Best:  A Retirement of Sorts

I first want to thank you all who read this column every year for *checks notes* that can’t be right **checks notes again** 10 years(!).  It’s been immensely enjoyable, cathartic, stressful, and every other emotion one can have as a writer to push these out every weekend following a game.  My day-to-day job in software development doesn’t really lend itself to prose, but I spent enough time and money going to law school and being a crappy lawyer once upon a time that I really missed the opportunity to analyze, to synthesize discreet information and ideas and turn them into a coherent narrative, and writing this column has given me that outlet.  And having this community engage with the content the way it has has been truly rewarding.  So again, I want to thank Brian, Seth, and this entire site for giving me this opportunity.

But as you may have noted by my earlier timeline, I’ve been writing this column for a decade and I wasn’t that young of a guy when I started.  Along the way I’ve moved across states, jobs, and life moments; both my kids have gone from theoretical to very real over this period, for example, and my responsibilities both in and outside the home have pulled at the time I can spend every Saturday and Sunday between August and January writing about football.  More times than I’d like to admit I’ve gone to bed well into early Monday morning having written this column, my wife understanding why I like writing it so much but also gently chiding me for trying to make it on 5 hours of sleep again.  And no matter how hard I’ve tried to wall myself off emotionally the wins and losses take an extra toll when you know you have to experience them all again for 4-5 hours, painstakingly trying to produce objective-ish analysis and discussion topics when all you want to write is “Let’s Fucking Go!” and “For Fucks Sake!” for 3000 words.  And that’s when the games are interesting – it’s one thing to spend precious hours recapping a beatdown of the Buckeyes in Columbus; it’s quite another to spend any amount of time discussing a win over Hawaii or MTSU.

So this year was the last time I’m going to write this column on a weekly basis.  That doesn’t mean I’ll never write a Best and Worst column again, only I’ll be more judicious with my time.  I’ll probably recap all of the OOC games as a unit, as I’d be shocked if ECU, UNLV, or BGSU put up huge fights.  I assume…something will happen against MSU that will be worth a discussion, and maybe road games to Minnesota or PSU turn out to be spicy.  And if Michigan beats the Buckeyes again and make it to the playoffs yet again, I’ll saddle back up happily.  But this year was really fun to experience as a fan but started to feel like a job as an unpaid internet writer, and the latter robbed some of the enjoyment from the prior.  So consider this column not necessarily a goodbye, only a see you later.

Worst:  Destiny

Last year Michigan came into their game against Georgia with, for lack of a better cliche, house money.  The Bulldogs had stumbled against Alabama in the SEC title game but otherwise looked every bit the Galactus The World Eater they were heralded as coming into the year.  They had an historically great defense, an efficient offense, and felt like a team of destiny.  Michigan was the plucky upstart, the team that had finally overcome their dreaded rivals for the first time in a decade and were making their inaugural trip to the college football playoffs.  2020 had been a hellish fall from grace for Michigan, going 2-4 with bad losses to basically everyone and the crowning achievement being a three-OT comeback in Piscataway There were obviously ways in which Michigan beat the Bulldogs but odds were against it, and the game largely followed the expected script with Michigan’s limitations offensively and defensively catching up to them against a better foe that seemed destined for greatness.  And to a lot of fans, the sense was that Michigan had had their nice run, had exceeded expectations, and that they were poised by again be competitive on the national stage but they weren’t likely to be back in the playoffs again this year given roster turnover, coaching changes, and the vagaries of football and scheduling.

But then the Wolverines surprised a lot of people by improving on last year’s record, going undefeated and trouncing their rivals (MSU, PSU, and OSU) by a combined 115-48 points on the way to winning another conference title and a return trip to the playoffs.  This was a different team than last year, with McCarthy at QB and a “no-name” defense that lacked the star power on the defensive line but compensated with no glaring weakness at all three levels.  But they still had a dominant offensive line, a couple of playmaking tight ends and running backs, and a sense, as the season progressed and the wins kept coming, that maybe winning it all this year was their destiny.  Georgia was still quite good but no longer quite the juggernaut, OSU was vanquished on the road, and every other conference champion waffled somewhere between “meh” and “really USC, you aren’t even going to try to tackle someone?”

All that stood in Michigan’s way to making their first ever national title game was TCU, another upstart who had survived a garbage disposal of a Big 12 conference unscathed, oftentimes by the skin of their teeth, only to lose in the conference title game.  They had an explosive offense, an aggressive if sometimes sporadic defense, and the type of moxie that would make a certain West Canann QB proud.  Michigan came into the game about a touchdown favorite and the general consensus, both amongst UM faithful as well as the greater college football ecosystem, was that Michigan would be in for a fight but their physical and talent advantages would ultimately win out.  TCU had ways to win but Michigan had more of them, and if you play out this game 100 times those advantages tend to bear out.

But you don’t get to play games 100 times, and so even if it’s 99-1 in your favor (which wasn’t the case in this game), you won’t know when that one hits.

I’m not going to recap this game in any detail; Alex did a fantastic job doing that and digging into some of the emotions that came with the fallout in his write-up.  I encourage you all to read it if you haven’t yet.  In it he compared McCarthy’s erratic performance to Wilton Speight’s against OSU in 2016, where Speight had his moments throwing the ball but also threw two picks (only one was returned for a TD – Speight wound up throwing 2 pick-sixes to start the 2017 season against Florida on consecutive drives) that ultimately helped decide the game, and that felt about right.  To me, the closer analog to this game was last year’s contest against MSU, mostly because it followed a similar cosmic misaligned script.   Michigan substantially outgainned the Spartans in that game, especially in the air, but struggled (relatively) on the ground against an aggressive, gambling defense hell-bent on stopping a physical running game.  That aggressiveness led to a big day passing, though, as Michigan’s receivers repeatedly got separation and UM’s QB was able to hit them in stride.  MSU actually outgained Michigan running the ball due to some dynamic playmaking by Walker and Michigan’s somewhat-stubborn insistence on running the ball in situations where it wasn’t going to work.  Both teams had the same number of turnovers but Michigan’s seemingly felt more impactful because of when they happened and what transpired right after them (MSU scored the go-ahead TD after McCarthy’s fumble and then sealed the game on McNamara’s pick).  Michigan was arguably better down-for-down but MSU hit their high-leverage plays when they needed them, getting a 40-yard completion on 4th-and-1, 28 yards on 4th-and-4, and multiple huge TD runs from Kenneth Walker.  And Michigan tended to be on the wrong end of controversial calls (there were six by my account), the most significant one being a clear touchdown being overturned on review for seemingly inexplicable reasons related to control and body parts.  And encompassing it all was the sense that MSU was “destined” to win that game because of the season they had been having and ultimately would have; if bullshit was going to happen it was going to go their way (as noted elsewhere they somehow went 7-2 in conference play with a +9 point differential) and combined with their talent at key spots was enough in a one game sample. 

TCU is different than MSU in innumerable ways but they too feel like a team destined to pull these types of games out.  They have done it all year and while they were far from perfect on the night the fact they made/received a couple more high-leverage plays (e.g. the aforementioned two pick-sixes, the Michigan fumble at the goal line after after the bad TD overturn, the Johnston catch-and-run on 3rd-and-8 when Michigan was so close to tying or taking the lead, etc.) to pull it out.  And so they’re on to face a mortal Georgia in the title game, a team that barely got by the same OSU team Michigan handled comfortably.  Obviously games and styles are different in contests, and it’s my opinion that OSU is a way worse matchup for Georgia than anything UM or TCU would throw at them.  But this felt like one team’s destined run derailed by another’s.  And it sucks to be the villain in the story, to be the hurdle that had to be overcome and the boss vanquished, but sometimes the story of a season isn’t written by you anymore.  It’s my belief that Michigan will be back, that what Harbaugh and co. have created these past couple of years is sustainable.  And there’s a ton of evidence to make that case, that especially as the playoff field expands you’ll see Michigan have a shot at grabbing the brass ring.  But this will still sting for some time, and I’m not going to try to sugarcoat that.  But it was still a great year, an unexpected one, and yet another sign that Michigan is back to competing at the upper levels of the sport after an extended fallow period.

Worst:  The Small Things

Michigan lost this game for a number of very big reasons (the pick sixes, the fumble at the goal line, giving up some high-leverage plays to TCU’s offense when they needed just one stop to get over the hump, etc.) but they also lost because a bunch of smaller season trends went haywire for a game.  For example, TCU isn’t known as a particularly TFL-heavy team; their average coming into the game was around 5.5 a game.  But against Michigan they picked up 13 for 54 yards, both season highs by healthy margins.  Conversely, Michigan had given up an average of 4.3 TFLs coming into the contest, which was one of the better marks in the country.  And on the other side of the ball, Michigan had averaged about 5.4 TFLs a game while TCU had given up, on average, 5.3 a game, yet in this game the Wolverines only picked up 3.  Those are both pretty big deviations from expectations, and it’s not like Michigan hasn’t faced TFL-heavy teams in the likes of PSU (8 a game) and Iowa and OSU (7 a game).  And yet in those three contests combined Michigan gave up 15 TFLs for 55 yards.  I’m sure some of that was scheming by TCU and unfamiliarity by Michigan’s offensive line in picking them up, as well as great individual performances by TCU defenders, but this level of outlier performance goes beyond mere preparation and player wins and into the vagaries of football’s unpredictability.  But each of those TFLs by TCU and missed ones by UM incrementally altered the outcome of this game both in high-leverage spots (the Johnston TD catch-and-run is a good example) as well down-to-down, and in a game decided by less than a TD played outsized roles.

Similarly, Michigan suffered some bad breaks as it related to field position both because of their own actions as well as the incompetence of the referees.  Brad Robbins has been struggling the past couple of games both in terms of distance and hangtime, and I felt like he had an up-and-down game against TCU.  Robbins wound up averaging 44.6 ypp this game because he booted a 64-yarder but he also had a 40-yard kick that TCU returned to Michigan’s 16 yard line in that 4th quarter where TCU was able to secure 3 pretty big points to go up 51-38.  A.J. Henning probably shouldn’t have tried to return that kickoff from inside his endzone that cost Michigan 4 yards (and was followed by the second pick-six).  We all remember what happened with Roman Wilson’s overturned TD but what might have slipped everyone’s mind is the fact these fucking incompetent refs mindlessly cost Michigan a handful of yards because they apparently didn’t know what side of the 50-yard line the pick was made on.

https://twitter.com/sbell021/status/1609322586013327360

And this wasn’t because of some change-over at a quarter or anything; they just walked backwards 3-ish yards and set the ball and apparently nobody on either sideline, the booths, the chucklefucks in the corporate office who call down for a review in the event someone farts unprompted, noticed.  For the game Michigan actually had a slightly better average starting position (their own 33 vs. TCU at their own 27), but that can be attributed to 2 of UM’s 3 TOs being returned for scores (70 yards) while TCU’s 2 picks weren’t returned for much (8 yards).  Again, in a game where lots of big things were happening TCU getting about 25 more yards in terms of return yardage and better field position overall undoubtedly made a difference.  Winning those little battles were how Michigan won so many games these past two years and it’ll be yet another stinging arrow to know they probably could have won this game had they simply held serve in that department.

Best:  Dropping Bombs

J.J. McCarthy was erratic in this game, making some fantastic plays with his arm and legs (especially in the second half when the rally was on) but also throwing those two back-breaking picks, somewhat mishandling the handoff to Mullings that led to the fumble, and at times running into sacks or failing to escape the pocket and instead try to muscle balls to his receivers.  All of this is totally reasonable, as he’s still a first-year starter facing a determined defense and not receiving a ton of support from an inconsistent running game.  And his raw numbers were pretty good – 20/34 for 343 yards, 10.1 ypa and another 52 yards on 10 runs as a TD.  But I want to highlight just how good his receivers were getting open in this game.  For the first time in what felt like months, Michigan’s receivers were consistently getting separation from cornerbacks and safeties downfield.  Ronnie Bell and Roman Wilson both averaged over 20 yards per catch on 11 balls between them, displaying downfield prowess and hands that were lacking against a lot of this schedule.  And TCU’s secondary was supposed to be the best part of this defense, two all-conference guys at corner leading the way.  And yet, Michigan’s receivers, who couldn’t get consistent separation against the likes of MSU, IU, and Nebraska found little resistance against TCU.  And while the first McCarthy pick was a heady play by the corner on a lazy throw, the second one was him not seeing the linebacker and could have been another big completion had he simply throw it further downfield to Bell, who had a couple steps on the TCU safety. 

While Michigan is going to lose Bell and likely will some some additional attrition at the WR spot, this performance does portend some explosive potential for next year as McCarthy matures and the lack of a “classic” running back like Haskins or Corum may well push this offense vertically.  I’m excited to see how that looks.

Worst:  In Search of a Fainting Couch

One of the best Spencer Hall articles around is Great Teams Taunt from his days back at EDSBS.  It cuts through all of the bullshit faux morality people place around sports, which exists seemingly only because some portion of every fandom deeply yearn for a sense of moral superiority (in what is for the consumer an utterly passive experience) over other strangers, and gets to point that in a game of skill and chance people should be able to enjoy the spoils of victory as they please.  Sport is all about posturing, mental as well as physical battles, and gaining every possible edge you can over your opponent, and all within the relatively safe confines of a game.  At least in the United States nobody is being sent to jail or the Gulag for losing a contest, and nobody at Michigan or OSU is losing his scholarship because they lost in the national semi-finals of the playoffs.  But instead, all four teams made it to the playoffs specifically because they had supreme confidence in themselves and played like it all year, and every one of them talked shit before, during, and after games because of it.  And conversely, they rely on unearthing every tiny bit of disrespect, real and imaginary, to fuel their own anger toward their opponents and the world, like a renewable energy source for disrespekt.  Hell, Mark Dantonio built an entire program on this concept and it got the Spartans to unparalleled heights, and numerous other programs (including Michigan) have dipped their toes into this bitter river with mantras like “nobody believed in us”, “we had unfinished business”, “revenge tour”, etc.  And one of Aidan Hutchinson’s “Heisman moments” last year was standing on stage with C.J. Stroud a couple feet away and saying his goal coming into the year was beating OSU and winning a conference title when nobody thought they would after the disastrous 2020 season. 

Coming into this game one of the big narratives around TCU was that they were overmatched compared to the other three teams in play.  While OSU, Michigan, and Georgia were of the bluest blood in the sport and had, to varying degrees, innumerable recruiting advantages the Horned Frogs were basically the same team that had gone 5-7 last year.  Sure, guys had developed physically and having a new coach can do wonders in terms of scheme, preparation, and overall team morale (look no further than Harbaugh’s 2015 season following Hoke’s disastrous final stand), but this was still largely the same TCU team that had sputtered along for some years under Gary Patterson.  TCU had played in a ton of close games and won all but one, going 5-1 in 1-score games (6-1 after this bowl game) and struggling at times with the lesser teams on their schedule.  By comparison, UM, OSU, and Georgia were a combined 4-2 in 1-score games, with both those losses coming in the playoff semifinals, and typically those close games coming in easily-explainable situations (Michigan beating Illinois by 2 after Blake Corum got hurt, Georgia being in a bit of a malaise against Missouri on the road for a half).  I compared them a bit to Michigan State from last year (who had gone something like 5-2 in 1-score games) and it wasn’t that far off, given they were a dynamic offense with a somewhat-suspect defense that, again, had a huge 1-year turn around largely due to winning close games.

And so when TCU lost in the Big 12 title game to KSU, a team they barely beat during the regular season largely due to the Wildcats being down to their 3rd-string QB, the general consensus around college football was that time had run out, that their magical run would come to an end in the playoffs when facing better competition.  There had even been some insane discussions around leaving the Horned Frogs out of the playoffs completely because of this loss, mostly because Alabama partisans couldn’t contemplate a world where 2-loss Alabama wasn’t given at least the #4 ranking because they had beaten Texas by 1 point and only nearly lost to Ole Miss and Texas A&M.  TCU’s coaches and players clearly got tired of hearing this constant doubting, this lack of respect for a team that had played a good schedule and gone undefeated save for the conference title game, and they used that general sense of “you don’t belong here” as motivation.  Every coach in America has used this trick over the years, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, but it’s the most base, human response to feel angry and motivated when someone or something dismisses your accomplishments. 

After this game, TCU’s head coaches and players unleashed a number of claims about Michigan (and the larger football community) “talking trash” about them and them showing everyone up.  And off the bat, that’s their right.  They won this game; they should talk as much shit as they want.  Doesn’t mean it was particularly true or relevant the source of their disdain because that’s never the point with this type of histrionics.  It’s about proving a point.  Apparently the TCU staff passed around a video of Junior Colson “not knowing what conference TCU played in” and treating like that was some massive sign of disrespect and shit-talking.  Having found this video (which I’m sure was just impossible for ESPN’s crack research team to locate and hence why they couldn’t possibly link it to the article) it was in the context of Colson complimenting TCU’s Miller as a great back, similar but faster than Hassan Haskins, and answering the question about if it surprised him that TCU ran as much as they did despite being an Air Raid offense.  He said they were in the Big 12 and then confirmed they were with the reporter before again complimenting their offense but saying UM’s run defense was tough and TCU would have to have a gameplan to run against them.  Now, if you want to get motivated from that by all means go for it, but if that’s considered “trash talking” then players should just start going the other way and cutting professional wrestling-level promos because if you’re going to get penalized the same for a pretty anodyne comment you might as well go whole hog and get the blood really going.

Similarly, after the game TCU’s Johnny Hodges noted “Once they started jumping in their bag, we had them right where we wanted them,” referring to Michigan’s ill-advised Philly Special on the first drive of the game.  He claimed it showed Michigan knew they couldn’t get 2 yards when they needed it and that had been all the talk during the weeks leading up.  That’s a somewhat brazen and factually dubious comment when Michigan then proceeded to put up 45 points, 528 yards, and a non-Hawaii season high of 7 ypp and 10 ypa in the air, but you’re allowed to say it because you won.  But Michigan fans needn’t buy into this argument that they “disrespected” TCU into a loss because that’s not what happened.  Michigan made some big plays and some mistakes, TCU did the same, and in the end TCU made just enough plays/just a few less mistakes to win.  That’s what happens in football games, and there doesn’t need to be some larger narrative, no greater pearl clutching or “you deserved this loss because you weren’t the correct amount of confident” beyond that.

Worst:  The Fucking Guys and also
Worst:  This Fucking Field

It goes without saying that the referees were awful in this game.  You saw it, I saw it, the college football world saw it.  And what bothers me isn’t the incompetence or the unfounded sense of superiority they clearly display because of a whistle around their necks, but the fact they aren’t held, or even expected to be held, accountable for their screw-ups.  McCarthy is going to have to answer questions about his performance and especially those 2 picks for month, Harbaugh is going to have to answer about playcalling, defenders are going to have to talk about missed tackles, and everything else.  But these assholes, who couldn’t spot a ball properly a couple of times in this game and overturned a TD seemingly without even looking at the replay, got off scott free and cashed a bonus check for overseeing a playoff game.  I don’t expect college refereeing to ever be fully professionalized; the sheer scope of refs you’d need to pay for all these games is really high, to say nothing of finding enough qualified men and women to do it.  But at the very least have these people stand at a podium and answer a couple of questions about their decisions, both good and bad, and accept a hint of responsibility.

Similarly, if we’re going to play these very important games in generic NFL arenas can we at least have good surfaces to play on?  That field looked awful and you could tell players were struggling all night with footing.  It’s been known for a while that this field is particularly bad and yet they keep hosting games there of real importance.  It’s embarrassing and hopefully one day they’ll just force these places to use some synthetic turf and at least provide a base level of footing and quality.

Quick Hits:

• Huge shout-out to Jake Moody for hitting the longest non-tee assisted FG in bowl history.  That 59-yarder to go into halftime was huge both from a gameplay sense as well as an emotional sense for the team, and he’s been money all year.  Looking forward to him having a long and successful NFL run.
• I’ve never tried to dig too deep into schemes, so I’ll refrain from being overly critical of the offensive and defensive gameplans by UM in this game.  Yes it was dumb they ran into the teeth of the TCU defense at times when it wasn’t clearly working, but that’s also UM’s identity to an extent and that first half was sufficiently choppy (and McCarthy a bit tilted) that trying to go with what worked and you had repped made some sense.  And in the second half you saw them expand the playbook and stretch the ball downfield.  I’m sure there are plays Michigan would have liked to run differently, but without Corum or McNamara you didn’t have any really depth or experience behind Edward and McCarthy so you had to ride with them a bit.  Again, I want to make it clear that McCarthy is better QB this year and in this game than anything McNamara would have given them, and they probably don’t even make it a game without him.  But Edwards is a different type of runner than Corum and his greatest strength (patience and vision) hurt him at times against TCU as they went hell-to-leather into gaps and forced him to make quicker reads and reactions/guesses than he seemed to want to make. 
• This was the game where Corum’s absence was felt the most.  They don’t scuttle in the redzone with him in the game, especially after that Wilson catch.  It was a bad break and while I’m not optimistic Corum returns next year it would be great if he did because with Edwards they could have one of the more dynamic and dangerous rushing attacks in the country.

Next Year:  Who knows?

With rumors around Harbaugh possibly, maybe considering a jump to the NFL who knows.  But assuming he comes back to coach I see this team again being one of the better ones in the country.  They’ll have to replace some guys on the offensive and defensive lines and secondary but they have the pieces to do so and a recruiting class that, when supplemented with transfers, looks solid but not loaded at the top.  Their schedule lines up well for being undefeated (or at worst one loss) heading into the Game again, and who knows how OSU will look with a first-year signal caller.  Chances are they’ll be pretty scary but there was a time not that long ago when they were a Justin Fields transfer away from relying on Tate Martell to be QB, and Kyle McCord is the only other QB on the roster to throw a pass this year.  He was a top-30 player and they have other stud guys in recent classes but this will be a new era for OSU football and recent history has shown their luck may have shifted a tad.  But while I’m not assuming it’ll happen there’s a decent chance that Michigan is yet again playing in Indy for a shot at the conference title and another playoff spot in 2023.  And either way I’m excited to enjoy the ride.

Again, thank you all for reading this column over the years and I’ll be talking to you again sometime in 2023.  Go Blue!