I honestly don't think Quinn had a great game against Michigan. During the middle of the game, when the offense was stalled, Quinn missed a number of open receivers across the middle. He overthrew them or threw wide, and those misses stalled drives. Had those passes been on target, I believe the Irish would have pulled away.
Quinn was pretty bad too, but his team won because Henne single-handedly blew the game.
This type of comment is my biggest problem with Michigan fans. I have no problem with blind loyalty to your team. But Michigan fans year after year offer excuse after excuse over why they lose games. By listening to them, you'd swear that the skunkbears have never actually been beaten on the field. And the fans almost seem to count those losses as wins because one player or another should have/would have. Or a ref did this or that.
Maybe Henne did make some mistakes. Well, so did Quinn, as I mentioned aboved. There were other mistakes. Our defensive backs were caught out of position on a few occassions. This is just as big of a mistake as a bad throw. There were also issues with blocking assignments that led to Quinn being rushed a bit too much from time to time. Do our mistakes not count toward the final score? Of course they do.
Michigan fans seem to think football is played in a vacuum and you add up the sum of the parts and there is your winner. Well, that's not the way it works. The entire team counts toward the game. Every play counts toward the game. Mistakes are part of the game. It's quite often that the team with less big mistakes win. If that weren't the case, then we would have coaches or practices. The players would just line up on Satudays and race to the endzone.
You take your excuses and keep them if they make you feel better. We'll take three out of the last four wins. We'll even let you keep that head start you got in the 1800's. We'll be happy to take 2006 in a few weeks.
I am not sold on ND's defense for this year either. They did not land any big recruits that are ready to play now, and there are a lot of holes.
Thankfully, you have nothing to do with it. Thanks for your input. We don't honestly expect a great defense either, but we expect improvement. A middle of the pack defense with our offense could go a long way. Cliche's be damned.
I think the best way to describe Quinn is that he's robotic. There isn't a lot of creativity from him.
Wow. Did you watch much Brady Quinn last year? He had so many little side steps to avoid sacks I thought he was turning into a dancer. The difference is, he doesn't waste movement. He takes the step or two needed while still finding the receiver and getting ready to make the throw. We shouldn't even have to mention the times he physically shook off would be tacklers.
And the guy can run. I'd suggest the Pitt or USC games as evidence. But you're right. He doesn't run as much as Stanton or Troy Smith. He doesn't need to. You're going to dock a guy who doesn't need to run?
You want creativity? Look at the receiving numbers of secondary receivers such as rb's and te's. Rather than run when the primary routes break down, he finds the open guys and lets them make plays. That is just as creative and effective as a guy who likes to (or HAS to) run figure eights in the backfield.
Fine. You're a Michigan fan who isn't sold on Notre Dame. That's OK. We get it and we don't care. But don't expect to come to a Notre Dame board and have us take too kindly to your feeling so. Just like we won't take too kindly to LLLLLoyd's refusal to shake hands after losing his third straight to the Irish next month.
It won't be long after that that the usual "drop Notre Dame, we don't need them" chants will start eminating from Ann Arbor.
