Anyone else get 2013 Akron vibes from this game?
That game was replaying in my head over and over during this game. That season also had immense promise like this one making the Akron game a huge dose of a reality check.
I’m sure that stadium experience was similar today with a similar nail biting ending.
Hopefully the end result is different from 2013 this time around.
September 7th, 2019 at 10:20 PM ^
Akron was a crappy MAC team. Army hasn't lost a game since September of 2018, when they played an almost identical game against a playoff team. Nope.
September 7th, 2019 at 10:41 PM ^
Identical? Did you watch that game? Outside of the end score, those two games seem pretty damn different.
September 7th, 2019 at 10:57 PM ^
I mean the individual plays were different, but it was a VERY similar game. Just like us, Oklahoma turned the ball over on downs multiple times and lost another drive to a regular turnover. The score was extremely similar and the way Army controlled the pace of the game was very similar.
September 7th, 2019 at 11:02 PM ^
Yeah - Michigan actually kicked Army off the field pretty consistently.
Yes, Oklahoma has a more explosive offense and scored in bunches. They also let Army run the ball 70+ times. If anything, Michigan's turnovers were relatively unexpected and likely not due to Army's particular gameplan; Oklahoma had one pick but otherwise won the turnover battle. They just were terrible defensively and offensively were basically shut out from the 1st quarter until overtime.
Again, these are different teams; Michigan isn't likely to be a playoff contender as presently constituted. But like, this is how Army games look and Michigan found a way to overcome some mistakes to win.
September 7th, 2019 at 10:46 PM ^
I agree with Chunkums. While I'm not saying that we have Oklahoma's offense - *sob* - I am saying that Army 2019 is a lot more like Army 2018 than Akron 2013.
September 8th, 2019 at 12:15 PM ^
The last team that beat Army in OT went to the playoffs.
Let’s get better the next two weeks and go beat Wisconsin.
Our Defense looks good and is going to be hard to score against.
The O will improve as it progresses. The year PSU won the Big Ten that offense grew. They were an OT game from being locked out early in the season and Franklin being in jeopardy.
September 7th, 2019 at 10:56 PM ^
I swear people just want to complain and ignore all context.
September 7th, 2019 at 10:20 PM ^
Well kinda but you gotta take into account Akron<a moss covered rock<Army, so there is a slight bit of difference.
September 7th, 2019 at 10:22 PM ^
Yes, I most certainly got those same vibes
September 7th, 2019 at 10:22 PM ^
No. Dumb comparison
September 7th, 2019 at 10:23 PM ^
I don’t see the point of panicking as a fan. We will know how to truly feel in exactly 2 weeks from now. Let’s wait and see.
Army is a winning team lately, and there were not many drives in the game which of course increases variance. Calm down people.
September 7th, 2019 at 10:56 PM ^
That's not how things go here at this point.
Instead, every game is a clear indicator of either insufferable doom or remarkable promise.
September 7th, 2019 at 10:23 PM ^
Give Army more credit than this. They came into this game on the longest winning streak in America by anyone not named Clemson. They’re an extremely well-coached, well-disciplined team. Akron was a helpless fart in the wind. I think they’d lost like 20 of 22 games before coming to Ann Arbor.
I know you’re pissed about today but this team is leaps and bounds beyond the 2013 squad.
September 7th, 2019 at 10:45 PM ^
Won 30 out of their last 40 coming into today including 3-0 in bowl games. Army is legit.
September 7th, 2019 at 10:24 PM ^
This was a Hoke-ish performance, yes.
September 7th, 2019 at 10:52 PM ^
No. I think you’ve forgotten just how bad those years were. Akron is horrible. Army is not. So the comparison isn’t there based on skill.
Michigan has a clearly injured QB, a great WR who was out, an OL out with injury, and dinged up DLs. Injuries don’t equate to inept play like we saw with hoke.
September 8th, 2019 at 8:51 AM ^
The decision making on those 4th downs were bad. We’ve turned it over way too much, clock management issues, the coaching blunders remind me of Hoke.
September 7th, 2019 at 10:25 PM ^
I feel like everyone has decided Army is like the old 1-11 Army teams. They are a good football team that plays a unique style that is hard to prepare for.
Beating them while playing badly is kinda impressive. Just have to fix the playing badly thing or we're fucked against good teams (OSU, ND, probably Wisconsin)
September 7th, 2019 at 10:31 PM ^
You can throw PSU, Maryland, and MSU in there too.
September 7th, 2019 at 10:47 PM ^
I am not willing to say that about any of those teams yet.
September 7th, 2019 at 10:32 PM ^
Most of what you say is sensible, but i disagree with the part of their unique style making it difficult to prepare. That would be true for the defense, but not true for the o where we struggled.
September 7th, 2019 at 10:28 PM ^
No, I remember watching that game/season and it was much worse. If we got a first down that season it felt like a touchdown.
September 7th, 2019 at 10:29 PM ^
To quantify this, I just asked Massey for a prediction on a hypothetical Army/Akron game. Median was Army 31, Akron 7. Probably the only reason it comes in that close is that a typical Army scoring drive takes about ten minutes so it's hard for them to run up the score no matter how bad they're kicking someone's butt. And 2013 Akron was not materially better than this year's version.
September 7th, 2019 at 10:30 PM ^
Let's take a deep breath here.
2013 Akron was a year removed from going 1-11.
2019 Army is a year removed from going 11-2. In fact, the last time they lost was an overtime game in Norman against playoff-bound Oklahoma.
And there is a reason why everyone says that triple-option teams are dangerous to put on your schedule.
September 7th, 2019 at 10:31 PM ^
Candidly? I'm not the cliff-jumper many are. A lot of people are waaaaaaaay overreacting. But, yes, I did.
Doesn't mean it's the same thing. There's more talent on this team, especially on offense, and I know certain guys on the staff are better, for a fact.
But there are some worrying things here.
Now, it's not that we had a tough game against Army. Oklahoma did last year and made the playoff, and the ceiling is still that high for us, too.
It's that the offense just looked nothing like a championship offense at all. It was a mess, nothing like Oklahoma's last year.* Not even as good as ours was last year.
I was hoping for an easier win, but a tough game doesn't actually say anything about the year. However, the inability to run plays, the inability and/or unwillingness to consistently throw downfield against a team that defends such attacks poorly, and the bizarre read/keep issue that the coaches clearly understand will occur and yet continues to happen on plays designed to read an unblocked player just beggars explanation.
*Oklahoma had only 7 regulation drives last year, while Michigan had 9. They had only two drives in the second half before their final two-minute drill. One ended in a pick, the other turned over on downs at the goal line. Their 2-minute-drill possession resulted in a missed 33-yard field goal. In the first half, they had four drives: TD, TD, TD, punt. That's not bad at all. Michigan has this game easily if it opens with 3 TDs, and frankly, there's no excuse for them not to against these lesser teams with the talent we have.
September 7th, 2019 at 10:42 PM ^
Certainly, I really don't understand what we were trying to do offensively much of the day today. Did we overreact to Shea's two fumbles and decide to massively dial it down?
We do have last week's game as another data point though, and that was more encouraging. So I'm awaiting further evidence for now.
September 7th, 2019 at 10:51 PM ^
Not THAT encouraging. MTSU is not on our level.
I think something is wrong with Shea. He won't keep on reads (the coaches aren't mystified by this, they KNOW he won't keep on reads) and his passing got inconsistent late. So his injury might be affecting him.
The coaches clearly thought that a hurt Shea was a better option than Dylan McCaffrey. I can only assume because he was the passer they had more confidence in.
But this begs the question:
If Shea remains in the game because of his passing ability, why did they run the ball so often? Why did they run the ball on all 8 plays of the crucial fourth-quarter drive that began with six minutes to go?
If they wanted to run the ball, why didn't they use McCaffrey, who is the superior runner and is proven to keep on those reads? If the reason is because Shea was still the better passer... why didn't they pass the ball?
September 7th, 2019 at 11:48 PM ^
I agree with your analysis here SRJK. It's just baffling. It doesn't seem to make sense with the information we have, so my guess is there's something we were missing. Maybe Shea and Dylan were both similarly banged up?
The whole idea of running the same play over and over and never keeping is mystifying. It's not like you're going to catch Wisconsin unprepared like we did with Shea's big run last year. They _know_ it's coming. It almost seems like both a) the coaches would rather lose to Army than take the slight increased chance of Shea getting hurt, and b) we don't have any other plays they trusted to be effective. It's hard to believe that b) could be true.
September 8th, 2019 at 7:51 AM ^
I have to think that the simplest explanation is the answer - Shea is a bit banged up so his throwing is a bit off AND the RPOs are legit RPOs (or at least a higher %age that it seems are true RPOs) and Army had a game plan to make them hand the ball off instead of keep or throw.
Isn't that the problem with the RPO? That the D will just dictate what you do b/c they know you're reading them?
September 8th, 2019 at 11:15 AM ^
Basically agree. I think it's probably just that Shea is hurt, Dylan is also hurt or somehow wasn't quite prepared for this game, and that's making the passing game fall into a black hole.
I don't think it is just that our RPOs were outschemed. Because if we felt we could have success passing, and we saw that our RPOs were all being forced by them into runs - why wouldn't we call a pass? Do we not have non-RPO passes in the playbook? Again, that seems hard to believe.
September 7th, 2019 at 10:33 PM ^
Yeah. And the end of the season will be spent struggling vs a shitty Big 12 team.
September 7th, 2019 at 10:36 PM ^
Army was way better than 2013 Akron.
That Akron team continuously got off big play after big play against our defense...which nobody in the world saw coming. Army’s offensive plan has been expected since last year. We just shot ourselves in the foot with turnovers and horrible offensive play calling.
And shame on you for bringing up 2013. I was literally too happy to sleep after the Notre Dame game. We looked like world beaters the first two weeks of the season and the rest of the B1G looked like a dumpster fire. Then one week later, Akron happens and we’re shit the rest of the year. That memory needs to burn in hell.
September 7th, 2019 at 10:53 PM ^
WH seems like a deeply tormented dude.
September 7th, 2019 at 10:39 PM ^
Nah, Akron made me think we'd go 7-5/6-6 (said as much and got ripped to shreds on the 247 Michigan forum for saying it). This year's week 1 and 2 makes me think we probably aren't a playoff team and will likely go somewhere between 8-4 and 10-2. Of course some folks will hate on Harbaugh like he's Hoke even though Hoke was obviously much worse as the numbers prove.
September 7th, 2019 at 10:39 PM ^
Much different. That Akron team was one of the worst D-1 football teams the previous year. Their Qb was making plays and throwing to open receivers. That was the day many of us realized the Hoke coach turned into a pumpkin. Losing to Army would have been disappointing, but not sure it was an indictment on the program. Although you could certainly make the argument.
September 7th, 2019 at 10:43 PM ^
Both games had a huge interception in the red zone in almost the exact spot.
September 7th, 2019 at 10:50 PM ^
Army is probably legit one of the 30 toughest teams you can play in college football. That Akron team wasn't in the top 100 that year. What an idiotic question.
September 7th, 2019 at 10:52 PM ^
Army nearly beat Oklahoma last year. Akron is/was an atrocious MAC team.
Michigan played extremely poorly.
September 7th, 2019 at 10:52 PM ^
Snowflake
September 7th, 2019 at 10:56 PM ^
I think the point being made is there are warning signs in a coach’s tenure and today’s game, while different from the Akron game in circumstance and quality of opponent, might be one.
September 7th, 2019 at 11:02 PM ^
I don't know that the comparison is fair, but I don't understand why our O was THAT bad.
To hell with the injuries rationalization. All teams deal with injuries.
We should have been able to move the ball against that team and we couldn't.
Second week in a row where the offense looked seriously flawed against an inferior opponent.
We returned a ton of talent on offense and should be taking a big step forward. So far this O has not been as good as last year's thoroughly mediocre O. With the drop-off in D the O needs to take a big step forward. So far, it's taken a step backward.
What a crapshow this game was on that side of the ball.
September 8th, 2019 at 12:04 AM ^
My guess is that the CBs are going to grade our similarly to the Colorado team in 2016. They came out of nowhere and covered incredibly one on one.
That being said, Shea should have thrown downfield more often, even if the receiver wasn’t open. We would have likely gotten more PI penalties and moved the ball more effectively overall. Hopefully Gattis will make the necessary adjustments during the bye and we see better results in Madison.
September 7th, 2019 at 11:04 PM ^
Army will likely go undefeated after this...no. Please stop.
September 7th, 2019 at 11:52 PM ^
No. Totally different feeling for me. Akron was way worse. Not even close.
September 8th, 2019 at 12:31 AM ^
Lackluster against MTSU.
In '13 that Akron game came off a very impressive win against Notre Dame.
This offense has looked bad so far. It's looked bad against teams that it shouldn't look bad against.
September 8th, 2019 at 1:04 AM ^
Magnus did, he wrote about it in the first lines of his game recap at Touch The Banner.
September 8th, 2019 at 1:59 AM ^
I didn’t read Magnus’ article before making this thread but I’m glad I’m not the only one who had flashbacks of 2013 Akron in how it exposed fatal flaws with this team.
September 8th, 2019 at 1:39 AM ^
No. Just no.