Best:  The Battle of Who Could Care Less

I just...I just don’t care about this game.  This happens almost every year around this time, usually before the Ohio State game, where the Wolverines just sort of sludgefart through a game against a good-but-overmatched opponent, suffer a couple of annoying injuries and some missteps, and we all sort of hand-wring about it.  Last year it was a late comeback against Illinois, embodied in this extremely topical image:

And that’s basically how I feel after this game.  In fact, this was less annoying in that Michigan never really trailed, Maryland never took the lead late in the 4th, and AFAIK Michigan didn’t lose a Heisman front-runner for the season right before the biggest game of the year.  Maryland does this to good teams; last season they were within 3 points of beating OSU well into the 4th quarter, and this year were leading into the 3rd quarter before absolutely falling apart.  It’s a Mike Locksley-coached team with Josh Gattis at OC and Tagovailoa at QB; it’s always going to be maximally annoying for Maryland fans whenever they play anyone in the upper echelon of this conference. 

I’ve seen Michigan fans get annoyed/worried that OSU is “turning it on” while Michigan is scuttling, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that OSU just finished playing two home games against MSU and Minnesota (a combined 9-13) with mediocre defenses (MSU is 49th, Minnesota 41st) while Michigan just finished playing two road games against PSU and Maryland (combined 15-7) with pretty good defenses (PSU is 4th, Maryland 28th).  The transitive property of sports means virtually nothing but I would only caution that winning on the road in tough situations is something that shouldn’t be discounted just because it’s not as pretty as dog-walking two teams.  So in the hopes of filling out your personal Sports BINGO card, a win’s a win after going into someone else’s house, and it was fueled by Michigan winning in the trenches despite everyone else not believing in them, and they’ll go forward and build on this momentum.  Survive and advance.

Best:  Have Defense, Will Travel

One of the cliches around football is that “defense travels”, the idea being that while offensive performance tends to fluctuate between the friendly confines of a home stadium versus the road, defensive performance maintain more consistently regardless of the locale.  Logically that makes some sense, evidenced last weekend in Happy Valley when it seemed difficult to audible plays on offense, especially near the student section due to the overwhelming noise, as well as deploy a less predictable snap count.  By comparison, on defense the crowd is going to be quieter to assist their offense and so calling out shifts and adjustments, plus hearing the snap count, is going to be easier.  Now, it’s debatable if this idiom is actually true especially in the small sample-size world of college football where a team like Michigan might only play a handful of teams a year with sufficient talent to really stress them, but Maryland was one of those teams offensively.  The Terps have a veteran QB in Taulia Tagovailoa, some talented WRs, and an offensive-minded coach in Mike Locksley and an OC in Josh Gattis who undoubtedly gameplanned heavily for his former employer.  And yet, coming into the game Maryland’s offense was only ranked 60th per SP+, hamstrung in part due to a pretty high turnover rate and a bad rushing attack yet buttressed by a passing offense ranked in the top 30 nationally. 

If that sounds like a recipe for an up-and-down performance when the Terps had the ball, you’ve either watched Maryland football at any point over the past half-decade and/or are pretty good at reading context clues.  For long stretches of this game Michigan’s defense stuffed Maryland in a locker, with 5 of their 10 meaningful drives spanning 4 plays or fewer and a 6th drive that lasted 6 plays but netted –2 yards.  In fact, 5 of Maryland’s aforementioned 10 drives ended in negative total yardage, including a scoop-and-score off a fumble and 2 safeties, a stat FOX was comfortable proclaiming was the first such occurrence in at least the last 2 decades. 

Thanks for sticking your necks out there, you brave graphic designers.

But all year Maryland has been feast-or-famine offensively, and it was no different in this game.  On the other 4 meaningful drives for the Terps they averaged 11 plays 74 yards, with 3 ending in TDs and the other with a FG.  They typically featured Taulia dropping some absolute dimes mixed with some solid playcalling and breakdowns by the Michigan secondary.  It was frustrating to watch because Maryland wasn’t particularly efficient but when they did something well they were able to string those successes together and generate points.  They did something similar against OSU, where they alternated absolutely disastrous drives with these largely-unstoppable marches up and down the field.  But on the day Michigan held Maryland to 264 yards of total offense, with 2 picks, 5 sacks plus a pressure-induced safety due to intentional grounding.  Mike Sainristil added to his legacy with 2 picks, while Kenneth Grant was an absolute menace up front all day, no moreso than late in the 4th when he squashed a Maryland drive by sacking Taulia deep in his own end.  His athleticism is simply too hard to match for most lineman.  And while the stat sheet wasn’t particularly stuffed, guys like Derrick Moore and McGregor shined when the defense was tasked with holding onto that late lead.  In fact, once Maryland pulled to within 29-24 late in the 3rd quarter, they picked up exactly one first down while Taulia was sacked twice, threw a pick, and took the critical second safety. 

So while I get some people’s consternation around how the defense played and what it portends about next week’s game against OSU, this wasn’t a particularly bad performance by the defense save for a couple of breakdowns and some great throws by Taulia.  Can McCord throw some great balls to Harrison Jr. even with great coverage, or find Stover and Henderson for big gains?  Absolutely, and that’s an area where Michigan will need to adjust.  But on paper OSU’s passing offense doesn’t look that different than Maryland’s, and on the road it’s significantly more mortal (61%, 7.9 ypa, 9:4 TD:INT ratio) than at home (70%, 10 ypa, 15:1 TD:INT ratio).  By comparison, Michigan’s pass defense has dominated regardless of location (54%, 5.7 ypa, 7 picks each at home and on the road), while OSU’s has been as elite overall but a bit more variable (47% on the road while 53% at home but also 4 TDs and only 1 pick forced away from Columbus).  If nothing else, after a season of basically rolling out their OSU defense regardless of opponent, this upcoming game will provide evidence if the issues that have occasionally popped up are real or a byproduct of gameplanning.

Best:  Villain

Last week I noted that a refrain around college football media is that what Michigan did was victimless and thus their punishment was also victimless, and this week we’ve seen a concerted effort on the part of the worst types of writers (and please don’t feel like you need to click on those links but unlike these authors I put the work into actually supporting my claims) in sports media to chide Michigan for treating the reality of down their head coach, a linebacker coach, and constantly having to deal with unprecedented cooperation between the NCAA and the B1G conference in punishing the Wolverines in the least amount of time possible as “adversity”.  Like how evolution’s endgame is apparently always crabs, every shitty sportswriter defaults to personifying an institution via a fabricated strawperson they can create and then summarily burn at the pyre whenever they want to make a self-righteous point.  The argument in all these pieces is that capital-M Michigan should stop complaining about the punishments Harbaugh has received, stop wearing “Free Harbaugh” shirts or trying to defend themselves against, say, cynical claims about “player safety” as they relate to stolen signs in light of  evidence that opponents have shared UM’s signs and don’t seem to care all that much if other teams have them.  Any defense by Michigan is treated as whining, with calls for due process and a proper investigation dismissed as the laments of a guilty person while any half-cocked message board claim about FBI investigators, coaches removing an account from a site run by an anti-Semite, and whatever Zach Smith can unearth from scouring shady Instagram accounts between check-ins with his parole officer are given far more credence than they warrant. 

And the thing is, I absolutely agree that Michigan should be appropriately punished for what has happened around Stalions even if it’s more because of how stupidly obvious it was than some grievous injury to the competitive spirit of the game.  In particular, Chris Partridge being given the boot for possibly trying to “destroy” evidence on a computer and advising players  how to respond to NCAA questions, either of which is categorically a fireable offense and if UM catches additional NCAA punishment for that I’m fine with it.  But this entire scandal revolves around, and it’s weird a month in we keep having to say this, a weirdo trying to deduce opponents’ signs via mediocre iPhone recording of games played before tens of thousands of people.  That’s it – one of the most consequential in-season scandals (in terms of coach punishment) in my lifetime revolves around advanced scouting practices that (a) the NCAA considered allowing a mere 2 years ago and (b) seemingly a large number of people thought wasn’t actually against the rules until this scandal broke.  People rightfully look back at scandals such as those at USC and OSU scandals and recognize the heavy-handedness of the response, that these schools were raked over the coals because the players responsible for making millions of dollars for their universities and billions for the NCAA tried to break a little off for themselves.  But at least in those cases the violations were somewhat egregious and the rules obvious; Bush and his family got over $100k from an aspiring agent and OSU players had apparently been selling autographs and memorabilia for nearly a decade, and in the latter case Tressel had known about it and done nothing to stop it.

But people like heroes and villains because it makes the season easier to digest; a plucky upstart like Colorado that pulls off some big wins and have a flashy head coach keep pulling in eyeballs even when it becomes clear they’re not very good and their coach is equal parts “charismatic” and “petulant egotist”.  A couple years ago Michigan was the belle of the ball, winning their first conference title in almost 20 years and vanquishing the Buckeyes at home before making it to their first playoff game.  But success breeds a certain level of disdain, and as a Michigan fan I’ll admit this fanbase can be arrogant and memory-hole recent struggles while assuming the good times would never end.  Now, that behavior is true for basically every fanbase that’s experienced even a modicum of success over the years (I had a passing interaction with an FSU fan pre-Travis injury that rivaled any OSU/MSU troll I’ve met), but Michigan doing it has always engendered a heightened level of disdain from a subset of rivals and media types who take personal offense with Michigan’s particular level of arrogance.  And that’s the same driving force we saw behind the anger directed (somewhat) at OSU and USC, this idea that you already had these advantages and now you’re greedily demanding more, breaking rules and norms while acting like you’re just out-working everyone else.  That was the vibe around those championship USC teams under Pete Carroll and especially under Tressel, who wrapped himself in a vest of faux morality that when they were revealed to be taking shortcuts and bending rules the anger boiled up immediately.

As a result, those teams’ transgressions drew so much attention and gave media types such an opportunity to sink their teeth into juicy narratives that the nuances of those situations were rendered meaningless under the deluge of vitriol and moralizing thrown their way.  They became the villains of college football for some period of time, and even if rivals were guilty of similar violations, the light never shone quite as bright on them and the punishments were less severe. 

And it’s clear this year’s villain role is being played by Michigan.  I’ll save the rehashing of Burgergate but it really was the most benign of violations, exacerbated by Harbaugh not cooperating with the investigation but I can sort of imagine how that went and what response that would elicit.  That led to Harbaugh being booted from the sideline for the first 3 games of the year, along with Sherrone Moore for the first one against ECU.  I noted after that game the outcry against Harbaugh and Michigan seemed a bit excessive given the violations involved, and you could sense that people weren’t primed to forget.  So when the Stalions story broke the immediate response wasn’t “that sounds wild, let’s wait for some more information to come out” but instead “see, those arrogant assholes were cheating and (thanks to this PI firm’s leaked stories) here’s all the juiciest details”.  It seemingly took weeks for anyone to begin questioning why a couple of reporters, including those sympathetic to OSU, were the only ones with information, or why CMU’s continued silence on who was standing on their sidelines when they faced MSU wasn’t being challenged, or even how prevalent sign sharing and other “advanced” scouting really was amongst teams.  But that never mattered because Michigan was the bad guy, and so any evidence that supported that characterization was taken as gospel and any refuting it treated as partisan hackery (look no further than the relative lack of traction the revelations about shared signs between Rutgers and OSU with Purdue from the same crowd that clutched pearls over player safety). 

And what sucks is that the players had nothing to do with this.  At least with USC and OSU, you can point to actual players being involved in the violations; there’s no evidence that any player on Michigan’s roster knew what Stalions was doing.  Hell, Michigan and even the NCAA noted that Partridge seemingly didn’t know about his scheme prior to the news being broke by the media.  They’re painted as co-conspirators in a violation of rules they played no part in and seemingly didn’t even know existed.  Regardless of how this season plays out, their accomplishments past, present, and future will be discounted for reasons beyond their control.  I don’t expect most fans to shed a tear for anyone in maize and blue, but it still sucks to have that black mark on what were clearly great teams and players who gained vanishingly little advantage from whatever information Stalions was able to draw from those videos.

So at this point it’s not really worth fighting the villain label, and in fact Harbaugh has leaned into it a bit by framing Michigan as “America’s Team” with a wink and a smile.  The only good thing is that fans have short memories and desire new chapters and characters in their stories, so chances are by next season someone else will supplant Michigan on the most wanted list and the ire will be directed at them instead.  But at least until Michigan is out of the playoff picture, I don’t expect much of a change around how this team is treated.

Worst:  Push

I understand that figuring out what constitutes “forward momentum” is an inexact science especially when we’re talking about a dozen or more bodies crammed into a space barely larger than the front seats of a mid-sized sedan, but they’ve got to figure out a more equitable solution to the QB “tush push” you see on most short-yardage plays.  The Philadelphia Eagles are the current masters of it, but the play’s essence comes from college, where Reggie Bush was able to shove Matt Leinart in for a late-game TD to beat Notre Dame after initially being stopped at the goalline.  My problem with the play is less that it’s effective as much as it feels way too arbitrary and reliant on referees to make judgment calls.  For example, Maryland scored 2 TDs on extremely short 4th-down runs where Billie Edwards was initially stopped and then 2 teammates just slid him over the pile until he was in the endzone.  And yet, on a number of occasions this year Michigan’s running backs have been denied TDs at the goalline due to some subjective belief their forward momentum had been stopped short of the plane.  If your offensive line can push the defenders back a yard so be it, but basically submarining the defender in front of you and then letting the QB be flung 6 inches forward feels cheap in a way that I assume will be altered via rule change in the near future.  But in a game where Michigan’s defense really did hold up at the point of attack, it felt like a bit of a bailout when the Terps got both of these close TDs.

Worst:  Throw a Changeup Every Once and A While

I don’t have a ton of concerns around McCarthy’s play these past 2 weeks – yes he threw a couple of bad balls and one of them was picked off, but when tasked with needing to pick up 4th downs McCarthy delivered a strike to Loveland and drew a DPI throwing to Barner.  The wind seemed a bit swirly and especially once Wilson went out and the tackle situation got squirrelly Moore switched to a more conservative approach with the lead.  I didn’t love that approach and I assume won’t be the fallback against OSU, but that’s not really on McCarthy in my eyes.  He’s clearly not maintaining the same pace as he did earlier in the season, but he’s also faced the 2 of the top 30 defenses in the country on the road in successive weeks and steered the team to wins.  But one of the complaints I’ve heard for a couple of weeks now about McCarthy from analysts is that he throws the ball hard at times when a bit more touch would be better.  His big throw downfield to Johnson felt a bit pushed, that a bit more air leading the receiver would have resulted in an easier attempt.  McCarthy has a plus arm and clearly isn’t afraid of trying any of the throws you may need.  But he does sometimes try to rifle balls into spaces that are incredibly cramped, and that can lead to some near-turnovers and missed completions. 

Ohio State’s secondary can be got; we saw it last year and this season they struggled (relatively speaking) at times against this Maryland team as well as Notre Dame with Sam Hartman.  There will be opportunities downfield, especially if Wilson is back and the tackles can give McCarthy time, and he’s gotta connect on a good chunk of them.  He’s shown touch in the past so hopefully that returns against OSU.

Worst:  And Maybe a Curveball

This was the second week where Michigan’s offensive gameplan, especially with a lead, became somewhat suspect and conservative.  I understand how and why that could happen; this is the second week where Sherrone Moore learned he was going to be the head coach late in the process, and trying to be both offensive coordinator and head coach is incredibly difficult (there’s a reason guys not named Jimbo Fisher typically don’t) even for seasoned coaches, let alone a guy who’s still relatively new into his college career.  And Moore also had to deal with losing Roman Wilson early on due to injury, plus being down Henderson at tackle to start the game and later losing Hinton in the second half. At that point you’re jostling your line, you don’t have your top receiver, and you had been able to move the ball somewhat successfully on the ground, so I get turtling a bit and just trying to get home with a win and no more injuries.

At the same time, this is also the second week where they basically ran a handful of play-action passes despite them being open whenever they wanted them.  Even with Michigan’s relatively unimpressive rushing totals, it’s obvious teams know that the Wolverines have the ability to gash them on the ground and so they’re responding by attacking the line with additional defenders with little restraint.  That leaves limited help in the defensive backfield to deal with guys like Johnson, Wilson, Morris, Loveland, Barner, and Morgan, plus Edwards out of the backfield.  These are yards that are there for the taking if Michigan’s offense is willing to exploit them.  Moore, though, set some downs on fire trying to get 2-3 yards up the middle and then failing to use the threat of the run on 2nd and 3rd downs to pick up necessary first downs that would have made that 4th quarter way less stressful. 

My hope is that with some stability around the coaching situation going into next week these wrinkles will be ironed out.  You can tell, especially in the second halves of these games, that time Moore would have usually spent as just the OC to tinker with protections, deploy some counters, and even just talk to his offense are spent managing the other side of the team to some extent as the head coach.  Even though Minter is calling those plays and takes a lead role when the defense is out there, as the head coach Moore still has to be somewhat present throughout, to track the flow of play, ride the refs, consider when to call timeouts and challenge plays, etc.  Even if you’re coaching by committee to an extent you’re still “the man” on that sideline and so Moore’s attention is split whereas it usually isn’t when he’s just the OC.  Next week’s game is going to take a village, and I do hope that Moore and co. will take this week to figure out those adjustments and recognize when to deploy them sooner in games.

Meh:  I Know Too Much

This is a very me-specific issue but figured it was worth sharing.  A joke around this whole Stalions scandal is that arguing with Michigan fans is exasperating because half of us are lawyers and love nothing more than to argue minutiae.  Around these parts both Bryan Mac and Raj have commented about the various legal maneuverings and exploits from this scandal, and I’d encourage people who are interested in some of the novel legal issues this situation has brought up to dig deeper.  But one of the more exasperating by-products of this scandal is that people who DON’T know what they’re talking about are allowed to just pontificate with the air of authority gleaned from watching Suits for 2 months straight.

As I noted a couple weeks ago, the sign stealing impact really highlighted the ball knowers vs. the ball fakers.  Well guess what?  I’m a special kind of weirdo because I have experience both with the law as well as technology, which have been at the fulcrum point of this entire scandal from the start.  I actually went to law school, passed multiple state bars (on my first try each time, which remains a shocker to me and anyone who likely knew me in school), and for a couple of years practiced on the transactional side of (mostly) academia.  I set foot into court exactly once to watch a friend of a friend appeal a ruling, and it was basically just someone arguing over penalties with a contract breach.  Yet after graduating from Michigan with a degree in computer engineering I decided that much like bungee jumping and making out with cobras, I’d like to live dangerously and experience significant student loan debt.  So I went to law school, became a mediocre lawyer, and after about 5 years realized this was absolutely not something I was particularly good at nor wanted to keep doing for a significant portion of my life.  So, at the ripe old age of 30-ish, I went BACK to school and got Master’s degree in computer engineering, which again meant more student debt but was at least a field I enjoy.  I’ve been working as a software engineer since, moonlighting as an obsessive Michigan fan who writes 5,000 words a week about football games for fun.

Anyway, why bring this up?  Because this scandal is so in my wheelhouse.  I have now gotten to see multiple journalists treat shared Google drives as if they’re secret NSA servers deep in the Utah desert.  I’ve seen people talk about Chris Partridge “destroying computer evidence” like the files are in the computer and he’s setting them on fire as opposed to, you know, dragging them to the trash bin.  I’ve seen references to “Master Spreadsheet” as if an Excel file has its own currency and religion.  I’ve heard so much about “hacking”, as if Matt Weiss was furiously typing away while OSU’s sys-admins were battling him.  And don’t get me started about evidentiary standards around TROs, which people seem to think is some codeword for “secret super-quick trial” and not just an acronym that starts with “Temporary”.  I’m not a smart guy and my knowledge around football is limited but I now get why former coaches and players must get exasperated with goobers like me questioning their decisions because I swear this past month has shown me that with a little bit of knowledge and a healthy amount of ego you can say some absolutely wild shit and people will believe you.

I fully expect more to come out in the intervening weeks, and maybe the coverage around it will get a bit more nuanced once the games have been played.  But I fully expect there to be a couple more weeks of absolutely bugnuts misreading of key elements of this story where I’ll just ruefully shake my head and not try to correct as many people on the internet.

Quick Hits:

1. It doesn’t sound like any of the injuries sustained over the weekend will be lingering, which is a good sign.  Barrett went back out after an AC sprain, and Wilson was on the sidelines but with the concussion glasses on.  I assume they’ll both be good to go next weekend.
2. I thought both the hit on Wilson as well as Graham’s on Taulia were called correctly.  They were dangerous hits but didn’t rise to the level of targeting we saw in, say, the Pitt-BC game.  While it annoyed me at the time with the shot to Wilson, on replay that’s always hard to adjust to as a guy goes down.  Graham, by comparison, needs to be careful there because QBs always get the benefit of the doubt and it felt a bit excessive.  Neither was “throw him out”-level bad, though.
3. You may not see a better punt this year than the one Doman did late in the 4th quarter to set up that safety.  The ball hit at the half-yard line and then bounced forward ever so slightly.  We know he’s got a big leg but that’s the type of play that can turn a game around.  Just great stuff to watch.

Next Week:  Ohio State

Nothing really needs to be said.  A couple weeks ago I opined that this year’s game was the biggest in James Franklin’s coaching career because if he couldn’t beat Michigan now his legacy was basically set.  Well, that’s doubly so for Ryan Day, who has gone to extraordinary measures to stack the deck in his favor and finally get back to beating the Wolverines.  OSU has a good team and Michigan has some flaws, but my guess is this is going to be the most-watched game all season in college football (save maybe the national title game), and at this point any outcome is as likely.  I do think playing at home will be helpful for Michigan, especially on offense, though Treyvon Henderson’s recent emergence for the Buckeyes means they’ll likely be able to run the ball a bit better than in previous years.  At the same time, when facing a defense similar to Michigan’s (so PSU and ND), they struggled (relatively speaking) to move the ball.  I suspect it’ll be a close game going into the 4th and then we’ll see what happens.  Regardless, a fitting end to a crazy regular season.