Things That Have Been Called Boo-Boos That Aren't: Denard's inability to not throw like he's Taylor Martinez early on in the season can in part be explained by the fact that his boo-boo was actually a staph infection. In addition, the "myriad injuries" part confirms that the few times where I blasphemously thought that maybe Denard had lost a step were not necessarily unfounded concerns because, you know, he was hurt.
I'm no doctor, but staph infections conjure up vague notions of unpleasantness, and it's not hard to imagine it affecting his play. As if you needed an more reasons to love Denard, he is a TOUGH football player with lots of TOUGHNESS and GRIT. THIS GUY'S ARM WAS FALLING OFF BUT HE JUST KEPT PUSHIN', THE WANT TO IN THIS GUY IS JUST UNBELIEVABLE. I'LL TELL YOU WHAT, I'D LOVE TO HAVE 22 DENARD ROBINSONS ON MY FOOTBALL TEAM. Jon Gruden hasn't said this yet but can you imagine him saying it? I sure can. And people say Denard's NFL prospects as a QB are bleak.
But seriously, after last season a lot of people were left wondering whether or not Denard could survive another season. He can partly thank Fitz for his durability this season, but Denard is simply a pound-for-pound TOUGH human being a la Vincent Smith.
Stand(ifer) Down*: Michigan loses its commitment from Anthony Standifer, as tweeted by Allen Trieu yesterday. Grades seem to be the reason per the Internets, which is a shame if true. It's always tough losing a commitment, particularly one that goes to the same school as 2013 target Laquon Treadwell. His offer list isn't outrageously great (basically us, ND, Iowa, and assorted mediocrity plus Boise State) but at the same time, Michigan is one of them and trust the coaches &c. Come on down Armani Reeves and Yuri Wright.
*I'll show myself the door.
Rich "Uncle Rico" Rodriguez: When Coach Rod said that he would've gone 10-2 this year if he was still around, my first thoughts were: 1) Would GERG still be around in this hypothetical scenario? 2) I could see 10-2 as a best-case but 9-3 or even 8-4 are probably more likely if we're conjecturing baselessly here (and we are) 3) Coach, why would you ever agree to do The Huge Show/answer a question like that with anything other than mind-numbing coachspeak? and 4) I give you the below*.
Coach woulda put me in fourth quarter, we would been state champions. No doubt. No doubt in my mind.
*Just FWIW; that is a joke. There were very few people as pro-RR as I, and what RR said wasn't really that bad either in or out of context.
Oakland (Not That Oakland): Michigan takes on the Oakland Golden Grizzlies (our most hated rival!) at the Palace of Auburn Hills tomorrow (4 ET). UMHoops has the usual preview and other assorted reading material. Oakland's three losses are to Alabama and Arkansas on the road and Ohio (not that Ohio...Ohio Ohio). Playing this sort of team is the kind of RPI-booster that teams want; high enough to be respectable as a tomato can but not enough to worry about defeat. The game recap should come up Sunday afternoon as I prepare to watch my Bears get Tebow'd. /cries
Heisman Stuff THIS IS SO IMPORTANT not really: Doctor Saturday on RGIII winning the Heisman. Okay, yes the Heisman is an inherently stupid award reflective of the BCS and its big name favoritism...but I can't help but be OUTRAGED if RGIII (2011 RGIII, aka 2012 Denard PLEASE) doesn't win it. How is this even a debate? Mel Kiper showed up on ESPN earlier expressing a preference for Trent Richardson, which, come on. Anybody picking Richardson for anything (including the Doak) is having one single un-ending thought process being coded out in their brain: SEC SEC SEC SEC SEC SEC SEC, and so on into oblivion. He hasn't even had the best season for a tailback, let alone overall. I know that he benches so much that the Bama S&C staff won't let him up his max because it would supposedly destroy the universe like he's dividing by zero, but come on guys. COME ON.
It's interesting how such a high profile guy from a "high profile" family has sort of slipped under the radar amidst the winds of change in Schembechler Hall. Tate Forcier was not without his flaws, but he was a Wolverine (often times a great one), and he has chosen, like his brothers before him, to take his talents elsewhere. While I do not wish to imply that this is a debilitating loss in any way other than the quarterback depth perspective for next season, Tate was perhaps the most controversial, and, dare I say it, definitive figure of the RR era and it's collapse. No offense to Steven Threet, but this transfer is an entirely different beast. At least the weather will be nice.
And so we sit in the doldrums of the dreaded offseason with too much time to think about things. Why was Kenny Demens consistently lined up so close to the line? Why did the coaching staff pretend that Craig Roh could be anything but an end? Why did Tate Forcier ultimately decide that Ann Arbor was not for him anymore (and, let's be honest, thoughts of leaving were likely in his head even before the academic troubles)?
What went wrong?
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Put him in a prison cell but one time he coulda been The champion of the world
You might posit that the answers to that question are fairly obvious. His dubious commitment to academics, Denard's Great Leap Forward, and even his cursed 2009 shoulder all did him in in a series of blows coming from outside and within. These are all true, and yet, I still see a Michigan offense being effectively led by Tate Forcier. In any case, that will not happen. All we have available to us is the tragic rise and fall of a young man who reached the top likely far sooner that he would have wanted, only to begin a long, slow decline reminiscent of the former Ottoman Empire, the so called Sick Man of Europe.
The Rise
We all remember it fondly. Emerging from the destruction and sorrow that was the 2008 season was one Tate Forcier, whose talents and aura has been hyped up for many months, on the heels of his recruitment and early enrollment. By the Western Michigan game, he wasn't the typical freshman who comes in in August, thrown to the fire and asked to enter games here and there against teams with players several years older and many pounds heavier. He was still small and physically underdeveloped, but he was full of GRIT and MOXIE, like a quarterbacking doppleganger of Zack Novak. After a season of superior talent losing to vastly inferior or comparable teams, and a season of unmentionable anarchy, this was a welcome change. Sadly, when I think of these aforementioned traits, I think of Troy Smith in 2005 driving down the field, avoiding the rush to find Anthony Gonzalez down the field, delivering the penultimate blow and completing the comeback. The rise of Tate was all of that...for a while.
Any discussion of Tate Forcier begins and ends with the 2009 Notre Dame game. While Notre Dame was certainly not an elite squad, the importance of the game at the time holds fast. It was a game that Michigan needed, much like Michigan needed the 2010 Notre Dame game in South Bend. Then again, it is historically accurate that Michigan "needs" to win every Notre Dame game to have a good season. It is the first step, the gateway to greater things. Upon reaching this gate, Tate Forcier juked the Cover 0 and kick flipped over and beyond it like Bart Simpson in his most mischievous state.
And the rest is history. I still remember seeing images of Tate and Coach Rod after the game, and it seemed that everything was alright for the first time in a while. They were, to use a hackneyed expression, on the same page, and the brilliant offensive mind that Rich Rodriguez had brought to Ann Arbor has seemingly been infused in the skull of this young man from California. Whereas pat White executed methodically and quickly, each read option like a blitzkrieg of moving parts, Tate Forcier did it in his own way. Sometimes he scrambled for too long, taking sacks and causing a general pulling of hair and gnashing of teeth. Then, on the very next play, with no intention of changing his overall raison d'etre, he'd scramble and hit the open man. He'd often take the most unorthodox path, zig-zagging, going bckwards, almost falling and taking another sack like a drunken bumblebee. Then it would all come together, as if to say "Hey guys, this was my plan all along. I've got this."
A few seconds after Minor fumbled they showed Mike walking up the sideline with his helmet in his hand, and this “I’ll handle it,” look on his face. Like he’d done it before and he almost wanted to laugh because he was about to do it again. Maybe he was hurt, maybe he wasn’t. But he ran for 115 yards in the fourth quarter and had the guts to talk to us after it was all over.
Only this time it was different. While Mike's drive to put the team on his back was relentless and full of angst and rage and desperation, Tate's was free-wheeling and weightless, as if all this didn't matter but hey we might as we'll win while we're here. We had the golden boy, the one that the media would fawn over and talk about in a Favre-esque sense (whether you think that is a good or bad thing is obviously up for debate). It seemed that the good will of the universe was on our side for the first time in a while. I don't think that, even after the Notre Dame win, anybody expected to go undefeated (or even win the Big Ten), but we all thought we'd have a chance if things kept going the way that they were up to that point.
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The Fall
It all happened so suddenly. In one triumphant moment, the seeds of the end were sown.
It was a Pyhrric victory. We got the win, but at a cost. He was never the same for the rest of the season, like a prized horse trying to go on a gimpy leg. It is probably convenient to cite this as one of the reasons for the fall and not, for example, the upswing in the level of competition as the season went on, but, as I said, there are many reasons for how the Tate Forcier era came and went in a flash and a cloud of smoke.
The season went on and we all know what happened. The Iowa game engendered the beginnings of the Legend of Denard, and Tate's struggles in the OSU game opened the door for legitimate competition for the position in 2010.
From that point until the news of his academic issues, it is unclear what really transpired. The offseason came and went, and Devin Gardner took the field when Denard took his standard snap or two off each game due to injury. He didn't work as hard as Denard in the offseason, his attitude had gone sour...who knows. All we have is what goes into the box and what comes out, and what came out was a bitter, immature shell of what we saw the year before when he was on top of the world.
Illinois came to town and we were returned to familiar feelings. With Denard out, Tate was asked to lead the team once again, having regained the good will of Coach Rod after a tumultous offseason. And, like the 2009 ND game, he did not disappoint.
Even then, it was clear that Denard was the man. Even the above interaction between RR and Tate is a shadowy outline of their embrace following the 2009 ND game. Like Napoleon's Hundred Days, Tate was once again exiled to second string shortly thereafter. There was still hope for Tate as a Wolverine, but as a leader of the team?
Now we have our answer. His immaturity, repressed by praise and adulation circa 2009, emerged. He was no longer a Wolverine, and then he definitively distanced himself from Ann Arbor by taking his talents to Coral Gables. Despite it all, I see a Michigan team led by Tate Forcier--a new, mature, better Tate--in some alternate universe that exists only in the minds of the optimistic (or the delusional), a world where Crable takes the inside guy and Demar Dorsey enforces a No Fly Zone with aplomb over the Ann Arbor skies. Like the RR era, it was not meant to be, and like the RR era, it was a case of what could've been.
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What is there to say other than "good luck, Tate?" If the career arc of Tate Forcier tells us anything, it is that the great can rise and fall in the span of a blink of an eye, that greatness and longevity are not given let alone assured. He was bred to be a quarterback from the beginning, from when he was a bright-eyed tyke to a cocky free-styling high schooler. Yet, as we all know, college football, the game we all love, doesn't care about what you did before. It takes all your accomplishments and shreds them, pointing to the Big House as if to say you're not the first to come through this place.
As fans, we can only say that to take things for granted is foolish. Very few players ever achieve the brief success that Tate did in his short reign as the leader of the Michigan offense. His penchant for the miraculous and unplanned maneuvering will not soon be forgotten. Even the selflessness he displayed in 2010, trying his best to cage the inner drive to be the man despite the existence of Denard (and even Devin), while also winning us the Illinois game, will always be something that I'll remember. While his nature (i.e., being a 20 year-old kid) did him in in the end, he could've left a while ago, like many often do when put in his situation. The rise and fall of Tate Forcier was swift and not necessarily unwritten for quite some time, but that doesn't make it any less frustrating. Despite the way he went out, I hope that he will be remembered for what he did and not for what he didn't do.
That's the story of the Hurricane But it won't be over till they clear his name And give him back the time he's done
Hello, Internet. I am Fouad Egbaria, a Michigan grad ('11) and recent graduate of the MSJ program at Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism. This is a blog that attempts to analyze the highs and lows of Michigan football and basketball; I'm just trying to capture the spirit of the thing. I will also write about general Big Ten news, as well as Chicago professional sports (from time to time).
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