Meh: Better Than I Expected, Still Not Good

I'm not going to waste a ton of time recapping this game because at this point that's not really relevant. Michigan has now played, in consecutive games, the SP+ #1 and #2 teams. Michigan is decidedly not better than either of those two teams, and billions of 1's and 0's have been used to discuss the level of acceptability that reality is. They also lost to the SP+ 8th and 12th teams and beat the 19th, 20th, and 24th. I'm sure the final rankings will move around a bit after bowl season, but it feels safe to say Michigan is between the 10th and 20th-best team in the nation this season. Preseason expectations were a bit higher, but so much of that was based on assumptions and unknowns, about how a couple of players might perform with a new offensive system and the quality of other teams on the schedule. And that's always the danger with Michigan; they aren't (and really have never been) the type of dominant juggernaut whose seasons play out almost independent of external factors. Teams like Clemson, Alabama, and (sigh) OSU know virtually every season that they'll win 11+ games, largely decimate anyone who stands in their way, and will face 3-4 teams capable of giving them much of a game. Michigan isn't in that rarified air, and other than blips here or there they've never quite had that level of talent and acumen. So their seasons are more variable, more dependent on guys making leaps and playing up to their potential and a heavy sprinkling of good fortune from the injury gods and lady luck.

The doomsday scenario coming into this game was that after OSU basically did whatever they wanted against Michigan at home, a pissed-off Alabama would try to replicate that with their flotilla of NFL WRs and armada of dominant offensive linemen and, I don't know, Hammerhead Corvette running back and smash Michigan for 4 quarters. That certainly was the sentiment here at the blog, and a decent number of people assumed 41-19 was Brian blowing sunshine up various orifices. The prevailing narrative around Michigan football since about midway through the year is that they don't have the talent to compete against elite teams, and with Alabama having ALL the talent this game felt like it would be the exclamation point on that statement.

And yet, as has been the refrain most of the season, things didn't play out quite as expected. Michigan actually out-rushed Alabama in this game (162 to 153), and Alabama closed the gap on their last drive when the game was largely decided. It was Michigan that was able to push Alabama's defensive line around in the first half, consistently creating holes for Haskins and Charbonnet. On the other side, despite being down both Carlo Kemp and Michael Dwumfour, Michigan largely held Najee Harris in check, with a long of 25 yards and only a couple of runs that looked all that dangerous. Jerry Jeudy, probably the best WR in the country, remained unstoppable (204 yards, including an 85-yard TD on Alabama's first offensive play) but otherwise Michigan held Alabama's passing game down. Michigan's corners were able to hang with guys like Ruggs and Smith, and even Smith's one long TD completion was a picture-perfect throw that just got past Lavert Hill's outstretched fingers. Michigan failed to collect a sack but were tantalizing close on a number of occasions, and induced at least one uncalled intentional grounding.

What didn't help was an admittedly-awful performance by Shea Patterson. I've been a pretty vocal Patterson proponent, but he consistently missed open guys downfield and had a number of bad reads. Weirdly, the one that didn't bother me was the usual "look at Nico Collins blindly wide open as Patterson scrambles" play because that looked dead-to-rights until Alabama's safety inexplicably stopped running with Collins and the Alabama corner. But early in that first half when Michigan was getting opportunities to score TDs Patterson missed Eubanks and Bell on passes that would have led to either big gains or scores. I'll get to this in greater detail, but I think Patterson has been unfairly maligned at times this year but in a game where Michigan's gameplan and talent level gave them a chance to win, Patterson couldn't deliver. Beyond the one awful pick where he missed Eubanks cutting inside for an easy TD, he also fumbled the ball on a sack that pushed the team out of scoring position. There won't be a UFR for this game so we won't know for sure, but my guess is this was his worst passing performance, especially downfield, in quite some time. He wasn't the whole reason Michigan lost this game but after a string of pretty solid-to-great performances, this was a major drop.

So part of me is pretty encouraged by this game. Michigan isn't at Alabama's talent but they showed they aren't that far off; it certainly didn't look like Alabama was dominating the game even in that second half when the wheels sort of came off. A couple of UM's second-half drives were doing fine until a bad break, whether it be a sack, a fumble, or a missed open receiver, ended it. Alabama wasn't tearing it up in the second half either, but much like PSU were able to score on chunk plays when they found them. This isn't a moral victory but it's also not the searing indictment of Michigan's future quite like the OSU game. On the other hand, Michigan apparently hasn't beaten a top-15 team on the road or neutral site since 2007, and that's not great even if a couple of those Florida wins were close (#17 and #19). Some of this fallow period is just bad luck; flip a couple of plays against OSU, PSU, and ND and Michigan's got a couple of those elusive top-15 road wins without demonstrably changing the overall picture of the program. But this was a game where Michigan led at halftime and it wasn't a fluke; if anything, they should have been up by more than 2. Hell, it was a 1-score game going into the 4th quarter and Michigan was driving to possibly take the lead.

So Michigan had their chances in this game to win. Depending on your outlook, that's either a positive sign for the team going into next season or a broken record you're sick of hearing. I'm somewhere in the middle, though the emergence of a dynamic offense under Josh Gattis and Don Brown still fielding a really good defense despite losing a decent chunk of NFL talent off last year's squad tips me a bit toward the more optimistic outlook. But I'm also not buying any major hype that may come UM's ways this offseason.

Worst: No Sheavior

The entire season UFR O comments were 50% bitching about how I was too hard on Patterson for noting that he threw a lot of bad passes and had generally regressed.

— mgoblog (@mgoblog) January 1, 2020

I won't rehash completely how I think Patterson was made the scapegoat for many of the offense's struggles early in the year even when some weren't his fault (in particular his receivers' penchant for dropping passes or running bad routes at times), but it's safe to say that Patterson never took the leap everyone expected of him this year. Since we don't have UFRs for OSU or the bowl game either this year or past, I relied on Patterson's numbers as of each season's respective IU game. Last year Patterson started the year hitting downfield shots close to 80% of the time before tapering off, but still consistently finishing in the mid-60% for DSR. This year he never got into the 80's and tended to stick around in the low 60's/high 50's for DSR, though it was trending up somewhat in the second half of the year.

Some of these struggles were, as I mentioned, systemic of larger ones for the offense; as is apparently tradition, Michigan couldn't locate their running game for the first half of the year and suffered through an inflamed rash of inexplicable turnover luck; Michigan was -4 in the TO margin for the first month+ of the year and lost 7 fumbles in 3 games. Some of that was due to poor play by everyone (including Patterson) and some was just a divine random number generator doing it's job in a particularly cruel way. Key contributors like Runyan and DPJ were out and somewhat limited early in their returns, and Patterson gutted through what turned out to be a bad injury to his midsection suffered during the MTSU game. As the turnovers went down and people got healthier/more acclimated to the offense everyone's play picked up; it's telling that despite the competition getting better Patterson's downfield success rate ticked up in the second half of the season (and my guess is his DSR was solid against OSU).

At the same time, he never quite seemed to find his rhythm consistently, especially when under duress. Against Alabama, Patterson started to fade progressively more as the game went on, oftentimes failing to step into throws sufficiently and leading to inaccurate balls downfield. His first pick looked so bad, in part, because he put himself off-balance despite there not being an immediate threat. Part of me wondered if he was having flashbacks to the last time he played Alabama. Regardless, Michigan was in this game despite Patterson's play, and even an average performance from him likely makes this a nail-bitter at the end. He certainly wasn't the only reason they lost (and if anyone is wondering what the Maven-ing of sports writing looks like, look no further than articles with ledes like "Michigan football lost to Alabama in the Citrus Bowl Wednesday for one reason and one reason only: Shea Patterson."), but his performance was still glaring.

Patterson ends his career at UM a bit of an enigma; a top-rated QB out of HS who showed flashes of brilliance but suffered through inconsistencies that seemingly sabotaged greater heights. Evaluating young QBs may be one of the toughest jobs in all of recruiting, as the proliferation of year-round coaching and camps have led to guys maximizing their talent within certain systems that don't always translate to a higher level of competition. I mean, look at the top-10 QBs from Patterson's class and there are a lot of guys who never really lived up to their billing. He doesn't deserve nearly the level of vitriol he received, and he follows in a long line of QBs Michigan fans shit on because we're all not nearly as emotionally mature as we think (me included). Next year will feature yet another new QB, and my hope is that it's McCaffrey, Milton, or someone else on the roster (and not another 1-year flyer on a guy like KJ Costello). Michigan's offense has enough talent to take that next step under Gattis, and having some familiarity with it at QB is key.

Best: The Other Alabama Assistant

Much was made about Alabama's two leading offensive coaches leaving last offseason, Gattis to Michigan and Locksley to Maryland to run the post-Durkin outfit. Considering Alabama had come off an historically great season offensively, a natural question fans had was which of these coaches was most responsible for that success, especially given Saban's general revulsion toward anything that isn't defense and recruiting. Adding further intrigue to this question was Gattis's last-minute decision to not follow Locksley to Maryland and instead take over OC duties at UM, which apparently didn't sit well with Locksley.

Now, it's only been a year and Maryland's talent level is demonstrably worse than UM's and that was not a good situation to begin with, but thus far it sure looks like Michigan made the right hire for their OC. After some early-season struggles, I thought Gattis called some great games and maximized Michigan's chances of winning against really good defenses, most notably against OSU and Alabama. This is trending dangerously close to "former players/coaches on pre-game show" territory, but Michigan struggled to execute the gameplan at times and when you don't have a talent advantage missed throws, poor cuts, and some sub-optimal blocks cut into your margins of error. Still, Gattis looks like a keeper and I'm excited to see what he does next year with a season under his belt.

Worst: Lashing Out

Chris Partridge was rumored to be leaving Michigan for a spot on Lane Kiffin's Ole Miss Experience last week, and today it became official. People have largely assumed it's to take over as defensive coordinator, though with D.J. Durkin also coming on (because why should millionaire football coaches suffer any real consequences in this world?) perhaps it's some co-coordinator role. Whatever the case, it's a major loss for the team from a recruiting standpoint. It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, though, as his name has been floating around in coaching searches for some time and any guy with ambition is going to aspire for greater heights even if it means leaving a good situation. I wish him nothing but the best of luck (and he may need it if Lane Kiffin's entire history is to be believed), and perhaps he'll be back in Ann Arbor in the future.

All that said, some people around here lost their damn minds when the news broke. I mean, there was legitimate discourse that perhaps Michigan should fire Don Brown, a man who has fielded SP+ top-10 defenses every year he's been at Michigan, and replace him with a position coach who last coached a defense in 2003 for a HS team. And the most common rationale was that the defense gave up a lot of points to OSU the past couple of years so, I guess, shoot him into the sun and just assume that coaching defense is really easy and a 39-year-old guy can just pick it up. I know this reads like a calm section of written text but I am slamming my fingers into the keys loud enough that both my wife and dog came in to see if I was having a stroke.

via GIPHY

Don Brown is not perfect; his gameplan in 2018 against OSU was atrocious and there have been times when he's slow to adapt to how teams initially attack his defense. He's not a fantastic recruiter, even though he does tend to have an eye for guys he can mold into solid performers, but he's better than people give him credit for (#34 nationally last year). And if coaching was mostly about recruiting players to your team, or if Brown was only an average DC, I could see the inclination to push Partridge in over him, or at least into some convoluted co-DC/DC-in-waiting situation. But Don Brown isn't an average DC; he's been one of the best in the country for damn near a decade, and has done it multiple places with wildly diverging levels of talent.

He came into the year down 4 defensive players taken in the first 3 rounds of the NFL draft, including two in the first. He also lost his presumed starting DT, a former 5* guy, to Tennessee for reasons I'm sure will come out years from now. One of his two starting CBs suffered from colitis over the off-season and lost "quite a bit of weight", weight he certainly didn't need to lose in the first place. The team's offense, breaking in a new coordinator and dealing with an early-season turnover locust swarm, often left his defense in poor spots and required them to hold serve. And despite all of that, Michigan's defense finished the regular season ... 9th per SP+. And that's after playing the nation's #4, #10, #14, #17, and #20 offenses. Without both his starting DTs against Alabama, he held the Crimson Tide to 28 points until a final, meaningless drive, and kept Najee Harris largely in check. Again, he didn't have much of an answer for Jerry Jeudy but that's not surprising; he's a top-5 pick for a reason. But after the OSU game, this felt like a return to form a bit, a game where Brown sorta schemed his players into good spots and minimized his deficiencies as best he could.

And that's why I don't understand this whole drive to replace him. He's a DC who has consistently delivered Michigan top-10 defenses, and there is this weird undercurrent that Michigan should have rolled the dice with some really unproven coach with the hope he might deliver...a top-10 defense. That doesn't mean Michigan shouldn't always be striving to improve their staff and keep an eye on the future (Brown is 64 and has interviewed for other jobs in the past), but this sentiment that everything should be replaced the minute it stops being acceptable to 51% of the population regardless of circumstance is just exhausting.

Quick Hits

• Coming into the game Alabama's special teams were...rough. They were 74th in SP+ and 126th in punt efficiency. So of course Alabama dropped 4 punts inside the 20, including two 50+ yarders, and oftentimes put Michigan deep in their own zone to start drives. Michigan didn't give up any big returns of their own, but it was infuriating watching the Tide's punter surprise himself with unexpected competency.
• On a more positive note, Nordin booted a 57-yard FG and was perfect on the day, and Giles Jackson had a couple of really nice returns on kickoffs. I don't know how much influence Partridge had on returns this year, but Jackson feels like a very natural and dangerous threat back there.
• The refs were their usual mediocre selves during the game, so I wasn't overly annoyed except for two plays. One was the Hutchinson roughing the passer. I am all for player safety but if a guy is tackling a QB and lands on him as part of said tackle, that's just football. He didn't maliciously drive Jones down, try to injure him, nothing. But if you're going to call that then you absolutely have to call targeting on the Bell run where he sorta slipped and was smashed in the head. I don't believe either was a penalty from an intent perspective, but if you're going to follow the rule book on one you gotta do the same for the other.

Next year

This was...a year. Thanks for reading and hopefully we can give it a go in 2020. I do ask that anyone who reads this take a moment and remember that being a fan is supposed to be fun. I know it's a little treacly but there's a negativity around Michigan football that's just corrosive, and while I'm all for passion at some point it is just a game and taking it too personally isn't helping anyone.

Anyway, "Go Blue" and maybe I'll trot one of these out during the basketball season.