Don’t believe everything you read.

Here’s one from Jamie Samuelson of The Detroit Free Press that puts the usual negative Free Press spin on a Michigan victory: It was quite a game, but it matters little for Rich Rodriguez’s fate. The Free Press is trying desperately to keep the “Fire Rich Rodriguez” campaign alive. Perhaps it sells newspapers, who knows? My question is when will The Free Press treat Mark Dantonio the same way as his handling of off the field incidents involving Michigan State players warrants some “Fire Mark Dantonio” talk.

Speaking of “Fire Mark Dantonio” talk, there were plenty of opportunities to voice an opinion:

MSU’s Chris L. Rucker reinstated to football team – Matt Charboneau passed up all opportunities to voice an opinion in this article but instead chose to quote Dantonio ad nauseum in an effort to give Dantonio plenty of opportunities to explain his decision.

Chris L. Rucker is traveling to Iowa; no word on playing time – Charboneau punts on this opportunity as well.

MSU’s Mark Dantonio: I don’t regret Chris L. Rucker decision – Charboneau again gives Dantonio plenty of newspaper real estate to explain himself.

Desperate for “Fire Rich Rodriguez” material, Drew Sharp attempts to elevate RichRod’s comments concerning Lombardi to the level of blasphemy: Rich Rodriguez’s excuses no joke to program. This is a perfect example of yellow journalism – taking a joke made by Rodriguez and making it into much more than it was ever intended but hey, the Free Press has to sell papers somehow.

Let’s see if Drew Sharp makes good on his promise in Rich Rodriguez must survive dark cloud hanging over Michigan where he indicates:

Rodriguez has no other alternative but to find some kind of competitive advantage from the increasing adversity. If he somehow wins seven games this season within a tumultuous climate of investigation, inconsistency and now injury, he should be the Big Ten’s coach of the year.
After 3-9 and 5-7 seasons, I honestly don’t see how anything short of pixie dust makes that possible.

Here’s more from Jamie Samuelson: Long way to go before Rich Rodriguez’s job is secure

MITCH ALBOM: Their Rich Rodriguez mess could one day be ours: Albom attempts to make Rodriguez seem like the bad guy in leaving West Virginia but Michigan was well aware of what had to happen to get Rodriguez.

Why didn’t Michigan back Rich Rodriguez’s decision on Demar Dorsey? – Drew Sharp attempts to insinuate dissension between Rodriguez and Michigan in this story: “The real issue is whether Dorsey’s status indicates a widening gulf between the administrative hierarchy and Rich Rodriguez.”

And here’s the famed Free Press “Investigation” that turned out to be false: Michigan football program broke rules, players say

“The players say they routinely are required to work out or practice many more hours throughout the year than the NCAA allows.” – In reality, almost all of the sixty odd extra hours were attributable to supervised stretching sessions designed to protect (and not harm) the health and safety of the football players. MICHAEL ROSENBERG AND MARK SNYDER should be fired for their shoddy and biased journalism.

Apparently Drew Sharp had the balls or just dumbassity to ask David Brandon if he was going to fire Rodriguez as a result of the NCAA’s final ruling on the stretch-gate matter. Here’s a link to Rodriguez’s reaction to Sharp.

Michigan’s stumbling win against Purdue should be another signal to end of Rich Rodriguez era – Brian VanOchten of the Grand Rapids Press tries to sell a few more papers by claiming that RichRod will be out because of an ugly win against Purdue. I guess he failed to notice the improvement of the defense.

By the way, Michigan is not going to fire Rodriguez after two seasons. They stuck it out with Amaker for 6 years. I think they are going to give Rodriguez a fair shake. I also agree with Colin Cowherd that Rodriguez will be Tressel’s worst nightmare. So Buckeye fans, enjoy the victories over Michigan while you can.

Back to the question at hand, has Rodriguez shown progress/improvement from year one to year two?

I think we can just compare Michigan’s performance against Ohio State in the last two seasons to begin to answer that question. It could be as simple as saying – 2008 – OSU 42 – Michigan 7 and 2009 OSU 21 – Michigan 10. But some might consider a loss as just a loss much as many consider a win as a win. Even more simply, however, Michigan had a chance to win in 2009 but through quarterback turnovers pretty much gave the game to Ohio State. Some might say that we should have won the 2009 game. We really didn’t have a chance to win in 2008.

Despite the turnovers, the offense actually moved the ball against Ohio State in 2009. This didn’t happen in 2008. I have to give some credit to OSU for stopping the run, but we were without our first and second string tailbacks, Brandon Minor and Carlos Brown. Also, despite the turnovers, Forcier is light years ahead of Nick Sheridan and Steven Threet. Sheridan and Threet were abysmal against Ohio State in 2008. It may have just been Sheridan in 2008 as Threet might have been injured for the OSU game. And in fairness to Rodriguez, Forcier is a true freshman and still has a ways to go in his development as a quarterback. While we are mentioning being fair to Rodriguez (which nobody seems to want to be), we did lose our starting center, David Molk, early in the year and then lost him again for the rest of the year during the game he came back. Despite the loss of Molk to injury, our offensive line has come a long way from 2008. I mean, c’mon, we were able to move the ball against the so-called best defense in the Big Ten with relative ease.

But for the Ohio State game, it would have been easy to argue that our defense has not made progress over 2008. We had let-downs against Penn State, Illinois, Purdue and Wisconsin with the losses against Illinois and Purdue being especially devastating. Again, we have to look at available personnel before we can put the blame on Rod. Our secondary was abysmal with Jordan Kovacs at free safety and Michael Williams at strong safety and Troy Woolfolk playing cornerback (this move necessitated by injury to J.T. Floyd and Boubacar Cissoko’s poor play). Michigan was able to return to its original lineup of Woolfolk playing centerfield and Kovacs at strong safety against Ohio State and it showed. Michigan only gave up one long td scoring drive to OSU. OSU’s other 14 points were a result of Forcier’s fumble in the end zone and a Forcier interception resulting in a short field for OSU’s offense.

So was there a lack of improvement in 2009? Michigan had a stretch of games that were very disappointing especially from a defensive standpoint but injuries definitely played a role in those losses (as well as lack of depth in general on defense). Overall, however, Michigan has come a long way from 2008′s 3-9 campaign. 2009′s record should have been better but I take hope from the mere fact that we had a chance to beat a decent OSU team and, in the end, beat ourselves more than OSU beat us.

Rich Rod on the zone read option. You can see why Forcier appears to be the headier quarterback than Pryor – he can make the quick decisions required by the zone read option.

As an OSU fan, I could not agree with him more.  Rodriguez has been an important pipeline of talent for OSU’s offensive line.  Justin Boren, a Michigan recruit, and a fellow who started on the offensive line for U of M as a true freshman (and playing well in the victory over Florida in 2007), left Big Blue last year and enrolled at OSU after he found Rich Rod’s coaching atmosphere to be less than family friendly when compared to Lllllloyd Carr’s.  We will need a guy with playing experience next year given the graduations on the OSU O Line this year, and thanks to Rich Rod, we will get one just in time.

Further, Rich Rod has shown an alarming (if you are a Michigan fan) grasp of the fundamentals of coaching.  Little things like not getting the plays in to the defense in the game against OSU were obvious even to the likes of Bob Griese, who commented on the fact that seniors on the Michigan defense were yelling at their coaches for not getting the play calls in.  As a coach, an argument can be made that you can’t improve the talent on a team that you have just taken over.  But you certainly can get your play calls in in time to have your players attempt to execute them. 

This may have been going on all year, but we would not have known it because the Michigan players were afraid of getting benched or kicked off the team if they expressed such outrage in earlier games.  But this being the last game that these seniors would ever play for Michigan (there being no bowl game in sight for teams with 9 losses), they likely felt free to exercise their rights to free speech.

So I say keep paying the man for the product he has put out.  I say keep doing it for at least 11 years, or at least however long John Cooper was at OSU.  Go Blue is right on this one.

Rich Rodriguez post game press conference – Toledo

Perhaps Rich Rod will have former Michigan Coach Gary Moeller’s empathy for such situations (Moeller having been there himself). 

The point is that these guys are kids in college and they make mistakes just like we did.  We just didn’t have cameras following us around all the time. 

Nor really good looking chicks either, come to think of it.  Actually, since there are no really good looking chicks at Michigan, Grady didn’t have that.  Just cameras.

ikoni