Looking good, Billy Ray! Feeling good, Louis!
Sep 2, 2007 Boulware, Charles Spencer, Jason Babin, Michigan Wolverines, Preseason 2007, Secondary issues are primary
I was out-of-pocket yesterday, spending most of that time playing football with (much) younger cousins and drinking beer. Thanks to the wonders of cellular technology, however, I received two pieces of interesting news mere minutes after the events occurred in real life.
The first, obviously, was that Michigan lost to something called Appalachian State. Ah, yes… the beautiful state of Appalachia. Where men are men and sheep are nervous.1 Seriously, though, I am not one of those people who is trying to excuse the loss with the whole “well, they won the Division 12 Super Bowl two years in a row.” Fuck. That. Shit. You schedule a HOME GAME with a DIVISION I-AA TEAM, you sure as shit BETTER WIN. End of story. My college football season was ruined on September 1 and I blame Lloyd Carr. I hate you, Lloyd Carr.2 OK, that’s enough Michigan talk. I realize this whole paragraph only applies to me. Moving on…
The other piece of news was the Babin-for-Boulware trade. Now, I am part of a very small group of people who liked Babin as a draft pick, even at that price. I might be the only non-EMU grad who was talking Babin up as a starter even before camp started this year. In short, I had a weird mancrush-like obsession with J-Babs. That said, I LOVE this trade.
Yes, I know that there are concerns that Boulware is a run-stopping safety and not that great in pass defense. So what? That’s pretty much all Glenn Earl did, and I’m 99.27% sure that Boulware will be better than Earl. And no offense to Jason Simmons, who by all accounts is the nicest human being on the planet, but I even more sure that Boulware will be an upgrade over him. Hell, I like having a strong safety that is great against the run. I just wish we had a free safety who was that good against the pass. That will come in time, I suppose. For now, though, we traded a backup DE for an upgrade at SS. That’s a deal I’d make 10 times out of 10.
Besides, the deal looks even better when you stop to consider the odds against us snagging a Boulware-level strong safety in next year’s draft. More importantly, if Boulware works out like I think he will, we won’t have to look for a strong safety next season. We can focus our attentions elsewhere–say FS or (if Barbaro doesn’t come back healthy) OT.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to continue numbing yesterday’s pain with dark beer.
1 How the hell was that quote not on the IMDB page? Someone is slipping.
2 I’ve mentioned this to a couple of you, but isn’t it bizarre that two of my least favorite people in the whole world have the last name “Carr,” yet they are not related? What are the odds of that?
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September 2nd, 2007 at 9:59 am
C’mon man… Bill Ray? It’s Billy Ray. That should have been a slam dunk it was so easy. Kinda like beating Appalachian State. (I know, low blow). Still a great quote, though.
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September 2nd, 2007 at 10:34 am
Typo on my part. I thought I typed “Billy Ray.” Will fix.
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September 2nd, 2007 at 3:37 pm
“For now, though, we traded a backup DE for an upgrade at SS. That’s a deal I’d make 10 times out of 10.”
You nailed it. We’ve got the depth at DE that we could trade Babin away for someone who could potentially become our starting SS for a few years.
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September 4th, 2007 at 9:17 am
…and if Boulware doesn’t work out, we can always drop him at the end of the season. I’m left pondering the same questions, however. Who’s gonna rush the QB (not that Babin was neccessarily the answer there), and who besides Dunta is going to cover opponent receivers?
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September 6th, 2007 at 7:03 am
For your first question, I am hoping the answer is “Mario, from the left d end spot.” For your second, I honestly have no idea. Ugh.