Rex Hudler

QUOTE(whitesoxfan101 @ Oct 30, 2007 -> 12:23 AM) The biggest key for Michigan is they have been really smart in using zone and blitz schemes and avoiding dangerous man to man situations on defense. Their defense is still amazingly slow for a school that recruits that well, but Ron English is doing a great job hiding it. With that said, I think Ohio State will expose their defense big time. I've tried to explain this before. The defense is NOT slow. It plays slow sometimes when it is making the wrong decisions or playing tentatively in order to not get burned. Of course that is when they get burned. Getting burned does not make one slow. That said, their two linebackers aside from Crable, are not great playing the pass in zone coverage. Put a slot wide receiver against Chris Graham and yes you see slow. But aren't most LB's, especially ones whose strength is playing the run? Obi Ezeh has gotten more PT with the injury to John Thompson. Thompson is more like Graham, better against the run. Ezeh is quicker and more athletic, but still uncertain. He was a redshirt last year as a running back, so his switch to LB and immediate PT has increased the need for a fast learning curve. Morgan Trent, Donovan Warren and Brandon Harrison are fast by most any standards. Warren is a true frosh, Trent is still learning to play CB (2nd year after switching from WR) and Harrison has a tendency to run past plays. What this shows is a lack of depth that these guys are pressed into action. Warren will be a big-time player, however. At safety, Englemon is not as speedy as Stevie Brown, but more steady. Brown was over-running plays early in the year and getting burned. Taking a bad angle against a guy with speed will get you in trouble right away. Jamar Adams the other S is not slow, but not fast. He has typical safety speed. The others include Crable a very fast LB/DE hybrid and Brandon Graham, a quick DE. Terrance Taylor and Will Johnson aren't sprinters at DT and Tim Jamison is certainly respectable at DE. So Michigan's problems on D have been more due to inexperience, bad judgements and missed assignments more than a lack of speed. With Brandon Graham in the doughouse the first two games, Crable had to line up at DE, taking the fastest LB out of coverage against two spread offenses. Ezeh was hurt the first two games, so they were stuck using Graham and Thompson exclusively against Appy St and Oregon, not their strengths. Johnny Sears started at CB in the first two games and was promptly kicked off the team (pot??). The year certainly didn't start well on D which isn't good considering they lost five NFL players from last year's defense.

Forgive me for thinking the current status of "news" today blows. We don't really have news, we have rumors that spread at lightspeed. The 24-hour news cycle forces reporters to come up with stories and to jump on new information without much regard of its truth. Most people read a headline on the internet, hear something about it on tv and their friend talks about it and all of a sudden they are an expert on the situation, when in actuality they don't know s*** about it. You are right that is how things have changed, but I don't have to like it. Count me as one of those "let's get all the information from both sides before we overreact" kind of guys. I hate needless drama and the internet and the world as we know it today does nothing but create it. I guess I am just an old bastard at 39.

QUOTE(Texsox @ Oct 28, 2007 -> 07:01 PM) I must have missed the part about them not trying to contact AT&T. I must have missed the part where they tried! I guess I am the only one that sees things the right way. lol I can live with that. I just know that half the time, the customer's story is not accurate, so it seems to me to be poor journalism to take the story in that direction without trying to get the whole story. Either way, with or without the "TV announcement" this would have been a non-issue. That lady won't be writing a $300 check anytime soon.

QUOTE(Brian @ Oct 29, 2007 -> 09:56 PM) You and I are the only ones that realize this. Hopefully teams will keep thinking Appy St., Appy St. as we keep on beating them. Getting Henne and Hart back and then clicking on all cylinders will be the key. I still think they are a game away from doing so, but they are certainly peaking at the right time.

QUOTE(RockRaines @ Oct 29, 2007 -> 04:27 PM) Absolutely too high in the polls for them to be. Check out their computer rankings vs some of the people they are above. They shouldnt have cracked the top 15 Why is that too high? Other teams have been losing left and right. Michigan has won seven in a row. I don't see how you can just eliminate Michigan solely because of their start. USC lost in a game where they were favored by more than 40 points, the largest such spread in college football history, yet they only fall a few places. Michigan is far from the team that started this season. I know they have no chance at a National Championship, but a Big Ten Championship is a real possibility and they could end up in the Top 5 when all is said and done. One week at a time, but its possible when they start clicking on all cylinders and have a healthy Henne and Hart.

QUOTE(Texsox @ Oct 28, 2007 -> 08:40 AM) I have a cable box, and a "modem" for my cable internet/phone/tv. There are deposits on them. At what point do these customer service problems become news? When a lawsuit is filed? When someone is hurt physically? The only problem I see is we have not heard from AT&T. They become news when it is actually news. Again, we have comments from someone extremely distressed and no attempt to contact the company to get their side of the story. Bad Journalism 101 I'm not trying to say the CSR wasn't a complete idiot and it did not go exactly as was reported. While I doubt it did, it may have and that isn't even the point. This is something that shouldn't even been worried about until later. No bill has actually been generated at that point. And there is no actual place to send it to. This is a situation that will get cleared up easily at an appropriate time. One can contest a bill if it even gets to that point, which I doubt it will. If it doesn't get cleared up easily and they have to fight AT&T about it THEN it becomes newsworthy. It will become newsworthy because many people will be fighting the same battle. Do you really think that will happen? I seriously doubt it. This is all just so stupid. They should have been worried about a hell of a lot more than a cable/satellite receiver and the journalist should have been focused on many other things when staring at a completely burned down house.

Especially since there are no satellite dishes with a cable company! I still stand my ground that this is not a topic for the news. This is a simple customer service issue and might have already been resolved at AT&T for all we know. No reason to take a shot at a whole corporation for what some dumbass CSR supposedly said. Note they were taking the word of a distressed homeowner in a crisis. Their interpretation of the conversation may have been different than what happened or was intended. How many people do you know that completely freak out in stressful situations and end up overexaggerating everything? Not saying this is the case or the CSR didn't make a mistake. But to try and publicly fry a company without all the facts is poor journalism. Did they try and ask AT&T what their side was? Were there other reports of the same kind of treatment? No one knows. Today's media and the internet trains people today to overreact and to act without all the facts. It seems to have been built into our culture, but that doesn't make it right.

Sam has really struggled this year with injuries. He had an ankle problem in pre-season and made it worse in the first game. He sat out three games and then came back for three, but it is still not 100%. He sat out this week's game as well. Apparently all it needs is rest, but he is going to try and play through it when he can to help his team get to the playoffs. On top of that, he hurt one of his shoulders and that has been hampering him as well. It has not allowed him to be as physical when making contact and causes him to tend to turn his back to the defender at contact and keeps him from blocking effectively at all. Playing through all of that, he still has over 700 yards in just 4 games. You can still see the potential for him to do the things he did in his video, but he can't really cut or be as physical right now. None of the injuries are reported to have any long-term effects however. UM should have an interesting competition at RB next year, with Kevin Grady coming back (apparently he was running as good as he ever had in the spring before getting hurt) and both Brandon Minor and Carlos Brown stepping up this year. Add McGuffie and you have some nice depth.

QUOTE(Chisoxfn @ Oct 27, 2007 -> 06:59 PM) No recruit...I just hate the Hoosiers. I also hate the Illini, but I hate IU more. C'mon Jason, join us on the dark side. It's a ton of fun and we're gonna have a great year, whether everyone else wants to whine about some stupid 3-way calls or not. Go Hoosiers!!

I'm sorry, but this is stupid. This scenario is no different than most any of us have ever had with a cable or phone company. Yet we always seem to get it resolved. This is nothing more than one CSR who doesn't have a clue. I would venture to say that most of us have dealt with at least 5 of them in our lifetime that are the same. The lady will get this resolved and AT&T will apologize to her. To put it on TV like that is ridiculous. The last thing anyone needs to be thinking about at this time, including the people at the home is what bill AT&T is going to send them. In fact, why worry at all. Where in the hell are the going to send it to??? I'd call this poor journalism personally. With a tragedy like this, there should be a whole lot more important things to talk about on TV. To me this is a complete non-issue!!

QUOTE(RockRaines @ Oct 25, 2007 -> 04:17 PM) Thad is a recruiting machine. Also gets 3 star Cameron Wright. So far for 2010 he has 2 5's and a 3 star. Just keep reloading!!! Are you really that excited over 2010 verbals? I can't see being real happy about the whims of 16-yr olds.

QUOTE(Palehosefan @ Oct 26, 2007 -> 09:17 AM) I honestly think you could go 1a. UNC, 1b. Memphis, 1c. UCLA. All 3 have their reasoning and tournament success to back it up. UNC actually has the least amount of tourney success in the past 2 years of the group, and they were beat by final four George Mason and final four Georgetown. I'm really getting tired of George. You don't play George Washington, Georgia Tech, Georgia, Georgia State or Georgia Southern this year, do you?

QUOTE(RockRaines @ Oct 24, 2007 -> 09:48 AM) But thats been because they cant throw and have stressed the run. If you have this "great" runner that everyone talks about he should be able to run off of any formation and scheme. IMO Ill is too talented to run the option. I leave that to teams like the service academies and alot of high school teams that need to run those plays because they are inferior talent-wise. Like Florida? Nah, that wouldn't work in a big game............. ;-)

got it, thanks!

Okay, anybody want to help me learn how to embed a YouTube video??

QUOTE(IlliniKrush @ Oct 21, 2007 -> 11:32 PM) Anyways, doctor summed it up perferctly. Illinois didn't make enough plays (or made too many dumb ones) to beat a more talented Michigan team. We're one dimensional on offense and that doesn't look to be changing. McGee should play every snap, just my opinion. We have zero passing game with Juice, none. And Locksley calls plays based on the fact that he can't throw a 15 yard pass, ever. OSU will beat us up pretty well, but we should be able to win the other 3 games. Don't get me wrong, this isn't a bad football team, but if we had an average big ten qb, this team would be up another level. This game isn't that disappointing because most of the wind was taken out of our sails with the Iowa game. That's the game you shouldn't have lost, this one I knew we could win but didn't think or expect to win. An 8-4 year with a bowl game would look pretty nice, hopefully we can get there. Krush, glad you weren't the idiot with the stupid hat. I figured you for more class than that, even if wasted. Not sure if you watched the game on TV, but the reason they said Williams is still the QB instead of McGhee is that Williams runs the spread option much better. They said McGhee, while a better thrower and faster runner, doesn't execute the option like they want him to. I'd guess as that improves his chances of taking over full time will skyrocket.

I can't say specifically what if anything Nieves had to do with Jenks and his curveball. But considering Jenkins always had problems with control, it would not be out of the realm of possibility that Nieves helped him locate it better to make it an effective pitch and gave him the confidence to not stress of he bounced one or two. Those are common issues with young pitchers who have big breaking balls. There is very little margin between bouncing one in the dirt and hanging one. So it is possible that Nieves could have helped him with the pitch, yet did not show him how to throw it. So lots not get too tangled over words, shall we?

Hey honey, I promise to marry you unless a better looking girl shows interest in me. But until that happens, I'm yours. Some commitment!

QUOTE(Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 21, 2007 -> 03:18 PM) Ugh, upsetting night last night. Illinois lost the game more than Michigan won it - stupid penalties (and a few questionable calls IMO) and of course the unexcusable drop by Hudson on the punt. They also failed to get the ball to Mendenhall and Benn. Overall I thought the defense played really well - essentially limiting Michigan to only one, maybe two good drives the whole game. But really the game should have been put away before that. Up 14-3 the offense stalled (suprise). I think the Juice Williams experiment is over. Not only can he not pass to wide open recievers (save the TD pass), you can tell he doesn't know WR routes or defensive coverages. He's the Sexy Rexy of college football - if his first receiver isn't open he's screwed. Whats worse is that this lack of football IQ could be excusable because he is so young, but he's shown zero improvement over the course of the season. I think Zook needs to make a choice to stick with Juice for the rest of the year, regardless of the record, and see if he can improve going into next season, or you give the ball to McGee and see how much he can progress. For the season I'm still happy, but admittedly after the Wisky and Penn St games I thought Illinois had a chance to contend for the Big Ten title. It's pretty clear that the offense is not good enough. We'll win the next two games, lose at Ohio state, and then have a decent matchup with Northwestern. That'll put us at 8-4, or 7-5 at worst - considering we've won 4 games the last two years, I'd say that's a pretty succesfuly season. Hopefully Zook can bring in some more talent (defensive secondary and WR's for sure) and with another year of experience we can make some noise the next couple of years. Just out of curiosity, which calls did you think were questionable?

I'm not sure what makes you so sure Miles isn't a great coach. It sure as hell took a lot of stones to make that call at that point. Granted, it wasn't that risky of a call because there was time left if the pass was incomplete or if Flynn was sacked (although that would have made the FG tougher). The only real downside was an interception and the odds of that happening if you throw it deep to the end zone weren't great. An underthrown pass could have been disastrous, however. Maybe its just a matter of knowing your personnel and trusting them. I'd call that good coaching.

Good win by the Big Blue. Given everything they had to deal with in Hart and Henne, they played well. The defense stepped up big time and a great game plan without Mike Hart. This is finally the Michigan team we expected early in the year. I tried to tell folks it was coming.

Carlos Brown left, Carlos Brown left, Carlos Brown up the middle to finish it out

QUOTE(Brian @ Oct 20, 2007 -> 09:59 PM) It was wrong to blow a whistle by the refs at the time anyway. He never had the ball. Refs probably would of just called it inadvertent. exactly....... that wasn't going to undo the fumble recovery. Somebody just jumped the gun, assuming he was going to catch it

QUOTE(Buehrle>Wood @ Oct 20, 2007 -> 09:56 PM) There was a whistle before as Hudson touched it. He had a right to be mad but you have to hang on of course. The whistle was after (or perhaps simultaneous) he dropped it