Best:  There’s Always Something Bigger

One of my kids’ favorite books growing up is “I’m the Biggest Thing in the Ocean”, and it makes total sense why it’s so appealing the minute you crack it open.  It’s got simple story-telling, big, bright images, and fun characters.  The plot revolves around a squid who remarks how much bigger he is than every creature he comes across in the ocean, from shrimp to jellyfish to turtles.  Even when the squid sees a shark it comments (quietly) that it’s bigger than even the shark, which depending on the age of the reader elicits anything from a giggle to a “well actually” 5-minute digression about how sharks have big teeth and eat things like squid.  But towards the end of the book there’s a panel where the squid triumphantly claims he’s the biggest thing in the entire ocean…before immediately being swallowed by a passing whale.  The squid, unsurprisingly, is taken aback by the sudden change in his circumstances and surveys his new environment, which features a ton of other small creatures the whale has hoovered up as it swam through the ocean.  But after a beat, the squid’s face lights up and our protagonist proclaims that he’s “the biggest thing in the whale!” as the story ends.

Michigan came into this game a pretty confident squid, having defeated OSU by 15 points and then blasting Iowa into lower orbit on the way to their first Big 10 championship in nearly two decades.  They had a Heisman runner-up at defensive end, another couple of first rounders on defense, and a dominant running game powered by two of the best backs in the country.  Other than a misstep against MSU they won every game they played, often by significant margins, and showed themselves to be one of the top 4-5 teams in the country.  But every year there are Leviathans floating around in the college football waters, warily eyeballing each other but generally ignoring the rest of the chum that inhabits their dominion.  The names of these beasts may change but they generally look the same, and when you run into one and it’s paying attention you tend to wind up in its belly. 

I saw this mentioned a couple of times throughout the game but it bears repeating – college football is so immensely top-heavy that only 4-5 teams, at most, have a realistic shot at winning a title in any given year.  The sport requires so much to go right, from consistent top recruiting hauls, to near-perfect player development, to favorable scheduling and a paucity of injuries, that only a handful of teams are even in the conversation and you can usually identify them pretty easily before a game has been played.  Case in point: before Michigan became the first team to make the playoffs after being unranked to start the year, the lowest-rated team to earn a bid was #19 Oklahoma in 2015, who had “stumbled” to 8-5 after a 5-year run of 10+ win seasons and hasn’t lost more than 2 games a year since.  Most years the least-credentialed team was still a top-15 outfit and one of the nation’s bluest of blood programs (Oklahoma, Notre Dame, Washington, Georgia, Clemson), and only in the context of an Alabama-level juggernaut would they be considered the scrappy underdogs.

I pulled some recruiting numbers after the Iowa game because I wanted to highlight just how deep this divide is between the have’s and the “excessively to the point of it being offensive” have’s when it comes to talent mining.

But Michigan is, by any objective measure, one of the most talented and “loaded” teams in the country.  For example, here are the 5-year recruiting average for other recent “blue blood” teams that reached the playoffs the past couple of years:

• Oklahoma (2019) – .8958
• Notre Dame (2020) – .8991
• Michigan (2021) – .9032
• LSU (2019) – .9067

Those are all programs that consistently recruit in the top 10-15 per year, oftentimes in the top 10.  Oklahoma and Notre Dame play in relatively weak conferences (Big 12 and sorta the ACC for Notre Dame) and thus rarely face a Big Bad every year with superior talent.  For reference, here are the 5-year rankings for Alabama, Clemson, OSU, and Georgia leading up to 2021:

• Clemson – .9230 (!)
• UGa – .9300 (!!)
• OSU – .9321 (!!!)
• Alabama – .9359 (!!!!)

Now, obviously there’s a gap but it’s a bit esoteric as a single number.  During the broadcast the announcers noted some jaw-dropping numbers about the recruiting differences between Michigan and Georgia – Georgia had 54  players from the ESPN top-300 over the past 4 years while UM had under 20, or how Georgia had 20 guys who were 4.5* and above while UM had 7.  A player ranked a .9300 to 24/7 is around the #175 player in the country, while a player rated around .9032 is the nation’s 275th-ish ranked player.  Put another way, it means the average player on Georgia is equivalent to Cornelius Johnson and the average player on UM is Louis Hansen.  That’s not intended as shade thrown a guys, only to highlight that the “average” UM player is…the average player in their class while Georgia’s average recruit is closer to the top of Michigan’s recruiting haul in a given year.  And yes, some lower-rated guys have worked out in spades, as both David Ojabo and Cade McNamara, to name but two, were huge parts of the team’s success this year despite being ranked outside the top 250.  But as Brian noted making a whole team out of fire-breathing, radioactive super lizards is going to make smashing that unassuming city pretty easy.

And to the vast majority of college football teams, Michigan is that whale, that recruiting juggernaut with a decisive talent advantage at virtually every spot.  Hell, Michigan did it against Iowa in the Big Ten Championship game, where the Wolverines were the ones with RBs throwing TD bombs and future first-round defensive linemen laying waste to well-intentioned-but-overmatched offensive linemen.  Iowa’s average player rated out to .8567, which is an even larger gap relative to Michigan than the Wolverines were to the Bulldogs.  And we’re talking about a 10-win Iowa team that will likely finish in the top 20 this year, yet feels like it’s playing a completely different sport.  That’s why I’ve never really understood the concerns about the nascent NIL rights somehow leading to a competitive imbalance in college football; it’s already been here for a while and the only thing seemingly keeping it from getting even more pronounced is a hard limit of 1 football and 11 players per side allowed on the field at a time.

And in all honesty, even amongst the upper tier of college football teams there’s basically Alabama and then a gap to your Clemsons, Ohio States, and Georgias.  For example, despite having one of the best college coaches ever in Urban Meyer leading the way and enjoying every recruiting, developmental, and off-the-field advantage one could expect since the playoffs started, Ohio State has won one title (which necessitated an absolutely miracle run by their 3rd-string QB to pull it off) and has a –15 net scoring margin in their various playoff appearances.  LSU won the title in 2019 with an historic offensive season in which they obliterated everyone they faced; they enter the Texas Bowl this week with an 11-11 record in the 2 subsequent seasons and haven’t looked remotely championship-caliber over that stretch.  Georgia looked like the most dominant team in college football all year, but last year got clocked by Alabama and Florida and were in dogfights with teams like Mississippi State and Kentucky.  And chances are next year Georgia will take a step back (as Clemson did this year) and someone else will emerge as the biggest fish in the pond.  Time will tell if Michigan will be in that mix, but they’ve already shown they can pull it off and there’s no reason to believe they can’t build off that accomplishment going forward.

 

Worst:  Moderately Overmatched

Still, Michigan making this playoff wasn’t a fluke; they really are one of the 4-5 best teams in the country and they showed it all season.  Pair them against Alabama or Cincinnati and I think they’d have looked better, as neither of those teams looked particularly sharp in their first games in about a month.  But Michigan drew a pissed-off Georgia, and were thus on the receiving end of a 34-11 hamblasting that was simultaneously more and less of a blowout than the final score indicates.  On one hand, Georgia outgained UM by nearly 200 total yards (521 to 328), averaging 10.7 ypa in the air and 5.4 ypc on the ground without giving up a sack while forcing 3 turnovers and holding UM to under 100 yards on the ground with 4 sacks and 7 TFLs.    But at the same time, Michigan also put up the 2nd-most yards per play against the Bulldogs all year and the 4th-most yards overall, while generally stringing along decent drives (they only went 3-and-out twice on 10 drives) and generally picked up yardage and/or scored.  Michigan had one pick in the endzone on a promising drive after some miscommunication between him and Baldwin on the route, then followed that up with a seemingly innocuous run by Corum turning into a fumble that stalled out another drive getting into Bulldog territory.  They failed to convert on 4th-and-goal late in the game but, again, they had moved the ball with some success vertically and didn’t look completely overmatched. 

Defensively, the team struggled early on as Georgia’s gameplan was rather clear – they’d double Hutchinson and/or run the play away from him while forcing Michigan’s linebackers and corners to handle screens and backs on the edges.  Other than Ross the linebackers were mostly fresh faces with little experience and while the corners have made Herculean progress compared to the start of last season Georgia has a top-10 offense and nearly a month to gameplan for Michigan’s weaknesses.  I’m not nearly enough of an X’s and O’s guy to tell you where the breakdowns occurred, but both in real time (including watching the All-22 feed, which was awesome and should be part of my already-bloated cable package) and reviewing highlights, Georgia was able to get RBs named Cook lined up against LBers and exploited Brock Bowers in the flats.  They didn’t do anything particularly surprising or unexpected, only they executed incredibly well, kept Stetson Benneett under limited duress, and bailed him out with nice catches when he did feel pressure.  And to UM’s credit, I do think they adjusted as the game progressed and slowed down Georgia somewhat; they held UGa to a couple of FGs after their first 2 TD drives, then a 3-and-out on UGa’s first drive of the 2nd half, then forced a missed 45-yard FG after only giving up 28 yards on an 11-play drive (aided by a couple of penalties) that followed Corum’s fumble.  The Bulldogs undoubtedly let up the gas a bit in that 2nd half but Michigan wasn’t completely run off the field, and had the offense converted on a couple of those drives and not turned the ball over, perhaps the contours of the game would have looked a bit different.

Still, it’s pretty clear that Georgia was the superior team in this game, and while fans love David knocking off Goliath far more often it’s just a behemoth stomping a mudhole into the plucky shepherd for 4 quarters.

And yet, this didn’t feel like the usual sacrificial lambs being led to the CFP slaughter; it was in line with most of your standard-issue CFP semi-final games, where the average score is 39-18 and only a couple of games have a margin in the single digits.  And Georgia may just be absurdly good; Connelly ranked them as the #7 team overall since the introduction of the playoff system, and that was before they played Michigan.  Alabama whomping them in the SECCG remains one of the more unbelievable outcomes of this season, and there’s a good chance that the Bulldogs beat the Tide in a week and end the year with a title.  Michigan showed it definitely isn’t in that discussion yet, but it’s recruiting and player development gives them a good crack at being in the discussion for a playoff spot more often than not, which is all you can expect.   

 

Best:  A Real Quarterback Competition

I’ve been one of the more vocal defenders of Cade McNamara all year, often pushing back against the idea that he needed to cede the starting spot to JJ McCarthy under the guise of “raising the team’s ceiling”, and I’m immensely happy that he piloted this team to a Big 10 title and a playoff spot.  He had a fabulous year and anyone claiming UM would have been better with McCarthy at the helm is, frankly, just being contrarian for the sake of it.  But I also always contended that next year there would, and should, be a healthy competition for the starting role, and that McCarthy possesses the skillset and talent to win it outright even if McNamara returns and shows improvement.  That’s how good McCarthy can be, and it’s going to be an interesting subplot this offseason about who emerges because whomever doesn’t is likely to be one of the more sought-after QB prospects in the transfer portal if he decides to go that route.

And this will be a somewhat novel situation under Harbaugh – and honest-to-gawd QB competition where both guys will have a realistic shot at winning.  Yes, there was something resembling a QB derby in 2017 with O’Korn entering his second year in the program but after that injury-plagued debacle it was two years of Patterson and then the Milton-McCaffrey “battle” that ended with both of them ultimately flaming out both at UM as well as at their subsequent landing spots.  As the only returning QB who had seen any piece of the field in 2020, McNamara was the presumed starter and while there were murmurs of McCarthy at times they always sounded more coach-speaky and motivational than anything else, and all year the staff ran the team like McNamara was the starter and McCarthy would get his moments as an apprentice. 

But that’s ended now, and McCarthy will get a full-throttle shot at taking over a Michigan offense that will likely return most of their key parts and should get some help from the transfer portal and the injury list.  Obviously, losing Haskins will be a major blow but Corum and Edwards have proven to be dynamic weapons and UM’s backfield has depth and talent elsewhere, and the line will lose some contributors but has rotational depth and should get a lift from Remington finalist Olusegun Oluwatimi stepping in at center.  They’ll get Bell back from his season-ending ACL injury and he’ll be joining a WR room that emerged in the second half of the year as fast and athletic, while Erick All could well be one of the best TEs in the country next year.  Obviously guys will come and go via the portal, especially as depth charts start to shake out, but whomever runs the offense next year should have a robust collection of weapons to utilize. 

In terms of necessary steps for both QBs you’d like to see next season, it’s the classic “you got chocolate on my peanut butter, no you go peanut butter on my chocolate” wherein both QBs would benefit from adopting some of the strengths of their competition.  For McCarthy, it’s an improved understanding of the offensive playcalling and the ability to modulate his throws and velocity depending on the situation.  As we saw in the bowl game he throws a beautiful deep ball but he still rifles every ball like he’s trying to implant it into his receiver’s chest and misses a number of open guys because he’s prone to start bugging out and looking to make a play on the move.  Obviously he’s a good enough runner (when he learns how to dive) to make some plays and keep drives alive, but an underrated aspect of McCarthy’s play this year was his ability to identify the right reads pre-snap and wait for them to develop if they looked good; obviously he’d miss some late-breaking guys getting open but more often than not he got the ball to the right guy in his progression.  McCarthy played like a true freshman in that respect and while fully understandable he’ll need to continue to mature in that area.  But we’ve seen all year the potential he has to lead this offense, and if he wins the role I suspect we’ll see an even more vertical passing game along with a real run threat at QB.

As for McNamara, he’ll need to continue to hone his identification of plays before the snap but would benefit from adding some degree of uncertainty and adaptability to his progressions after the snap.  There were times when I found people claiming McNamara “missed” guys downfield as unrealistic; in particular I remember a MMQB with Devin Gardner where he claimed Mike Sainristil was “breaking open” when in fact he still had a safety pretty close by and the play had gone on for 3-4 seconds when McNamara had identified another open WR and had the ball out to him.  But at times it did feel like he missed big plays because he was just moving through his progressions dogmatically.  And while his longball was solid this offense can stretch the field even more, especially with guys coming out of the backfield, and he shouldn’t be shy about airing it out in those circumstances.  There’s obviously a fine line between pressing the issue and recklessness, but Michigan’s defense is likely going to take a step back next year without guys like Hutchinson and Hill, and so I think we’ll see UM in more shootouts and if McNamara is running the team he’ll need to be able to recreate what he did against MSU, PSU, and OSU and throw the ball downfield in a hurry.

Having a competition like this where the floor is likely all-conference level play is a good problem to have, and one that portends a more explosive offense next year.  I’m not going to speculate about who is likely to emerge this early on, but it goes without saying that whomever emerges will have some high expectations to meet but also the opportunity to guide one of the better offenses in college football.

 

Worst:  Getting Mad About Someone Else’s Lawn

https://twitter.com/bubbaprog/status/1477302609790869504

This has been discussed already in multiply places so I’ll keep it short – maybe the guys who are being paid by a network that paid billions of dollars for the media rights to various bowl games and have a vested interest in said bowl games being full of the best unpaid labor possible should maybe sit out the moral aggrandizing about the dedication of said athletes to play in the exhibition.  It’s beyond disingenuous for guys like Herbstreit and Howard to question the heart and dedication of these players just because they showed agency over their lives in a way these guys disagreed with, and (frankly) it seemed mostly pointed at the fact it lowered the ratings profile of the Rose Bowl they were shilling for to have guys sitting out.  We all know about Jake Butt and Jaylon Smith and their career-shortening/ending injuries, and we saw it again in this year’s Sugar Bowl with Matt Corral going down.  Players should be allowed to make decisions that in their best interest, and while I commend guys who want to compete in these games for whatever reason(s) they may have, I also commend those who decide to sit them out for similar reasons. 

And unless I missed it, I don’t remember these assholes questioning the heart and dedication of Lincoln Riley, Brian Kelly, Billy Napier, and various others who left their teams before the bowl game to (checks notes) get paid more money to coach other college football teams.  Nor did they discuss the absurdity of Rutgers being dragooned into playing a game with about a week of preparation (a month after their season ended) just so that ESPN didn’t have to lose a lead-in to the CFP games on 12/31 and, oh yeah, the completely non-conflict-of-interest it posed for head coach Greg Schiano, who picked up a cool $100k for getting to said bowl on top of Rutgers now getting a bigger cut of bowl proceeds from the league.  Yes, I’m sure there are players on Rutgers who were happy to play the game and get to compete, but the only reason they were in that spot was because of global pandemic knocked out Texas A&M to say nothing about the heightened injury risk posed to said players now having to join back together, travel to a new location with limited preparation, and compete in a physical, dangerous sport after having not played for nearly a month and (undoubtedly) letting their conditioning taper off.  But hey, content is king.

I’m not the biggest fan of a super-expanded playoffs because you’re asking college athletes to play even more high-leverage games than they already do, and it’s downright insulting to insinuate that these players need some greater incentive to play after already dedicating months during the season to school and athletics already.  But I do think we’ll see it expand somewhat to 8 or (at most) 12 teams, where top seeds get byes and some of the lower-regarded bowls gain heightened importance as a result, and that’ll likely convince some players to stick around for a bowl game.  But it was disappointing to see Howard parrot this line of thinking (Herbstreit is a lazy shill so I wasn’t expecting anything else from him) questioning players, and there will be a time when Michigan’s top players sit out a bowl game and I hope this fanbase reacts a bit better than these guys.

Next Year:  Who Knows – And That’s Exciting

Honestly, had you told me last year at this point UM’s season would end with them battling Georgia for a chance at the title game, I’d have called you a liar.  This was a magical year but also one that feels somewhat sustainable; obviously they’ll take steps back at some spots but the team returns a fair bit of talent and recruiting has been consistent.  OSU isn’t going anywhere and there are still places to trip up on, but 2022 looks like a chance for UM to really build on this year’s success and compete yet again for a playoff spot.  I’m going to work on a larger season retrospective in the coming weeks, and maybe see if I can un-moth some stuff I worked on in pieces throughout the year.  But for now I’m going to enjoy this year a bit more and thank you riding it out with me all year.