Tuesday, November 22, 2016

Michigan Tuesday: A Free Playoff Game

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Bryan Fuller - Mgoblog

I just love the above photo.   For those that watched the game on TV, wasn't it strange to watch a game without snow right after the Michigan game?   The clear HD hurt your eyes after watching the snow of the 4th quarter.

The College Football Playoff System gets a freebie on Saturday as #2 Ohio State host #3 Michigan.    Which is a huge help to the committee.   What they will have to decide is what to do with OSU if they beat the Wolverines, as OSU is probably not headed to the Big Ten Championship game.   Let's hope the Wolverines make the decision easy for the committee and beat the Buckeyes this weekend.   If it does end up a Penn State vs. Wisconsin Big Ten Championship, I think Wisconsin will win.   I would have bet a million dollars that Penn State had zero shot of making the CFP after that performance in Ann Arbor.  This is a crazy sport.

The QB Question

Michigan can't seem to have a healthy QB for the biggest rivalry in college football.  Brian at Mgoblog jogged my memory on how the Wolverines have had QB issues in this game.   Chad Henne couldn't throw his senior year against OSU, Denard was a RB his senior year because he couldn't throw and Devin Gardner broke his foot one year during the game.   Last year Jake Rudock was healthy but as a rent a QB, clearly wasn't invested like other program QB's would be.

So now Michigan has two choices:

1) Maybe Wilton is healthy enough to play on Saturday but he is clearly injured and coming off his worst performance as a starter. 

2) John O'Korn who has played one full game as a Wolverine starter and passed for 59 yards.    That type of performance won't beat the Buckeyes in the C-Bus. 


OSU and JT Barrett have similar concerns.  MSU beat OSU last year with two back up QB's in C-Bus.  JT didn't look very sharp last week in the cold in East Lansing.   JT seems to struggle in cold weather and tends not to be very accurate with his throws.   Both Michigan QB's also have similar issues, Wilton struggled in the cold at Iowa and O'Korn struggled in the wind and cold on Saturday.   O'Korn is from Florida and played most of his starter snaps in Houston.   I doubt he has played in too many snow games before this past Saturday.

Saturday is supposed to be chilly but no Snow or Rain really in the forecast.

  • Michigan Basketball is now ranked #25



2 comments:

Scott K said...

I hope that Smith's effort last week is the inspiration for Peppers, Darboh, Lewis, Chesson, Butt, Wormley, Charlton, etc etc etc.... If the rest of our Srs (or those underclassmen likely in their final season wearing Maize n Blue) can give the effort that Smith did.... we move on to Indy. Regardless of who starts under center, we can expect it's not going to be our strength. Either Wilt less than 100%, or O'Korn anything less than 90% better than last week isn't going to win the game. We are going to need a special teams score or a defensive score to help out our offense. Jabrill, time to make your heisman statement!

Go Blue!

Unknown said...

Rudock got injured in the game last year and had to come out of the game.