Patience

Another week, another loss. This makes 5 in a row and 7 total for this season. But this one signals the end of the longest consecutive bowl streak in the nation. Maybe we all somehow thought we could at least make it to a bowl this year, but no one...NO ONE saw a season like this coming.

It's funny because Purdue is a far lesser team than Michigan is. You can blame coaching or play calling or lack of execution or whatever for this loss, but the basic fact is: This team has forgotten how to win.

Let's face it, guys come to Michigan to be the best. To compete on the highest level. For probably every player on this team, this may be the first time any of them have had a losing record this far into a season...college or high school. It's a spiral effect that mentally kills you. You just find that you can't stop losing.

Is it bad coaching? Who's to know? I personally think it all stems from the idea that Rich Rodriguez wants to build his program and run his system...his way. And that means doing away with this idea that players are just entitled to winning. He wants to instill the idea that you have to earn what you achieve. It's not just inherited from years of success.

I'm not naive enough to believe that Michigan was going to be successful forever. I liked Lloyd Carr a lot as a man and a coach, but there was a sense that change was needed. We got lazy over time. Our players were good enough to execute basically the same offense that Bo started running in 1969. Of course it was a recipe that worked very well for Michigan for 39 years. It made Michigan great again. It put us back on the map, so to speak.

But the game has changed radically in just the past 10 years. 12 years ago when Joe Tiller brought the spread to the Big Ten, no one thought it would work. But if you tuned in last week, you saw Justin Siller run the spread better than almost anyone in the country, you know why Michigan has been struggling with Threet. Siller made Pryor look like a high school kid. He is a very talented QB. He's a perfect example of why the spread is so powerful...and I'm so happy that Michigan is adopting this offense.

I know it sucks, but this season is a wash. Boil it down to basically 2 more warm ups and our "bowl game" in Columbus in 3 weeks. It's all about the future now. And in case you don't believe me, why did we start running the 3-3-5 defense last week? That will be the defense that we will run for the rest of the time Rodriguez is head coach. He's running it now because he wants to get game day experience running it, and not just on a drawing board in the off-season. That right there is a prime example of how this season is a pure transitional year.

Cry all you want about Scott Shafer and how bad the defense looked. It doesn't matter. Games like this happen every once in a while. It turns into an offensive shootout. I'm just happy we scored 42 points! For the first time this year it was actually nice to see the offense on the field. Threet did enough to not screw up too bad, Minor looked good, the line looked good, and our receivers actually made some plays. And of course special teams looked awesome when Odoms ran back the punt return in the first quarter.

The point is, for the first time this year, we saw tangible improvement on the field. Not on defense of course, but we will. It will come. The bright spot is that we have so many freshman making improvement and turning into play makers. The negative is that we will have to replace our QB again next year with another freshman...but if Beaver or Forcier can be anything like Siller...we're in for quite a year next year.

Oh, and by the way...its 18 days and counting until tOSU.