What's Being Said: The Michigan State Fallout

Once again, M bloggers have taken to the streets. Brace for impact.

Maize & Brew
There are many reasons why the offense sputtered time and time again this Saturday. Michigan's interior offensive line is atrocious. Devin Gardner is prone to turnovers and has no run game to lean on when times get tough.

With all that said, Borges still needs to go. Michigan capitalized on an errant Connor Cook pass by coming out and running the ball, instantly putting itself in a hole and squandering any opportunity to score. Everyone in football knows what you do when you've got your opponent reeling: get freaking aggressive. Al Borges saw the eyes of Pat Narduzzi and became scared.

MVictors

The team played hard and the defense made hits.  All that will be remembered is that we couldn’t handle the heat and took a brutal beating.   Maybe it was the green uniforms against the field, but at times I swear there were a baker’s dozen Spartans in the box.  It felt like 4th and 48 more than the one time it was really 4th and 48.

Hoover Street Rag
The Borges-O-Meter is now broken.

MGoBlog
It takes a special kind of failure to achieve such lows: complete, utter failure from top to bottom. The gameplan from Al Borges lacked coherence, an issue that's plagued him during his entire tenure at Michigan. The play-action from under center isn't fooling anyone and still gets brought out several times a game, yet the shotgun runs somehow lack any sort of constraint or misdirection. A piecemeal offense isn't going to beat MSU's defense.

Maize & Go Blue
What a strange, strange season it has been, from the elation of the Notre Dame win to the depression of the Akron, UConn, and Penn State performances to the record-breaking thrill of Indiana to the embarrassment in East Lansing. With Nebraska, Northwestern, Iowa and Ohio State remaining, the ups and downs are likely to continue the next four weeks. And with no shot at Hoke’s stated goal – to win the conference – we resort to playing spoiler, especially when Nov. 30 rolls around.

Touch the Banner
What does this mean for the rest of this year? Well, this is the best defense Michigan will play all year, so at least that's out of the way. No other team is going to hold Michigan to single digits unless Gardner gets injured. Each of the next three games is winnable - though challenging - but I'm chalking up Ohio State as a loss already unless something happens to Braxton Miller and  Kenny Guyton in the meantime. It appears 9-3 is a best case scenario at this point.

UMGoBlue

M’s coaches have much work to do. And a little soul searching ought to go with it, as they, team and coaches, have not been able to match their often proclaimed goal of being a physically dominating football team this season, to be a team which can run the football, and utilize the pro set to advantage. They simply have not met those goals. The offense is not improving and the pass defense remains problematic.
Tough loses engender team dissension. The Captains will have to cut that kind of stuff off at the pass. Last Saturday’s game measured the Wolverine’s physical toughness. Next Saturday’s will measure their mental state as well.