As the season is nearly upon us, this is the best Michigan team, on paper, that I can remember since.........1994.  Spoiler alert, the incredibly talented 1994 team essentially sat on a whoopie cushion and finished 8-4, broke many Wolverine hearts, and taught me a great lesson about expectations and the emotional burden of serious fandom.  I've been a serious fan since 1990, my freshman year, and 94 was my first year of real adulthood, with ties to the football season being a meaningful emotional bridge back to college.  While I don't think the 2023 team has any chance of flopping to that degree (due to schedule as much as anything else), 1994 is my standing cautionary tale about the ways in which a team of destiny can go off the rails and make it look easy.  I would assert three pathways to potential doom, all of which converged on the 1994 team: injuries, luck, losing the locker room. 

To set the stage for those who weren't there, or those who have forgotten, the biggest offseason news (not unlike Blake Corum's bombshell of 23') was that Tyrone Wheatley, regarded as the most explosive RB in the nation, announced he would return for his senior season. Michigan immediately became a National Title contender and the B1G favorite.  Michigan also had several other returning stars and would go on to have 3 first-round draft picks (including future HOF CB Ty Law), a veteran senior QB, Todd Collins, who would be a second round draft pick.  The OL was good, with a first-round tackle, Rod Payne, an excellent center, Jon Jansen, future #37 pick at RT, a good TE.  The defense also had several excellent players, highlighted by Law and steel-trap tackler Steve Morrison at LB.  Kicking was an issue that turned out not to be an issue as sophomore Remy Hamilton emerged from nowhere to be a stalwart.  

The 1994 schedule was a gauntlet, of the type that we will, sadly, never see again, due to the unquenchable thirst for Benjamin Franklins by all major programs.  The non-conference schedule was Boston College, Notre Dame, Colorado.  The latter two were preseason top-10 teams.  For younger fans, please process that......two top-10 non-conference foes, and the third being against a historically good program (BC) with many significant upsets in it's resume (fortunately, most were against ND, ha ha).  This was truly a schedule worthy of a National Championship run, and Ann Arbor was brimming with excitement.

Out of the gate, the season immediately delivered the worst possible news: Tyrone Wheatley suffered a shoulder injury in practice and would not be available for the first games.  Panic buttons were pressed and doom ensued.  A uncomfortably close grinder victory at home vs. BC in week 1 didn't help.  However, in week 2, at ND, the team rallied for an amazing final drive, moving 60 yards in 39 seconds to set up a dead-center Hamilton FG, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.  It was an incredibly emotional victory against a bitter foe who had seemed to pull out exactly these kinds of heartbreaking wins over the previous 7 years (ND was recently 5-1-1 against UM coming into this game). Lou Holtz tears were delicious.  Another feather in the confidence cap emerged from this game as well, not dissimilar to the RB tandem of 2022-23.  That is that, in place of Ty Wheatley, Tim Biakabutuka had emerged as a very good backup, albeit he was more of a quick slasher than the homerun threat of Wheatley.  But only good had come thus far.  

Directly following on ND, highly-ranked Colorado, led by former Michigan DC Bill McCartney, came to Michigan stadium.  McCartney had slowly built up a bottom-dwelling Colorado program by recruiting high-end talent to Boulder. One of the first things he asked his AD when arriving was to schedule UM, because Bo had taught him that to be the best one needed to play the best (I grew up in Colorado and watched his amazing resurrection of this program), though through some questionable recruiting (noting that Rae Carruth, future wife murderer, was the #2 receiver, among other unsavory characters).  Colorado would finish the season 11-1 and ranked #3, and looked formidable, having absolutely crushed #10 Wisconsin the previous week, having done so without their best DT who was suspended for the game (more unsavoriness).  However, the counterbalance of hope for UM was that Tyrone Wheatley was returning.  Everyone knows the last play of this game, and the devastating luck that handed victory to an inferior Colorado team, and fortunately wouldn't be repeated until Sparty in 2015 (Sparty wasn't even as lucky as Colorado).  Michigan started slowly, ground out 9 first-half points, and trailed 14-9 at the half.  However, UM adjusted well on both sides of the ball, and scored the next 17 points, and had CU on the ropes late, 26-14.  UM had multiple chances to put this game away, including electing to kick a FG on a 4th & short deep in CU territory.  UM also had a 3rd and short late, again in Colorado territory, to run more clock, and Moeller elected to hand off to FB Che Foster, for his first carry of the game, who proceeded to fumble.  Nonetheless, CU, absent a miracle, had no shot to win this game.  

Michigan didn't drop too far in the polls and had the nation's sympathy.  They held serve at Kinnick and against Sparty, before facing the PSU team that was finally, in year 2, realizing their promised prestige when joining the B1G (PSU would finish 12-0 and #2). The team still seemed focused and driven to win the B1G and let the chips fall where they might nationally with the Hail-Mary loss.  These teams were very similarly built and were evenly matched on the field.  Both teams had control at points in the second half before making mistakes to allow the opponent back.  UM had the ball last, down 7, drove to near midfield before facing a 3rd and short.  I remember a sense of terror at seeing a single back formation, with no FB to pick up any penetration, watching a CB blitz off the edge for a 2-yard loss.  A pitiful 4th-and-3 pass failed and that was the ballgame.  

After this, there was a palatable sense of a failed season.  Two heartbreaking losses to teams in thetop 5, both nailbiters, at Michigan Stadium, had taken an obvious emotional toll on the team, coaches, fans.  This was, as perhaps younger fans don't know, against a backdrop of talented UM teams of the previous 25 years coming up just short of elite greatness.  That sense of doom had fully returned, only half-way through the season.  Three top-5 games in the first 6, a 4-2 record. The team dropped to #11, and, with PSU looking so dominant, it seemed hard to see the season unfolding with anything but a second-tier bowl bid. A season with such great promise was on the edge of a cliff, if not over it.  

Any doubts about the intentions of the football gods became absolute crystal two weeks later when Wisconsin visited.  Michigan was sluggish and it was clear that Wisconsin was both more capable and more motivated than their recent bottom-dwelling history. This was a new era for them, and perhaps the first statement win by a Barry Alvarez team.  Michigan's starting QB was also injured and removed by a hip pointer, and we never really effectively moved the ball after that.  An embarrassing 19-31 home loss ensued, and any doubts that the team had more-or-less quit on the season were now erased.  The return of the most spectacular UM RB, and a plethora of other talent, were all for naught for a 5-3 squad.  

UM would stare down weak competition for two more weeks to get to 7-3 before making the trip to the Shoe to face a middling #22 OSU.  Nonetheless, UM had no stomach for a fight, and lost a humiliating 6-22 game to a grossly inferior, but highly motivated, Buckeyes squad.  This would be the first of John Cooper's 2 wins against us, en route to the wonderful 2-10-1 performance of his tenure.  

With the season for all purposes over, we drew a weak WAC champion in the Breadcrumbs Bowl sponsored by estate of Marie Antoinette.  We won a relatively close game against a grossly overmatched team that at least was interested in hanging around, and the most promising UM team of my fan lifetime farted to a close at 8-4.  Gary Moeller would be fired for disorderly conduct the following spring and the Lloyd Carr era would begin with two more 4-loss seasons, though none with the kind of wasted firepower of the 1994 team (Lloyd would perfect wasting firepower later in his career).  

Lessons:  High expectations are balloons waiting for the needle.  One needs luck, a bounce here and there, to get to the mountaintop. This team could easily have been 7-0 when facing Wisconsin, rather than 5-2, with a failed season already logged.  The Gods are happy to deliver pivotal injuries without cause or comment.  Even great teams can quit on seasons and make a mess of things. These are kids, with incomplete frontal lobes, raging with emotion, which is why we love college football.  Thanks for reading.