GBMWolverine: Coach’s Corner — Michigan Football — The Unknown Future — An Important Unknown
Posted at 6:00am — 12/13/2011
GBMWolverine: Coach’s Corner — Michigan Football — The Unknown Future — An Important Unknown
The future is a concept always of human importance, and is always on the mind of football fanatics. The future is reserved for visionaries in every human endeavor, from science fiction writers to draft experts in the NFL. The past can be used to learn and prepare for the future and the present can give an indication of likely future trends. But when talking about the future there are never any guarantees except the unknown, an entity that creeps like fog to muck up the best of plans.
The future is sold on the basis of security and hopes shrivel when insecurity is entered as a variable. Next year presents the gifts of optimism and the gloom of reality for the potential won-loss record. The formula will be more work, more improvement, more belief in the overall mission and even higher expectations.
The mission will be difficult, even more difficult than the mission so well undertaken and accomplished in 2011.
The schedule is brutal. Games with Alabama at Jonesworld and road games at Nebraska, Notre Dame, and Ohio State signal a challenge in the stratosphere.
The roster is still thin in spots and if injuries pile up during the first three games a negative effect may dog the team the rest of the year.
Michigan loses some cornerstones next year in Molk, Martin, and Van Bergen. The now not so young replacements must accelerate progress this bowl season and in spring practice.
Tied to the depth is the probability that Michigan would like to red short a good majority of incoming freshmen, especially linemen.
Predictions are a necessary vehicle to explore the future. One prediction is that the talent block at linebacker may split to give playing time to good players over the next five years. The offensive line needs eight guys that can play and that means one redshirt from this year and one incoming freshman may fill those spots.
The offense will hopefully be the present on steroids next year with new parts becoming honed for the true future of Michigan football, the year 2013. It is then that the new parts will become apparent and those parts must be ready.
Michigan’s future in 2012 is like a physics lesson. There is work to be done and force must be applied to overcome the resistance of the tough schedule. More force needs more mass, and Michigan is certainly making an effort in that regard. Chick Fil-A is not coming to the Big House, but the beef will be on the hoof. That beef will be needed to finally create a net force better than the opposition’s front wall.
There have been great visionaries of the future: Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, Aldous Huxley, and George Orwell. But none of them were any good at football prognostication. Today’s visionaries pale by comparison, and so GBMWolverine is glad to take up the charge and undertake the practice of prognostication in the spirit of Michigan’s first visionary, Fielding H. Yost.
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Written by GBMWolverine Staff
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