I've been extremely critical of Brady Hoke because of his overt dissing of Notre Dame, but anyone who's followed college football for several years knows that he's not a bad coach by any means. For example, he's now got Alabama's former offensive coordinator on his staff, and his dc has tons of experience. He seemed to have addressed the shortcomings. He has Devin Gardner, a QB who has the NFL scouts salivating (whether for WR or whatever position), thanks to RichRod's recruiting -- and used him to trip up ND last year.
Then we look at the reality: The 2013 team had close calls against Akron and UConn, and went on to lose all but a couple of their last 8 games or so. The 2014 team is shut out against an ND team that dropped a lot of passes, the only shutout UM team in the 40+ times the schools have played.
Just like ND fans who endured Davie, Willingham, and Weis, UM fans are now in a surreal state of mind with Rich Rod and Hoke. They can only hope for one of 2 best-case scenarios: UM goes on a tear and pretty much wins out -- which is possible seeing the lack of B1G quality this year -- or the new hire at Head Coach proves to be one that can get the Wolverines up to speed in modern college FB.
Michigan has a lot of youth, but once Gardner is gone -- and likely Hoke along with him -- there's a big cloud of uncertainty beginning to form over Ann Arbor.
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