00:00At the end of the week, Michigan State plays Toledo Friday night.
00:04Michigan plays Western Michigan Saturday night.
00:07I made the comment that my first read on these two games is that both teams
00:11better show up.
00:12These are two of the better teams in the Mid-American Conference.
00:15And now Toledo's breaking in a new coach,
00:18but he brought a dozen players with him from Mercer.
00:21But both Michigan and Michigan State with new coaches, new schemes,
00:26new systems.
00:27Yes, the talent for talent.
00:29They'll be better off.
00:31But when you're breaking in new coordinators and new systems,
00:36it can be clunky at the beginning,
00:39which is what exposes you to the possibility of an upset or a game closer than
00:44people think.
00:45What is your early read on Michigan State Toledo?
00:48Very calculated.
00:49I mean, they're not cranking out a hype machine in East Lansing at all.
00:53They're keeping things kind of quiet there, and I think in large part because
00:57there has been so much turnover and they are implementing new everything there.
01:01But just based on the fact of who the coach is, I feel like it's going to be a very
01:05conservative offense and kind of a very fundamentally sound defensive group, too.
01:12It might have some players that can flash.
01:15But I would expect Michigan State's going to go out there and just try to establish the
01:18run, run this football with a bunch of transfer offensive linemen with a really quality transfer
01:24running back.
01:26And if they're able to run the football well, then the quarterback's going to be able to
01:31throw the ball downfield a little bit, too.
01:33That should help out.
01:34But it's going to have to say this.
01:36It's almost like a broken record every year with Michigan State.
01:39Everything is about the offensive and defensive lines.
01:42If you can if you can protect the quarterback and open up holes in a running game, you're
01:45going to be fine.
01:47But they haven't been able to do that with any kind of consistency since Kenneth Walker
01:50was there.
01:52So Michigan State's favored by 10 and a half forecast, by the way, a high of 83, low of
01:5962, probably closer to the 62 at being a night game.
02:02Mike Jacobs has taken over for Toledo and he was on a Mercer team that he was the head
02:07coach of a Mercer team that won the Southern Conference a year ago, probably made the biggest
02:14waves when they wrapped up their season at Auburn and actually led Auburn 14 to 7.
02:20And the two guys that scored the touchdowns for Mercer in that game at Auburn, both came
02:26to Toledo.
02:27So they'll be in uniform for Mercer on Friday night.
02:32Both first team, all Southern Conference guys.
02:36So, you know, I mean, I think what you're seeing is Toledo's trying to pull off a Cignetti
02:40at a lesser level.
02:42They went and got a guy from the FCS at Mercer who brought guys with him, one of the better
02:48programs a year ago, and they're hoping that they can get a foothold in the MAAC.
02:53Obviously, Cignetti did it with D1 guys.
02:56They were just a group of five D1 guys.
02:58They had a bunch of Sunbelt dudes that were already playing D1 football, became high D1
03:04football, but just switched from the Sunbelt to the Big Ten.
03:07And Cignetti is a hell of a coach, too.
03:10Yes, he is.
03:12Michigan's a 27.5 point favorite against Western Michigan.
03:15Again, similar forecast, a little bit colder the next day, but they'll be probably close
03:19to the low of 60, so dress appropriately.
03:22Western Michigan's Brock Lowry, who is a transfer from Indiana, is a running threat as a quarterback.
03:29He was the MAAC Offensive Player of the Year.
03:32He had over 200 carries from the quarterback spot, rushed for 17 touchdowns, only threw
03:37for nine.
03:39And they also got a former walk-on in Jalen Buckley, a fifth-year third-team All-Mac
03:44running back who's rushed for 2,700 yards and 28 touchdowns in his career.
03:48It's a veteran group.
03:49Lance Taylor's a hell of a coach.
03:53And I would have to think it was a good hire by Dan Bartholomew.
03:57He was now at Michigan State.
03:59But, you know, you got to show up.
04:01You got to show up from Michigan to Michigan State.
04:04You know, there are games that you look at and people just punch-button them as wins.
04:10If the team tries to punch-button them as wins, I could see them both in dogfights.
04:14Yeah, you can't just, as a team, just go through that.
04:17And I would imagine that at Michigan State, that Pat Fitzgerald is hammering that point
04:21home, and I would hope that Kyle Whittingham is doing the same thing at Michigan.
04:25But, you know, Michigan's got the hype machine in full effect.
04:28And whether it's going to live up to the hype is, we'll end up seeing it.
04:32I mean, in the last few days, I've seen a number of posts about a different defensive lineman,
04:37about the wide receivers, about the running backs.
04:39And it all may be true, but it's just, it's the same.
04:41And how the narrative has changed on Underwood in just a few months.
04:46You know, where it looked at the spring game, he didn't look good.
04:48And now everybody says he looks amazing.
04:50And we'll see.
04:51The coaches have all said the same thing.
04:53Is this just the annual hype, or is this actually going to be something that, you know, has substance to
04:57it?
04:57The coaches have all said the same thing about him.
04:59And that is, in practice, they believe in what he can do.
05:04But until they see him do it in the game, like throwing off the back foot last year,
05:10is something that they were trying to coach out of him.
05:15But when it comes to Coy Detmer, who spoke about him, Kyle Whittingham, who spoke about him,
05:20Jason Beck, the new offensive coordinator, they all said the same thing.
05:24It's been fine in practice.
05:26We need to see it in games.
05:28We need to see him be more fundamentally sound in games.
05:32So that is something that I just don't think you know.
05:39They did bring in Braden Fowler-Nicolosi from Colorado State to provide some experience and some depth.
05:45And yet today, Kyle Whittingham meeting with the media this morning named Tommy Carr as QB2 there in Ann Arbor.
05:54So 248-539-9797, you want to keep talking Wolverines and Spartans.
05:59Let's get back to your phone call.
06:01Steve in Rochester Hills.
06:02Hi, Steve.
06:03Hey, you guys.
06:05You know, I'll just give you my experience, and I'll make it as brief as possible,
06:09because I know you guys have a lot of things going on.
06:11But I had shoulder surgery back in March, and they went in to just repair my labrum.
06:16And I had shoulder surgery in 2009.
06:19So you're talking 17 years ago.
06:21And as soon as the doctor opened it up, he found out that I had five bone spurs there,
06:26and I also had, which is what tore my labrum.
06:30And then they also noticed that I had to get my rotator cuff redone, and I had a lot of
06:35arthritis.
06:36And to make a long story short, through my rehabilitation, I couldn't go any further until I got to a
06:45certain point.
06:46And then to make it better, they had to shoot me up with cortisone to get past that arthritis.
06:51So now I'm pretty much probably 90%, 95% back to where I was.
06:56Steve, we're a minute in.
06:57What are we doing?
06:59What do you mean?
07:01You've talked to us for a minute about all your injuries.
07:02What does this have to do with anything?
07:04No, no, no, no.
07:05I'm sorry.
07:06Yeah, I just want to get it off my chest.
07:07No.
07:08What it was is everyone's talking about with Kirby Joseph, those are unknowns that no one knows until you finally
07:15get in there.
07:16And then you're trying to treat it, and then you come across other things that are there.
07:20And who knows?
07:21He might have a really bad case of arthritis there that they're trying to do certain things to try and
07:27get past it.
07:27And where I, me personally, what aggravates me is not Kirby Joseph per se, it's just that I don't think
07:35Holmes is doing enough to get us, for right now, controlled with safeties and that, that are proven, just to
07:44get us by to maybe that Kirby Joseph could be back.
07:47I know Branch will probably be back, to what extent, we don't know.
07:50But I'm just, and I think other people are aggravated because they're like, come on, guys, we're just waiting and
07:55waiting and waiting.
07:56I mean, we need to have somebody there.
07:58I thought they were, well, a little bit, some of it makes sense.
08:00I think I expected them to draft a safety.
08:05I thought that was going to be a certainty, and they didn't.
08:08So that kind of surprised me they didn't go that route or that they didn't get someone of substance, real
08:13substance and free agency with that, that they were going to roll the dice with this.
08:18That part surprises me.
08:19As far as, you know, Steve's personal situation with his injury and trying to compare that to an NFL players,
08:26I just don't, because obviously the NFL takes a lot.
08:30They're invested a lot more.
08:32I doubt that they're going to cut them open and say, oh, look at all this.
08:36We've got all these issues, too.
08:37I mean, they know because of MRIs and countless other exams.
08:41I mean, I think his point was you really don't know until they open it up and take a look
08:44inside, but I think they've done all that with Kirby.
08:47The one thing you have to keep in mind is that every team has unaddressed issues where they're rolling the
08:55dice because of the cap.
08:57And I think the Lions are like, OK, if we invest heavily in safety and both these guys come back,
09:03we're going to have established safety one and two with established safety one and two coming back.
09:10Now, maybe they should have done a little bit more.
09:12But if they believe that there's a chance that these guys come back, it's an area that, OK, we're going
09:21to take our money and spend it elsewhere.
09:24And because we think that there's a good chance we'll get one, if not both these guys back eventually.
09:31They may have miscalculated.
09:32They may have miscalculated.
09:35But I've heard this complaint a lot.
09:37They should have done more at safety.
09:40OK, let's say you do more and the best ones are going to get four or five year contracts and
09:44then Branch and Kirby Joseph come back.
09:46And I mean, I guess you could trade somebody at that point, but it feels like even the safeties on
09:51the open market in a free agency might be like, I don't want to sign there.
09:55Am I going to play when they come back?
09:57But, you know, like they maybe they did miscalculate.
10:00We'll find out over time if they if neither of them come back or ever as good as they were
10:04and it undermines this team's chance to win a Super Bowl.
10:08Big mistake.
10:08Well, I mean, Branch's injury is when you come back from it just takes a while, right?
10:12The Joseph one, we're still not sure.
10:14We don't know what the injury really is and what it means and what a what a full career could
10:19look like.
10:20Or is it shorter, you know, by the minute here?
10:23We don't know.
10:24Carson Anderson, 97-1.
10:26We don't know.
10:26We don't know.
