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**Jeff Buchanan** · November 19, 2017, 05:35 PM

Better yet, with Jim Mora's firing, Jedd Fisch may be available too. Right now, he's been named interim. He very well may land as UCLA's HC. He's got the pedigree. But JH ought to be working the phones to get him back in the fold. I could see Fish as OC and QBs coach (one guy doing this not the apparently ineffective play calling by committee), Drevno or Frey as OL coach (one not both - I'd go with Frey), find a WRs and RB's coach send Hamilton back to the NFL and do something with Jay .... I really don't know what though.

**Rocky Bleier** · November 20, 2017, 09:05 AM

I have a job for Jay. Do you remember the movie No Time for Sergeants? Andy Griffith was in the army, and he was made a PLO - Permanent Latrine Orderly. Jay could be the PLO of Schembechler Hall.

**hack** · November 20, 2017, 11:14 AM

It's an awful stretch here, but the RBs are improved and Jay is the RBs coach. Causation/correlation and all that, of course.

I wouldn't be pining after Fisch. The offense wasn't that much better last year. Feasted on cupcakes and struggled against good teams.

**Jeff Buchanan** · November 20, 2017, 11:33 AM

Jedd Fisch was responsible for Speight's and more supportive of working to get him back to M, he got Jake Ruddock to the NFL.

I'd give him less than 5% chance of returning to M. Just a useless thought of mine because I'm frustrated over OL play........ and I think this is due to a combination of factors involving Pep Hamilton, Drevno and probably Frey although I think he was brought in to teach zone blocking stuff so, IDK.

How the hell the OL and FBs/RBs and passing coordinator can be jointly responsible for losing two QBs in a season due to sacks is just beyond frustrating.

This team was about to make a statement with Peters - the game plan was good, the execution was decent, M was in control, on the road, in a very tough venue v. a #5 ranked and undefeated team with the best D in the nation. WTF?

So, M is ahead by 3 mid 3rd and Kinnel gets a ticky tack PI on a 2nd and long that extends Wisky's drive and then Hornibrook connects on a big play (JKP got burned), and scores from the 19 on, for Cryst, what amounted to a well executed trick play that the M D blew coverage on.

IOW, 2 key plays on that drive that put Wisky on top by 4. The next M possession, Peters get knocked out and leaves the game. Can anything more random happen to M on the cusp of a statement game that would have been JH's first Signature win of his tenure at M?

How frustrated must he, the coaching staff and the players be today? I'm not sure steeling the spine is going to happen.

**hack** · November 20, 2017, 11:55 AM

Well, you can't make a statement if you're just categorically unable to protect your QB from unchecked rushers. Great that they've improved the run blocking, sure, but chrissakes already. So I don't think it was random. It's been a glaring weakness the whole year. Otherwise I tend to agree with you. Michigan was better for most of the day. Isn't the first time. Was better for most of the day last year in Columbus too.

**Rocky Bleier** · November 20, 2017, 01:24 PM

Don't want Fisch to come back. He's looking for a job as a head coach. We'd be a stop gap again.

RBs have improved? I think the O-line is doing a better job with run blocking. RBs are terrible at pass protection.

***JD*** · November 21, 2017, 11:23 AM

Mike Hart?

**Rocky Bleier** · November 21, 2017, 03:50 PM

I'm referring to the current group of RBs. I'm also implying that Jay Harbaugh has not helped them to improve in this area. Wheatley was a huge loss as a coach and a recruiter.

**hack** · November 21, 2017, 04:44 PM

I don't understand the basis for that comment. The RBs are better this year. Which probably has nothing to do with either of them, frankly, but that just seems an assertion difficult to support.

**edindetroit** · November 21, 2017, 04:51 PM

Michigan football 'working on lifetime contract' with Jim HARBAUGH!!!, Brady Quinn says

https://www.clickondetroit.com/all-a...ys#/questions/

**froot loops** · November 21, 2017, 07:02 PM

Is Sunil Gulati a regent?

**Jeff Buchanan** · November 21, 2017, 09:00 PM

Heh.......

No, he'd have been outta before he did the kind of damage he did to US soccer.

**Rocky Bleier** · November 22, 2017, 03:55 PM

Originally posted by hack View Post

I don't understand the basis for that comment. The RBs are better this year. Which probably has nothing to do with either of them, frankly, but that just seems an assertion difficult to support.

Better how? Surely, you can't mean their blocking/blitz pickup performance. That certainly is a function of coaching. I think Higdon's vision has improved. Evans has had a little more room to operate against Minnesota, Rutgers, etc. Isaac looks the same. Support your assertion that they're better this year.

**Jeff Buchanan** · November 23, 2017, 08:15 AM

With few exceptions, the group of regular posters here are pretty rational about Michigan football losses and wins ....... not overly enthusiastic nor, after a loss, overly despondent. Still we have our outliers and I enjoy there contributions.

But college football fans, generally, aren't rational beings. Looking around the web this is especially true of Michigan football fans. I started reading these articles a couple of weeks ago to assign, in my own mind, some objectivity to the psychology of Michigan football fan's. I was hoping this might explain why early season expectations of 8-4 climbs to 10-2 and subsequently becomes the bar, for M fans, that defines a successful versus an unsuccessful season. The author of the piece linked below has some useful introductory comments about how and why that happened.

Fan Satisfaction Index: Wisconsin Results | mgoblog

http://mgoblog.com/diaries/fan-satisfaction-index-wisconsin-results

That sucked. It started as a hard-hitting Big Ten rock fight with Michigan giving Wisconsin all it could handle. Then it dissolved into another miserable and hard to watch affair as Peters went down with a concussion and the team lost its mojo. On paper Michigan did pretty well; Peters had his most promising outing despite a couple of mistakes and the defense kept Wisconsin’s high-powered tailback in check for most of the game. Heck, with a couple of breaks (thanks replay guys!) the outcome could have been very different. But things went the way they did and from a fan’s perspective it mostly just sucked. This week’s game satisfaction clocked in at a whopping 28.8, down almost 50 points from the past three weeks, slotting in just ahead of the Penn State debacle. Figure 1. Wisconsin Game Satisfaction Unsurprisingly, season satisfaction also took a nosedive, dipping to 36.3 after camping out near 70 the past two weeks. At this point most fans seem to be grappling with the cold hard truth that Michigan is likely to end the season 8-4 and without any quality wins (in fact, without a win over a team with a winning record). Figure 2. Season Satisfaction after Maryland This brings up an interesting point about fan psychology. Before the season started a lot of analysts, including our own Ecky Pting, predicted Michigan would go 8-4 this year and would have trouble doing better than 9-3. Michigan was rebuilding on both sides of the ball, had tough games on the road against Penn State and Wisconsin, and beating Ohio State is always a challenge. In theory, then, fans should be relatively sanguine about going 8-4. Most fans, of course, are decidedly not sanguine about it. Many of them are losing their shit. The threads and comments this past week have been a mess. There are many reasons for this psychosis. The most basic reason is that fans are not rational. Emotions don’t obey the laws of analysis and logic. Just look at Michigan Twitter during a loss if you doubt that statement. Feeling better than warranted after crappy wins and worse than warranted after tough losses on the road to the #5 team in the nation is just what it means to be a fan. Somewhat more specifically, though, I think fans have problems setting expectations. They look at the fancy stats analysis that provides a rational and compelling case for an 8-4 prediction and then they immediately imagine all the ways in which Michigan could beat the prediction. Speight will be better than last year; the receivers are young but more talented; MSU will suck because they lost all those guys; we play OSU at home this year, etc. Pretty soon the fan is screwed because 10-2, not 8-4, has now become his or her emotional baseline for success. I know this because I am one of these people. I can know in my head that 8-4 is a sign of progress, but my heart will still bleed at the failure to go 10-2 (or better, really). Themes, Thoughts, Trends I Am Too Rational! Okay, fine. Figure 3 provides some evidence that fans aren’t entirely irrational. The correlation between scoring margin and game satisfaction is quite high. We can explain 78% of variation in game satisfaction with just the margin of victory (or loss). In my regular season wrap up column I will use my somewhat more complete model to simulate game and season satisfaction scores for each of the other Big Ten teams – I have already done several of them and the variations are very interesting. Figure 3 Scoring Margin and Game Satisfaction The Road Ahead Well, we’ve reached the end of the line. It’s the last chance for Harbaugh and the guys to pull our season satisfaction numbers out of the toilet. A win sends Michigan fandom into bowl season with confidence and boundless optimism about next year. A loss, especially a crushing loss, well, the less said about that the better. Go Blue. Figure 4 Season Trends

**iam416** · November 23, 2017, 08:48 AM

Well, the Pied Piper -- Brian -- predicted 10-2 because that was the middle of where he was. He thought 8-4 was the absolute floor. He thought that M, going into the season, was the favorite to beat Florida win AT Wisconsin and win AT Penn State. He acknowledged that M would be a slight dog to OSU.

Now, of course, he's banging on people because 8-4 "was to be expected." Everything is right on track. It's semi-farcical if anyone actually pays attention.

IMO, he's right in his more realistic assessments of the team. But, he was just plain wrong on the season prediction.

So, I find it humorous that the Pied Piper wonders why his followers thought that M would be really good this year.

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