quarterback run game

Previously: Podcast 15.0A, 15.0B, 15.0C. The Story. Quarterback. Running Back. Wide Receiver. Tight End. Interior OL. Defensive Interior. Edge. Linebacker. Cornerback. Safety. Special Teams.

Last year this question was "does losing Gattis matter?" The answer was "absolutely not":

I loved the gameplans down the stretch, but if Michigan put up two of the worst ten scores in UFR history early in the year, and things got a lot better late, and then Gattis decamped for 7-5-ass Miami after making the Cofopoff, what is the most likely explanation? Gattis got sidelined.

This was accurate. Gattis trashed Miami's offense, got fired after one year, and is now back with Locksley at Maryland. Insert Matt Weiss. Michigan's offense dunked on OSU again, moved up four slots in SP+, and looked exactly like it had when Gattis was around: meat, meat, meat, and meat.

Then Weiss took being the Madden Kid thing too far and got booted for still-mysterious computer access crimes. Kirk Campbell was elevated to QB coach and Sherrone Moore became the full-time offensive coordinator. In one area this has already been a massive win, as Campbell appears to be one NIL package away from landing #1 overall 2025 prospect Bryce Underwood. Ok, but what changes on the field?

[After THE JUMP: McCarthy items]

SPONSOR NOTE: Upon Further Review is sponsored by HomeSure Lending and Matt Demorest. Rates are the lowest they've been in three years so it can't hurt to check whether you can save money on a refinance. Or you could buy a house in Ann Arbor! Good luck with that!

Matt's relocated the bus to Pioneer this year, BTW, and invites everyone to stop by and say hi. There's beer. I mean, obviously. Matt. Matt and beer: a good pairing.

FORMATION NOTES: All gun or pistol until some goal line snaps on which Michigan went under center. Rutgers ran every front known to man.

That's definitely a thing! Whatever it is! I may have been less than diligent at sussing out what every front actually was.

Short yardage featured three tight ends and sometimes Erick All would motion back to fullback. All gets after it as a blocker but I mean… Michigan has fullbacks on the roster.

Michigan had the usual mix of 3 WR, 1 TE and 2 WR, 2 TE snaps. McKeon's injury meant it slid a little bit more towards the former. A couple of two-RB snaps saw Michigan with a slot guy in the backfield.

SUBSTITUTION NOTES: OL the usual Runyan/Bredeson/Ruiz/Onwenu/Mayfield. No Hayes rotation until very late. Spanellis got a few late snaps so he's most or all of the way back from injury.

QB went Patterson, Milton, Sessa with McCaffrey out. Slightly odd they didn't spend one of McNamara's games here.

RB was a near-even rotation between Turner, Charbonnet, Wilson, and Haskins. Turner and Charbonnet got almost all the early snaps; Haskins got in late and is probably going to be a backup option in more competitive games.

WR also a near even rotation with Bell, DPJ, Black, and Collins all getting about half the snaps. Jackson and Sainristil each had about 10, some of them with the first team but mostly on the second team. TE saw Eubanks get more snaps than any other skill guy; Erick All and Schoonmaker filled in for McKeon, mostly All. Muhammad got in late.

[After THE JUMP: an oasis in the desert! Possibly the mirage of one!]

9/28/2019 – Michigan 52, Rutgers 0 – 3-1, 1-1 Big Ten

This is all Raj's fault. He referenced the Mandela Effect in Punt/Counterpunt, and I clicked the Wikipedia link. There I had a record scratch moment:

In 2010, this shared false memory phenomenon was dubbed the "Mandela Effect" by self-described "paranormal consultant" Fiona Broome, in reference to a false memory she reported of the death of South African leader Nelson Mandela in the 1980s (who was at the time still alive), which she claimed was shared by "perhaps thousands" of other people. Other such examples include memories of the Berenstain Bears' name previously being spelled as Berenstein, and of a 1990s movie Shazaam, starring comedian Sinbad as a genie.

This is a bad moment, the moment an article about someone else's bad brain suddenly becomes about you. I remember a 1990s movie named Shazaam starring comedian Sinbad as a genie. I remember thinking that it was dumb that they had a movie named Kazaam starring Shaq as a genie. They just made that movie. Why on earth would you make a genie movie like two years after the other genie movie?! No I didn't see it, I have standards.

I have been googling furiously!

I must report back that Shazaam does not exist. This is a jarring thing to myself and fully two-thirds of the people who voted in my very scientific twitter poll on the subject, which even points out that this Sinbad movie is not the Shaq one:

was Sinbad in a genie move in the 1990s that was not the Shaq vehicle Kazaam

— mgoblog (@mgoblog) September 29, 2019

I believe in the ability of the internet to surface literally everything that's ever been, especially if it's dumb and/or funny. Any Shazaam surfacings have been quickly debunked as photoshops or Sinbad appearing as a turbaned host for a bunch of Sinbad movies, often by Sinbad. Sinbad himself insists he was never in a genie movie.

Undeterred, certain other persons have not and will not ever be put off their conviction that Shazaam exists. There's going to the mat for something and then there's this, for a 90s genie movie:

Carl’s explanation, however, is the most detailed. …

“University of Oxford’s philosopher Nick Bostrom suggested that members of an advanced civilization with enormous computing power might decide to run simulations of their ancestors,” he says, also arguing that quantum computers are now able to run such simulations. “In a day where we can now run these simulations, is this a far-fetched theory?” he argues, noting that the famous scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson put the odds we are living in a computer simulation at 50-50 earlier this year.

“Does it make more sense to argue with the scientific minds of our time exposed to the greatest understanding of the capabilities of modern technology, or to argue with the masses of people who simply write off these effects we are noticing as faulty memories?” Carl asks.

Shit, Carl. I had not thought of it like that. That had not occurred to us. I had not thought that we were in a faulty simulation that may fray at the edges by accidentally deleting the existence of Shazaam. Fiona Broome, the paranormal consultant—aren't they all—referenced in the Wikipedia article, has built a semblance of a career on another theory:

The “Mandela Effect” is what happens when someone has a clear memory of something that never happened in this reality.

Many of us – mostly total strangers – remember the exact same events with the almost identical details. However, our memories are different from what’s in history books, newspaper archives, and so on. … parallel realities exist, and – until now – we’ve been “sliding” between them without realizing it.

If this sounds like Ms. Broome had several mind-altering substances during a Sci-Fi channel marathon of the mid-90s Jerry O'Connell vehicle Sliders, well… yeah. This is absolutely, 100% what happened.

But I have to consider the possibility that the dubious provenance of this theory does not keep it from being true, because several people I talked to after the game said things like "that was better" or asked me if that performance changed my opinion. These people must have slid in from parallel universes where the Wisconsin game was less of a debacle. Maybe their universe's version of Rutgers is a spunky, cursed underdog like Indiana is in ours.

Or maybe this isn't "our" universe at all; maybe I, along with the six-hundred or so people who said Shazaam is a real movie in my twitter poll, have shifted timelines. My googling hasn't picked up any glaring alterations from my home universe, so let's just take a big sip of coffee and find out who the president is…

-----------------------------------------

[Barron]

Your perspective may be different if you've recently shifted universes. In this one Michigan is a team with a ton of question marks and no more time for answers. Rutgers doesn't provide them. Michigan's first touchdown came on five-yard out to Nico Collins on which he was still running 43 yards later. Rutgers fired its coach immediately after the game.

Michigan is staring down the barrel of Iowa, a team with defined offensive and defensive philosophies and an 18-17 win against Iowa State in which they got outgained by about 100 yards and didn't face a potential game-winning field goal drive because one Cyclone obliterated his teammate when he was trying to field a punt. Michigan was a 7-point favorite when betting opened; that line has been hammered down to 4.5 already.

Iowa will be an opportunity to change some perceptions, to prove something. At best it'll probably prove that Michigan can beat a mediocre Michigan State team. That would be nice, but when people ask me about whether needle's moved—no, it still points directly at another Ohio State loss.

We could try to pick out the things about this game against Rutgers that make it seem like the Army and Wisconsin games are not fate for the rest of the season, or we could sit down and try really hard to shift into a different universe. The latter is my bet. Maybe in the other universe they'll have supermarket tomatoes that are good.

[After THE JUMP: content]