MGoBlog: The MGoPodcast

2 hour and 30 minutes The Sponsors Thank you to Underground Printing for making this all possible. Rishi and Ryan have been our biggest supporters from the beginning. Check out their wide selection of officially licensed Michigan fan gear at their 3 store locations in Ann Arbor or learn about their custom apparel business at undergroundshirts.com. Our associate sponsors are: Peak Wealth Management, Matt Demorest - Realtor and Lender, Ann Arbor Elder Law, Michigan Law Grad, Human Element, Sharon's Heating & Air Conditioning, The Sklars Brothers, Champions Circle, Winewood Organics, Community Pest Solutions, Venue by 4M where record this, and Introducing this season: Radecki Oral Surgery, and Long Road Distillers. 1. Offense vs Michigan State Starts at 1:05 They watch games in Craig's garage but to be clear it's a very nice garage. This game means different things based on if you're from Michigan or not. This game is like "Jerry Springer: the Rivalry". Michigan went back to the 2023 "we can just run the ball and get away with a win" gameplan. 'Road Bryce' seems to be a real thing. Every time they show Jonathan Smith he looks like he doesn't want to be there. Should there be an ingrained hatred of Michigan if you're going to be the head coach at Michigan State? Bryce doesn't have a good game but both backs go for over 100 yards. Bryce looked great last week, what happened? Or is this just the case of a true freshman in a road environment again? Sprague and Guarnera had great games, El-Hadi maybe not so much? The pieces for the 2026 offensive line may already be in place. Let's talk about Semaj... We're mostly out on Semaj, do you bench him now for his own good? Jordan Marshall: runs through guys and runs through guys. The Crippen high snap was unfortunate. Can anyone play fullback better than Max Bredeson?  [The rest of the writeup and the player after THE JUMP]  2. Defense vs Michigan State Starts at 59:04 We've been down on Wink but this was a good game for the defense. You can't take much on this based on the performance of the opposition. Chiles was awful in a vacuum, Michigan was not forcing his problems. Hillman had a really good game, he's been given a lot of criticism but this was a chaotically good game. Jimmy Rolder was a little bit of everywhere, he's a playmaker now. Derrick Moore is pretty good, he should start! Everything around the defensive tackle position is fine but we're used to a defense designed around great defensive tackles. Defensive backs should have as equal right to the ball as wide receivers.  3. Hot Takes, Game Theory, and Special Teams Starts at 1:26:57 Takes hotter than the bacteria and/or virus that really got up in Brian's business this week. Glue the hat and pants on, Michigan State's not getting the trophy back. Some of us don't think that guy was off-sides... or was he? The hold on Crippen is not even remotely a hold. If that's a hold then we need to talk about Jaishawn Barham. Why are we accepting a fair catch on the 20?? We are out on J.B. Brown as special teams coordinator. Hollenbeck had a nice game at least. Semaj gets run over by Goodwin?! Should they have taken a shot in the endzone before the end of the half?   4. Around the Big Ten with Jamie Mac Starts at 1:51:10 Rutgers 27, Purdue 24 The Purdue QB catches his own pass and spectacularly hands the game over to Rutgers in dramatic fashion. Rutgers gets yards, not points. Purdue wins a game they probably shouldn't have. This game kind of saved Rutgers' season, they could potentially compete with Penn State for bowl eligibility.  Nebraska 28, Northwestern 21 Northwestern outgains Nebraska and Dylan Raiola was un-inspiring. That said, Raiola was still the better QB. Northwestern always seems to find the worst QB in the portal. Nebraska seems to think they can solve their offensive line problems with the portal but they can't.  Indiana 56, UCLA 6 There was a pick-six a minute into the game and that's all she wrote. Last year Indiana was a fun story, this year THEY'RE SCARY.  Washington 42, Illinois 25 Road Washington is a thing. The worst roughing the passer call we've ever seen is in this game. Could Oregon be a play-in for a playoff spot for Washington??  Oregon 21, Wisconsin 7 Wisconsin doesn't get shut out three games in a row! All things considered, the Wisconsin defense is playing their hearts out.  Iowa 41, Minnesota 3 Iowa had 274 total yards. How do you get 41 points on 274 total yards? It's Iowa. We need a Floyd of Rosedale pose on touchdowns in this game. Playoff Iowa??? No, that's silly.  MUSIC: "Chokkan Way"—Haku "My Girlfriend Doesn't Worry"—Jeffrey Lewis "Nausea"—Jeff Rosenstock “Across 110th Street”—JJ Johnson and his Orchestra   

The Sponsors We want to thank Underground Printing for starting this and making it possible—stop by and pick up some gear, check them out at ugpmichiganapparel.com, or check out our selection of shirts on the MGoBlogStore.com. And let’s not forget our associate sponsors: Peak Wealth Management, Matt Demorest - Realtor and Lender, Ann Arbor Elder Law, Michigan Law Grad, Human Element, Sharon's Heating & Air Conditioning, The Sklar Brothers, Winewood Organics, Community Pest Solutions, Radecki Oral Surgery, Long Road Distillers, and SignalWire where we are recording this. Featured Musician: Chirp THE VIDEO: [After THE JUMP: Things discussable.]  --------------------- 1. MSU Preview: Offense starts at the top. What have they done to Aidan Chiles? He's dinky this year, and not very accurate as a dinker either. Be careful of his rushes. MSU fans are turning on their coaches already. Offensive line is a shambles of injury. Nick Marsh, enter the dang portal already friend. They're not even throwing to him deep. Sandbagging for this game? Please don't Wink out—they've been running a million screens. 2. MSU Preview: Defense starts at 20:26 Let Bryce cook, we say! A lot of cyans as yards are coming easily. They run both types of switch coverages—weird to see Dantonio's low safeties and press corners against a passing spread (it didn't work). Best thing to do is repeat last week's approach. 3. Washington After Review starts at 43:48 Waiting for Brian to tell us about Bryce and Frazier, but they looked pretty good. Drops were an issue, are an issue. Seth proposes a prospectin' name for Jordan Marshall. Defensively Washington contributed a lot to our scores, but credit Wink or the people who yelled at him for going back to the 2024 Ohio State gameplan. Long discussion on the rotations, especially at DL—Cam Brandt isn't Derrick Moore or a young Derrick Moore and it's unfair to be playing him as such. Also Jordan Young at the end of the 2nd half when you've got a 7-point lead. 3. Hoops and Hockey Check-In starts at 1:15:54 Hockey is undefeated after their best game in years vs WMU, game 2 is tonight and will be intense. Hoops has their 2nd exhibition, hopefully with a frontcourt this time, and this one has all the makings of an elite matchup. Featured Artist: Chirp Chirp is a four-piece band that hops around genres. I don't they've opened for Vulfpeck but they're part of that same progressive rock/funk and jazz-fusion scene. Formed in 2015, Jay Frydenlund, Brian Long, Sam Naples, and Patrick Blommel have been playing concerts and festivals all around the region. I saw them with Joe Hertler (featured here before), and got a notification in my email this week that they'll be at the Pig at the end of November (11/28), so I figured it's a good time to bring them up. I have them on my work playlist, mostly for their covers, but the songs featured are all off their 2022 album. Songs: "By the Book" (video) "Little Friend" "Fast Food Blues"       Also because Across 110th Street will get our Youtubes taken down, the opener and outro: “The Employee is Not Afraid”—Bear vs. Shark “Ruska Vodka”—Motorboat

Things Discussed: OFFENSE Bryce Underwood had has best game yet. Throws down the middle of the field can beat ANYTHING. His RPO reads are on point. Chip is doing a great job with him. How do they keep finding these TEs? Michigan made a lot of young guy mistakes but also overcame them because they have kids who can step up. Max Bredeson for Heisman? PFF numbers on him don't capture what he does. The split stretch trap TD was a *READ* by Bredeson!!! Offensive philosophies: One school of thought (Lloyd, Harbaugh) is if you option you let the defense call the plays. Other school of thought (Chip, Malzahn) is take what they give you. Post-Gattis, M ran maybe three RPOs/season. Blake Frazier: Still not super strong but that agility is visible. Ryan Hayes as a RS Fr would have looked like this. In the break: Sam Webb's football career, Craig praises Seth/Brian, Seth says there are MSU guys who would do this sort of thing (e.g. Chris Vannini) if they had the fanbase to support it. Michigan fans want to KNOW more than they want to believe. DEFENSE USC gameplan vs the Washington gameplan. This was the Ohio State 2024 gameplan: play four against the run, 75% two-deep, lots of QQH, and invite the opponent to screw up. Will Howard, Demond Williams: these are college QBs. If you give them enough opportunities to make hard reads they'll screw up and throw it at a defender. This has gotta be hard for Wink because if you play this way against an NFL team you'll get shredded. Vanilla defense unlocked fast play from their linebackers. Yay Michigan went away from Bear fronts against 2 TEs on the field. This is hard for Wink, but he's not good at disguising fire blitzes, and believes he does. Got away with it at the Ravens because he had great man coverage defenders. He needs to use less of them to keep them effective. They still got taken advantage of on passing downs in this game. Edge defense: only one Barham went too high incident, which is VERY GOOD! Hutch would have games with 1 or 2 and I'd praise him to the heavens. Need to calibrate. M mixing more man into their coverages. Jordan Young out there at the end of the half—that kind of stuff has to stop. Young is young Rod Moore, but at this stage it's Rod against Washington in 2021 not Rod against OSU—Rod needed time to become the guy who could start against Ohio State.

1 Hour and 16 Minutes With David Nasternak and Alex Drain This Podcast Has a Sponsor: Michigan Law Grad Jonathan Paul is the guy with the C you want skating next to the ref and pleading your case. He's also a good guy to sit next to at the hockey games. Segment 1: Thursday Escape and Friday Dominance  Opener Tight Game...On the Scoreboard Friday Night Beatdown Attempted Takeaways Segment 2: NHL, Scores, and Previews  We Dig Into NHL Storylines and Team Old Friends and Around the League Western Michigan and William Whitelaw Revenge   MUSIC NHL on ESPN Theme "People I Don't Like" -- UPSAHL Ice Hockey (NES) theme

2 hour and 10 minutes The Sponsors Thank you to Underground Printing for making this all possible. Rishi and Ryan have been our biggest supporters from the beginning. Check out their wide selection of officially licensed Michigan fan gear at their 3 store locations in Ann Arbor or learn about their custom apparel business at undergroundshirts.com. Our associate sponsors are: Peak Wealth Management, Matt Demorest - Realtor and Lender, Ann Arbor Elder Law, Michigan Law Grad, Human Element, Sharon's Heating & Air Conditioning, The Sklars Brothers, Champions Circle, Winewood Organics, Community Pest Solutions, Venue by 4M where record this, and Introducing this season: Radecki Oral Surgery, and Long Road Distillers. 1. Offense vs Washington Starts at 1:05 Pay no attention to the background noise from the drag show at Venue. This game was vanilla and we like that. Bryce Underwood had a fabulous day despite losing about 50 yards from drops. There seems to be a big difference between Road Bryce and Home Bryce. Michigan didn't take many deep shots because the short stuff was working great and Washington has tall corners. The remaining road games shouldn't be nearly as threatening as the previous three. The game is over but they have a designed run for Bryce? Jordan Marshall isn't Justice Haynes but he gets a lot of yards after contact. He's still working on re-gapping but overall an excellent first start for him. Jasper Parker looked fine. Under Harbaugh not much changed between offensive coordinators, but with Chip Lindsey a lot has changed already. He was dealing in the first touchdown drive. When's the last time we came out of a game thinking "oh wow they nuked the defensive coordinator?" How do we feel about going for it on 4th down and passing it to Mr. Dropsies? Running it up the middle is probably a 70% conversion, throwing it to Semaj is also a 70% conversion but for different reasons. Evan Link looks to be done for the year. Bryce's first scramble was Frazier getting knocked backwards, he seems fine but doesn't quite have the oomf that Evan Link does. Zack Marshall had a great game, what happened to the starting tight ends? Overall the offensive line was fine.  2. Defense vs Washington Starts at 34:40 The defense only gave up seven points but everyone is still a little mad. Michigan runs a pretty vanilla defense and it works nicely because college quarterbacks are going to make mistakes. Oden did intercept the ball but uhh... it was not because of his performance. Washington shot themselves in the foot but also Jaishawn Barham was much more responsible. Wink is not forgiven but it was nice that this game plan was simplified and it was fine. A lot of defensive tackle rotation but not everybody is a play maker. Is Lou Esposito the one rotating the tackles so much? Maybe part of the chaos on defense is you don't get used to playing next to the same guy every snap. This will not be a -33 RPS day. Jyaire Hill is not getting targeted very much.  3. Hot Takes, Game Theory, and Special Teams Starts at 58:19 Takes hotter than the bangin' drag show going on during the recording of this podcast. Brian apologizes once again for changing "AHHH YOU PUT IT THROUGH THE UPRIGHTS" and disrupting the cosmic balance. Zvada misses another field goal but gets the game sealer. Punting was a 35 yarder and then a rocket. No major complains about Semaj on punt returns except that he hit the spin button at the wrong time. The 4th and 1 drop to Semaj was unfortunate. What about the 4th and 2 on the 6? The whistle blew too early. Max Bredeson's holding call is the worst holding call since that Northwestern holding call. Stadium vibe: some people could actually use their phones! It should not take nine minutes to get a $9 coke, the athletic department doesn't pay close attention to the small things. Apparently concession people at Yost don't get paid but the athletic department can finally install cell phone towers at Michigan Stadium after 11 years under Warde.  4. Around the Big Ten with Jamie Mac Starts at 1:26:57 Iowa 25, Penn State 24 The nicest thing you can say about Penn State is that a lot of big programs are in collapse. Drew Allar's career is over, Ethan Grunkemeyer throws for 93 yards and throws two interceptions. Iowa threw for 68 yards but ran for 245 yards, Iowa should just run the triple option!  UCLA 20, Maryland 17 You gotta respect Maryland's commitment to one Army drive and then not doing a thing after. UCLA looked like the better team all game. This was a Big Ten [wild wild] West game. This is Maryland's third straight heartbreaking loss, they can't finish games with a freshman QB. There's still a path to a bowl.  Indiana 38, Michigan State 13 Shout out to everyone who listened to this on Spartan Radio. Indiana's offense was extremely efficient. Fernando Mendoza was 24/28 for 332 yards and four touchdowns. Indiana football fans were mad that they weren't winning by more. Did Indiana give up enough passing yards to be concerned with playoff implications for the Hoosiers? Northwestern 19, Purdue 0 Northwestern gets one 76 yard scoring drive and that's about all the scoring in this game. Don't let the score fool you into thinking that Northwestern has figured something out.  Notre Dame 34, USC 24 USC takes a 3rd quarter lead followed by Notre Dame getting a kickoff return. Then USC just falls apart in the 4th quarter. This was frustrating to watch as a Michigan fan.  Ohio State 34, Wisconsin 0 134 total yards for Wisconsin and that's generous. Oh god they play Oregon next weekend. Minnesota 24, Nebraska  Dylan Raiola is sacked nine times, that's too many times. Nebraska had just entered the top 25 and has now exited the top 25. A left tackle was ejected for targeting! Shout out to Minnesota fans for really filling the stadium on a Friday night.  Oregon 56, Rutgers 10 14 different Oregon players went for at least 10 yards on a play. Oregon was very upset about their Indiana game. Somehow there wasn't a rutger. Oregon had 233 breakaway yards, Rutgers had 202 total yards.  MUSIC: "Brand New Second Hand"—Peter Tosh "It's Not Easy"—Ofege "Plain as Your Eyes Can See"—Jim Sullivan “Across 110th Street”—JJ Johnson and his Orchestra   

The Sponsors We want to thank Underground Printing for starting this and making it possible—stop by and pick up some gear, check them out at ugpmichiganapparel.com, or check out our selection of shirts on the MGoBlogStore.com. And let’s not forget our associate sponsors: Peak Wealth Management, Matt Demorest - Realtor and Lender, Ann Arbor Elder Law, Michigan Law Grad, Human Element, Sharon's Heating & Air Conditioning, The Sklar Brothers, Winewood Organics, Community Pest Solutions, Radecki Oral Surgery, Long Road Distillers, and SignalWire where we are recording this. Featured Musician: Rawhide THE VIDEO: [After THE JUMP: Things discussable.]  --------------------- 1. Washington Preview: Offense starts at noon, we hope Massive respect for their skill positions, not so much their offensive line, which means this game will mostly be a test of whether Wink learned anything from last week, or cares to now that he's put his football career on life support. 2. Washington Preview: Defense starts around 12:15 PM Not the offense. D'Anton Lynn is on the Ravens tree but he's not having the same success, mostly because they can't seem to get the defensive line up to size. Devan Thompkins is 290, Jide Abasiri is 295. Edges were highly ranked (Anthony Lucas was a pre-Elston Michigan target) but sophomore Kameryn Crawford isn't panning out like a top-100 is supposed to. They added Portal #25 Keeshawn Silver from Kentucky and a 5-star freshman, but they haven't changed that math, and are getting pushed around. We do still like Kamari Ramsey, who came with Lynn from UCLA and has been playing nickel this year. Cornerbacks are tall. 3. Hoops and Hockey Check-In starts around 12:30 PM Hockey is off to a hot start after a two-game road sweep of Providence, though having to come back against Robert Morris last night put the first little damper on it. Basketball starts tonight with an exhibition against Cincinnati at Crisler that will be our first look at the transfers. Question #1 is how physical will they be up front, because Cincy has a brawler. Will they try three bigs? 4. USC After Review starts around 1:00 PM I had three RPS-3s, two for screens and one for the Power after the 3rd & 26 and TD, which were both Power, when Wink ran an exotic that had no chance against Power. If they can cut out half of their shit and get their best players (read: seniors like TJ Guy) on the field, they should be able to get righted. Offensively it was a better performance than 13 points. There weren't that many drives, and Bryce struggled. His passes might be flat because he's getting sped up (Gardner has been in that position). Marshall missed two big cuts that Haynes makes. OL was okay; El-Hadi's return wasn't great, there were some mistakes from Guarnera, but USC's defense didn't ask Sprague to do too much and he did well, and Link had MAs but wasn't straight-up beat. Brian doesn't blame Bryce for the interception—once the WR wins inside he's going to win the route—but the throw to Marsh could have put him in the endzone if Bryce is feeling confident in his throw. Maybe give him some max pro to Featured Artist: Rawhide (formerly Girl Fight) Last May someone was carrying a tom into Ziggy's with a bumper sticker that read if "If you don't like Motörhead Fuck you" with American and British flags on it. My one friend snapped a photo and sent it to our group for commentary from the guy who founded (and sold) an MGoBlog-sized site about metal music. This thread of college roommates/bandmates/best friends is like 10% Michigan sports, 20% Xennial parent shit, and 70% music shit, meaning music prompts can result in 42-message threads that the college football guy in the middle of writing a college football preview magazine might not get to until he's trying to clear unread notifications many months later. This is how I found I had missed the group discovering a new genre/EP called Michigan Fuzz Punk by Rawhide, a two-piece (Ellen Cope and Jacob Bloom) Michigan band formerly known as Girl Fight. What I know about them comes from this column. The EP is pay what you may ($13.10 is fair). Anyway this is me talking about Michigan Fuzz Punk, which is both an excellent description of the genre and the EP's title. I am a total tourist in this genre so I'll refrain from talking about it like I know shit about shit, except I'm super intrigued to see what this is actually like live since the recordings only hint at it. I'll say the song Reach Me kicks and it's hilarious that "Greta is a Punk" and "Paige's Song" are the same song. Songs: "Stone Cold" "Reach Me" "Clocked In"        Also because Across 110th Street will get our Youtubes taken down, the opener and outro: “The Employee is Not Afraid”—Bear vs. Shark “Ruska Vodka”—Motorboat

Things Discussed: RIP Zia Combs. Wink shit. Brian and I are done. Is it coaching or players? I say coaching, because there's no point in running the stuff, even if it's good stuff, if you don't have the coaching points down, and the #1 coaching points are not in. They're going to have to simplify, stick to some basics until they can run all of this stuff. Hillman: Unplayable at this bust rate, but too good of a player to not coach the bust rate out of him. Players going off-script? If it's seniors you gotta ask why they think they have to. Wink Shit: Never drops a DT into a screen. Plays three DTs. Expected long passing and got short. Had no way to defend power. It was all so easy; the only thing that stopped USC was a bad call and 2 redzone turnovers. Worst coaching performance since Rich Rod made Greg Robinson go 3-3-5 vs Purdue in 2009. Offense is young but you can see what they'll look like post-mistakes. Found a WR2 in Marsh, might want to try some max-pro to get BU confident.

1 Hour and 3 Minutes With David Nasternak and Alex Drain This Podcast Has a Sponsor: Michigan Law Grad Jonathan Paul is the guy with the C you want skating next to the ref and pleading your case. He's also a good guy to sit next to at the hockey games. Segment 1: Friday Beatdown  Opener Back and Forth Opening Period Second Period Drubbing Shutdown Third Period Segment 2: Saturday Sweep, Non-Con Shockers, What's a Bobby Mo?  Special Teams and Breakaways Series Takeaways. Feeling Pretty Good? Hockey Jaime Segement We Want Mo' Bobby  MUSIC NHL on ESPN Theme "Providence" -- Poor Man's Poison Ice Hockey (NES) theme

Jamie Mack, a contributor at JustCoverBlog.com, joins the discussion to dive into recent Big Ten drama. The conversation heats up as they debate Wink Martindale's controversial game plan against USC and whether he deserves to be fired. Mack provides insights on Indiana's stunning upset over Oregon, while also analyzing Penn State's struggles and Michigan State's collapse against UCLA. They wrap up with a look at standout performances from Nebraska and Ohio State, revealing the ever-shifting landscape of the Big Ten.

This week, the hosts preview USC's revamped offense, focusing on Jaden Maieva's rising star and Makai Lemon’s impressive stats. They explore Michigan's defensive strategies against USC's two-tight end setup and the challenges posed by the Trojans' injury-plagued offensive line. The conversation shifts to USC's defensive shortcomings and how this matchup could lead to a high-scoring shootout. Predictions for the game wrap up the discussion, alongside insights into key Big Ten matchups to watch.