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Featured Musician: Julia Rose Pagac

The Video:

[After THE JUMP: Things said.]

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starts at the top.

Brian feels crazy sometimes because he can't understand the though process of playing Evan Link after we see that Gentry and Persi are…fine? We aren't seeing practice but literally can't be worse. Only one (1!) designed run for Alex Orji. Clear that they haven't practice Orji offense because nobody is ready for the natural reactions. Maybe they're just focused on next year?

starts at 26:03

Getting 500 yard of offense against live defenses like Northwestern and Rutgers, but offensive line is a trouble spot. Tackles are uptransfers who are struggling at this level, interior is an OSU downtransfer, a Portland State uptransfer, and a guard whose name is Gaard Memmelaar. Keeping it alive by having former air raid QB Will Rogers knowing where to go with the ball, and elite RB Jonah Coleman making yards out of nothing, and a very good tall and fast receiver in Denzel Boston who's broken out this year. Tendency to shoot themselves in the foot though.

starts at 41:08

The Rutgers offense is unfortunately a good stand-in for Michigan. Interesting rotation at DE where they can play a 290-pound guy, or a 260-pound 4-3 DE, or a 225-pound edge, or a 230-pound tight end eraser. Washington likes to put their "WLB" Alphonzo Tuputala at the "Uche" position—IE off the edge—and bring down SS Kamren Fabiculanan as an extra LB. Stuffed Rutgers on most drives but they give up the badly timed big play, which is often an RB breaking a tackle. Star is MLB Carson Bruener but they ask him to do a lot and he's a modern NFL linebacker who can be clonked if a blocker gets to him. Free safety Cameron Broussard has tackling issues. Making do with an interior DL that we didn't expect much from and which took some injury hits to their depth, but they've held up so far. Corners are pretty good in coverage, which is going to be mostly Cover 1 against Michigan as they stack the box—their only other coverage is Cover 2. Top 25, but barely, and credit to Steve Belichick for putting it together.

starts at 1:03:44

A summary of Alex's hockey preview series. They're not a collection of 1st rounders anymore, Michigan Hockey Summer took its toll there but they got older and bring back a lot of good pieces. Might be more of a depth team at forward this year. Discussion whether they should load up same types (e.g. speed line, heavy line) or space out their skills. Defensively they have B+ guys five deep and two good additions who should battle with Luka for the 6th/7th spots. In this they seem to have a lot of varied abilities. Goalie is a Ferris State transfer in Stein who needs to be taken in Ferris context, and a 160(?)-pound build-a-Portillo who might take the job this season or might need a year to fill out. In the Big Ten there are two tiers: Minnesota/MSU/Michigan/Wisconsin who expect to make the tournament, and Notre Dame/Penn State/Ohio State who would like to. Michigan has a *tough* nonconference schedule.

THE BAND: Julia Rose Pagac is a Metro-Detroit musician with an eclectic list of influences: rock, funk, blues, folk and hints of country that are most in Julia's vocals. I heard of her because her session drummer is Reggie "Banga!" Williams Jr., a local legend in the metro-D music community. They'll be at the Pig on October 12th.

Song choices:

• "Army"

Also because Across 110th Street will get our Youtubes taken now now, the opener and outro:

• “The Employee is Not Afraid”—Bear vs. Shark