We want to thank Underground Printing for starting this and making it possible—stop by and pick up some gear, check them out at ugpmichiganapparel.com, or check out our selection of shirts on the MGoBlogStore.com. And let’s not forget our associate sponsors: Peak Wealth Management, Matt Demorest - Realtor and Lender, Champions Circle, Human Element, Ann Arbor Elder Law, Michigan Law Grad, Venue by 4M, Winewood Organics, Sharon's Heating & Air Conditioning, Royal Oath Insurance Group, Community Pest Solutions, Autograph: Fandom Rewarded, who just launched an app where you earn rewards for things like reading MGoBlog and listening to our podcast, and SignalWire where we are recording this.

Featured Musician: Magic Toaster

THE VIDEO:

[After THE JUMP: Things said.]

---------------------

starts at the top

High-five everybody! Is he the starter next year? What does it do for the class? Guessing this means Michigan gets Derek Meadows, who was a package deal, and keeps Olesh, and can finish strong. What to make of other flip possibilities, including an OT committed to Alabama? What happened to Jaylen Williams?

starts at 24:19 (offense) and 35:38 (defense)

Offense isn't SO bad but still quite bad. Offensive line issues are not just injuries. Mirror Michigan in that they have similar weaknesses and an OC who doesn't really know what he's doing or how to evaluate what he has. Defensively well-coached guys but few dudes. One dude they do have is a cornerback who's playing hurt.

starts at 46:57

A glitchy shooting night and a lot of fouling in a low-care blowout, but we only care about the turnover rate. Well not ONLY: Vlad Goldin needs to stop and gather when he gets the ball low in transition. Defensively the starters are so much better than other lineups. Seeing good play from Pippen—has he earned a role?

Fort Myers: Virginia Tech is Not Good but also important to beat because South Carolina and Xavier would both be very good resume games we'd like to get to. Xavier is on par with Michigan; South Carolina looks like Wake and TCU.

As far as I can tell we're getting in on the ground floor of this local dude—and I have to know is that a sample from Chrono Trigger at the beginning of Blue Night Oberon, which is his latest single? Magic Taster calls his music "igneous rock recorded in my basement" but it's got deep prog and rock roots. The lyrics are accessible, smart, and funny. He came up on a playlist of Indie Ann Arbor music and I wrote the last couple of articles with him on in the background. I don't know any more about him but I'm featuring and finding out and giving you a selection of three different songs that show off his range. FWIW the third one—Saturday Nite—is the one that caught my ears.

Song choices:

• Blue Night Oberon
• Anything's Fine
• Saturday Nite

Also because Across 110th Street will get our Youtubes taken now now, the opener and outro:

• “The Employee is Not Afraid”—Bear vs. Shark
• “Ruska Vodka”—Motorboat

Things Discussed:

• Northwestern: Offensively they’re terrible, defensively they’re well-coached.
• QB is Davis Warren except they actually run with him.
• Michigan’s offense: coordinating has been the worst we’ve seen for decades. It’s not a quick fix or even a bye week thing: they don’t evaluate their players, their stuff doesn’t look like their other stuff, and they didn’t have a plan.
• Can they get a new OC installed by December 1st? Because I’d hate to go through a second straight portal season unable to answer “who’s going to be coaching me?”
• Craig: Women’s BB is *FUN*. They’re blowing teams out, they don’t turn it over, they play fast, and they’re the hardest working team in basketball.
• Men’s basketball: Not going to be top-50 in turnover rate but this will come down. They don’t have a single originator, but a lot of guys who can create a little.
• They also won’t be 350th in TO-rate; they’re still getting to know each other.
• The shots they do get up are super high-efficiency.
• Getting Vlad going:
• Nimari Burnett had to come to Michigan to become the perfect Alabama player

Things Discussed:

• Wake game: Brian thinks it counts as a road game for NET purposes so this will be a NET Tier 1 as long as Wake's in the top-75.
• A few moments of bad luck but the problem was Michigan's: they're not hitting the role man, way too much usage on Cason way too little on Goldin. Goldin himself has to be assertive. As a team they shied away from the rim when they saw length but the plays were there.
• Things working: Sam Walters looks like a real defender at the wing, which is a big development because you don't have to play Wolf at the four against teams with a lot of good scoring wings. Jones is everything we thought he was. Phat Phat is a defensive dude too.
• Playing games at LCA: Deacon-Wolverine Challenge? EMU game was a good atmosphere but if you're not playing them or Oakland what's the point? Seth: LCA is actually pretty terrible. They have great staff, but the design is 100% modern revenue-maximization and the cheap seats are extremely far away and extremely vertical.
• Hockey v Notre Dame: Not like most Michigan teams because the talent isn't there—Hage and maybe a couple of other guys are Power Play-worthy.
• CHL players now eligible, one CHL coach is mad about stuff, says people are gonna go play for Brandon Naurato.
• Hallum in a race for the puck: yay!
• Goalie plan? Friday/Saturday guys until you have to pick a guy. Stein's got a .934 save% right now so he's got the edge, but saw a couple of fantastic point blank stops from Korpi and you want to develop him.
• They're old (mostly juniors) so we might be pretty good. Craig uses the BGSU example. CHL route might be a way for Michigan to get talented and older.
• Football: Offense doesn't have their answers prepared, haven't figured out who their best players are—the Link thing, the Mullings thing.
• Think it's the end of the road for Kirk Campbell.
• Defensively they might be elite next year: Brandt came on, Benny is great, Guy is great, the linebackers might return? I doubt the NFL will let us keep Barham but Hausmann could use another year of weight training to see what he's going to be. Both had great games.
• Wink's getting a 'B'. No he's not Jesse Minter but Minter is going to be an NFL HC in a minute. Interception was a good gamble, and then Wink was ready when Indiana tried to test that behavior.
• IU was more the kind of offense this defense was designed to stop: Like Stroud teams they want to get 1-on-1 deep matchups. Quick-passing teams beat Wink shit, screen teams exploit our tackling issues.
• Paige's tackling issues are manifest.
• Secondary: They're playing Berry at CB and Paige at nickel but they have some young safeties so it's working as long as Berry can hack it. He had a good game: TD was a perfect throw.

1 Hour and 12 Minutes

With David Nasternak and Alex Drain

This Podcast Has a Sponsor: Michigan Law Grad Jonathan Paul is the guy with the C you want skating next to the ref and pleading your case. He's also a good guy to sit next to at the hockey games.

• Opener
• A Tight Start
• Domination, But Goal for Each
• 5x3 missed chance, but OT Finisher

• Goal Count
• Weekend Takeaways
• Old Friends and the League
• Looking Ahead a Couple Weeks

MUSIC

• NHL on ESPN Theme
• "Nancy Whiskey" -- The Town Pants
• Ice Hockey (NES) theme

1 hour and 39 minutes

The Sponsors

Thank you to Underground Printing for making this all possible. Rishi and Ryan have been our biggest supporters from the beginning. Check out their wide selection of officially licensed Michigan fan gear at their 3 store locations in Ann Arbor or learn about their custom apparel business at undergroundshirts.com. Our associate sponsors are: Peak Wealth Management, Matt Demorest - Realtor and Lender, Ann Arbor Elder Law, Michigan Law Grad, Human Element, Sharon's Heating & Air Conditioning, The Sklars Brothers, the Autograph: Fandom Rewarded app, Champions Circle, Winewood Organics, Community Pest Solutions, and Venue by 4M where we recorded this.

Starts at 1:00

When the head coach makes a completely obvious bad decision about something, that's when your patience gets especially broken. Let's talk bout Sherrone's game management. Sorry to Drake Johnson for catching strays in this segment. If he has the best players, would he even realize it? Why is Ben Hall coming in over Kalel Mullings? Davis Warren is just not good enough, he missed too many passes that should've been routine. All problems at some point go back to the offensive line. Kirk Campbell seemed to have a good gameplan for Michigan State but this was bad. How would you compare this to the Threet/Sheridan offense? Kalel Mullings' flea flickers are beautiful.

Starts at 26:05

Defense completely dominated the 2nd half at least. They didn't give up 8 yards on the first play of a two-minute drill! Indiana turtled at the end of the first half and it almost cost them the game. Shout out to Zeke Berry for having a great game. Michigan ran blitzes but they weren't six man blitzes. Cam Brandt looked like Taco Charlton for a moment there! Michigan is in a reasonably good spot for next year's defensive line. Hillman came back from the dead on a MISSION. It gets Italian for a second. Indiana's punt return was a Jabrillian return. Special Teams have done worse than regress, they've become disorganized.

Starts at 49:39

Takes hotter than the flu fever that struck CJ Stroud in the 2nd half of the Lions game. Statwise, it was a very even game between Michigan and Wake Forest. Michigan is a team of passers without a total dude and they're still getting used to each other. Goldin was underused in this game and is getting shots that are outside of his game. It's a competitive loss against a good team at the start of the season so no need to panic.

Starts at 1:14:03 UCLA 20, Iowa 17 UCLA ran the ball, Iowa did not! Iowa is down to their 3rd QB since Cade has a concussion. There are six total turnovers in this game. Suddenly UCLA is eyeing down a bowl game!

Rutgers 26, Minnesota 19 Rutgers gets a safety. Greg Schiano has one of the most egregious uses of the word "literally". The Rutgers train horn grinds Seth's gears.

Oregon 39, Maryland 18 Oregon with only 363 total yards of offense. The ducks killed the clock with a 3(!) minute drive.

Penn State 35, Washington 6 This might mean something for Penn State because they completely dominated an offense that has been at least decent all year. Where was this Penn State offensive gameplan against Ohio State?? Washington kicked back-to-back sad field goals in the redzone.

Ohio State 45, Purdue 0 Nothing to see here. The Michigan Indiana game did raise some red flags for the Indiana Ohio State game.

MUSIC:

• "Cruel To Be Kind"-- Nick Lowe
• "Favourite" -- Fountains DC
• "We Gonna Make It" -- Jadakiss
• “Across 110th Street”—JJ Johnson and his Orchestra

Things Discussed:

• Keep Bryce Home tailgate tomorrow at Belleville. Also Keep Avery Home as Groves faces Seaholm in the playoffs tomorrow.
• Oregon: Figured they'd get slaughtered when Jyaire was out but!!!
• Offense: Took awhile to learn not to run outside against the outside team. Mistakes are less important when you're a good team.
• Warren looked plausible in the 2nd half but you can tell they don't expect him to make 5 yards when they need him.
• Defense: Took them a half to realize they have to lean on their front four and spend a guy helping their CBs—they mostly helped Zeke so Hall got exposed. Uncomfortable for Wink to play the way this team was designed, also only works when you have your starters.
• Should they be more of a pass team? Craig: yes. Seth: play-action off what you do. Brian/Seth: They don't have constraints to stop teams from overplaying their runs.
• They have plays but they're one-offs. Used the example of the Orji at WR play where it shows they understand how the Lanning defensive checks work, and it gets them a 3rd & 5 on a screen. But there's nothing else off of that.
• Split zone should be their bread and butter,
• Indiana: They've had an easy schedule, they give up points, kind of built like Oregon in that they have two good tackles, a good QB and RB, may be a little soft on the interior. Defensively they imported Cignetti's JMU roster; CJ West at nose is a big pickup. They cascade. Stay disciplined and focus on your bread and butter, because the game runs away. Worried that IU is the kind of team that will really expose our coordinators' weaknesses.
• Officiating: It should be a guy with a DVR talking into the referee's earpiece.
• Basketball! The best opener you can ask for. Cleveland State was a good program but they had a lot of transfers and were discombobulated: throwing the ball out of bounds, missing threes. Still an awesome performance, especially from Danny Wolf. They were getting after it on D, playing upbeat.
• Used to be frustrated by Izzo teams that run out after you score, and Michigan was doing a lot of that.
• LJ Cason is a find! How was this a 3-star? He gets after it on defense, has length, is impossible to keep out of the lane.
• Roddy Gayle is faster than we realized, maybe smaller than we realized which could scare away the NBA an extra year.
• Tre Donaldson had a great game: zero turnovers as the primary initiator, 7 assists, looked like a real PG.
• Goldin: Not the best game, not reading much into it.
• Wake preview: Mostly road (Greensboro) against some names you'll remember from Michigan recruiting: Hunter Sallis the scoring guard, and center Efton Reid, both who came from Gonzaga last year to key a bubble team. Return 4/6 of their main rotation but struggled to score vs the team that was #360 in Kenpom.