Should Indiana Have Slowed Down?

I think they had just started slowing down when Howard broke the long TD run.  Looked like that was Indiana's plan - to drain the clock, but luckily for us, Michigan's defense was terrible.

(wait...what?)

Only if their worms had machine guns.

If players could "turn it on and off" and modulate their play to subtle degrees, yes you are right, they could have limited their gashing runs to 7-11 bursts. They would keep the ball, move the sticks and basically grind up the clock and Wolverines. But having played in a certain style (FAST and FASTER) and at a certain tempo (I think in the first half they already had over 50 plays) it isn't that simple to rein the team in - it isn't what they have done all year.

what is odd is that we've seen this pairing a lot - crazy fast up tempo offense and bad defense - personally with RR and at a lot of other places. ? Is there something inherent with this approach that creates this sort of pairing?

Tempo was their friend. Keep playing to your strength. Going slow doesn't work if you are built for tempo. The problem was IU moved away from what worked for them when the game was on the line: Jordan Howard.

Right before the Howard TD run with 3:00 left I told my wife that our best chance to win is to let them score quickly. There was no way our defense was going to stop them.

That could be phrased as, should Indiana have done what Hoke did at PSU, set up the game for a FG at the end?  It usually works.  But Hoke's experience--Gibbons suddenly missing multiple FGs in the multiple OT game--is a cautonary tale for "playing too conservatively."  Either way--stalling or not--it's great when it works and invites blame when it doesn't.

Indiana IS tempo. When you stop playing to your strengths, bad things happen. In this game, it was all on the IU D. They sold out against the run and the passing game, finally, made them pay for it.

Thought the same thing last night. When IU scored their last TD in regulation I said to my wife "good, now we've got time to score ourselves."

There has to be a reason why a team so gifted offensively is 0-6 in the Big Ten. That and a defense.

Almost looked as if we let Howard score that last TD.. bunch of guys running alongside of him instead of at him. Besides it's what we needed...

They tried to slow down. It's hard to slow down when you allow them to get a 25 yd TD run or whatever that was. I honestly thought the game was over until we gave up the TD. We couldn't stop them, and they were about to run out the clock and kick at least a game winning FG. Did anyone else feel more confident in a victory after allowing that long TD run or was I just being irrational? I saw Rudock throw all over that Indiana defense all game and also recalled the TD drive late in the Utah game. I did not lack confidence in our offense getting it done, but I did lack confidence in our defense to keep them from scoring an easy FG or TD to prevent the loss as Indiana was driving the ball that last drive.

I was convinced we couldn't stop them in OT and was hoping they would go for two after the first TD for the win. I'll stick to my spectator role.

I was a bit surprised IU threw the ball late in the game. They were running at will against us. Thief OL is very good and their RB (# 8 ) is awesome. Probably the best offense we have faced all year.

I thought going in we would need at least 35 to win, cause I knew they would score. Thank God Rudock was ON. Disappointed in our run blocking.

Props to the D for coming up with some stops, but I am grateful IU chose to throw instead of run cause that really helped us.

The complicating factor in that was yardage to go and that we had two timeouts. They could run so much clock after they got into goal to go.

.....is that the play that might have most helped the Mich defense have enough left to finish this game was the punt return. If that kid doesn't take it back and they're back out there for a 2-3 minute drive that yields the TD anyway, that would've probably buried us.

they ran the ball the whole time and let the play clock go down as well once they got into our territory. If Howard doesn't score on that long run, they probabaly do get a late lead, but in that case, he has to take the guarranteed points. 

Ehh at this point it's all moot. They lost. We won.

Learn from the mistakes and move on.

According to the game summary, IU ran eight plays in 3:38 in that drive. That's actually a fairly slow pace. If you're suggesting that their RB should have gone down on his own to preserve possession, I would say that would be a bad idea. Thry were losing, and you could always have a bad snap, penalty, or simply a missed field goal. It did help us by giving us ample time, but OTOH, if they had played for a field goal, we would have used our timeouts to give us some time, and trailing only 29-27, we would have only needed a field goal ourselves to win it. I will say I was relieved that he scored. Also that Chesson didn't score on the long catch. I wanted us to score as late as possible, and while it ended up being nerve-wracking, it worked out beautifully.

I'd like to see the graph that's shows our odds to win this last game. It had to be all over the place.

I think harbaugh purposely let they score a TD and have the the ball in his offense in the last drive. Not defending the 2pt is not ideal, but it's a good risk to take. even rookie NFL coach would agree that letting them score would be the best option at that point. I am sure Harbaugh knew that given our defense performance and offense performance that night. And he made a good decision.

Though they would walk to the line rather quickly, the game clock would show 2-3 seconds before they would snap the ball.  Besides they were running the ball, which also takes more time off the clock.

They did slow down. You could tell the Indiana coaches were slowing down their sideline checks and getting the play calls in significantly slower than earlier in the game. Plus, all they were doing was running the ball. Howard just broke through the defense on the touchdown run.

Nonetheless, I don't think you can ever just play for a field goal with that much time left. You never know what can happen...

I don't think we let them score on purpose at the end. That defense was done,wore out. Indiana put it to them from the get go. It was absolutely painful to watch. I hope they have a better plan for OSU.

Yup

I know I said to myself just let them score fast since we can't stop them and we'll have more time to score to tie or win

They were running the ball, they were trying to slow it down, but unfortunately we were keen to give them a first down with every run.

I thought the same thing. When Howard broke through the line I literally screamed LET HIM SCORE. Or else they would've run it out like u said.