My 2-Day Old Response

Tough to really put the Utah game into perspective in less than 24 hours since the end of the game...thus my absence from posting this weekend.

First of all, my feelings about what I saw, and thus what I've read since then have been pretty typical of what most other Michigan fans feel. It was not pretty. It was down right ugly.

Now, I won't go any further without at least giving Utah some credit. They are a good team. This blogger would not be surprised to see them win the MWC and knock off BYU. We knew Utah had a good defense. We also knew we didn't really have a good offense. I mean let's face it, when you have 1 returning OL starter, 2 QBs whom have never taken a snap in college, and freshman all around you...what do you expect?

I'll go ahead and give Rodriguez credit for getting these guys in at least good enough shape to lose by only 2. Part of me was pleasantly surprised to see how well the OL played. They had a few mistakes here and there, but for the most part...Sherridan and Threet had decent time to throw...at least on quick 3-step drops.

Now running the ball was a whole other story. We knew we had to run the ball to take pressure off the QBs and young WRs. We seemed to have pretty good depth at RB. I liked what I saw from McGuffie...if he can just improve his vision a little bit, he could be great. He's surely fast enough. Brown and Minor just look out of place on this offense. There's really no better way to put it. They have the size and build to be typical Big Ten backs...but we need more typical Big Ten linemen to block for them...and we just don't have that.

Now the defense is a better story. They played terrible in the 1st half...we all know that. And they played much better in the 2nd. I don't know what happened...but someone woke up the DL at halftime. They played and looked great in the second half. Utah's offense just looked awful. Once we got in our groove, all areas of the defense looked really good.

It's hard to believe that I am actually looking forward to this Miami game...just because of the defense.

Much more about this game and of-course the look-ahead to Miami will be forth coming this week.