Comments on Maize and Blue Nation: Michigan Football Blog: Penn State Defense Controls Game From Beginning

Hey Aaron, thanks for taking the time to read the ...

2009-10-28T23:09:09.718-04:00

Hey Aaron, thanks for taking the time to read the site, glad you enjoy. Sorry to take so long to get back to you.

I agree with you that the physical ground game seems to quickly evaporate once we get down by more than 7 points. I'd love nothing more than to see Minor and Brown get more carries and for us to pound the ball between the tackles.

I think Rodriguez/McGee like to get the ball into the hands of big play makers as much as possible. If they call a few runs and they don't get much, the tendency is to put the ball in the air. I don't necessarily disagree with that policy...but lately, when the OL doesn't run block very well, they don't pass block much better.

The Penn State game was tough...maybe the best front 7 in the country. Hopefully the ground game gets back on track this week against a much weaker Illini defense.

Hey Brad, First off, love the blog. It's the first...

2009-10-26T15:27:13.743-04:00

Hey Brad, First off, love the blog. It's the first place I go to for info about the team. Thanks so much for doing it. Second off, I'm interested in reading what you think about the offensive game plan. I'm not sure that I agree with you that Minor, Brown, etc. were bottled up the whole game (after the first drive). Sure, PSU stuffed the run decently, but I think there were a lot of yards on the ground to be had if we had stuck with it. My main concern is that it seems like (and we saw this in the Iowa game too) the offense is too quick to go away from the run. We seem to get panicky too early when we fall behind. This leads to lots of drop back passing from Tate and even Denard, which is where they've both gotten into trouble in recent games with turnovers or third and longs that we don't end up converting. Do you agree?