Iowa Pretape Thoughts

Offense

• Replay again blows a huge call by ruling that Antonio Bass had fumbled when it was clear that his elbow hit the ground and then the ball came out. When your elbow hits, you're down, and everyone knows that except for the Big Ten replay official. It balanced out an earlier blown fumble call when Martin clearly coughed the ball up but the play was ruled down and not reviewed. I'm in favor of replay but I'm also in favor of finding replay officials that have watched football before.
• Jake Long returned, praise Jesus. The guy off the bench when Henige was injured was actually redshirt freshman Alex Mitchell.
• Henne... what can you say? Iowa decided at some point to rush three and sit back on passing downs because he would panic after about two seconds in the pocket and check down or throw the ball away. Michigan's confidence in him is seemingly very low. His numbers look fine thanks in large part to the 52 yard screen touchdown and some completions that were meaninglessly short of the sticks on third down, but Lloyd is going to have to call me an idiot again.
• Still not sure if the pass to Avant in overtime was brilliant or retarded, since he was covered well and Henne was throwing across his body. He did put it in the only place he could and let Avant make an incredible (OMG INCREDIBLE) catch.
• I hate the fact that whenever Mike Hart gets injured they show shots of him on the sideline after every other play; each one breaks my heart.
• Jerome Jackson? WTF... okay! Jerome Jackson!

Defense

• John Thompson played the entire second half in place of Chris Graham and did very well. We have a new WLB and the difference was immediately apparent, like going from McClintock to Harris. Now about the strong side...
• A ton of frustrating soft zone coverage the whole day. Tate was very accurate but it helped that he only had to thread it into coverage infrequently. I'm getting tired of seeing our cornerbacks 10 yards off the line of scrimmage like they're Jaren Hayes.
• Woodley went out early in the game and Tirico kept referring to an Alan Branch leg injury. Pierre Woods and Tim Jamison filled in for Woodley very well, getting pressure on Tate regularly.
• After a couple of long early touchdown drives Michigan held Iowa to one last second field goal over the course of the second half, though they were aided by a gift interception.
• I was too hard on Jamar Adams. Over the past two games he's played very well in the absence of the starters (Engelmon missed one tackle on Iowa's first drive and then disappeared).
• Shawn Crable only appears on my radar when he's doing something really dumb, like the holding call in overtime.

Special Teams

Not much to speak of in this game. Iowa's punter consistently dropped in 20-30 yard punts, giving Breaston no chance to return. Rivas hit his one field goal. David Harris blocked an Iowa field goal. Ross Ryan's punts were all short-ish and had good hang time. He'll consistently kick it about 40 yards and only very few of them will be returned.

The call on the Breaston muff was correct, I think, as he was clearly affected by the gunner. Perhaps not the letter of the law but definitely the spirit of it.

Coaching

It took Carr all of one game to forget the lessons he professed to have learned against Penn State. When Michigan got the ball back late Michigan looked at nine man fronts on first down and decided to run into them. The final series before overtime: run for two yards, run for three yards, run for two yards. Punt with three minutes left, almost lose the game.