UMFan83

4th loss in regulation in their last 6 I believe. I didn't expect this team to be this mediocre.

Agreed. Scoring has been an issue this year hasn't it? I miss Ladd and Versteeg. Kane and Toews too.

I can't let such an egregious Northwestern history error go uncorrected. Michigan was up 16-0 in that game and Northwestern scored 17 in the 4th quarter (TD, 2 point conversion, FG, FG, FG) thanks to a big 4th down catch by Musso to set up the infamous double game-winning FG by Gowins. A game that I, too, attended as a kid. Sorry, I was just going off memory. Anyways, I didn't completely drop Northwestern. They've remained my (clearly distant) 2nd favorite college football team.

I do actually think that someone at some point did because I'm not clever enough to think something like that up. I know that Ward, Taylor and Baston came in one year (while Jimmy King and Ray Jackson were still on the team) while Bullock and Traylor were the next year, so it can't be considered an incoming class of 5 players.

OK, I'm on board now. Totally sign him up for the Bears.

What the hell is this supposed to mean? It's not like one win against a contending team makes you Super Bowl contenders yourself. Remember when the Bears beat the Colts in 08 and the Steelers last year? You might win the division, but the fact is nobody in our division should be bragging at this point. GB is still a very flawed team. Saying a month ago that the Packers fans on this board are respectful is the biggest plate of crow I have ever eaten. I missed that post originally, was there some sort of context to that remark about the Bears? I dont understand why the Bears would be swallowing bile because the Jets lost to the Packers? I don't think any of the Bears fans on the board even care at this point. Edit: Oh it was chuckywang. Nevermind.

Sorry bout that. The good news is, that we are well on our way to being the next Notre Dame :). Despite my entire NSBB monkier being about being a UM Fan, I am a very fickle football fan that can't handle that the one team he is supposed to count on being good every year is a huge mess. I've always been a bigger UM Hoops fan anyways. Will always watch and follow football, but I became a Michigan fan more from guys like Traylor, Bullock, Ward, Taylor, Conlan, etc So you've got Charles Woodson making amazing plays, winning titles, and generally being dominant but what really drew you to Michigan were the middling basketball teams led by Tractor Traylor's fat ass? I can't explain it. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the 1997 National Title run. OK, this is what happened. This is how I became a Michigan sports fan. It doesn't exactly paint me in a good light as a Michigan fan. Until 1995, I never followed college sports at all. Then, being a 13 year old kid who loved his local sports teams, became enamoured with the 95 Northwestern Rose Bowl team. I mean how could you not like that story. The next year in 96, I followed Northwestern again to start the year. Midyear, my dad took a friend and I to the Michigan Northwestern game in 96. A year prior, my mom took my shopping at Woodfield and took me into champs sports and for some reason I picked out a Michigan jersey, because I thought the maize and blue colors were cool. I knew it was a Michigan jersey but I definitely didn't buy it because of that. The jersey was of #12 Mr. Scott Dreisbach. I didn't think much of it until the opportunity to goto the NW/UM game came up. At that point I thought "awesome I have a jersey for one of these teams, I'm gonna wear it to the game". So I wore it and celebrated proudly when Michigan stormed out to a 19-0 lead going into the 4th. Of course NW scored 20 in the 4th and won with a last second FG, but I didn't care. So my seeds for Michigan were planted. That year I decided to follow Michigan basketball too. And they started out great that year. They were even #4 in the nation at one point. But they started sucking, as the next fab 5 tended to do, and ended up blowing all chances of making the NCAA Tourney, unless they won their last game against inferior OSU. I was devistated when OSU went on a run late to take a 4-5 point lead with under a minute left. Upset, I gave up and went outside to my driveway hoop to pretend like I was leading a comeback. And while that was going on, they did comeback and win. They actually didn't make the Tourney that year, but I watched them all next year after the 97 Michigan football team did their thing. The 97 bball team won the inagural Big 10 tourney, had a 3 seed in the tourney, and I was officially hooked...completely unaware that their 2nd round flameout to UCLA that year would be their last appearance in the tourney for like 11 years. I don't know why I typed all that out but there it is. Edit: And screw you SSR, actually winning the NIT in 1996 was a huge part of why I became a Michigan fan. I was so upset they got snubbed to the big dance, I thought winning the NIT would show those assholes they made a mistake, as every single NIT winner has felt.

Sorry bout that. The good news is, that we are well on our way to being the next Notre Dame :). Despite my entire NSBB monkier being about being a UM Fan, I am a very fickle football fan that can't handle that the one team he is supposed to count on being good every year is a huge mess. I've always been a bigger UM Hoops fan anyways. Will always watch and follow football, but I became a Michigan fan more from guys like Traylor, Bullock, Ward, Taylor, Conlan, etc

u cannot be serious. I vote this the most bizarre story in NFL history.

Yup, and that win over Wisconsin 2 years ago was the flukiest fluke ever. Interestingly, Minnesota was actually halfway decent when we beat them. I'm starting to actually think that the Michigan team that went 3-9 and lost to Toledo, but beat #9 Wisconsin and a 7-2 Minnesota team on the road was actually the best of the RRod teams.

I think its more like at 1-3, it was worth risking putting up with his crap to desperately stay in contention. But at 2-5 its less worth it. Especially with Rice probably coming back eventually. That said, your point still stands considering they gave up a 4th for 4 weeks of him.

I see no value in just letting the season play out as is if you don't need to. If you can get him, I think you have to take the chance that you can make it work. I would prefer drama and a blowup to end the season than just finishing 7-9 again with no clear-cut vision of the future. If we stay the course, we probably finish 6-10 or 7-9 and Lovie is fired. If we sign Moss, we might go 8-8 or 9-7, barely miss out on the playoffs or make a WC spot and get throttled. Meanwhile, Lovie manages to stay on board because of his improvement. Can you really see signing Randy Moss ending up any better than that? I'm not sure how signing Randy Moss gives you a clear-cut vision for the future either. It's not like he's a long term fit at WR for us. He's never played anywhere where he hasn't been let go for .50 on the dollar due to the team being fed up with his antics, so even if we did sign him this year, and resign him for the next 2 years, there is no way you can plan on Randy Moss being your starting WR in 2 years or even halfway through next year. I just think its not worth the trouble and doesn't really have a biggest enough net effect to bother going after.

Didn't realize he could block DTs. As I said last week, if you are going to go with a system that goes cheap on the offensive line, you at least need to invest in WR. A new WR is going to help more than a new OL in the very short term. Eh..maybe. Moss be ok...if he stays a wideout he'd probably disappear a lot as Cutler is unable to buy enough time for him to go deep. It would be nice to have someone that can jump up and get the ball when Cutler throws it up for grabs. I don't think its worth it at this point, especially because he's been run out of 2 cities already this year. This team has enough drama on it. Part of me thinks that as a fan it would be more worth it to let the season play out and move on because moss or no moss we're not really any sort of contenders. But from Angelo's perspective, maybe he feels like he absolutely has to make the playoffs with this group and makes a drastic move like this.

If it makes you feel better...I am absolutely positive that the Bears could pull off something of this magnitude of incompetence.

Didn't realize he could block DTs.

LOL, I know this would never happen but it would be hilarious if the Pats resigned him.

Yeah I'd have to say out of the 8 divisions, the Giants and Packers are the two division leaders I see most likely to stay there. I agree with those that say the Giants have looked awesome. They have. And the thing is, their only real competition is Philly at this point. Washington is clearly not a very good team and they are starting to have a lot of turmoil. Dallas is just done as it has completely given up, so unless a coaching change occurs, they won't even be in that "dangerously skilled spoiler" category. Philly is a decent challenger, but seems to up and down. They look really good one week, and the next a lot of issues are exposed. As for the Packers, its pretty much out of default. I actually don't think their win yesterday is as impressive as I've read. Their offense was nothing special (obviously against a top 5 defense and crappy conditions), the Jets offense was just as bad if not worse but against due to conditions. Also the breaks went GBs way, with the INT calls. Anywho not supposed to be tearing down GB. I think at this point the Packers win by default. They are obviously the best team in the division. The Bears are just not a very good team. They have good parts to their team but their flaws are absolutely fatal and for the most part too big to cover up with scheme changes. The Vikings I still believe are talented and they've lost a lot of close games but at this point their hole they dug is too big. Lions might be the 2nd best team in the division but again, the hole they've dug is IMO too big. Reset the season and they might be a 10-6 team, but 6-3 the rest of the way is only going to put them at 8-8 for the season. Just for fun, my picks for playoff spots at this juncture: Giants (11-5) Packers (10-6) Falcons (11-5) Seahawks (8-8) Saints (10-6) Buccaneers (10-6) Pats (12-4) Steelers (12-4) Colts (10-6) (changes if the Texans win tonight) Chiefs (9-7) Jets (11-5) Ravens (10-6) (I'm just guessing on the tiebreakers...the WC teams could easily be 2 of these teams: Jets, Ravens, Titans, Texans, Dolphins)

The bills have played well enough to win the last two weeks. If there's a team that can make enough mistakes in a close game to give the game to the Bills, it's our Chicago Bears.

on the flip side, how did Penn State's anemic offense and terrible O-Line win a shootout with Michigan? I didn't see a single snap of the game That's easy. They ran 35 counter plays that Michigan got faked out on every time. Then they ran 15 rollout passes that saw every Penn State receiver open by 15 yards. Your walk-on QB had over 250 yards passing. I'm recording ESPNU's replay tonight. I'll be interested to see if PSU can build on this Build on what, destroying one of the worst defenses in Division 1? It looks like Purdue is Michigan's only hope for getting bowl eligable. (which I predicted when we were 5-0 ;))

Here I said it. If Noah and Rose keep those stats up the Bulls won't need Anthony. Disagree. He's averaging 29 shots a game after the first 2 games. The next closest person is Durant with 24. I'm not saying Rose hasn't done well but averaging 33 points on 29 shots is not very efficient at all. Think back to post Shaq pre Gasol Kobe when he was just throwing up shots by the boatload because no one else could, scoring 50-60-80 points in a game. And even he still topped out at 27 shots per game. Think pre-Pippen Jordan. Most he averaged in a season is 27.8 shots per game. Of course that year he averaged 37 PPG. It shows a guy who is trying to shoulder too much of the scoring load because there aren't enough options to help him. All that said, obviously there is sample size involved. But bottom line is, Rose will not be efficient unless he gets to the FT line quite a bit more. As it is right now he's playing well but not nearly as well as his counting stats would suggest.

5 wins in your last 47 games and cocky enough to talk about 4-3 teams being inferior to you. Typical Detroit sports fan. I am starting to come around on the Lions though. It's not even the offense that's impressing me, it's the defense not giving up 500 yards and 40 points a game.

Last 2 minutes of the Bears holding a share of 1st place.

Finish him Pats Why the heck do I have to watch Dallas vs. Jacksonville as one of the 3 games this afternoon here in Chicago. There had to have been a better game for CBS to show. Like for instance I'd have much rather watched Cincinnati and Miami than stupid Dallas and Jacksonville. Or even Denver vs. San Francisco, only because its in London though.

How many years will Notre Dame give Kelly?

This is turning into the Rockford Ice Hogs. Remember when we said we'd only really feel the loss of depth if we had to deal with a lot of injuries this year? Well here we go.