MichiganCardinal

Hockenson was injured his first year and TEs traditionally take one or two years to develop before contributing on a high level. We'll see what those rankings say five seasons post-draft, but I feel that comparing Hock to Tavai is pretty extreme. I think Hockenson will be a top-five TE in the league through the prime of his career, and I think he will be one of the few members of this present team still on the team when we do turn the corner. To back off my defense of Hockenson though, I agree with the consensus here that he was not worth the #8 pick in that draft, just as I don't think Okudah was worth the #3 pick in his draft (injuries or not). I'm not one to "Monday Morning Quarterback" NFL drafts, because it's very easy to cherry pick who you should have picked once you see NFL success, and much much harder to accurately predict which 21-24yo kids will rise and which will flame out once in the NFL. For instance, I think the goal posts shifting from "they should pick Tua" when they picked Okudah, to "they should have picked Herbert" when Tua has busted (so far) is indicative that being a GM is harder than it seems from the couch. Yet, neither a top-tier TE nor a top-tier CB made sense in the grand scheme of where either of those teams were, and did not set us up for success today.

The first four are all about common opponents and head-to-head comparisons that don't work in a three-way tie where they've all lost to each other. Michigan's non-divisional conference opponents are Wisconsin, Nebraska, and Northwestern, which are a combined 5-11. Michigan State's non-divisional conference opponents are Purdue, Nebraska, and Northwestern, which are a combined 5-11. Ohio State's non-divisional conference opponents are Minnesota, Purdue, and Nebraska, which are a combined 8-8. In such a scenario, Ohio State's victory over Minnesota would likely allow them to go to the B1G Championship game via tiebreaker #5, though that could still change in the coming weeks.

I think it's hard to compare him to Kelce or Waller, when teams are putting their #1 corner on Hock because he is all we have as a weapon. Kelce is going against linebackers while corners/deep help are focused on Hill; same to a lesser degree for Waller with Renfrow's help. The 2nd and 3rd string WRs on the Chiefs and Raiders are comparable if not outright better than whoever our top WR of the day is. We have Hock signed through 2023 with the 5th year option. He's due for a raise regardless of his draft position though because he's coming off a rookie contract. I don't think he deserves to be the top paid tight end in the league, though his agent may ask for it.

I think the Steelers game is also winnable. Lions are coming off an ass kicking and a bye week, Steelers have a short week after MNF and have not won a game this year by more than a possession.

I think at the end of the day, whether we finish 3-14 or 0-17, the regime will be given a couple of years. I just think it's hard to justify an 0-17 season to either the fans or free agents you are trying to court. Sure you inherited nothing, sure you are devoid of talent, sure you were a properly called delay of game penalty from a win, etc. etc.... But you couldn't muster one win in a 17-game season? Maybe I am making too much out of it, but I just think the mark of a winless season is a hard pill to swallow and recover from. If you hire a Hue Jackson (which I don't think Dan Campbell is), you need to be able to recognize it before he's 3-36-1.

That's fair - I'm distinguishing between the Ravens/Vikings games where they never gave in, and the Bengals/Eagles games where they were disinterested from the opening kickoff. I agree that Campbell hasn't been perfect, but I think his mistakes are not on par with those made by his predecessors in Detroit, and I think they are more aligned with being correctable in time than his predecessors as well. Or at the very least, he is deserving of more time than they were when they left.

The odds we lose the next nine games remains less than us finishing 1-16 or 2-15. Regardless of how poor we looked yesterday. Steelers, Bears, Vikings, and Falcons are all winnable games if the Lions team that went 60 minutes punch for punch returns instead of the team that rolls over and dies at the first sign of adversity.

Right now my concern (and I am sure their concern as well) is finding that win. 3-14, 2-15, even 1-16 (given the nature of the early losses to the Ravens and Vikings) is forgivable, and an acceptable start to the regime given how completely devoid of talent the roster is, combined with the injuries to their best players. 0-17 though is an absolute regime killer, right or wrong. It would just be so hard to come back from that. At the point we go 0-17, you have to consider replacing at least Campbell, whether the locker room wants to or not. Or at the very least keeping him on a short leash in year two if marked improvement is not seen with a second year of talent acquisition. I think there are still wins to be had on the schedule, but the team cannot come out dead every other game.

It feels weirder to ruin a Sunday by watching something you clearly don’t enjoy than to perform an unconventional function in a message board. I dunno, I’m not here to argue. A sport isn’t worth it. Just seems like if you don’t enjoy it, turn it off. YMMV.

Legitimate question. Why do you watch.

But Goff is a Libra! Doesn’t that negate coin toss losses? Matters just as much…..

Happy Halloween everyone. Going today as a ghost. Wearing a Don Muhlbach jersey.

Lot of reasons to think this could be MCDC’s first win. Eagles are depleted and ready to give up on their new head coach already. Their defense is trash and their offense is one-dimensional, especially without Miles Sanders. If the Lions can contain Hurts how they did Lamar and don’t come out disinterested like they did against the Bengals, this game _might_ not even be all that close. Ready to eat this post in a few hours. Lions: 27 Eagles: 16

The last time they bottomed out though they didn't fully clear house until after the 0-16 season. I think this is our 2-14 season and we should be looking for 4-8 wins next year.

I agree the first part of this. I don't think Goff is a QB who can be expected to make an offense good. He can work with good pieces and lead a team to wins, but if you ask him to try to be one of the top three players on offense, you will wind up 0-7 seven weeks into the season. Even with one of the top five QBs in the league I don't think this team posts a .500 record. That said, I don't think acquiring him was a mistake. Even without him included, the Rams offer was arguably better than any other. Two 1sts and a 3rd is hard to match on its own. I also don't think the FO has given up on him. I think it was already pretty well known the day he arrived that he likely wasn't the QB of the next decade in Detroit. It's perhaps fair to say that they could have hoped for better performance as a stopgap, but I don't think seven games in Holmes and Campbell are going frantic thinking about who will be under center in 22. If I had to bet who it would be right now, I would still say Goff. I don't the Lions are even close to desperation, or that they will approach it this offseason. Brad Holmes and Dan Campbell were given five- and six-year deals for a reason. They inherited a dumpster fire and are still working on extinguishing the flames and seeing if anything is salvageable. We will likely finish around 2-15 this year and enter 2022 hoping if things go our way to be flirting with .500. That will give us a pick in 2023 around 8-16, another with the Rams around 20-30, in position to move where needed to get the QB we want and plug him into an exciting situation. It won't be until 2023 or 2024 that we could see a desperate front office if we are still floundering without any sense of direction.

I think the Big 12 is worse top to bottom than the Pac 12. The Pac 12 is just more evenly distributed in talent level than any other conference, so they perpetually beat themselves out of contending for anything. But please, don't let that stop your U$C hate. I'm always here for it. 🍿

I had originally typed that hockey was never going to become the #3 sport in the US and then backtracked and put that it could have in its hay-day. I tend to agree with you, I think my hopes for the sport were more personal than practical, as I really don't like basketball much, particularly the NBA, and I think that playoff hockey is one of the best offerings of any sport. Hockey is working from behind as it is given that half the country can't easily access it, the half of the country that can is only able to easily access it 4-6 months of the year, and it's a sport of immense privilege given the exorbitant costs associated with playing even recreational hockey (let alone travel). My point is I don't think the NHL in the last 10-15 years has done enough (or much of anything) to broaden their horizons to kids and families that wouldn't otherwise blink twice about hockey. If I am a family in suburban Phoenix or Miami, what about the NHL makes me want to spend a couple hundred bucks after tickets, parking, and food to go to a Coyotes or Panthers game?

I think the work stoppage and the nonsensical decision around the same time for the NHL to not ensure the renewal of their contract with ESPN (in addition to the last 15 years of doubling down on this stupidity) all combined to set the sport back. When ESPN stopped caring about hockey (what little they did then), it caused the sport to stagnate. When they said “we want games on Versus instead of ESPN2”, they may as well have been saying they’re not even going to try to expand their fanbase. Back in the late 90s to early 00s, hockey had the opportunity to overtake basketball. Now I think it’s more likely for soccer to overtake hockey. The league may be expanding, but on the whole it’s not adding new viewers (or all that much money), just the same viewers in new areas. Hopefully that changes with the new ESPN contract.

I agree. I think if you asked the board preseason what our record would be if Goff was out for the year and Blough started every game (to emulate having a 25-32 QB rather than the 16-25 QB we expected), most would have probably said around 2-15... Under those conditions, 0-7 shouldn't be a surprise, and honestly that we would be 2-5 if not for two walk off field goals speaks volumes to the team coming ready to play.

Stanford had a few fun short response prompts too. One of them asked to name a historical event you would return to, one asked to describe yourself in five words, one asked what you did last summer, one just asked for favorite books and movies. Their big essay though is "what matters to you and why?"

As long as one isn't going to a school that is for-profit (think the schools whose students were bailed out of their loans by the Biden admin), you will receive a roughly equal quality of education across the board. With rare exception, it's not like the information being taught about subject matter is fundamentally different between a HYPSM and a "lower tier" state school. Depending on what someone is interested in, any number of schools may make sense for any number of reasons. If you want to do research, a HYPSM is going to have money they don't know what to do with to fund whatever your little heart desires. At the same time, if you have specific interests and those interests are to a 't' met by a professor at Eastern Michigan, that may make more sense for you. This is even before financial considerations. Stanford would not be worth a $50,000 price tag if one is offered a full-ride to Michigan. The ratings have more to do with donors and money (the first bucket I mentioned) than anything else. My own story is that I was very middle-of-the-road in high school. Finished with a 3.2 GPA or so. Went to Oakland Community College and figured out how to do life and school. One Biology course I can remember clearly, I got a D on the first exam and said to myself I was going to apply myself, go get it, and see what happened. Got no less than a 93 on a test the rest of that semester. I applied to transfer to Michigan after a few semesters and they rejected me, citing I didn't have enough credits to say I was the near 4.0 CC student and not the near 3.0 HS student. The following year, 40 more credits under the belt, I applied to ten schools with a 3.95 GPA: Michigan, Michigan State, Harvard, Penn, Vanderbilt, NYU, Columbia, Cornell, Brown, and Stanford. All rejected me except Michigan, MSU, and Stanford, and I decided to go west of the Mississippi River for the first time in my life as I drove out for orientation. I was in a cohort of 26 transfers that class. I wouldn't change anything, I had a great time and did pretty well for myself, graduating with a BA and a 3.88 GPA. But I also believe that a lot of the hype around undergraduate education at those top US schools is just lore and toxic comparison of self vs others than anything else. I don't think I'm any smarter (however you choose to define the word) or better prepared than my colleagues who went to Oakland University or Wayne State. Part of that certainly has to do with my field (majored in Psychology and work in child welfare - if I was a Computer Science guy it would be a different story), but overall, if I were speaking to someone who was making a decision on colleges (for undergrad), fit and comfortability is much more important than pretty arbitrary rankings. /soapbox

US News and World rankings are junk. Though I am intrigued by MSU's fall, they were around #50 ten years ago. Have to imagine it's related to the Nassar fallout. UM 16 MSU 14

I would hope they remember that MLB never truly bounced back from the work stoppage in 1994-95. Nor has the NHL from the work stoppage in 2004-2005.

Campbell was competitive in this game by continually making the risky move. I’m not sure what people expect out of this roster but the staff is making the most of it.

It's about two things - eligible receivers and blocking. Since linemen are ineligible receivers, you don't want teams sending their centers five yards down the field to just distract the DBs and LBs from their assignments. It also prevents a team from having linemen streak down the field at the snap to block for a single intended receiver. Otherwise teams could just design plays where they have their #1 wideout run a slant, catching a ball five or ten yards downfield surrounded by a convoy of three offensive linemen who are at that point going against DBs instead of guys their own size. Scoring would go way up if linemen were given free range. These reasons are also why IDF is only a penalty if the pass actually happens, and if the pass crosses the line of scrimmage. On a screen pass behind the LOS, linemen can go downfield.