This is going to be a short diary.  I plan on writing one to recap the regular season this week, but a game that ends at midnight, even one that brings UM a conference title, isn’t a recipe for a ton of analysis.

Best:  Don’t Call It A Comeback

As I assume it is the case for lots of people who frequent this blog, sports movies hold a special place in my heart.  By its very nature sport provides a rich tapestry from which to draw narratives, with revelatory victories and soul-crushing losses powered by neatly-defined heroes and villains (even if the actual people who occupy those roles vary based on rooting interests).  Sport has served as a proxy for war, for morality, and for faith, from referring to football players as warriors and soldiers to deifying stadiums, and enduring parables like David and Goliath, Tortoise and the Hare,  and the Prodigal Son are used as shorthand to describe the people and contests played.  Hell, this narrative structure is the backbone of professional wrestling, which more than any other entertainment medium combines this story-telling aspects with athletic prowess.  And when serendipity strikes and sports can harness this mixture of pathos and gamesmanship, you get indelible moments like the Miracle on Ice, Douglas beating Tyson, Seabiscuit beating War Admiral, the Giants beating the undefeated Patriots, and, yes, The Horror.  Stories where good triumphs over evil, where the underdog prevails due to hard work and internal fortitude despite facing seemingly insurmountable odds.

But like most things in life, there’s more nuance and context to such pat storytelling.  The US team that faced the Soviets in the Olympics wasn’t some rag-tag collection of nobodies; they were a young team but had a number of NHL prospects and were one of the best teams during the qualifying rounds.  Buster Douglas came into his fight against Tyson 30-4-1 and was riding a 6-fight win streak including wins over highly-ranked fighters like Oliver McCall and Trevor Berbick.  Seabiscuit had been the leading money winner before facing War Admiral and both horses had “scratched” facing each other previously due to injury and race course conditions.  The Giants had barely lost to the Patriots to end the regular season and had already beaten the top 2 seeds in the NFC.  And Appalachian State was in the midst of a 3-year run as champions of the FCS and had a couple of guys drafted that year, which was the same or more than Big 10 members Northwestern (0), Illinois (1),  Penn St. (2), and Indiana (2).  That isn’t meant the diminish the scope of those wins, only to shed a fuller light on the proceedings.  When Michigan beat Ohio State 42-27, much of the talk was about the epicness of the  win for the underdog Wolverines given the fact they were -7.5 pts coming in and hadn’t won against the Buckeyes in a decade.  But in reality, Michigan wasn’t Chaminade vs. Virginia or the Little Giants vs. the Fightin’ Al Bundy’s; they entered the game the #5 team in the country per the voters, #4 per SP+ and top 10 to basically everyone else.  If OSU was Goliath then Michigan was Goliath’s slightly less jacked neighbor, and that had (largely) been true for the intervening 8 contests. 

The problem for Michigan, one that has become more pronounced as talent and resources in college football has become more stratified, is that teams like Alabama, OSU, and Georgia have been able to horde the top players and coaches such that the gap between them and everyone else has expanded significantly.  And to make matters worse, previously uncommon options such as the transfer portal have allowed these teams to shore up weaknesses that previously could have been their Achilles heel (for example, Justin Fields transferring to OSU saved the Buckeyes from a season of Tate Martell as starting QB).  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 (!!!!) – look up gap between UM and Iowa

Yes, I understand that guys transfer out, rankings aren’t pure indicators of performance, etc.  But good lord, that’s an insane gap between “really good” and “credible national title contenders”, and it’s almost impressive that Clemson was able to hang with that group given the (relative) gap between the Tigers and the other three teams.  And so it’s why most years there are 3-4 teams battling for playoffs spots and then a tier of 10-12 other teams are basically duking it out for that 4th spot, hoping to at least put forth a good showing and maybe catch one of these teams napping or distracted by, I don’t know, yet another top-10 recruit.  For most of Harbaugh’s run at UM he’s had the team in that chase pack, and if a couple of plays had broken his way in 2016 or 2018 he’d have gotten in earlier or, at the very least, won a conference crown.  And it’s a big reason why I advocated for retaining Harbaugh; expecting any coach to take UM to the top of college football while facing down a fully-operational OSU (to say nothing of teams like PSU, Wisconsin, Iowa, etc. who can put together really good teams) every year is a bit unrealistic, and so a coach who has a proven record of raising the floor and putting a team in the position to have a magical run, of making the tweaks to dislodge the Buckeyes, made a ton more sense than hoping some unknown commodity could come in and do the same.

This year is just such a magical run.  Buoyed by a major staff overhaul and the emergence of program legends-in-the-making (Hutchinson, Haskins, etc.), Michigan has put together one of the best runs in recent program history.   Coming into the year the Wolverines were given a 2% chance of winning the conference title, behind teams like Indiana, Wisconsin, and Northwestern, and getting to 8 wins would have been considered solid.  But from the beginning Michigan played like, well, a team with a fair bit of top-end talent and a chip on its shoulder.  If you’ve been reading this diary all year you know how the season went, how the team just felt “different” even when everything wasn’t clicking, and so when they rattled off wins against Wisconsin and Nebraska on the road, the latter in comeback fashion, those early prognostications started to look less salient.  A trip-up in East Lansing, featuring a couple of questionable non-/calls by officials and some bad luck, momentarily put a damper on the ascendance but Michigan bounced back with big wins at PSU, Maryland, OSU and finally Iowa to cap off a run to their first college football playoffs.  And other than the game against OSU Michigan was favored, sometimes significantly, and played like the bruising heavyweight they were. 

And that’s the thing – teams can play both underdog and favorite, plucky rebels and sinister empire, throughout the season and even week-to-week.  Michigan’s definitive win against the Buckeyes was made even sweeter by the fact most pundits and fans expected yet another OSU blowout; conversely, their win over Iowa highlighted just how significant the gap was between the Wolverines and a top-15 team that had once been #2 in the country.  Michigan deserves to be in the playoffs because they are one of the best teams in the country, and that really shouldn’t be a surprise to people.  They are once again underdogs to the Dawgs in their next game, and as noted above there’s good reason to expect Georgia to field one of the most talented teams UM has faced all year.  But the same can be the said the Wolverines, and I expect Georgia will be made aware of that fact very quickly.  Michigan has been on the doorstep of this moment for some time; they just needed this team, this staff, this year to finally push their way in.

Best:  Finisher Spamming

Professional wrestling has a myriad of tropes, but one of the more recent ones has been the “finisher spamming” you see in the main event(s) of signature events like Summerslam and Wrestlemania.  It’s pretty self-explanatory, but a quick primer for the uninitiated: every professional wrestler has a move he/she uses to signify the “finish” of a match, and more times than not if they successfully hit it they’re able to win the match.  Famous ones include the Stone Cold Stunner, the Hogan Leg Drop, the Rock Bottom, Sweet Chin Music, Cobra Clutch, the F5, the Figure-Four Leglock, etc., but if the wrestler has told a solid story thus far in the ring and has consistently conveyed the power of the move as a match-ender, it usually conveys the appropriate amount of finality and the fans recognize that when, say, Randy Orton hits the RKO out of nowhere his opponent is vanquished.  Wrestlers “protected” those finishers because they helped tell the story in the ring, and so when a guy did kick out of the move it was supposed to convey courage, heart, toughness, and the unbelievability of it all.  But over time, professional wrestling has gotten more video game-y, where you could “store up finishers” and unleash them in succession for some pretty absurd sequences.  The first example I remember was Cena vs. The Rock at Wrestlemania 28, where the last 5 minutes of the match were just a series of big moves and finishers without much drama.  Triple H vs. Undertaker matches had similar flavors, and it’s only gotten worse as major promotions look to tell  “epic” stories via false finishes and the equivalent of jump scares instead of coherent storytelling.

Well, this game against Iowa felt a bit like one of those matches where Michigan just kept hitting knockout shots but due to the strictures of football it had to keep being played.  After their first drive went 3-and-out, Iowa marched down the field (with the help of a middling PI call on Hill) and had a shot at taking the lead with a chipshot FG.  They missed, though, and Michigan responded with a 67-yard Corum TD run a couple of plays later.  Iowa then went 3-and-out and Michigan responded with a 1-play, 75-yard TD pass from Donovan Edwards to Roman Wilson that might as well been the Undertaker throwing Mick Foley off the top of the cage with its brutality.  Michigan was up 14-0 and had just put the biggest run and pass gains of the year on Iowa in successive plays.  But people forget that the Hell in a Cell match went on after Foley crashed through the table, and there were many other brutal moments that followed.  But the big moment had happened and it felt like the story had been written on how the title game would ultimately end.

Even though Iowa got into the redzone on the next drive they settled for a FG and an unfortunate bobble on an errant pass by McNamara led to a pick, Michigan’s defense stiffened and the rest of the half played out like a field position battle that UM kept losing because AJ Henning kept fair-catching punts inside the 5.  If there was a chance for the Hawkeyes to mount a comeback it was in that series of exchanges, much like they did against PSU where they just kept pinning the Nittany Lions deep and shortening the field on the exchanges.  But after a couple of drives Michigan was able to push themselves out to midfield and the last real threat was over.  Iowa wasn’t going to be able to march down the field against Michigan and the Wolverines were simply too disciplined, too tough to allow themselves to fall into that trap. 

The second half was then basically a slow-motion beatdown, as UM scored 4 TDs one a series of bruising runs and fantastic plays by the tight ends.  By the time Erick All caught a one-handed TD to put UM up 35-3 you almost wanted them to just keep a running clock going to get everyone home safely.  Hassan Haskins was sandwiching Iowa blitzers on pickups, Iowa kept rotating through QBs in a futile attempt to throw the ball more than 4 yards behind the sticks, and the biggest moment was realizing that UM had both yellow AND blue Gatorade to douse their coach with.  In the end the UM fans went home happy and psyched for a playoff date. 

Best:  Sub-Tweeting the Hawkeyes

This game felt like it was over a half-dozen times but to me the defining one was when Brad Robbins boomed a 60+ yard punt to flip the field and then Johnson blocked the ensuing punt.  Up until that point Iowa was still somewhat, ephemerally in the game down only 21-3 and had shown some slight ability to move the ball.  But that turn of events was how Iowa needed to play to win, so when UM turned the tables it almost felt like a subtweet of Iowa, a personal diss to the Hawkeyes that UM’s top-rated special teams could even do their bread-and-butter better than them.

Worst:  Hurting Hutchinson’s Heisman Hampaign

Iowa rather smartly recognized that they didn’t stand much of a chance of stopping Aiden Hutchinson in this game so they responded in two key ways: (1) having their tackle cut block at every possible opportunity and (2) throwing the ball as quickly as was humanly possible.  There was a stretch in the first quarter where every Iowa dropback featured a Hawkeye hockey-blocking Hutchinson at the snap and then Petras throwing the ball to one of his tight ends 3 yards downfield and it made immense sense.  And to Iowa’s credit, LaPorta did hold up a block against Hutchinson long enough that it was deemed a credible dropback and thus was able to sneak out for a nice completion.  But in general the Hawkeyes knew that if they tried to throw the ball downfield it would expose them to repeated “Not In the Face” rushes by Michigan’s two ends, and they did the best they could to mitigate that risk.  That didn’t stop Hutchinson completely; he still picked up a sack and could have had another by throwing his man into Petras, but after Bryce Young’s performance against Georgia Hutchinson needed another OSU-style hamblasting to keep his faint Heisman hopes alive. 

Now, I think the Heisman trophy rarely recognizes the best player in college foootball during a given year; it’s basically become a “who’s the best offensive player on one of the best teams in the country” award most seasons, the equivalent of the top scorer award they give to the kids who hit a growth spurt earlier than his/her piers on the youth soccer team.  And in general, football seems loathe to recognize defensive excellence as superior to offensive performance compared to other sports.  Baseball has given out its MVP award to pitchers with some frequency, and the Hart trophy goes to goalies as well.  Basketball is a bit more difficult because everyone plays both ways and some of the best offensive players tend to also be great defensive players, but even there you’ll typically see defensive performance be the deciding factor in a player’s candidacy.  But pro football has only given the MVP to 2 defensive players in its history and only Woodson has won it in college, and even then he also scored 3 TDs on offense and likely needed the punt return against OSU to seal his win. 

Hutchinson was never going to have those opportunities (though I’ll be honest watching him return a punt would have been fun), and so his dominant play (like that of Will Anderson at Alabama) is likely to be relegated to local history, his best chance at a payoff being team accomplishments.  In the long run that’s fine – I watch those Heisman House ads and remember how guys like Eric Crouch, Mark Ingram, and Johnny Manziel were thought of as the best players of their years because of media bias and “tradition”.  Aiden is likely headed to NYC for the ceremony, where he’ll get a couple of nice video packages and a chance to rock the Maize and Blue on a national broadcast until a guy who gets to QB the most talented team in the country gets a participation award for not messing it up.  But it’s still a testament to the season he’s even been in the conversation. 

Quick Hits:

• I noted it earlier but overall I thought the blocking by the backs and tight ends was fantastic in this game.  Yes, Iowa got some pressure on the QBs especially on A-gap blitzes but especially in the second half a lot of McNamara and McCarthy’s best throws were because they had time to work the pocket and that was because guys like Haskins and Edwards held up defenders.  That feels like a Mike Hart specialty and something reproducible going forward.
• Credit to Ferentz for calling a good offensive game against the Wolverines – he brought out a couple of trick plays, took chances in the red zone, and generally did his best with the limited talent he had on hand.  His ceiling is always going to be close to this, but I was impressed with how Iowa hung in there.
• I’ll get into this next week but the emergence of McNamara and McCarthy as both legitimate threats running and passing has been a godsend for the offense.  McNamara picked up a 1st down on a long run this game basically from the snap, and McCarthy was a credit enough passer than Iowa bought some of his fakes and that opened up the Corum TD run, amongst others.  UM is suddenly a matchup problem for teams like Georgia because their QBs are able to run the offense in complementary ways, and that’s a credit to the players and coaches.

Next:  One Thing Left to Do

Georgia is really good, but so is Michigan.  Michigan’s defense is going to be one of the better ones Georgia has seen all year and against similarly-regarded units they’ve struggled (Alabama held them to 24 points and they only scored 3 points against Clemson to open the year), though with a month to prepare I assume they’ll have some wrinkles.  I’m not quite ready to make a prediction but I’m comfortable saying UM will be the second team from the Big 10 to score in the playoffs, so at least the Wolverines will have that.  Like I said, I’ll have more a write-up and a holistic take on the season this week.  But go an enjoy this title and the possibilities for the rest of the season.  Go Blue!