10/15/2022 – Michigan 41, Penn State 17 – 7-0, 4-0 Big Ten

Yappiness varies by game when you're in the stands, and largely depends on what kind of opposition fans you get near you. I remember one particular Iowa game when seemingly everyone within earshot was giving the business to an oversized, corn-fed Hawkeye fan who the term "This Fuckin' Guy" was invented for. There is a 1000% chance that after the game he descended on the local message board and typed out a screed about how rude and terrible Michigan fans are. This is in total opposition to the rest of the Iowa fanbase, lovely people one and all, but sometimes you just get a guy. Not just a guy. A This Fuckin' Guy. A TFG. 

There was a Penn State TFG near me, and when Michigan broke Penn State's back with consecutive touchdown runs of 60+  yards he started loudly complaining about all the holding Michigan was getting away with. There were about three Michigan fans inclined to chirp back about how the scoreboard said Michigan many, Penn State considerably less (but not nearly as less as they deserved). They pointed out that Michigan had 300 rushing yards and counting, and that PSU had exactly three good plays all game.

They were correct. Also at various points all three of them had loudly complained about Michigan's playcalling in the game where Michigan had 300 rushing yards and counting. These fuckin' guys. Any neutral who happened to be within earshot learned everything they needed to know about the two participating fanbases in the course of about three minutes.

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As the teams headed to the locker room at halftime a similar scene unfolded in the tunnel.

Some halftime tunnel shenanigans happening. pic.twitter.com/FwxgXdO7jj

— Isaiah Hole (@isaiahhole) October 15, 2022

I imagine the Penn State roster's version of Jesse Pinkman started woofing something or other, and things descended from there until there was a generalized hooting, some pushing back-and-fourth, and the hurling of ineffectual but tasty projectiles.

Yesterday I found a few PB&Js squashed on the floor outside our locker room

I thought it was an unsuccessful attempt to sneak food to the sideline…

Turns out they had been thrown at our players during that… Jam up… in the tunnel 😂 pic.twitter.com/ViumYFYeRf

— Abigail O'Connor (@A_OConnorRD) October 16, 2022

Michigan came out to do the same things they were doing in the first half. Penn State hung on by a thread, just hoping to stay in contact. Once they fell out of striking range they flopped down on the ground, spent, and let Michigan run them over some more. What's one more tire track at that point? Maybe this one will make the whole thing look like a tribal tattoo.

This was eventually reminiscent of another Michigan-Penn State game in blog history, the one where Alan Branch made Anthony Morelli very flat. I went to that game, and winding through the hills in the aftermath of the game listening to the shell-shocked Penn State postgame show was an injection of pure schadenfredue. This quote from former PSU receiver Chafie Fields led the game column:

"If you put a pit bull in a ring with a chihuahua, don't expect the chihuahua to win."

Michigan also went to 7-0, 4-0 after that game. The main difference was the final score. Instead of the outrageous blowout Michigan put up Saturday, that game was 17-10. When you put Mechagodzilla in a ring with a chihuahua, sort of thing. Glancing up from the field to the increasingly outlandish scoreboard gave the observer a chill down the spine. The Pit Bull game was in 2006. Something else happened in 2006 that two fanbases are now barreling towards. If a train leaves Columbus at 100 miles an hour at the same time a train leaves Ann Arbor, what happens in the aftermath of their collision?

A few hurdles remain, but in Michigan's case they're a Michigan State program functionally entirely on transfers and spite and an Illinois team that is so far removed from success that they are merely surgent, no "re" involved. Focus up on the bye week, take MSU seriously but not literally, and toot toot all aboard for destination: carnage.

AWARDS

Known Friends and Trusted Agents Of The Week

"I should have transferred to Michigan" –Oluwatimi [Barron]

you're the man now, dog

#1 The Offensive Line. When you rush for 400 yards and two different backs go for a buck fifty and you're one ankle tackle away from sending CJ Stokes to the races as a third exclamation point, you get to be the KFaTAotW notwithstanding any attempts to grade you out like you're a Penn State OL that generated 35 yards on 12 carries for their backs.

#2(T) Blake Corum and Donovan Edwards. I imagine this one is relatively self-explanatory. Three points each.

#3 Mike Morris. Hard to pick out a defender based on raw numbers since snap counts were so low. Morris was Michigan's most consistently impactful defender, starting the game off with a Graham and Jenkins-assisted TFL on third and one, batting a pass down, registering a QB hurry, and nearly stuffing the fourth and goal PSU touchdown if he'd just gotten a little help.

Honorable mention: JJ McCarthy kept the offense moving and his legs were crucial even when not in direct use. Ronnie Bell didn't have a ton of yards but had a third and twelve conversion on which he had no business converting, and then he deployed Swag™. Nobody throws at Gemon Green anymore. Junior Colson put his nose in the right places. Jake Moody was 4/4 on field goals.

KFaTAotW Standings.

(points: #1: 8, #2: 5, #3: 3, HMs one each. Ties result in somewhat arbitrary assignments.)

27: Blake Corum (#2 CSU, #2 Hawaii, HM UConn, #1 Maryland, #2 Iowa. HM Indiana, T2 PSU)
19: JJ McCarthy (#1 Hawaii, #2 UConn, HM Maryland, HM Iowa, #3 Indiana, HM PSU)
16: Ronnie Bell (HM CSU, HM Hawaii, #1 UConn, #2 Indiana, HM PSU), Mike Morris (T3 Hawaii, HM Maryland, #1 Iowa, T1 Indiana, #3 PSU)
12: Mazi Smith (#1 CSU, T3 Hawaii, HM Maryland, HM Iowa)
11: The Offensive Line (#3 Iowa, #1 PSU)
8: Kris Jenkins (#3 UConn, T3 Hawaii, HM Iowa, T1 Indiana)
7: Gemon Green (HM UConn, T2 Maryland, HM PSU)
5: DJ Turner (T2 Maryland), Junior Colson (#3 CSU, HM UConn, HM PSU)
4: Eyabi Okie (HM CSU, HM Iowa, T1 Indiana), Luke Schoonmaker (T3 Maryland, HM Iowa, HM Indiana), Donovan Edwards (HM Hawaii, T2 PSU)
3:Derrick Moore (HM CSU, T1 Indiana), Jaylen Harrell (HM CSU, T1 Indiana), Mason Graham (HM Hawaii, HM Iowa, HM Indiana)
2: Roman Wilson (HM CSU, HM Hawaii), Max Bredeson (T3 Maryland), Joel Honigford (T3 Maryland), Mike Sainristil (HM Maryland, HM Indiana), Rod Moore (HM CSU, HM Indiana)
1: Braiden McGregor (HM CSU), Makari Paige (HM Hawaii), Rayshaun Benny (HM Hawaii), Cornelius Johnson (HM Hawaii), , AJ Henning (HM UConn), Caden Kolesar (HM UConn), RJ Moten (HM Maryland), Jake Moody (HM PSU).

Who's Got It Better Than Us(?) Of The Week

Corum puts what feels like the nail in the coffin one play after Edwards staked Michigan to a lead it would not relinquish.

Honorable mention: The Edwards thing. McCarthy hits Johnson on a 30-air-yard pass on a waggle rollout(!). Manny Diaz puts five in the box on third and long and gets what's coming to him. Michigan punches PSU off the field on third and one on their first drive, setting the train in motion.

?MARCUS HALL EPIC DOUBLE BIRD OF THE WEEK.

An attempted pass to Corum in the flat goes bat-helmet doink-pick six, briefly staking Penn State to the most improbable lead in recent Michigan football history, give or take the 2008 Wisconsin game.

Honorable mention: Sean Clifford keeper goes for 60+, setting up Penn State for their other touchdown. McCarthy overthrows a likely touchdown on a Donovan Edwards screen. Clifford puts one right on the money to set up a go-ahead third quarter field goal.

OFFENSE

JJ-assisted [Barron]

It changes things. I mentioned that JJ McCarthy's legs were an important factor in Michigan's ground game in the Indiana UFR, even and maybe even especially when he didn't have the ball. That's going to come up again in this week's edition because hoo boy the threat of McCarthy keeping the ball was a major factor on both of Michigan's long touchdown runs. The Corum one is obvious; just watch the cornerback to the bottom of the screen:

He's still running at McCarthy when Corum is three yards downfield and accelerating; his absence is the main reason Corum can dust the safety instead of getting funneled into him.

The Edwards touchdown is more subtle. Michigan's screen frippery to the field and the threat of McCarthy's legs—plus what is going to be our Block Of The Year Of The Week—occupy the backside linebacker and turns this from ten yards and change into six points. Hang on for the replay, which is from the skycam and shows the slight, but fatal hesitation:

LB #43

This guy was not on his horse like the IU linebackers were and that is likely because Michigan had established McCarthy's legs. The margins here are so small. Just that little peek into the backfield is the difference between a touchdown and some sort of tackle attempt that slows Edwards enough for the D to rally:

That is literally one step.

Earlier in the game this same play went off the right side into the boundary but Michigan spent Hayes on a hinge block on the DE, allowing the backside LB to flow free:

Occupy DE with threat of QB, hold LB with same threat, and ten turns into 60.

[Fuller]

Why you might hesitate. McCarthy's numbers on the ground weren't outrageous, particularly at the point both these runs popped off. But this was the second half, after PSU had 20 minutes to consider and regroup, and the guys in the box probably noticed that Penn State was fortunate not to give up two chunk touchdowns to McCarthy in the first half. Michigan had both tight ends on their close-to-new double arc available to take on one Penn State safety, but that guy was able to make the play. On Michigan's bash/QB counter Michigan had it blocked through the safety, but Hayes peeled off on a guy who was already being blocked:

LT #76

This game was close to having four long touchdown runs, not two.

[Barron]

Well, looks like we have to talk about this again. I think we're all on a hidden camera show at this point:

michigan graded out at a 62.2 in run blocking. the only individual player among the 20 to record run block snaps who cracked 64 was ryan hayes.

— ace (meeting at midfield) (@AceAnbender) October 16, 2022

i didn't even think to look until just now but they gave penn state a slightly better run block grade (63.5) than michigan on saturday

— ace (meeting at midfield) (@AceAnbender) October 16, 2022

Michigan State, which has cracked 3 YPC in one of their five games against P5 competition, ranks above Michigan in run blocking on PFF.

Some of this is explained away by PFF's grading of Corum; they have him as the best running back in college football. That, we can agree on. The OL grading, though, fails to pass a basic sniff test and seems like it's going up against NFL takes. Nick Baumgardner:

This might be a better unit for Michigan than the one that finished 2021 with the Joe Moore Award. It’s at least on that dance floor right now, and Virginia transfer center Olu Oluwatimi is a huge part of that. He’s been a seamless fit up front for a group that lost a senior leader in Andrew Vastardis. Oluwatimi is probably the top draft prospect along the offensive line right now, though junior Zak Zinter might have an argument. I also think LT Ryan Hayes and OG Trevor Keegan are draft picks somewhere.

Sherrone Moore, Michigan’s OL coach/co-offensive coordinator (I’m listing OL coach first, because that’s how it should go), has done an outstanding job since taking over the position before last season. To me, this has been Stanford-era Jim Harbaugh offensive line play at Michigan over the past two seasons. And that is a pretty large compliment.

At this point I want it to continue. Keep getting weirder, PFF. Grade Oluwatimi like he's at Colorado State. LFG.

Cutback time. Michigan had a lot of runs go off the backside or up the middle on gap-blocked plays, which is unusual. Most of the time I am not even grading those blocks because they're not relevant and are often compromises between blocker and blockee to hold a certain position. Here Michigan was moving guys off the ball on the backside, which was important as PSU linebackers hammered down on pulling action to jam up the point of attack much of the day.

Redzone whuffling. Felt kinda bad to be up 6-0 whilst outgaining PSU approximately 200-10. Reminiscent of frustrations with last year's team, which got Jake Moody the Groza by stalling in the redzone way more often than felt reasonable. Once you go over it, though… it's fine. The first field goal was only necessary because McCarthy airmailed the ball on what looks like a touchdown since Michigan is 4 on 3 to the field and no PSU player looks on the verge of something heroic:

The second field goal was a down G play on which a Penn State safety(!) did make a heroic effort… and also a rare Corum misstep as he tried to press it outside when the edge was emphatically set. If Corum cuts that up Michigan's probably at the two or one and the ensuing third down is much different.

Even that third down wasn't too bad, it just happened to catch a great playcall from Manny Diaz, who zero-blitzed while dropping out a guy who could handle the shovel pass.

I reject accusations about being too cute. Sometimes you do lose a playcall. Also Michigan's third FG drive, which was right before halftime, ended when PSU swarmed Michigan's default short-yardage dive.

Michigan's final redzone trip saw them hit with a questionable penalty and then they were in a situation up 14 with 11 minutes left where kicking a field goal is game over, so they ran the ball on third and long and kicked the field goal.

Are we being trolled? Michigan's first snap was a dropback pass out of the pistol, which finally broke their streak of constant runs out of that formation… without gaining a meaningful advantage. Michigan dinked it for four yards without even running any play action. Also, despite the total lack of a mesh point, both ILBs take multiple steps forward:

I'm not mad. Please don't put in the newspaper that I got mad. (Michigan did get a chunk out of pistol on the next drive when McCarthy hit the deep option on a waggle.)

There's respect, and then there's this. Penn State's solution to Roman Wilson running deep was to simply not cover him short.

That is a way to do things. Also, PSU never brought up their deep safety in quarters despite getting paved all day.

DEFENSE

oops [Barron]

We should talk about their one play, I suppose. Michigan has a scrape exchange on with Okie set to demolish the back while Barrett takes the QB. The Penn State LT recognizes this is happening and is able to redirect out on Barrett and run enough interference to get Clifford past the scrape backer. That's a first down chunk, and the rest of it is because Rod Moore is getting a –3 for getting nosy on a scrape exchange where if the back has the ball he's probably dead in the backfield:

This is the LT being a dude and the safety error.

Their other play. Filing their deep shot under Freshman Jourdan Lewis voodoo curse business:

On the podcast I was asserting that maybe Turner wasn't in phase enough to look back, but yeah he's pretty much in phase. Without an inch-perfect throw he's got a play on that ball. Turner bounced back by running a goal line fade for the PSU WR on the ensuing third and four. Speaking of!

Goal line fades like it's 1999. Penn State ran two in this game. Joe Moorhead wept.

[Barron]

Oy, almost. Makari Paige had a real good shot at stuffing the PSU fourth down, especially with Mike Morris coming from behind, but he weirdly fell out of the gap:

That looks like Paige playing defense like he's on the 30 instead of the one.

pretty dang close [Fuller]

The tipping point. Much podcast controversy about whether PSU's playcall on fourth and six was any good:

I think it might be okay. You've got a slot fade/corner, which is not a high percentage ball, but also Michigan ends up running a zero coverage with three dudes in that slant/mesh area. This defense is designed to crush high-percentage balls across the middle of the formation.

Sainristil plays this well—he has to give up the outside since there's no FS—and there's still a window there.

Might have to make some adjustments. This is the second straight week Michigan's gotten bailed out by an OPI call on a screen where the opposition player crossed the line of scrimmage before catching the ball. One day the guy catching the ball will run the right route.

Ok Will Johnson. OK.

Well done by that GA to get him out of what was 100% going to be a taunting call.

Mushin' the rush. Michigan's pressure rate fell off a cliff in this game because even a dodgy PSU line is miles better than Indiana. Also it seemed like contain on Clifford was a major priority. There was one third and long conversion in the second half where Clifford moved up in the pocket, drew Sainristil up, and then chucked it behind him for a chunk. Michigan thought that Clifford improvising was likely to be the best offense PSU had, and they were probably right.

Get some. When Seth talks up Michael Barrett as a blitzer this is what he's talking about:

That is a freshman but is a large freshman.

Safety rotation. Makari Paige and Rod Moore started this week after RJ Moten had a rough game against Indiana; Moten did rotate in frequently. Late in the game Michigan kept their first-string defense on the field, mostly, but inserted some backups. Jimmy Rolder is a pretty obvious one given the state of the LB corps. Will Johnson is another obvious one. (Green did come back after his injury, FWIW.) Quinten Johnson getting most of the fourth quarter was a surprise. Hopefully that means he's relatively close to viable.

SPECIAL TEAMS

also some field goals [Fuller]

Big Moody. Jake Moody hewing down the freshman five-star running back after his Keystone Kops return routine suddenly threatened to break huge was exactly—exactly—like Michigan blocking an Iowa punt in last year's Big Ten Championship game. Michigan has dethroned the king of a weird subset of football.

 

Moody barked at him! Woof. Woof. Woof. Joey Julius, we have avenged your slight. Jake Moody, wreck shit.

Good adjustments. AJ Henning got a couple of anomalously short punts from Barney Amor and didn't do anything rash. His decision to field the first one on one hop was hypothetically important, as it saved Michigan 10-15 yards near its own goal line. No doubt the run from the two that's supposed to get out to the four would have gone for 15, but I mean, good decision anyway.

has been promoted from punter to style icon [Barron]

Well done, Brad. Capital job.

Good holding. See you in two weeks. Maybe.

FWIW, when Robbins does get a punt off he's amongst the national leaders in making punt good:

Poor Iowa and its fifth best punter in the league.

MISCELLANEOUS

BAN BASEBALL SLIDES. Ban them.

Ban them now.

the new president [Fuller]

The new guy. Please, please, please do not give us cause to deploy this photo ever again, especially if a knish is involved. Thank you in advance. University presidents should be like the best safeties: boring. Open the NIL floodgates, build giant apartment buildings on North Campus and then lease them to a private company so they contribute to Ann Arbor's tax base, and spend the rest of your tenure in a basement tweeting out "go sports."

Extremely invested in Kenpom time. Your author was inordinately desirous of garbage time scores in this one, lest the poll-watching public be deceived by the final score into believing this was anything other than an epic beatdown. Drew Allar time was a tense, back-and-forth affair because 41-24 seems vastly worse than 41-17. If you felt this way as well, you are not alone.

Might be time to retire the fourth down ranting. People of earth, I have seent the impossible. I saw David Shaw go for it on fourth and two in plus territory against Notre Dame, fail to convert, and then go for it again on fourth and two in plus territory, whereupon he failed to convert. Then Stanford beat Notre Dame anyway. My only regret is that Rod Gilmore was not doing that game.

Anyway: after a solid 15 years of WHAT ARE YOU DOING GO FOR IT material it seems like football's conventional wisdom is now more or less statistically correct. Eschewed fourth downs are almost always in debatable territory. James Franklin didn't do anything dumb. Probably hasn't in a a while. Everyone's got a Madden Kid now.

An example. I completely forgot that Michigan went for it on fourth and one at the PSU 46 up 31-17 with ~2 minutes left in the third quarter, because it was so unremarkable. Lloyd Carr is punting that ball.

Ticky-tack. The illegal man downfield call on Loveland—really Bredeson—was dubious:

These days it's pretty hard for me to discern what is on and off the line when it comes to WRs—something Nebraska tried to weaponize a couple years back—and if they're going to call something like the above they've got to crack down on what "on the line of scrimmage" means. If they're just calling this it's capricious and arbitrary.

Uh-oh. Opponent adjusted EPA for P5 teams:

We appear to be on a runway to Football Armageddon II. Even if one of Michigan or OSU takes a loss that game is still for a playoff spot—heck, even if both teams do.

HERE

GIFs!

Best and Worst:

Best:  Answering the Bell

In a game with only 17 receptions to go around, Ronnie Bell continued his comeback season by leading the team (again) in receptions (5) and yards after the catch (30) while picking up a couple of crucial first downs, including one on 3rd down to start the 2nd quarter that required him to scamper across the field and fight off a defender for the first.  On the day he picked up 2 first downs on 3rd-and-10+ as well as a DPI on 2nd-and-12 when the PSU defender mugged him basically from the snap.  He wasn’t called upon to block a ton on the longer runs simply because Michigan was able to make a ton of hay going right down the middle of the defense, but him and Johnson both helped free up lanes down the sideline when presented with the opportunity.  Already this year Bell has 35 catches for 429 yards and a TD, nearly equaling the total for the rest of the main receivers (Johnson, Wilson, Henning, and Anthony combined have 43 catches) and further establishing himself as the leader on the field as well as one of the more impressive recruiting finds of the Harbaugh era.  While I’m not sure of his pro prospects – most draft analysis I’ve seen about him is based on preseason discussions (when he was coming back from an ACL injury) and saw him as a late round/UDFA player – but he currently sits 6th in the league in receptions and given some of the teams coming up it’s not hard seeing him pump up those numbers.

State of Our Open Threads:

There were only 8 mentions of "fire", and none of them were about someone, just that the OL was playing with it. There were only 13 mentions of "suck", with most of these actually referring to James Franklin. It's a complete about face from the vitriol that rained down during the Indiana game, especially in the first half, when a couple people wanted Minter left in Bloomington.

We must have felt rather comfortable with both the defense and offense too, because we didn't talk about them quite so much this week.

ELSEWHERE

Twitter ghost Horace Prettyman done did a substack:

Kinnick Stadium is an unmissable experience if you have the means to be a college football tourist. The fans outside (for an 11am local time kickoff, at least) are stereotypically kind and welcoming. The tailgating fare is glorious. Once you’re inside, an unassuming teenage girl in the row in front of you will scream “Kinnick is where top five teams go to die, baby,” warping Jim Harbaugh’s pre-game comments into a downright intimidating Viking war cry, as AC/DC’s “Back in Black” suddenly blasts out over the stadium PA. I have never heard a home crowd at its loudest for their team only when they are mired in a game state in which defeat is statistically assured. You begin to doubt statistics. They have a live hawk that flies right out of the press box. Their recent communitarian tradition of waving across the street to the gathered families inside the children’s hospital is already so well-established in college football culture that it constantly oscillates back and forth between over-commercialized and genuinely moving.

Michigan has just about caught Alabama in SP+. Connelly's odds machine on Michigan's chances:

SP+ now gives Michigan a 35% chance of winning the Big Ten East -- quite a vote of confidence considering how much it likes Ohio State (and considering that their rivalry game is in Columbus this year) -- and the Playoff Predictor gives the Wolverines a 51% chance of reaching the CFP, with or without a win over the Buckeyes.

Dan Wetzel:

This was some kind of Big Ten fantasy come to life, just a pure bludgeoning. And it came against a team that had allowed just 79.6 yards per game on the ground, fifth best in the country.

“Like coach Harbaugh said, ‘It was a butt-kicking in every which way a butt can be kicked,” quarterback J.J. McCarthy said.

“Yeah,” Harbaugh said, “that’s my favorite way to win a game.”

Sure, but can that style of play win it all? Because these days, for better or worse, the game is national, not regional, and the mockery of only coming close, as absurd as it is, can cripple a program.

Hoover Street Rag:

By coincidence, well, and the way the calendar lines up, today marked the third time that Michigan had faced off with Penn State on October 15.  The first was in 1994, just a few weeks after the release of Monster, R.E.M.'s "back to basics" rock album, when #5 Michigan faced off against the #3 Nittany Lions in Ann Arbor just three weeks after "The Miracle at Michigan".  Penn State was facing a lot of skepticism about their weak early schedule but came out and posted a 16-3 halftime lead, only to see Michigan race back to tie the game twice, only to pull it out in the end.  I distinctly remember this was also the night of my junior year Homecoming Dance and I kept checking in on the game at the bar in the restaurant, which was fine because my date was also a fellow future Wolverine and wanted to know what was happening. 

The second was 2005 when Michigan was 3-3, having alternated wins and losses to start the season took down a #8 Penn State squad at the Big House on "Touchdown Manningham" an improbable win during "The Season of Infinite Pain" that meant Michigan had won seven straight in the series, a run that began on Judgment Day in 1997. 

MBN:

Michigan beat Penn State 41-17 in what began as a stupid rock fight in the first half while Michigan dropped a few rocks on themselves, and became a one-sided slaughter once the score finally caught up with the stat sheet in the second.

Michigan ran 65% of their 79 plays from the Penn State side of the 50.

They had possession for almost 42 minutes.

Michigan never punted.

Four hundred and eighteen rushing yards. Against Penn State. In a top ten matchup. Get the F outta here.