of the facts that 1) Morelli is not good, and 2) Penn State's offense was easily defended. Up to that point, Penn State hadn't scored a touchdown all game, and now they were going to go 80+ yards in 90 seconds with no timeouts? I'm usually very frustrated with Lloyd's playcalling (or DeBord's), but I thought they played it right in that situation. I think Lloyd has been burned enough over the last few years by teams like OSU to know that there are certain situations where it is imperative to try and get that last first down, but in this game, I didn't think it was at all necessary. Penn State's offense sucked, and our D had been very effective up to that point. I thought Lloyd played it right, Mallett's burgeoning awesomeness notwithstanding.
Commenting by HaloScan
