Georgia Links: Preview, The Podcast, FFFF Offense (chart), FFFF Defense (chart)

Something's been missing from Michigan gamedays since the free programs ceased being economically viable: scientific gameday predictions that are not at all preordained by the strictures of a column in which one writer takes a positive tack and the other a negative one… something like Punt-Counterpunt.

PUNT

By Bryan MacKenzie
@Bry_Mac

“Act like you’ve been there before.”

You’ve heard it a thousand times. Often it comes from grumpy older fans upset that a Youth hit the Stanky Leg after scoring a touchdown, or when a school with a terrible basketball team rushes the court after beating the #8 team in the country. The idea is that people who experience success should act with humility and modesty. The idea is that it makes you look more impressive and imposing if you make it seem unremarkable.

And in this particular case, it’s really stupid advice. Just monumentally dumb.

For whom exactly is this façade being erected? Is there even a casual fan that doesn’t already know that Michigan is a newcomer here? The talking point has been so thoroughly beaten to death by everyone from Paul Finebaum to @SpartanGuy186631927 that we may as well have renamed Jim Harbaugh’s position the J. Ira and Nicki Harris Family Hasn’t Beaten Ohio State Hasn’t Won The Big Ten And Hasn’t Been To The Playoff Head Football Coach.

Now what? (Barron)

[After THE JUMP: Georgia font.]

Everyone knows they’re new here. Michigan isn’t a tourist walking through Times Square who might be able to pass itself off as a long-time New Yorker who just happens to love Bubba Gump Shrimp. Michigan is wearing a plastic Statue of Liberty crown and a giant “I Heart NY” foam finger. It has no idea how the subway turnstiles work. It’s speaking in the thickest Midwest accent and taking pictures of street signs and pigeons.

Michigan has been playing football for 142 years. They’ve never been in a game quite like this. Punt/Counterpunt has been punting and counterpunting for a few decades. Ditto.

This is a new experience for Michigan. It’s also, intentionally, a different Michigan team. Somewhere within the halls of Schembechler Hall this year, someone ⁠— probably Aidan Hutchinson or Hassan Haskins or Cade McNamara ⁠— made the decision that Michigan was going to become 1990’s Miami. They were going to exhibit aggressive amnesia about the failings of the past, and call their shot before every at-bat. They were going to be unapologetically vocal. They were going to kick the hell out of the ball. And they were going to prove once again the power of Spencer Hall’s contention that great teams taunt.

Coming for it all (Fuller)

It would have been safer, and possibly more advisable, to go the ‘quiet confidence’ route. After all, the odds weren’t great. Michigan has been program whose previous summit attempts to have been more Into Thin Air than Free Solo, and they were coming off a full-on Crashed Into The Mountain season. The mere suggestion that Michigan might accomplish something like this were met with contempt from friend and foe alike, and you don’t run the risk of ending up with a “Joe Bolden drives a spike into Spartan Stadium” if you act meek and hope for the best.

But Aidan Hutchinson summarized Michigan’s approach to the season when discussing his viral blasting of Thayer Munford:

“Send it all at me. I want it all.”

In the John Beilein era, we learned the phrase “Queme Los Barcos.” Burn the ships. Give yourself no chance to go back. No easy escape. You don’t worry about tempting fate, because Fate is on your side… and if it’s not, Fate will be brought to heel.

It’s how you get a team Jumping Around in Camp Randall like goddang maniacs with 15 minutes left in a 10-point game. It’s how you get a team dancing to Thunderstruck while TRAILING through three quarters at Nebraska. It’s how you get the entire team talking an EPIC amount of crap in the tunnel at halftime in a 1-point game against a team they haven’t beaten in a million years. It’s how you make the #2 team in the country quit, and then get Buckeyes whining to the FCC, the Pope, and the International Criminal Court about Desmond Howard saying mean (and ***demonstrably true***) things about their offensive linemen.

In a lot of ways, Michigan and Georgia have been similar programs in the last decade or so. Both have been quite good. But both have been seen by the rest of the college football world as fragile, especially when compared to their rival Leviathans. Michigan figured out how to get past theirs this year, doing so with gusto. Georgia didn’t; despite being a touchdown favorite, they were blown out by Alabama in the SEC Championship Game.

Georgia has been here before. They’ve won the SEC and they’ve been to the National Championship Game. They are easily the more established of the two powers, and Michigan is the upstart. But, fundamentally, is this a different Georgia team than the ones that came up short against Alabama all those seasons? Michigan, for better or worse, is a different team than the ones we’ve seen in recent years. This one wants it all, and Georgia isn’t the ones to deny them. Michigan 23, Georgia 21.

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COUNTERPUNT

By Internet Raj
@internetraj

I’ve been staring at a blinking cursor for an hour, willing words to spill forth from my fingertips, but nothing has come to me. “Counterpunt – Georgia.docx” is a vexingly blank canvas and the harder I try to summon the smallest nugget of an idea, a kernel of a concept, a mere subatomic particle of creative inspiration, the larger and more intimidating the white space before me becomes. I silently curse myself for typing this on my widescreen work monitor. I pace around my apartment, listen to my 17^th different CFP preview podcast, have a glass or 4 of bourbon. Still, nothing. I sit back down and try fiddling with the fonts. I eschew my go-to Times New Roman for Georgia to get meta. It’s similar to TNR in a lot of ways but much fancier. Especially the numbers. 42-27. See? They are all asymmetrical and stuff. My mind drifts. I wonder if Dax Hill has finally made it to Miami. I check Twitter to see if there are any updates on his status but end up falling into a meme wormhole and don’t snap out of it until another hour has passed. My mom FaceTime’s me and I answer. She asks why I seem so distracted. I tell her I’m trying to figure out if Dax Hill made the trip to Miami. She asks me who Dax Hill is. My forehead furrows in exasperation. This will require a lot of explanation. I start with a broad overview of FlightAware before taking a brief detour into the Najee Harris recruiting saga. There’s silence on the other side of the line. I ask if she’s following before noticing she hung up 23 minutes prior.

I try to give myself some self-encouragement. Come on Raj, you can do this. You’ve written this column over 40 times! It’s just 500 words, surely you can do it! It doesn’t work. I take a different tack and try to berate myself, hoping that a brutally sharp excoriation will whip me into a productive frenzy. You fucking idiot, Raj. You can’t write 500 damn words? Pathetic loser. Despite voicing these thoughts in as close an approximation of Urban Meyer’s voice that I can summon, it still doesn’t work.

So here I am, writing about my inner creative struggles, taking you, the reader, on a real time tour of my lethargically non-compliant brain. As I try to unpack and interrogate why I am at such a loss for words for this game, it would be easy for me to point the finger at my jetlag-induced fugue after just disembarking an 18-hour flight from New York to Singapore. But that’s not it. I’ve done some of my best Counterpunt work in a sleep-deprived fugue state.

The true answer, I think, is that we are in uncharted waters and I simply don’t know what to do with myself. Beating Ohio State. Avoiding a catastrophic letdown one week later by grinding Iowa into dust for a Big Ten Championship. A College Football Playoff berth. The Fucking College Fucking Football Fucking Playoff. Excuse my language, but as I’m typing it right now, I still can’t believe it. I was so sure that in the dying embers of the MSU loss, this season would devolve into the typical November nightmare. Instead, it’s been a dream. I feel like I’m floating in a warm fuzzy ether, the opposite of whatever the BPONE is. The strictures of Punt-Counterpunt require me take the opposite stance of Bryan and predict a Michigan loss. And, sure, I’ll do that. Given the Vegas odds, advanced stats, and all the prognostication from the College Football intelligentsia, a Michigan loss seems to be the most probably outcome. But predicting the outcome is beside the point. Like this column, I’ve decided I’m no longer in control. I’m just along for the ride. And my prediction be damned, let’s hope it keeps on going.

Michigan 24, Georgia 27