Worst:  Unnecessary Sequels

I've complained about this for weeks but it's getting hard to write anything new about these games.  You want a recap about Michigan-Indiana in football?  Read last year's Best and Worst column and it's almost the exact same flow.  IU did some stuff early that messed with UM, they got some points off of non-sustainable playcalls while UM wasted downs running into stacked boxes, then Michigan adjusted and that was the end of that.  In this game IU moved the ball well on their first couple of drives because they made some plays while Michigan didn't, but you could tell this was the kitchen sink and they didn't have much more after it in the bag.  Rinse and repeat.

This season has been enjoyable in the fact that Michigan is playing like a dominant, championship-level squad while other teams, even really good ones, have mucked through contests.  But at the same time, “adversity” for Michigan is being down 7-0 to Rutgers or Indiana because they took those teams’ best punches, spit out a loose tooth, and then got angry.  And last year at least you saw McCarthy struggle a bit throwing the ball at times, having to learn how defenses try to mess with your reads and how to handle pressure from unexpected places.  It was more nerve-racking and less enjoyable as a viewer, but it felt like something new.  But now, we’re 7 games into the season and McCarthy has 31(!) total incompletions, and off the top of my head I think 10-ish of them were either drops or balls that probably should have been hauled in given the minor duress the receiver was under. It's gotten to the point where fans are looking for anything, seemingly, to be concerned about.  Hell, the game thread had a number of people freaking out because the defense had surrendered a couple of drives to a coherent Indiana offensive gameplan consisting mostly of short passes and bullshit, and then once the first quarter ended so did IU's offense.  I mean, the Hoosiers had 141 yards in the first quarter and proceeded to pick up 91 the rest of the game.  

While I have my issues with conference expansion and future scheduling, one of the benefits, I hope, is that there will be fewer games where UM just grinds through bad teams with overpaid coaches and little gameplan beyond moral victories.  Give me a bad USC defense or a janky UCLA offense because at least that's variety and skill, because I'm not sure even my level of passion for football would be happy watching another non-descript Big 10 team get slowly choked out by this team.

Best:  Buffering

As college football fans we often bemoan the voluminous number of decisions, from TV schedules, matchups, to even conference compositions and existences, driven by media rights deals and payouts between the conferences and the major players in the TV/streaming marketplace.  The SEC and Big 10 have basically strip-mined major conferences for their best teams in pursuit of billions of dollars in payouts for all the three-level legacy media companies you've heard of, while "upstart" streamers (typically a rounding error for some of the largest companies in the world like Apple, Google, and Amazon) have gotten into the game as well, paying somewhat-insane premiums to stream games to their millions of users.  While the rest of media has moved toward time-shifting and on-demand replay of middling cable TV shows for years ago, sports remains one of the few properties you "need" to see immediately and live, and so cable companies have kept charging high premiums to their dwindling number of users in order to justify these deals.  And it makes sense – people will pay for products they care about, and FOMO is so high with sports that it's worth charging little old ladies extra so you can pay guys in suits a bunch of money to televise under-paid college students playing a violent sport. 

But no matter how tightly cable companies try to hold onto "classic" subscribers, they're inevitably moving more toward streaming platforms like YouTube TV, which offers access to these games are a competitive rate and with features that appeal to people who don't want a cable box in their home, tied to a single TV.  And I get that – that freedom to be unwired, to be able to see a bunch of games at one time on a single screen, is immensely appealing. 

But I guess I'm part of the problem because I still pay for cable TV, unapologetically, and that mostly stems from a bad experience I had streaming sports on Youtube TV some years ago.  I'll save you the details but let's just say I wound up seeing a lot of stuttering, blurry games for a couple of weeks before switching back to cable.  It just felt like the games were always buffering, always slightly delayed.

Well, the first quarter of this game brought back those same memories, of me watching a game where the timing always felt a bit off.  Indiana moved the ball against Michigan's defense in chunks because Michigan's defenders were a step too slow, a bit off in reacting and that leading to receivers steaking open behind young safeties or Mike Sainristil being deked out of his shoes by a backup QB's bump-fake.  On offense Michigan's receivers and QB weren't on the same page, with passes a hair behind or ahead of them, while the running game kept churning some yards but failing to break thru.  It also didn't help the weather was quite gross, with rain streaks on the lens and the entire field looking a particularly soggy green.  It was annoying to watch, and I found myself wanting to refresh the TV to see if the signal would get better.

But as with any streaming outfit, the buffer ultimately catches up, the images gets clearer, and I got to sit back and enjoy the next 3 quarters of the game, where Michigan thoroughly dominated yet another hapless team.  But slow starts have been part of this team's mojo for parts of the year, and I get that they're human and it's difficult to be up for every game.  But I'm hoping the improved competition/focus that'll be owed the upcoming opponents will help offset some of these early stumbles.

Best:  Getting Off the Schneid

Coming into the year Donovan Edwards talked about how he wanted to be one of the greatest running backs of all time, invoking names likes Sanders and Payton when describing his potential transformative skillset he brings to the game.  While that was clearly hyperbolic, Edwards evolution from "solid backup" to one of the top 5 running backs in college football was stunning to witness, and for the first time in what felt like eons broke the 5* Curse UM has "suffered" from at the running back position.  He finished last season averaging 7.1 yards on 140 carries, putting up huge games while Blake Corum was on the sideline while showcasing his receiving chops out of the backfield.  When Corum announced he was returning for his senior year, it felt like an embarrassment of riches for the Wolverines, two studs in the backfield who also complemented each other quite well.  Corum was the jittery bulldozer who always picked up a couple extra yards while Edwards was unguardable as a receiver and had homerun speed to spare.  There was always a concern about touches, as both guys clearly benefitted from having the ball in his hands more, but the benefits to each other in terms of wear-and-tear along with the positional and schematic flexibility they provided made it feel like a win-win. 

Unfortunately, this two-headed monster hasn't really come to be.  While Corum leads the nation in rushing TDs while being reasonably efficient on the ground, Edwards has scuttled along with limited effectiveness.  Coming into the game he was averaging a shade over 3 ypc, typically only touching the ball a half-dozen times, and while he's been a bit more effective in the passing game (16 receptions for around 130 yards), he wasn't displaying the dynamism that was his calling-card last year.  The stat that really jumped out to me, for example, was the fact his longest run all year was 11 yards against BGSU, and that only came about because Corum had just ripped out a 54-yard run and probably needed a breather.  The run itself was also a bit of a gadget play, the type you run to keep a defense off-balance but not necessarily one you should need to run for a guy who was a workhorse last year.  A big reason why it's felt like Edwards has underwhelmed is because, frankly, he has both compared to expectations as well as past performance.  While he's never going to be the pile-mover like Corum, he still showed an ability to push through initial contact and get a couple extra yards inside, while also flashing the ability to wait a beat before zipping through an open hole.  But that vision and strength has largely been lacking all year, no better embodied than in the ECU game where Edwards just couldn't find the endzone despite UM clearly trying to make it happen in a blowout.  This is not intended to be a dismissal of Edwards as a back or to blame him fully for not cashing in near the goal line, but Corum leads the nation in TD because when he gets hit at the 1 yard line he keeps driving forward and Edwards simply hadn't done that.  And beyond that, he has consistently been a step slow following his blocks and picking up yards when they're available.  Even in this game I saw a couple instances where a gap was missed or a lane not squeezed through, and all that adds up. 

So toward the end of the first half, Michigan was knocking on the door of another TD after Edwards made a nice catch from a McCarthy flip pass.  Edwards wanted to stay on the field and motioned to the sideline he wanted to stay in.  And I get that – you just took a hit and helped work the ball down the field, and you want to finish the drive.  That's totally understandable, even though it was still a 14-7 ballgame and there was whisps of competitiveness still in the air.  But Harbaugh clearly wanted Corum in close to the goalline, called a TO, and Corum bolted in for a TD to close out the half.  Edwards was happy for his teammate but it wasn't hard to see he was a bit dejected, as a competitor who wasn't allowed to finish what he started would react.  To his credit he didn't mope, he didn't display histrionics on the sidelines, and kept playing hard into the second half.  But I thought that Edwards desperately needed to score in that game, to get some confidence back not because he was "owed" a TD but because for this team to reach its apex it needed its marquee talents to be excelling, and that meant both running backs.  And so it was great to see Edwards finally get into the endzone early in the 4th, with a nice assist from Tuttle and the entire sideline clearly being happy for him.  And it didn't feel condescending or try-hard, like some human victory cigar celebration you sometimes see when a deep bench guy scores in basketball.  It felt more like a release, "finally" after coming up so short a couple of times including due to some dubious calls (for example, I thought he scored last weekend on a dive but the refs inexplicably spotted him short).  Edwards has been working hard this year despite, I'm sure, some disappointing in his performance, and it was good to see him finally put a TD up on the board.  With the far tougher part of their schedule coming it these next 5 games, hopefully this breakthrough is just the beginning of another big second half of the season for Edwards.

Best:  First World Problems, or Lack There-of

As the saying goes "every comic book is someone's first", and in the case of Michigan football I do get a sense that this site has a number of scars/memes that have been lost to fans due to age, circumstance, and intentional memory-holing the Dark Times.  So yeah, my guess is a fair number of blog members don't experience involuntary dread when they see "Never Forget" around any discussion of the secondary, or seeing words like "Jesse Speight and Ben Mason are fighting for snaps on the two-deep at defensive tackle", and that's probably for the best.  But those of us who have been around this place for a while, who've followed the team way too-intently during the Rich Rod years of "he just needs Jeff Casteel and then he'll field a functional defense", the "right to rush four" mantra under Greg Mattison that never turned into much beyond talk, or Don Brown's penchant for unearthing stud ends from the Acela Corridor but rarely getting such luck with defensive tackles.

So it comes as almost unfathomable good fortune that Michigan is now fielding maybe the best defensive line in the conference, if not the country, with particular strength up the middle.  Hell, 2 years ago the general vibe around the defensive line was "not in the face" when discussing their prospects against the better teams on the schedule.   Yes, Michigan had gotten sporadic playmakers on the interior, from Mo Hurst to Graham Glasgow to Willie Henry, but they never enjoyed sufficient depth at a spot you desperately need it.  Performance on the field was a lagging indicator of a recruiting philosophy that was more "build-a-bear" than talent acquisition.  And so when Michigan picked up a late commitment from George Rooks and Rayshaun Benny, for example, it was met with approval because they were at least shaped like that style of player.  But there were still concerns about how UM would survive, how they'd hold up against OSU, Wisconsin, and others with guys like Donovan Jeter and baby Kris Jenkins seeing the field with some regularity.  But first under Mike Macdonald and now Jesse Minter, the interior of defensive line has become a massive strength with so much depth that some of those previously hoped-for saviors had to go elsewhere not so much due to their own deficiencies as much as realizing the depth chart ahead of them wasn't going to provide much meaningful playing time.  Kris Jenkins and Mason Graham have obviously earned the significant press they've received as two of the best tackles in the game, with Graham getting the big turnover this week (a fumble recovery on 4th-and-3) as well as a sack.  But behind them you've got guys like Benny picking up two TFLs in this game, Kenneth Grant knocking down a pass and nearly picking it off a couple weeks after a big pick against the Cornhuskers, and Cam Goode collecting 2 sacks on the year (only one fewer than OSU's JTT) and providing not much of a drop-off as he rotates in. 

The ends are an equal bounty of riches, with Jaylen Harrell getting 2 sacks and currently leading the team with 3.5.  While I think the site has come around to recognizing that he's more than just a plugger, the fact he's probably the team's 3rd or 4th-best defensive end and is putting up these types of numbers is immensely impressive.  Derrick Moore and Braiden McGregor have been (relatively) quiet on the stat sheet, yet every UFR comes out with effusive praise for their performances.  It's hard to stress how much this team has improved up front in even the past couple of years, and how the depth going forward has allowed what was once a weakness under Harbaugh to become one of the defense's key strengths. 

Worst:  Too Much Pressure

If there's one concerning aspect of this game that can't sort of be hand-waved away with "it's Indiana in the rain", it's that the Hoosiers were able to consistently get pressure on McCarthy especially at the edges.  The Hoosiers picked up 4 sacks on the day that also forced 2 fumbles by McCarthy, both of which UM recovered/rolled out of bounds.  Carr got 2 of them but Aaron Casey picked up one along with Myles Jackson, and while some of these pressure came from blitzes and "secondary sacks" caused by McCarthy holding the ball too long, a number of them were just the tackles not holding up or failing to ID rushers.  Both Henderson and Barnhart gave up sacks on plays where they either missed a blitzer (Henderson) or got beaten around the end (Barnhart), and that's going to fly against teams like PSU who can bring pressure consistently up front.  And even when they didn't get a sack, the Hoosiers were able to flush McCarthy out of the pocket with some consistency.  Of course, sometimes that just led to Colston Loveland running for a 54-yard TD, but my hope is that some of these issues were due to IU's scattershot defensive approach and not both tackles regressing after what have been some positive performances.  Because while McCarthy is able to outrun unblocked cornerbacks and linebackers if they're running IU colors, I'm not sure that's going to be the case if they're wearing PSU or OSU jerseys.

Quick Hits:

• The unnecessary roughness penalty on Barner was maybe the weakest I've seen in years.  The IU defender was holding his arm after the play had been over for a while, jawing with him, and Barner smacked the arm away.  He's a former Hoosier playing against his past teammates, and I'm sure words were shared.  I get not wanting to let tensions escalate but you only need to do that if you see real violence break out, not two guys talking.  Just felt like a dumb overreaction.
• A lot has been made around UM being the least-penalized team in the country but what perhaps goes under-reported more is that Michigan's opponents are often lightly penalized themselves, to the tune of only 40 yards per game.  While I know it's every fan's assumption that there are tons of missed holds an DPIs by their opponents, this felt like yet another game where the opponent's offense was able to move the ball due to a healthy dosage of uncalled false starts and holding and once those started being flagged offensive efficiency went with them. 
• I have given up trying to understand the punt return system being implemented.  Neither Thaw nor Morris have really established a strangehold on the role, and while both have their strengths they also have weaknesses (Thaw sometimes letting the ball hit the ground and roll instead of picking it up, Morris letting it bounce over his head before trying to return it) that you hope don't hurt this team going forward.  Honestly, this team is so good they just need to the ball to not be turned over on punts, and right now I'm not sure either guy has filled me with a ton of certainty that'll be the case when a team punts it away.
• I really liked UM going for it on 4th-and-2 early in the 2nd quarter.  This isn't a game I expected to get out of hand but if you're an elite team you aim to score a TD when you're that close and trust your defense if you don't.  The call itself clearly flabbergasted IU, as the closest player to Wilson was A.J. Barner, who hasn't worn an IU jersey in a minute.  Harbaugh hasn't been afraid to throw the ball on 4th-and-a-bit (see last weeks' throw to Mullings on 4th down), and it adds some variety to the offense in short-yardage spots.

Next Week:  MSU

MSU is a mess, and has been for a while now.  They blew an 18-point lead to Rutgers in about 6 minutes of gametime in hilarious fashion, fumbling punts, failing to tackle backs, and generally Sparty No!-ing for the umpteenth time this year.  Some MSU faithful have clearly turned their eyes to the fever dream of Urban Meyer getting up from endless the lap dances he's currently getting at TGI Fridays and picking up the headset, while others believe that Mark Dantonio, a guy who won more than 7 games once in his last 4 seasons at MSU and "parted ways" with the school due in some part to mishandling of off-the-field issues, is going to right this ship.  But while MSU is probably better than the late-game losses they've suffered recently, they aren't that much better.    Houser looked semi-competent in his first game under center for the Spartans but they still can't really throw the ball downfield with any consistency, and their linebackers and secondary are still a mess.  Do I expect them to have a heightened level of competency against Michigan, at least for a while?  Sure.  But Keon Coleman ain't walking through those doors and it's hard to see them holding up against a Michigan team that will absolutely have their full and undivided attention.  This may be the week someone finally scores double-digits against the Wolverines, but I can also promise you that Graham Couch has pre-written the next "defeated with dignity" column that praises the Spartans for not getting too violent after yet another substantial loss.