The Victors

1. We should say a daily prayer of thanks to Paige Shiver. If not for her bravery, then we would be going into this season with Sherrone firmly on the hot seat, a pair of mediocre-at-best coordinators, and (as it turns out) an underperforming S&C program that results from the fact that the players don't respect or work hard for their coaches. About the time that Brian mentioned that Marsh was thinking about transferring after he was an afterthought in the Ohio State game, I thought "this season would be a fucking disaster with Sherrone in charge."

2. The fact that the offense is young but talented is a direct result of: (a) Michigan being late to the NIL game (the lost 2023 and 2024 classes are felt in the fact that the upperclassmen on this team are mostly mid); and (b) Michigan is in a good place now that NIL is unregulated. So I ask again, WHY THE FUCK WOULD MICHIGAN SUPPORT LEGISLATION TO GIVE THE NCAA AN ANTITRUST EXEMPTION!?!?

3. During the Bryce section, I was convinced that we are going to lose to Oklahoma. He had a lost year of development (again, bless you Paige) and is going up against a Venables defense that is going to do everything possible to confuse him. During the rest of the podcast, I talked myself into the fact that we are going to win. For one thing, we have the capacity to bludgeon them with the running game, which a surprising few teams in the SEC have anymore. I think they could struggle to defend that. For another, we are deeper at WR than we have been in ages and can show them a lot of looks that will make life tough on them. Finally, our pass protection is going to be better this year because almost the entire line is back.

4. This is the first year in a while where we could play five wide and actually be able to put five good pass catching targets on the field at the same time. (BTW, I repeat myself but anyone who was defending the WR room in the last two years was fighting the Copium Wars [I am looking at you, Rich] based on the fact that all of those dudes have either been passed or have transferred without making an impact.) Five wide could accomplish a few things. For one, it makes Bryce's pre-snap reads easier because it is harder for the defense to disguise its intentions. (We made good use of it when McNamara was the QB in 2021.) For another, it goes great with a QB run game because it spreads out the defense. For a third, it gets snaps for our WRs to keep them happy.

4a. In garbage time against UTEP and Western Michigan, I would much rather see Carr throwing to Robinson and Moa than handoffs to the bottom of the RB depth chart.

5. Seth takes some flak here but I loved his joke about "hey, we're going to run Cam Newton" that gave the episode its title. In retrospect, it's fucking insane that Sherrone bottled up the QB run game with Bryce. Imagine giving him 2010 Cam Newton and then treating the QB run as some exotic gimmick to be only used against Ohio State. Once again, thank you Paige!