NCAA Football Michigan Wolverines

Brady Hoke’s Michigan Wolverines Hitting Rich Rodriguez Levels

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By @rickstavig

Brady Hoke, Michigan Wolverines

Tim Fuller-USA TODAY Sports

The Michigan Wolverines football program seemingly hit rock bottom in the years of 2008 through 2010 under then-head coach Rich Rodriguez. 15-22 is abhorrent by Michigan standards, and as a result the school fired him and replaced him with Brady Hoke. Only now, just four years after Rodriguez has been let go, the program is heading back towards rock bottom, again.

People may ask, ‘is the team now at the same low level as it was under Rodriguez?’. The answer is yes, it is that bad, and potentially worse.

Rodriguez, for all the shame he brought to Ann Arbor by installing the wild and crazy spread offense over the traditional ground and pound favored by the Wolverines since, well, the dawn of time, wasn’t all that bad.

Was his record spotty? Undoubtedly. But also remember, his team was heading in the right direction. 3-9 in 2008 was followed by 5-7 and then 7-6. His offense continued getting better, going from 20.8 points per game to 29.5 then 32.8. His defense was atrocious, giving up 28.9 points per game, 27.5 and an ungodly 35.2 in ’10. But he recruited very well, developing future NFL Draft picks like Will Campbell, Jeremy Gallon, Taylor Lewan, Michael Schofield, Denard Robinson, Mike Martin, etc. You could say a big portion of Hoke’s success early on was a result of RichRod recruits playing lights out.

Hoke started out on fire, going 11-2 in 2011 and winning the Sugar Bowl. It’s been totally downhill ever since. 8-5 in ’12 was followed by 7-6 in ’13, and now in ’14 the Wolverines sit at 2-3 with three embarrassing losses, two of which came at home to major underdogs. The wins aren’t the only thing trending down. The offense went from putting up more than 33 points per game in ’11 to 29.8, 32.2 and now 22. The defense has gone from 17.4 points allowed to 19.8, 26.8 and then 22.2.

The recruits being brought in by Hoke are also not developing as planned. Really only WR Devin Funchess and DE Frank Clark have been hits from the recruits brought in the past few years. They can bring in as many 4 and 5-star prospects as they want but if they can’t develop them into top college players, it doesn’t make a difference what the class ranking is.

The Hoke era seemed to really hit rock bottom last week in the home loss to the Minnesota Golden Gophers (a team Rodriguez never lost to), when towards the end of the 30-14 shellacking, Hoke completely bungled a fairly obvious situation.

His QB Shane Morris was hit hard and got up clearly woozy and shaken up, needing to rely on a lineman to hold him up. Clearly this young man has a concussion, and even if he doesn’t, it doesn’t take a genius to know he should come out of the game and be checked out by the medical staff. After all the attention brought on football and concussions in recent years, it’s amazing this happened but Morris was kept in the game for another play.

On the next play when he was finally brought out, backup Devin Gardner’s helmet was knocked off (meaning he has to come out automatically for one play minimum), and instead of going with a third stringer (or ANYONE ELSE), Hoke put Morris back in. Then he has the audacity afterwards to blame it on his medical team to the press afterwards, instead of fessing up to a bonehead mistake on his part.

The program has hit rock bottom, same as in 2008, the first year of RichRod when they went 3-9. Only after 2008, things were trending upwards and in this instance, it looks like it’s only going to get worse.

Rick Stavig is an NFL Draft Columnist for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter @rickstavig or add him to your network on Google+.

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