Best:  Leaving Something in the Tank

Writing this diary every week is not unlike a season, with some weeks being full of more interesting topics and games than others all the while the drumbeat of completion beats like a metronome in the back of my mind.  Last week’s game was cathartic simply because it was definitive; Michigan didn’t inch their way past Buckeyes at the finish line but instead smashed them into oblivion on consecutive huge TD runs.  It proved a point, confirming what we had suspected for a while that Michigan was back to being a consistent contender both in the conference and nationally.  The opponent, the place, and the time already gave it a level of importance that necessitated deep analysis.

This week’s game, honestly, lacked much of that gravitas.  Yes it’s the Big 10 title game but while last year’s contest carried real weight for Michigan’s playoff chances  (a loss to the Hawkeyes probably knocked UM to #4 or potential even out of the playoffs given how Notre Dame closed), the playoffs were basically set before kickoff and it’s debatable if UM would have even dropped a spot with a loss.  Iowa last year wasn’t great but they were a top-25 team per SP+ and had one of the nation’s best defenses; Purdue this year was 47th per the same metric and neither side of the ball was particularly impressive.  They backed into the West division win because Nebraska finally did something right this year and beat the Hawkeyes on the road, but otherwise they’re an unremarkable team that played in a bunch of close games.  They’re a worse version of Maryland but considerably worse than Illinois, probably the best team in that division by a fair distance.  This isn’t meant to frame the Boilermakers as a bad team, only an average one.  And so it wasn’t a surprise that Michigan sort of sleepwalked through the early parts of this game, as this was a classic “trap” game except it happened in a conference title game. 

So yeah, I’m not really going to spend a ton of time writing this diary recapping this game.  Michigan played well enough to comfortably win and never seem in any real danger of losing but the Boilermakers were gamers and kept it interesting into the 4th quarter.  The game itself took approximately 17 hours due to numerous unnecessary booth reviews and a metric ton of commercials.  The Wolverines have now beaten every Big 10 team at least once over the past 2 seasons save Minnesota (who they haven’t played) and are heading to the playoffs to take on TCU.  That’ll likely be a more interesting game worthy of deeper than “Michigan was the better team and won”. 

Worst:  Possession

Purdue, at least since the era of Drew Brees and Joe Tiller, has been known as “basketball on grass” on offense, where a bunch of speedy receivers and hyper-accurate QB try to wear teams out by sheer volume of offense.  It’s hard to describe to people who weren’t there when it was introduced to the Big 10 just how revolutionary it was, but at times it felt almost unfair (and at times, given lax substitution timing rules and Purdue’s penchant of hiding players basically at the sideline, it arguably was) how quickly they’d get plays in and how difficult it was for late-90s Big 10 defenses to handle it.  We rue the day Mike McCray was forced to cover Dalvin Cook but imagine multiple mismatches like that on every play and with fewer options personnel-wise to address it; this was still the time of 240-ish pound linebackers and defensive coordinators who looked like Varsity Blues extras on the sidelines scrambling to adjust.  It had its limits, as Purdue could only recruit a certain caliber of athlete and defenses (and rule changes) adjusted to slow down that offense and get to the quarterback, but a lot of the modern passing wrinkles you’ve seen take over college football recently owe at least part of their existence to this by-gone offensive wizardry.

Modern Purdue under Jeff Brohm is different than those teams in numerous important ways but the underlying focus on positional and schematic mismatches remains a cornerstone.  In an optimal implementation you’d still have a ton of short passes to guys like Charlie Jones while trying to exploit mismatches with guys like David Bell and Rondale Moore out of the backfield and in the slot.  It was dink-and-dunk until something broke and then the offense was off to the races.  Much of the talk coming into the game was Brohm’s Boilermakers being 3-0 against top-5 teams and if you look at those games they all sorta follow the same script; get the ball out quickly and force the defense to tackle guys in space.  It wasn’t necessarily quick-strike but it was about keeping the ball moving, converting on 3rd downs when necessary, and waiting for the defense to make a mistake.  It’s a big reason why they are again one of the nation’s leaders in  time of possession despite not being your classic run-heavy outfit like other high-TOP teams such as Illinois, Michigan, and Coastal Carolina; they dink-and-dunk their way down the field with what are effectively 3- and 5-yard handoffs and dare you to slow them down.

But last year’s Purdue team had guys like David Bell and Milton Wright to spread around along with pass-catching tight ends like Payne Durham; they could get teams into mismatches especially once they got moving and could lock defenders on the field.  But Bell is in the NFL, Wright was ruled ineligible for academic reasons, and Durham still has limitations as a tight end.  They brought in Charlie Jones from Iowa and he had a great season but he’s the definition of a possession-type Iowa receiver and isn’t the type of gamebreaker they’ve had in the past.  And while they’ve been about the national average in terms of 3rd-down conversions this year that’s still 6-7% below last year’s rate and clearly hurt them in their losses.  In this game the Boilermakers were much better on 3rd down (50% on the day) but succeeded most often when they didn’t even get past 2nd down, and so when it felt like Michigan couldn’t put them away it was because they kept drives alive and slowly marched down the field.  After their first drive of the game ended abruptly with the first of two Harrell sacks on the day, the Boilermakers proceeded to piece together 3 consecutive scoring drives of 10, 11, and 13 drives spanning 92, 45(!), and 47(!!) yards.  Purdue was able to keep the ball moving, staying out of 3rd-and-long situations, and found consistent holes in the Michigan zone.  It wasn’t necessarily scary as much as methodical, the type of slow-drip drives that sap clock time and lead to only 4 possessions in a half for the Wolverines. 

Part of Michigan’s problem in terms of possession was they scored pretty quickly; they had scoring drives of 48 and 51 seconds and only had one drive all day that went over 8 plays.  But Purdue held onto the ball and consistently picked apart Michigan in the passing game until the Wolverines adjusted a bit.  But even to the end Purdue was able to get between the 20s with a fair bit of success, though Michigan tended to clamp down in the red zone and limit the Boilermakers to FGs.  But this was one of the first times all year where it felt like Michigan’s defense couldn’t get off the field because the opponent wouldn’t let them.  Yes, O’Connell played a great game and made some dime throws that were impossible to defend, but far too often it felt like Purdue had multiple guys open while Michigan safeties and linebackers were left scrambling.  I think there will be some big minuses both for the linebackers/safeties and Minter on the day, and it’ll be interesting to see what they team takes away from this game given the fact the other 3 opponents in the playoffs don’t really run an offense like this one.

Best:  Two for Two

Will Johnson has been coming on in recent weeks as a starting-level defender, with him matching up last weekend against Marvin Harrison Jr. and more than holding his own.  In this game he picked up 2 picks on key plays, one shutting down a potential TD throw from O’Connell that would have cut the lead to a score and the other deep in the Purdue red zone that set UM up for a short TD.  Some people were concerned early on in the year when it was clear Johnson wasn’t going to displace Turner or Green at the starting spot but that always felt like more of a validation for those two players than a denigration of Johnson.  He’s a superb athlete and a quick study, and you can tell that the coaches trust him in high-leverage spots.  With Turner and Green likely both slotted for the NFL next year having Johnson coming back bodes well for this defense being able to maintain a similar level of play in the defensive backfield. 

Best:  Keeping Them Honest

Before the season the big debate around the QB position was whether or not McCarthy could elevate Michigan’s offense significantly more than Cade McNamara could.  As a runner McCarthy is far and away better than McNamara, and all year his legs have helped keep drives alive and kept defenses honest.  But once the conference season started McCarthy’s passing struggled, especially on the deep ball, and that seemingly put a ceiling on how dynamic the offense could be.  He was somewhat consistently airmailing a couple of balls a game, still wasn’t hitting covered receivers downfield, and generally looked like a guy who the coaches didn’t quite trust to carry the offense in a pinch.  In fact, the three-week stretch coming into last week’s game against OSU featured a 50% completion, 6.3 ypa, and seemingly no completions longer than 10-12 yards downfield.  He was still a a threat on the ground but even there he had been stymied a bit, averaging about 1.5 ypc over those 3 games and getting sacked a handful of times.  With McNamara hurt and out for the year there wasn’t much of a chance McCarthy would be replaced as the starter but especially when Corum went down it felt like Michigan’s chances of winning in Columbus turned on whether McCarthy would be able to buck a season-long trend and be the downfield passer this team needed.

In the Disney movie about this season McCarthy would have walked into Columbus and either been a flame-throwing MechaGodzilla and laid waste to the hapless OSU secondary or suffered through a painful-but-gritty performance before rallying the team in the last moments a la seemingly every Friday Night Lights football game ever.  But this isn’t a movie and instead a game played by college-aged men with an oblong ball so neither narrative really hit home.  McCarthy did finally uncork a couple of nice deep balls, hitting Cornelius Johnson in stride on a wide-open 65-yard TD toss, picking up another long TD to Johnson on a quick out, and a third on a nice throw to Colston Loveland as he sailed past the OSU safety.  At the same time, he still only completed 50% of his passes and airmailed a couple of makeable throws.  Against Purdue McCarthy was a bit better; he only threw the ball 17 times but had a couple of nice throws including an absolute laser to Loveland for the first TD of the game, a nice throw between defenders that Bell just couldn’t quite pull in, and a great post throw to Bell for a TD on 3rd down midway through the 4th.  But he also threw a really bad pick on 1st down late in the 3rd quarter when the game was debatably still in play and had a couple of plays where he ran out of good pockets only to realize that nobody was open.  If there’s one complaint about McCarthy that has become more prevalent recently it is that he has a penchant for trying to throw outside the pocket and bailing a bit too early; he trusts his legs to beat defenders to the edge an so he spins away from the line when stepping into his throws would likely give him easy completions.  It’s worked thus far because he hasn’t faced many good pass rushes; if Michigan plays Georgia those scrambling forays are likely to end with huge losses. 

But the one thing McCarthy has been able to do these past couple of weeks is establish a baseline of passing competency that has forced defenses to loosen up and not sell out completely against the run.  Purdue was probably going to get got regardless but once McCarthy showed he could hit guys like Loveland and Bell downfield the game went from marginally interesting to an exercise in how few injuries Michigan could escape Indy with.  TCU will be a different beast (they’re one of the better teams in the country at preventing 3rd-down conversions and completions) but McCarthy’s last couple of weeks have shown just how dangerous this team can be with a functional passing game to compliment the rushing attack, and with a month to prepare my guess is we’ll see an even more fully realized McCarthy under center.

Best:  401k Investment

Michigan has been blessed with some amazing running backs these past couple of years under Harbaugh, and each has put up some truly memorable performances – Haskins vs. OSU last year, Blake Corum introducing himself to the nation last year against Washington and trouncing Maryland this year – but nobody has had the 2-game stretch quite like Donovan Edwards has had in two of the biggest games of this team’s season.  Against OSU and Purdue, Edwards has run the ball 47 (!) times for 401 (!!) yards, a healthy 8.5 ypc (!!!) and 3 TDs.  And that includes TD runs of 75 and 85 yards as well as a 60-yarder that set up another score.  But probably his best run of the day was maybe the most physical run we’ve seen from a Michigan RB this year, a 27-yard TD run to effectively put the game away where he bounced off a half-dozen defenders as well as dodge a couple more like he was trapped in a phone booth with them.  And he’s doing all of this with effectively 1 non-dominant hand, which robs him of probably his most elite skill which is catching the ball out of the backfield.  His comp coming out of high school was Alvin Kamara, one of the best receiving backs in the history of pro football.

Perhaps what’s most impressive is you can tell it takes Edwards a bit to get comfortable in these games, especially holding and securing the ball at the handoff point.  That makes a ton of sense because, again, he’s trying to play a high-level sport with his non-dominant hand in a role where the defense’s entire goal is to hit you hard and rip a ball out of your grasp.  In the first half of these last two games Edwards put up under 50 yards combined (37 on 11 carries against Purdue and 9 yards on 5 carries against OSU), and you could tell he was struggling a bit with feel and was hesitating a step before taking off toward the hole.  But once he got comfortable and into the flow of the offense in these second halves he’s exploded and close-ish games became laughers as a result.  Coming into the year the question around Edwards was if he could handle the workload of a feature back if called upon; with Corum turning into such a bellcow of a back and Edwards getting hurt about a month ago that question lingered in the air.  But these past two weeks have shown that even limited he’s absolutely still the 5* talent he was coming out of high school and with Corum likely off to the NFL next year the offense shouldn’t miss a beat on the ground and, if anything, may become even more dynamic given Edwards’s abilities as a pass catcher and just a bigger, faster athlete than UM has had in that spot for years. 

Worst:  Politicking

We all remember 2006, when Urban Meyer successfully grandstanded for his Florida Gators to play in the national title game after Michigan narrowly lost to the Buckeyes to end the year.  His logic at the time was Florida had played a tough schedule and done well against it and so they deserved a title shot over a rematch.  It was dubious at the time but because his Gators crushed the Buckeyes in the title game it likely emboldened even more coaches to try this line of reasoning no matter how obnoxious it is coming from millionaire grown men who are throwing temper tantrums because they aren’t getting what they want.  But during the Big 10 title game, seemingly for no other reason than he had his iPad available to live-stream, the Fox chucklefucks gave Nick Saban a platform to argue that his Alabama Crimson Tide, who had lost 2 games already and had 3 other games come down to a single score, deserved to be in the playoffs after USC (and perhaps even TCU) lost.  His core argument basically broke down to “because we’re Alabama and we should be good”, a logic divorced from actual play on the field this year.  The Tide are a talented team but they are flawed, with limited passing talent and an offensive line that struggles against pressure.  Their defense has some great pass rush talent but they don't have those stud tackles they used to have and their corners can be beat.  They're probably a lot closer to Kansas State or PSU than they'd like to admit this year, and if they had made the playoffs they'd likely get smoked by Michigan or Georgia in their first-round matchup.  This was a team that barely beat Texas with their backup QB and barely held on against an A&M team that was atrocious offensively; the idea Alabama was one of the best 4 teams in the country because they should be good is perfectly distilled SEC bias.

I know people have complained about the expanded playoffs but one benefit is it'll likely cut down on the stupidity of coaches trying to convince people who've actually watched the games that the teams are better than they are.  Yes, the #13 team can and will argue they're better than the #12 team in the country but that's more akin to your average March Madness discussion where some middling P5 program is trying to beat out a pretty-good-but-not-elite mid-major team for an 11 seed.  It'll be background noise instead of prime time spacer filler.

Also, fuck Fox and everyone else for thinking this made any sense.  Lincoln Riley had a much better argument for USC being #4 than either OSU or Alabama, as his team wound up having to play a bonus game against a team that would have dog walked either the Tide or the Buckeyes in a similar environment all for the opportunity to keep the spot his team had earned through 12 games.  Just embarrassing all around. 

Quick Hits:

• Stop reviewing everything, or if you are going to review things do it quicker.  At one point in this game I switched to the ACC title game (which started the same time) and realized they were 5 minutes of game time ahead of this one.  That huge time difference was almost exclusively due to the refs spending 5 minutes on multiple reviews for calls that were obvious one way or another.  Or, in the event of the Wilson catch they overturned, such a borderline situation that spending that long trying to figure it out proved how non-indisputable the situation was and how the original call should stand.  I recognize that replays help officials get calls right but it still feels like these guys don't remotely know how to use them properly and you wind up feeling like you're watching someone use the self-checkout kiosk for the first time in their lives on Thanksgiving eve.  
• Also, these refs missed some really obvious calls, including a couple of holds on Purdue defenders and maybe the most obvious facemask call in a while on McCarthy that was inexplicably overturned by the ref who didn't have a good view at all.  Just a clown show by these guys.
• The tv crew got some nice clips of the sideline bouncing around with folding chairs.  This has been an ongoing tradition and while I don't completely understand it I love they still do it.  I hope they make the trip down to the playoffs.

Next Game:  TCU

Much was made about TCU getting into the playoffs despite their Big 12 Championship Game loss and keeping their #3 seed but it makes complete sense to me.  They went undefeated in a really good conference (the Big 12 this year was notably harder than, say, the Big 10) and while they were in a bunch of close games (6) they won almost all of them (5-1, with the 1 being against KSU this weekend).  To put in perspective how tough the Big 12 was this year consider the fact the worst team, per SP+, was West Virginia at #62.  There are 5 (!) Big 10 teams ranked below them, including Nebraska and MSU.  Purdue, the team that won the Big 10 West crown and, in theory, had a chance to win the Big 10 title was #47.  TCU has a Heisman Trophy-caliber QB (who actually shows up in big games), one of the best running backs in the country in Kendre Miller, and when healthy maybe the 2nd-best WR UM will face all year in Quentin Johnston, a physical mismatch who can outleap your big corners and out-run your fast ones.  They also have a pretty good defense that features two high-level corners and an experienced linebacker group.  They do struggle in short-yardage plays despite Duggan being a willing runner, and on defense they’re not huge so they can be moved a bit.  But they’re at least as good as OSU and pose the added risk of the unknown; Michigan has prepared for OSU for years and know their strengths and weaknesses at least.  Is Michigan the better team on paper?  Sure, but TCU isn’t a Cincy-type G5 plucky upstart and they have more than enough talent to beat the Wolverines if they don’t perform up to the standard they’ve set over these past 2 years.  It’ll be interesting to see what happens over the next month as the teams prepare and guys who were limited the past couple of weeks become available (having Mike Morris back will be huge in terms of generating pressure, while the slight chance of a Corum return would be huge).  Georgia looks to be a level above the other playoff teams right now so this is a better matchup but fans acting like this will be a cakewalk are fooling themselves.  This will be a dogfight and if UM does get past the Horned Frogs they’ll be looking at one of two nemeses between them and a national title.