Bizarro Sugar Bowl
Is it me, or was that one of the strangest football games ever played? I know this may not be an informative thread at all but I think it is worth discussing in all the mystifying awesomeness that is an OT-BCS win.
Everything was normal, but just a little bit off. Every kick return seemed like it took an extra second or two to develop. Every handoff for both teams looked awkward, every pass -"it's complete, but wait, did that hit the ground? Is that a catch? Hard to tell."
Hitch step in every kick, short punts - "wait, how did it roll that way," every down "is this second or third down?" Every insant replay providing impossibly close calls but all bearing huge on the direction of the game. (Including the OT touchdown. I know I know, the one angle showing the nose of the football perhaps touching the ground, but indisputable? Hey, we had one coming our way from the Iowa game so might as well been that one.)
Really really odd football game. How good is Michigan? How good is Virginia Tech? Who was the better team? What was our strength? What is their weakness? There was four quarters to decide all or any of these questions and I am not sure that there is any relevant evidence to answer any of the questions.
Don't get me wrong, I am all "HELL YEAH!!" and "GO BLUE, HAH HAH, SUGAR BOWL FOOLS!!," but I thought it may be worth discussing how weird that football game was right from opening kick.
January 4th, 2012 at 9:33 AM ^
but I'm not sure if there's much there to discuss. The game was strange. Full Stop.
Michigan won. Full Stop.
January 4th, 2012 at 9:41 AM ^
January 4th, 2012 at 10:46 AM ^
Yes, it was quirky like the 2005 season Alamo Bowl, except this time the breaks and the refereeing went our way.
We all still bitch about that game. But to this day, it has not changed the result.
Quirky Sugar Bowl. Michigan win. It's in the books.
January 4th, 2012 at 11:15 AM ^
January 4th, 2012 at 9:47 AM ^
Michigan won despite these crazy stats:
The 184 total yards we put up amounted to our worst offensive performance since the '07 Ohio State game. The 377 yards we gave up were more than we gave up to MSU and Iowa. Fitz ran for a mere 30 yards on 13 Carries. Denard ran for 13 yards on 13 carries, to go along with 117 yards on 9/21 passing. Logan Thomas shredded our secondary for over 200 yards on 19/28 passing. Basically, VaTech thoroughly dominated the game statistically. And we still won.
So yeah, bizarre and ugly game. But I'll take an ugly win over a pretty loss any day of the week. GO BLUE.
January 4th, 2012 at 10:44 AM ^
VaTech's 3rd string FG kicker goes 4 of 5 and looks better than any kicker we've had in a long time.
VaTech punted only once, whereas Michigan punted 5 times.
I agree that it was a strange game.
January 4th, 2012 at 11:28 AM ^
Agreed. I will take a win with the offense like that everyday over a loss where your Quarterback throws for over 500 yards and the offense scores 41 points and looks unstoppable (cough Lions cough).
January 4th, 2012 at 12:10 PM ^
It seems to me that Denard and Fitz have been really hesitant lately. In the NFL - you see backs just gunning for the holes and there's rarely (or at least it seems this way to me) any hesitation. What I mean by hesitation is them being 2-3 feet behind an O-lineman or a lead blocker and waiting for a hole to open up. Now, I noticed a few plays this year where this worked wonders - but in the VT game, the DE's or LB's just sniffed this out seemingly everytime but one (where Denard followed Fitz for about a 10 yard gain.
Does anyone else find this hesistation/delayed waiting for a seam to open up weird? I don't remember seeing this in past offenses or even last year. Is this a Borges strategy or is this personal running preference by these guys? Am I imagining things?
To the OP - yes, the entire game just "felt" bizarre. More for me when we had the ball - when we were on D I was just pulling my hair out on so many of the long 3rd down plays we gave up.
But, the great thing is in 1-2 months - nobody is going to remember any of this. We won the Sugar Bowl and I'm damn proud of this team going 11-2 and a BCS bowl champ. Exceeded all of my expectations for 2011.
January 4th, 2012 at 10:00 AM ^
A lot of these bowl games were strange. In fact a lot of games are period. This just happened to be one you paid a lot of attention to...and it was the only game on yesterday so a lot of people saw it.
What matters is we won...and Michigan is front page news on all the sports sites this morning. We are back big time.
January 4th, 2012 at 10:10 AM ^
We stunk -- the O was aweful, the D was aweful between the 20's (reminiscent of last year, couldn't get off field on long 3d and 4th downs). VaTech was aweful in the red zone, but apparently that's been a year-long problem for them.
When that FG went through, I said to my wife, well we definitely got away with one there. Better to be lucky than good, and we weren't good.
HOWEVER -- what really scares me is, if this was a preview of the Bama game, well... ouch. We can't have our QB play like that against Bama. He's going to have to make some throws downfield, and not jump balls b/c Hemingway won't be there. Nor Koger. He's going to have to hit Stonum (and Arnett???) on some streaks, or Roy crossing, and force Bama to play the whole field. B/C if Bama loads up against the run and Denard won't go gonzo downfield, we are doomed.
Also -- what was WITH the playcalling, Al? It reminded me of RR -- every frakin' first down, we tried to run between the tackles. And every time, we got nothing, or lost a yard, or at best 2 yards. It was PRETTY CLEAR we weren't going to be running for lots of yards, yet they did NOTHING interesting on first downs in the 2d half to try and loosen the D. How about a trick play on first down -- a flea-flicker, a double-reverse, something, anything. With VT loading agaisnt the run, it just seemed nonsense that Al kept doing the same thing on first down over and over. And over.
My takeaway? Denard is a first-class human being, a great representative of the program, and a fabulous player against mediocre defenses. But this year, we didn't play a single GREAT team. Not one. We play one in our next game. He needs to elevate. Frankly, it's going to be like this until we get Shane in, then we can start throwing bombs all over the place.
January 4th, 2012 at 10:33 AM ^
Your life must be rough if this is how you look at things.
January 4th, 2012 at 10:41 AM ^
with a good D. They loaded the box and stopped our run and had talented secondary coverage. Our D was good too- they held them to field goals and had big red zone stops. It was a defensive struggle which is why the game was won at the margins: fieldgoals, flukes and calls. Did you expect we would roll them? It reminded me of the evenly mathced Alabama-LSU game.
January 4th, 2012 at 10:57 AM ^
January 4th, 2012 at 11:41 AM ^
VT must have watched the tape from our game with MSU in the trash tornado because it seemed like they had the same exact strategy. They blitzed up the middle and from the edges all game long because they didn't respect Denard's throwing ability. Denard ended up doing just enough to win throwing the football but it was one of his worst performances of the year for sure. So happy we pulled it out but the team has a long ways to go if they want to beat Alabama next fall in JerryWorld.
January 4th, 2012 at 10:43 AM ^
Maybe not a "Great" team, but VT is a far better team than most people were giving them credit for - they were ranked 11th going into the game. We beat a VERY good football team with an excellent QB, one the best RBs in the country and they have a top ten defense. I'd say VT is the best team we faced all year and guess what? We won! MSU is no slouch either and they beat Georgia. With another year with AL Denard could be a Heisman candidate next year.
January 4th, 2012 at 11:33 AM ^
Why the hell do we care about Bama so much? It's a NONCONFERENCE GAME NEXT YEAR. Michigan is now the SUGAR BOWL CHAMPIONS. Their first BCS win in over a decade. It wasn't pretty...but damnit, if you can't celebrate that then is there anything you celebrate? When is a team truly perfect and infallible? I mean, we all dream that our offense and defense both dominate, but reality dictates that football is a strange sport played with very fallible human beings, and how the game is played is never perfect.
Lighten up. We won. With an offense that got less than 200 yards. I'm ecstatic about that. You should be too. Stop worrying about teh future and enjoy the HERE AND NOW. Because there is a lot to enjoy right now. The coaches have all winter, spring, and summer to worry about the future. For once, celebrate Team 132, because they did something that no team at Michigan has done in over a decade. GIven all the obstacles they went through the past few years including the transition this year, that is nothing short of remarkable. If you had told me before the season Michigan would be Sugar Bowl champs, I would have laughed at you. Team 132 overachieved, largely due to the intangibles of the attitude they came in with day in and day out (along with our awesome new coaching staff, of course)
VT is a great team. If by "great team", you mean we didn't play Bama or LSU, then you're right. But not every BCS bowl is played by Bama and LSU. Or even Stanford, Oregon, and Wisconsin. Some are played by at-large bids. Maybe we would lose to everyone in the other Jan 2 BCS bowls. But so would VT, likely. So, I'm not sure what your point is.
January 4th, 2012 at 10:38 AM ^
Seem strange. The offensive ineptitude was shocking. D played great when they had to.
January 4th, 2012 at 10:42 AM ^
could you imagine winning a BCS game with our defense and our field goal kicker last year. Cheer up. It was an ugly game and Denard definatley played one of his games where you wonder how the heck he is a starting QB at Michigan, but we pulled out victory when everything was against us and did it with our supposed weakest links. Thats a good sign in my book.
January 4th, 2012 at 10:45 AM ^
This was one of the strangest games in recent memory. There were so many strange occurrences on both sides of the ball that fans of whichever team lost would have had reason to throw a TV through a plate glass window.
I am just happy that when it was all said and done, Michigan was on top of the only stat that counted: the score. One of the best indications that any program is going in the right direction is to come out with a win when it seems like nothing is going right. Michigan did exactly that.
January 4th, 2012 at 10:45 AM ^
and all-around inability to enjoy a hard-fought victory over a damned good foe coached by damned good coaches is nothing other than perverse. Hell, I thought VT was going to win before the game started, but I'm still able to take pleasure and pride in being able to surmount obstacles and get the win.
At no point during this season has Michigan been an elite team in terms of team-wide talent or execution. The problems that we saw during the Sugar Bowl have cropped up already at various times during the season. These players are still in their first season in new defensive and offensive systems, and it shouldn't be necessary to point out that many of the guys on the team, especially on offense, were recruited by the previous staff for a different offense. Hoke & Co. have managed to put together 11 wins with bailing wire, chewing gum, duct tape, a glue gun, twine, a nail gun, and twelve bungee cords. That's a significant achievement.
Jesus.
January 4th, 2012 at 11:02 AM ^
Team 132 showed us what effort, heart, and a refuse to lose can do for a group of young men and new coaches. I have seen many a Michigan team with far more talent (let me rephrase that, I have seen MOST Michigan teams with far more talent) that had far less impressive results.
Teams always play diferent in bowl games due to anywhere from a 4 to 6 week lay-off.
January 4th, 2012 at 10:53 AM ^
So let me see if I understand - we played an excellent D, didn't have a great game on offense (partially because our all-america center was playing on one foot), and now the team is hopeless until a high school junior can come in and be our savior?
Denard didn't have a great game, but he developed as the season went on, and is still in the first year in Borges's system. Two words give me hope....Cade McNown. He was mediocre in his first year under Borges, lights out in his second year, and worthless as a pro. So that tells me Borges has a pretty good mind, and Denard is still learning - John Navarre's second year as a starter wasn't so good...neither was Chad Henne's...and they both turned out ok.
I'm hopeful that Denard will be pretty good next year. The more pressing concern in my mind is depth on the lines. Losing our best lineman on each side of the ball will really hurt...hopefully the development of the other young lineman is ahead of schedule. That's the bigger issue with 2012 than Denard.
This team had no business winning 11 games - it was clear VT had more talent on both sides of the ball, and that comes down to recruiting...but the coaches did a tremendous job this year to pull off 11-2, so we should all be very happy about what that means for the future and for recruiting...
January 4th, 2012 at 10:55 AM ^
FIrst year coach. Great incoming recruiting class. We can now tackle and play Defense. We have a big game winning FG kicker. BCS bowl victory. 11 win season. Beat Ohio State.
WTF this year was AWESOME! GO BLUE!
January 4th, 2012 at 11:36 AM ^
As always, the team made me proud to be a Michigan alum - they worked their tails off to pull off a very difficult victory. Sometimes you just have to give the other team credit, too.
VT is a very good team, and it came in with a very good game plan. Its QB played a terrific heads-up game, constantly bailing his team out with long third down conversions that were, in most instances, brought about by great decisions on his part. Their defensive game plan was terrific. It was amazing to me that they were able to both stack the box to stop our running game and still have incredibly tight coverage on our receivers.
There were very few times that I saw a Michigan receiver who was not well covered, including both TDs. In fact, the one time I can remember seeing an open receiver was when a VT defender just barely managed to get a finger on the ball at the line of scrimmage to prevent what may otherwise have been a touchdown.
We also made some great plays, perhaps the two best being the 22 (!!!) yard TFL when they had a first and goal from the 4 and the great defensive play when they tried the fake punt option rugby kick on 4th down at midfield. On the latter, we were so all over the guy that we both made running the ball impossible and eliminated the rugby kick option. Terrific plays at key times.
The lack of any semblance of run blocking was a concern and a concern for next year, but I have to believe that Coach Borges will learn from what VT was able to do to stop us, and so will the players.
Go Blue!
January 4th, 2012 at 12:53 PM ^
after the first series I had a weird feeling. denard missing those snaps was uncharacteristic. But sometimes you will win some ugly games.
January 4th, 2012 at 1:04 PM ^
JUST WIN BABY!