Northern Illinois Hot Wash

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[hot wash]

I'll warn you up front - if you're looking for a serious breakdown of this game, I'm not the guy. Any of the folks on my U-M blogroll would put my analysis to shame. That being said, here we go:

The offense looked pretty good. Avant's SpiderMan-hands mutation continues to pay dividends. The loss of Arrington will hurt, but U-M is ocean-deep at WR so they should be OK there. Kevin Grady is a freight train. Unfortunately, he's going to be a freight train that carries a ball wherever he goes for the next week (the typical freshman punishment for fumbling, particularly near either goal line). Henne looked real good - I reckon his receivers will be sporting a fair number of Elway Crosses tomorrow. Pass blocking was real good, run blocking was OK.

Special teams were decent - Ryan put about every kickoff halfway through the end zone, and he showed real hustle to recover that PR fumble. Rivas' PAT block wasn't his fault (the center got pwned on that play by a bull rush), but his 48yd miss was.

Now the defense.

Next post, please.

It looked pretty much like the defense that played the last four games of '04 - bad pursuit angles, worse downfield tackling, and ANOTHER long TD allowed. If they hadn't pried 5 TOs out of NIU, the outcome would very much have been in doubt. In particular, if they play like that against fND, it will be a long and unpleasant afternoon.

Update: Blogroll seems to be busted at the moment. Not to put too fine a point on it, but when I say "put my analysis to shame," I was talking about posts like this one.

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This page contains a single entry by Chris published on September 3, 2005 7:06 PM.

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