Worst:  Cool Kids

This will be quick but at the top I wanted to make it clear that the part of this fanbase I find most annoying is the assumption that bad things are right around the corner and preemptively bracing themselves for it with detached irony.  This isn’t intended as a subtweet of this site’s main writers but BPONE remains the worst thing this site has created by a huge margin mostly because it tries to ignore the fact that being a fan and being irrationally hurt by wins and losses is part of the deal with following college sports.  The ride, for lack of a better term, is part of the deal with being a fan, and that means being up and being down.  Trying to preemptively be mad about bad things that may happen in the future just so you can point it out you called it early drives me fucking insane.  It’s not cool, it’s not being better than everyone else, it’s just annoying and derivative.  Michigan will not go undefeated this year; they’ll likely lose a couple of games in various degrees of depressing fashion.  If you somehow thought that wouldn’t be the case than you haven’t been paying attention.  But right now UM hasn’t lost a game and are still playing pretty well; they played poorly for a half and still found a way to never lose the lead against a decent opponent on a weekend when a lot of other teams didn’t play as well.  By all means be critical of the coaches and team, as there are reasons to do so.  But if they lose to Wisconsin next week then feel bad then, don’t complain about it for a week because it’s definitely not going to make it any easier. 

Worst:  A Slow-Moving Near-Miss

One of the occupational hazards of writing this diary is that I spend a decent chunk of my time trying not to go down rabbit holes when looking for some bit of information or moment in a game to support the larger narrative.  Now, this isn’t a danger unique to diary writing on this site; since the internet’s inception there’s always been the pressing danger of getting lost in a series of inter-related information dumps and time-sinks, where you find yourself clicking on one more link or reading one more post about some topic you suddenly find yourself enraptured by (I remember once looking up the name of the blue elephant-looking keyboard player from the original Star Wars cantina scene and waking up 4 hours later reading a detailed discussion of Jabba the Hutt’s early years).  Heck, early internet sites lived and died by webrings, and most social media now is premised on the idea that you just need to see one more picture, watch one more 10-second video clip, read one more tweet.  YouTube is the king of that for me, suggesting I check out some compendium of “GoPro shots” with a misleading screenshot of oh, like, a shark riding an surfboard, or a 20-minute video about a squirrel obstacle course while I look for some clip from a recent game or a performance I remember from a couple years ago.  Perhaps apropos for this week’s game against Rutgers, YouTube’s main page thought I’d be interested in a variety of “close call” videos, wherein people nearly suffer grievous harm but just miss disaster due to a bit of fortuitous luck all while the viewer is wracked with tension that perhaps the title is a bit misleading and you’re about to catch a snuff film.  Because honestly, this was my expression for most of that second half:

Weirdly, it wasn’t that Rutgers was really dealing on either side of the ball.  For the game they averaged 4.8 ypp, with 4.7 ypc on the ground and 5 ypa (!) and a mere 8.7 yards per completion.  Even in that second half Rutgers only averaged 5.6 ypp, with a long run of 26 yards, and averaged a healthy 10 plays per drive covering an average of 48 yards.  They faced 8 third downs and 1 4th-down during that time, converting on 4 of them.  So it wasn’t some quick-strike comeback as much as series of just exhaustingly tedious drives wherein Rutgers would call a play, Noah Vedral would then play 3-card monte with the ball, and they’d pick up between 3 and 5 yards more times than not.  I saw this mentioned on Twitter that Rutgers was clearly applying the “3.4 * 3 > 10” approach to offense and it worked well enough especially as Michigan’s defense tired and some of those plays busted loose. 

On defense they they absolutely stymied Michigan’s rushing attack starting midway through the 2nd quarter (for the game UM only averaged 2.9 ypa and it’s only a bit better if you throw out 2 kneel downs at the end of the game), but Michigan also repeatedly failed to test the edges of the Rutgers defense and instead ran face-first into stacked boxes, grinding out a couple of yards but failing to generate the type of consistent gashing we’ve previously seen from the nation’s leading rushing attack.  And even when Michigan was able to generate some decent holes for their backs, they either missed them or were delayed enough in engaging that the defense was able to limit the damage.  And the passing game, which was humming along in that first, seemingly fell apart at halftime, with McNamara making some poor throws and his receivers failing to bail him out a bit or seemingly not being on the same page with some of the playcalls.  This isn’t intended to short shrift a good defensive effort by the Scarlet Knights, only highlight that Michigan’s offensive issues seemed in part self-inflicted.

And so with every 3-and-out by the offense and every interminable odyssey by the defensive series it felt like the game was not so much slipping away as getting unnecessarily close.  It’s difficult to describe and probably comes across as homer-ish, but this game never felt quite like last year’s contest in NJ, where Rutgers raced out to a big lead behind superior play.  I’m not saying you should but if you so inclined, go back and re-watch even just the highlights of that game.  Rutgers put up nearly 6 ypp in that game and had 486 yards of total offense while also committing 12 (!) penalties on offense for 99 (!!) yards.  Their defense struggled in the second half but they were consistently getting pressure early on and Michigan barely had 100 yards of total offense before McNamara came in.  Rutgers looked like the better team in that game and Michigan was lucky they were able to stay close enough.  Those were two equal-ish teams in terms of talent and execution playing a defensively-challenged game of chicken, with Rutgers finally blinking in overtime.  It felt not unlike a lot of Big 12 games in that respect.

This week’s game was different.  Michigan  always looked like they had an extra gear they could shift into, and thus their struggles in the second half felt even more confounding because they didn’t.  Michigan’s still a relatively young team (especially on defense), but they’re nothing like last year’s team, which by the end felt like a carousel of backups and walk-ons held together by ankle tape and that flinty sense of self-preservation that flowed through humanity for most of 2020.  They had just spent the better part of a month unleashing a maize-and-blue road grader on defenses with a running game that could grind up defensive tackles and leave safeties and linebackers grasping at air as Corum, Henning, and others raced down the sidelines.  Heck, they had marched down the field for most of the first half with few issues, scoring on 4 of their 5 drives in the half.  Yes, Rutgers was crowding the line and eliminated Michigan’s usual big-play runs (their longest on the day was 13), but Michigan was able to move the ball in the air without much issue and it looked like one of those games where Rutgers would either have to revamp their rush defense to help their secondary or McNamara would continue to gash them for big plays.

But then the second half started and Michigan’s offensive playcalling inexplicably became opponent-agnostic to an illogical degree.  I’m not quite as salty about it as some since I didn’t have a problem with UM’s 3rd-and-12 run call on the first drive of the second half because (1) UM had already run a similar play earlier in the game and it had worked well, (2) Michigan was still up by 17 and probably didn’t foresee Rutgers going on successive 12-play scoring drives, and (3) Michigan had just thrown the ball on the play before and continued to do so on the subsequent number of drives.  But whereas in the past 3.5 games Michigan had played expert-level RPS with opposing defenses, suddenly it was just a steady series of rocks despite Rutgers practically begging for a scissors to be thrown.  I don’t subscribe to the notion that this is somehow Harbaugh’s lizard-brain kicking in and him dictating the playcalls as much as Michigan’s offense never getting on track and, in particular, their short-yardage offense failing to convert when necessary, and that led to short drives wherein they couldn’t get a rhythm going.  For example, Michigan faced 7 3rd-down situations in the first half, 4 of which were 2 yards or fewer, and converted 5 of them including the 4 short-yardage ones.  But in the second half UM faced 5 3rd downs but only one of them was under 5 yards (and 2 were 10 or more)  and failed to convert on any of them.  Michigan’s offense isn’t dynamic enough to survive long down-and-distances, and so because they struggled to stay on schedule on first and second down they ran into issues trying to convert against a solid defense that could exploit their limitations. 

And yet, it was a 2-score game going into the 4th quarter and Michigan still had opportunities to get some breathing room once Rutgers cut the lead to 7.  McNamara just missed a wide-open Erick All to start the 4th quarter after Mike Sainristil couldn’t quite corral a first-down throw, and Rutgers squandered a chance to cut the lead to 4 on the ensuing drive.  Michigan wasted that opportunity with maybe their worst drive of the season as they just tried to smash their way through the line with little success, but then stopped Rutgers on 4th down to get the ball back.  The Wolverines finally tested Rutgers at the edge and were able to pick up a first down but then failed to convert on the drive.  Rutgers had one final shot to go for the tie or lead but Michigan’s defense forced Rutgers’s first turnover of the year on a fumble and that ended the game.  Michigan escaped with a win that could have easily been a loss, and all I can say is that I’m happy it ended well but I sure hope this season’s algorithm doesn’t decide to serve up any more of these games.

Best:  W

I said this last year when UM escaped with a dramatic 3OT win over the Scarlett Knights and I’ll say it again – this was a win.  It wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t encouraging, it’s probably a sign that this year won’t be demonstrably different than past UM seasons where they’re between okay and pretty-good but lack that extra gear elite teams possess, but it’s a win.  And in a week wherein the football gods were taunted with unmitigated hubris and it would have been poetic justice for Michigan to lose in heart-breaking fashion, they pulled out the game with a strong closing defensive effort and just enough offense.  Now, the tapes from this game should be burned and the turf salted and replaced before UM again steps into Michigan Stadium, and there are legitimate complaints about the playcalling on offense and defense further soaked by buckets of cold water flung on the running offense, second-half QB play, and linebackers, but I am also going to push back against the inevitable doom-and-gloom that UM fans reflexively seek out whenever things don’t go as expected.

Chiefly, Rutgers isn’t “Rutgers” anymore – coming into the game they were ranked 59th in SP+, 43rd in defense, ranked around teams like IU, UVa, Purdue, Louisville, Wake Forest, and Memphis.  And that ranking included preseason expectations, which pegged Rutgers as the 83rd-best team in the country.  Those fell out this week, and with that Rutgers jumped to #53 in the country with a top-25 defense.  They are, by performance thus far this year, an okay team.  They’re a mid-level Big 10 team, which makes them a mid-level P5 program, which in turn means they’re looking at a bowl invite to some place in the Northeast or Midwest that is cold and possibly played on a baseball field.  But that’s the type of accomplishment Rutgers hasn’t enjoyed since the waning days of the Hoke era, and points less to this being some harbinger of UM’s impending collapse and more a decent opponent putting up a fight and Michigan still holding on. 

Now, I’m not going to sugarcoat the second half of that game; the offense looked completely out of sorts, picking up exactly 1 first down over 20 plays, and the defense looked flummoxed at times by Noah Vedral and a series of read options and misdirections that you’d sorta hoped a modern defense was prepared for in the year 2021.  Offensively, it was clear that Michigan was going to challenge Rutgers to slow them down on the ground but were also going to punish the defense in the air when they committed too many men to the box.  That worked in the first half pretty well, with UM averaging a bit under 4 yards a carry but 14.1 ypa (and 10.5 ypa if you want to throw out that 51-yard completion to Sainristil).  Rutgers was doing a good job against the run and was able to force Michigan’s running backs away from their preferred first cuts, especially in the second half, and while this defense isn’t particularly talented it was clearly experienced and well-coached.  But it also felt a bit like low-stakes gambling wherein Rutgers would be able to limit yards after first contact but weren’t doing much to get into the backfield and disrupting plays (they only had 2 TFLs on the day and no sacks), and Michigan’s offense was still identifying mismatches and exploiting them. 

After a first half where McNamara really couldn’t miss (even his three incompletions were catchable throws), he struggled to get into any sort of rhythm throwing the ball and missed throws to both Erick All and A.J. Henning that would have extended drives and given some additional rest to the defense.  He did take a rough shot at the end of the 1st half that may have played some role in his struggles, but re-watching the game it also felt like the entire offense got out of sync.  Like, McNamara threw a pass on 2nd-and-12 to start the second half that looked a lot like this throw against Washington, a play I can only assume was inspired by Top Gun, which would have allowed Henning to run his defender down the field and then pull up for a nice completion.  And yet this time Henning just kept running and the ball was off by yards behind him.  I know McNamara was under some duress on that throw but it still felt like an intentional play that wasn’t executed properly.  And that’s what the entire second half felt like – a smattering of missed opportunities to put the game out of reach because of relatively minor miscalculations or mistakes, and these were amplified because Michigan couldn’t string a couple of plays together.  Because that’s the thing – even elite offenses make mistakes, but with 3/4 downs to work with and (usually) a dozen or more drives per game you can absorb those missteps and still survive.  Had those handful of bad plays been dispersed amongst Michigan’s other scoring drives instead of the four 3-play drives that spanned the entire 3rd and part of the 4th quarter, they would have just been bad plays that Michigan likely would have survived fine.  But Michigan’s offense just got stuck in neutral in that second half, seemingly trying to brute-force itself into gear and not checking to see if there was anything wrong with the clutch.  And so when your first-down play doesn’t net you much real estate it amplifies the stakes for 2nd down, then third down and all of a sudden you’re off the field. 

As for the defense, they played better than the final numbers will lead you to believe, even if it felt like they took a step back especially as it applied to Noah Vedral as a running threat.  That seemed like a new wrinkle Michigan wasn’t expecting; Vedral hadn’t really been used like that all year (he ran the ball 8 times against Syracuse but he was also sacked 4 times along with 12 TFLs so most of those were scrambles and escapes), and a couple of times he’d simply hold onto the ball until the last moment before pulling it and rushing for a couple of yards.  Case in point – Vedral only ran the ball 3 times in the first half but 8 times in the second stanza, a couple of times picking up nice gains as defenders tackled his running back a moment before he pulled the ball.  I’ll leave it to the defensive UFR but one thing that stood out was it seemed like the defensive line couldn’t get into the backfield quickly enough to disrupt what were, um, “slow-developing” handoffs, allowing Rutgers to draw defenders in and leaving holes to escape through.  And in an example of what can happen when you do piece together some plays in that second half, Vedral got nicer pickups late in the game as a tired Michigan defense played less soundly and may have been trying for a bit TFL or turnover and left themselves exposed.

But I also don’t want to read too much into a single half of football during which UM held a double-digit lead for significant portions and were in position to break through a couple of times and put some additional distance between themselves and the Scarlet Knights. 

Worst:  The Wall

As noted earlier, the biggest issue with this game was that failure to test Rutgers in the running game outside of the tackles.  Far too often Michigan sent Corum or Haskins into a stacked box that, while blocked adequately, still allowed the numerically-superior Rutgers defense to limit runs to single-digit pickups.  This wasn’t like the Army game in which UM struggled to run block consistently and didn’t trust their QB; they had gashed Rutgers earlier and it still felt like there were gaps in the defense that Michigan could have exploited with better execution.  Still, it was tiring to watch them run the ball for minimal gain when it was clear Rutgers was selling out to stop it, though I would argue that there were cutbacks for both Haskins and Corum that, had they been picked, likely would have broken loose for big gains.

In the first half Michigan’s gameplan appeared to be to throw their way out of those packed defenses and it worked, but they failed to replicate that success in the second half (Cade was 1/5 of 7 yards in the second half) and didn’t pivot to trying outside runs, WR end-arounds, sweeps, etc. until it was late in the game.  The optimist in me points to the paucity of plays that led to a lack of creativity until the end; UM only ran 12 plays over 4 drives and they absolutely did try to mix it up a bit (they ran the ball 7 times and threw 5, with each of those throws past the sticks), but they still should have tried a flare screen out to Corum in space or a run to Henning just to see if Rutgers was prepared to stop it.  Had they picked up a first down or two in those early series my guess is they would have peppered in more variety as they had in previous games.  The pessimist in me wonders if the offense got a bit complacent and then nervous about putting the ball in McNamara’s hands, which led to conservative playcalling that snowballed into wasted drives and a tired defense.

My guess is reality falls somewhere in the middle.  The offense struggled to run all day outside of that first drive and while the passing game was doing well the coaches should have started sprinkling in outside runs earlier; I don’t have any idea why they didn’t.  But I also think they trusted their QB to make the throws he had been and then either he got hurt, lost some confidence, or just had a streak of bad throws and the smooth air attack we saw curdled quickly.  I definitely think they’re feeling the loss of Bell in games like this when he’d have worked his way open for a nice pickup and helped calm the nerves of everyone, and for whatever reason Johnson seemed to disappear as a passing option in the second half when he likely could have taken the top off the defense.  McNamara missed some throws he usually makes (the bad throw to All stands out most), but Henning also seems a bit lost out there and he should have been used more extensively in the run game instead of the passing one when the game got tighter. 

Are these issues fixable this year?  To an extent sure (I don’t think Haskins and Corum will miss some of the holes they did this game), and Rutgers ran the type of defense that other teams will roll out against this rushing attack so the hope is the coaches have seen it and will make adjustments.  But this is a limited offense at the skill positions to an extent, and so they’ll have games like this where they’ll slog through some series.  And these aren’t issues fixed by a change at QB; McCarthy may have a cannon for an arm and more mobility but he’s also been erratic as a passer and McNamara has shown a command of the offense that I doubt McCarthy possesses.  So there’s dangers in change for change’s sake, and feels like the easier fixes to the playcalling would give you way more benefits without the potential downsides.

Meh:  College Football is Unpredictable, Part 1,000,000

Here’s the preseason top-25 for the year 2021.  It featured Clemson at #3, Iowa State at #7, Wisconsin at #12, Indiana at #17, and both Miami and USC hanging out in the top 15.  Oklahoma is sitting at #2 and everyone expected the Sooners to be yet another offensive dynamo.  Well, 4 weeks later Clemson is 2-2 (and could have been 1-3 if Georgia Tech had played even a bit better offensively) and barely hanging on to the polls while Iowa State, IU, and Wisconsin are out along with Miami and USC, who fired their head coach after getting housed by Stanford.  Oklahoma has tried its damnedest to lose games to Nebraska, WVU, and Tulane by a combined 15 points.  Iowa State and Indiana returned gobs of talent and production from good teams last year and have instead looked between poorly-coached and bad all year, and suddenly I’ve noticed a distinct lack of people around here clamoring for Tom Allen or Matt “Soup” Campbell to take over at UM.  Perhaps they can talk to another former savior in the wings, PJ Fleck, who rowed the Gopher boat directly into the vaunted (checks notes) Bowling Green defense and proceeded to sink at home.  Oh yeah, and Florida State is currently winless.

I mean, this shouldn’t surprise anyone.  College football is full of unpredictability, of teams playing up or down to their expectations from year-to-year, game to game, or even half-to-half.  Case in point – MSU escaped with a win against Nebraska despite being even more feeble in the second half than Michigan was against Rutgers; MSU didn’t pick up a single first down and only had 7 yards of total offense before OT.  The only reason they even made it to OT was because of a punt return TD that Nebraska misplayed, and there they needed an Adrian Martinez pick to give them the chance to escape.  Iowa barely beat Colorado State despite trailing at halftime, picking up only 278 yards of total offense, and surrendered 275 yards to the nation’s 121st-best offense.  As noted earlier, Minnesota lost at home to BGSU, IU barely beat Western Kentucky, and Purdue squeaked out a win against Illinois.  And Wisconsin, in the game of the week for the conference, struggled to move the ball against a Notre Dame team that put up way less of a fight against Purdue, Toledo, and Florida State and, perhaps most surprisingly, couldn’t run the ball with any consistency. 

So when it seems like I’m annoyed with people trying to out-bemoan the falling sky because Michigan only beat a decent opponent by 7, it’s because it feels like too often we as fans lose the forest from the trees and assume that everything bad we see happening to our team is unique to them and the good stuff is random and unreproducible.  There are two-ish elite teams this season – Georgia and Alabama – followed by one pretty good one in Oregon, and then a huge mass of flawed teams that can win or lose games if the cards don’t fall their way.  I think Michigan is in that group, and we’ll see if they can stick around there after a trip to Madison.  But Michigan’s done pretty well against a slew of teams that have gone 8-2 in games where they didn’t play the Wolverines, and there’s still reason to believe they have another step up they can take.

Quick Hits:

• The defense was fine in this game; they struggled with Vedral’s running and looked gassed later in the game but they still held up pretty well overall.  NHG was picked on a bit and he made some bad reads that let Vedral move the ball with his arm and legs, but he’s still young and made some nice plays.  The corners were fine; Green in particular kept RU out of the endzone late in the 4th by running with his receiver across the entire field and blocking a good throw into the corner of the endzone.  My bigger issue was that UM gave the Rutgers receivers too much of a cushion and so a lot of the completions will short passes that kept RU in manageable downs and distances.  I’d like to know the thinking behind that decision.
• There was no holding called in this game, which is a sure sign that it happened and the referees just sort of ignored it.  Holding is part of the game and I like when referees don’t call it excessively, but there were a couple of times when Hutchinson or a linebacker would be close to taking down Vedral or a back in the backfield and suddenly he’d be yanked backwards or down by a Rutgers lineman who was clearly beat.  Michigan also maybe got away with some hands on defense so it’s an equal-opportunity complaint, but if you’re wondering why it seemed like UM struggled to get to the QB at times that certainly contributed.
• The defense did get that late fumble but they’re still struggling to get turnovers.  Some of it feels like bad luck moreso than bad positioning, and my hope is they’ll start catching some of those breaks against teams like, say, Wisconsin.

Next Week:

Wisconsin is reeling and secretly isn’t all that good.  Their rush defense looks good but hasn’t really been tested; I think UM will try to break out of the rut they ran into against Rutgers and see if the Badgers can compensate.  On offense Mertz seems absolutely lost and I assume his backup isn’t any better, so UW’s offensive line isn’t as strong as past vintages so the rushing game has struggled to lighten the burden on his shoulders.  This feels like a game where UM can mitigate their issues we saw against RU better than UW can fix theirs, and that might be just enough in a low-scoring game.