I know a lot of people are sore over the end of the Alamo Bowl. "If only," they say, "Tyler Ecker had just pitched the ball over his shoulder to a wide-open Steve Breaston instead of letting himself get tackled at the 13..."
First of all, you've got to remember that Tyler Ecker is a money man in the last couple minutes of a game (aOSU '03, Minnesota '04) but not the last couple seconds of a game (aOSU '05 and now the Alamo Bowl).
Second of all, so what if he had? Michigan would have won another game on the last play (which would have been the fourth time in 2005), and everybody would just remember that and forget that they lost four times. This would 'validate' an eight-win season, with the four losses being excused by the number of injuries Michigan had this year. Nothing would change in the offseason, and Michigan would go on to yet another three- or four-loss season in 2006 and squander yet another top-five recruiting class. With the kind of talent Michigan gets year in and year out, this string of three-plus-loss seasons (five in a row now) is absolutely unacceptable and shows no sign of changing. Lather, rinse, repeat until Llllloyd retires, then spend five or more years after that trying to get Michigan back where it belongs.
Instead, with the memory of yet another blown fourth-quarter lead for them to suck on all offseason, maybe, just maybe, something significant will change.
It had better.
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