Eddie McDoom (image via Twitter)
Let’s see more of this guy on offense . . . Eddie McDoom. I’m not calling for anyone to get benched here. I just really like what I’ve seen out of McDoom so far. He’s shown speed, agility, willingness to fight for extra yardage, an ability to catch the ball in traffic, etc. He needs to get in the weight room this off-season, but there’s a lot of potential here.
Hit the jump for the rest of this week’s awards.
Let’s see less of this guy on offense . . . Jake Butterfingers. Jake Butt ended up with 7 catches for 86 yards and 2 touchdowns, but his evil twin Jake Butterfingers dropped a couple passes that should have been completed.
Let’s see more of this guy on defense . . . Jourdan Lewis. Michigan needs him back soon, because the depth in the defensive backfield isn’t great. Michigan has three solid safeties and three solid corners, but with Lewis out, you’re down to one nickel package before things get questionable. Lewis sat out the Hawaii game with an injury and then sat out the UCF game with (depending on whom you believe) a different injury or a tweak of the same injury. The Wolverines are going to face tougher opponents, starting next week against Colorado. On a less important note, Lewis’s chances of being All-America or winning the Jim Thorpe Award are dwindling with every game he misses.
Let’s see less of this guy on defense . . . Jabrill Peppers, yet again. I’m guessing this is a moot point, because he seems to play almost every defensive down for two weeks now, and nobody’s coming to the rescue. Noah Furbush is out with a knee injury of some sort, and Brandon Watson is the primary backup, but he can’t do the linebacker things Peppers does. Especially when Peppers starts playing offense during the meat of the schedule, his role on defense needs to drop off some.
Play of the game . . . Wilton Speight’s 8-yard completion to Henry Poggi. It didn’t result in a score or even a big chunk of yardage, but I really liked this play by Speight. Inside the redzone, a blitzing safety wrapped up Speight in the backfield, spinning him to the ground. The 6’6″, 243 lb. Speight had the wherewithal to know his outlet was open in the left flat, and he was able to get it there with some accuracy. Meanwhile, former defensive lineman Poggi showed soft hands on a high throw, ran over the first defender to show, and kept his feet moving for a nice 8-yard gain. It was a solid play all around (well, except for the offensive line) and showed some heady play by the first-year starting quarterback. (Honorable mention play of the game goes to UCF’s 5’8″, 155 lb. backup running back Adrian Killins, who broke off an 87-yard touchdown run. He’s a high school track star who ran a 10.3 in the 100 meters, but he’s got some lateral quickness to him, too. I’m embedding a few high school highlights below just for fun.)
MVP of the game . . . Wilton Speight. He finished the game 25/37 for 312 yards, 4 touchdowns, and 0 interceptions. Along with the play above, he showed some good patience and anticipation in waiting for routes to develop. He threw the ball away when necessary, and he didn’t make dangerous throws. I still think he has a tendency to check down too quickly, and that might hurt the team when Michigan needs big plays to win. But on the flip side, this is UCF so maybe he has that sense to know that he just needs to move the chains against UCF to win. We’ll see in the coming weeks if he has the chutzpah to make throws into tighter windows against Wisconsin, Penn State, etc.
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I’d like to see less of Jake Butterblocker. On Deveon Smith’s second nice run on the same drive that Harbaugh referenced in his press conference, the reason Smith had to work so hard was Butt’s pretty much complete whiff on a block which allowed his guy to penetrate the play three yards deep. Terrible
I though the play of the game was Pepper’s hit on Patti. Todd Frost should ask that kid if he thought UCF out hit Michigan.
I’d like to see less of Rashan Gary on defense. On one of the very few plays UCF made hay on, Gary clearly quit mid-stride on his pursuit. I’m giving the kid the benefit of the doubt and call it fatigue, which as we all know, “Makes liars of us all”, but it looked bad to me.
Having watched the game again, I think above all else that Frost brought this team in to hit and lose. He walked through the tunnel planning to be saying after the game “We out hit them” regardless of the score, having prepared his team all week to come in hitting. This was a springboard game in Frost’s mind. Because of the above, I can’t get too exercised over our inability to run the football. They knew they couldn’t win, and came in having determined to load it up the box and lose through the air.
I also think that this is a much better team than their 2015 record would indicate. UCF comes of of 9-4, 12-1 and I think 10-3 seasons coming into 2015. O’Leary quit both his AD job and his Coaching position before the middle of October. Something was going on there that was not a football issue. That team got caught in a mess not of it’s own making. There were quick, fast, nasty and talented players at every position on both sides of the ball and especially on defense. The only thing lacking on their defensive line was length. They sold out against the run and gave us the long ball if we could hit it. We hit it hard. Credit to us.
We covered like demons against a couple QB’s that can’t hit small windows and weren’t going to try. We need to get better about contain and will some obvious coaching opportunities having been presented in this game. All in all, I think this is a better win than we are getting credit for. Only time will tell.
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In retrospect, I believe it’s “cowards” and not “liars”.
Been paying to much attention to politics. Went straight to liars.
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As an aside, an edit process would be helpful here.
Just saying’.
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Still chasing …
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Lanky
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You’ll get there someday. Keep reaching for the stars…
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During the radio broadcast last Saturday, Dierdorf went on and on about how if a ball is on the hands of Jake Butt, he’ll catch it. “Incredibly soft hands.” Dierdorf said. Then, of course, Butt went on to drop several balls that were delivered to his hands.
Add to that Roanman’s observation about Butt’s blocking (or lack thereof).
I’m wondering if maybe — just maybe — Jake Butt has allowed a bit of his fame get to his head? The blocking responsibilities of a TE fading in his mind, and images of Butt-as-Gronkowski-the-receiving-TE flashing in my mind.
As others have said, I suspect Harbaugh’s behind-closed-doors demeanor with the team was a slightly different thing than his post-game press conference demeanor. I suspect the message was that there’s lots of football to be played, and no team should be taken lightly … every game bring your best.
I also wonder if there’s a bit of a “hangover” the second game of the non-conference season? The adrenaline of the first game is gone, the long season lies before the team, and the second game against a lesser non-conference team is a little less-than-enthusiastic. It seems across the college football landscape we saw cases where teams (Alabama, for instance) that should have made easy work of their opponent had to work a bit more than expected.
Apropos of nothing in this post … I’m starting to wonder if Houston is the real deal. Just two games in, but I’m wondering if Tom Herman has himself lightning in a bottle down there …
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I don’t know that Butt’s “fame” has gone to his head. He’s never been a great blocker. Better than Devin Funchess, but not great. I just don’t think he’s improved as much as one would hope. To me he still looks a bit willowy. He needs to get a little bit bigger in the lower half.
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I think this is a place where you can still blame Funk/Borges. They never developed any of their TEs as blockers, from Funchess to Williams to Butt. They were what they were as freshman. So, not only did those previous coaches fail to identify quality blockers but also failed to develop their skills.
Those guys are gone and Harbaugh/Drevno are here, but it takes most OL a at least a year to get their technique down and strength up. It’s going to take a TE even longer most times since their attentions are divided.
Asiasi and Wheatley are already better as blockers (it seems like anyway) than the guys recruited in the Hoke era. That’s mostly still just skill identification (recruiting) but it will end up even better with development.
I’ve blamed the OL for most of the offenses struggles since 2012, but the TEs have been a big part of it too.
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Speight to Poggi made me bust out laughing!
If you can’t enjoy your rookie QB on his way down throwing and completing a pass to his safety outlet a former DL current FB teammate you have never played football.
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Yep, that was a good one!
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I like the measured rationale for “lets see more of” and “lets see less of”. Given the faith Harbaugh has earned you might consider adding a qualifier to these posts about how you’re not saying a guy should be benched (unless you’re saying a guy should be benched explicitly).
Agree with all the takes above, except for on Jourdan. I love the depth we have in the secondary and I think him sitting is helping to develop it. The real bummer is that Long was out.
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Kind of awesome that we have so few things to grumble about through 2 games that we are picking at the limitations of our all-conference senior TE.
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Hey, it’s what we do! 🙂
It’s like a buddy of mine and me picking apart movies … even the very best movies … trying to identify the last n-th degree imperfection we can find. Our doing that doesn’t make the movie a bad movie, it just provides us fodder for discussion and argument.
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