When did we last rush for 300 yards and lose the game?

Submitted by docwhoblocked on

My brother and I have been going to U of M football games since we were kids and we are both over 60 now. On the way out of the stadium on Saturday I asked my brother who is a bit of an expert on U of M footbal if we had ever rushed for more than 300 yards and still lost the game. He could not remember this happening before so I dutifully dug into the archives one year at a time to look at all the losses to see if it had ever happened before. It did in 1987.

From 1987 to present, we lost 120 games.  There were a couple near misses with rush yards above 250 where we still lost including:

1) "The Horror" in 2007 (I will say no more)

2) UCLA in 2000 where Navarre went 8 for 28 with an interception

3) NW in 1995 where Biakabutuka had 213 yards rushing out of a total of 270 ( we had 4 fumbles, lost 2 and had 2 interceptions)

4) Notre Dame in 1990 where John Vaughn had 201 yards of 265 yards in a 2 point loss at ND  

5) Indiana in 1987 where we had 253 yards rushing.  Demetrius Brown was 6 of 15 passing with an interception.   

Finally I came to the last game before Maryland where we rushed for over 300 yards and still lost.  It was at Ohio State in 1987.  Jamie Morris had 132 yards of the 316 yards but Demetrius Brown went 5 of 13 with an interception in a 23 to 20 loss. 

I kept going back to 1980 and could not find another game with above 250 yards rushing that we that we lost.

funkywolve

November 23rd, 2014 at 11:35 PM ^

Heck, if Henson came back for 2001 I think Michigan would have been playing Miami in the BCS title game.  UM's 3 losses were 1) at Washington, a game UM led for most of the game until imploding in the 4th quarter, 2) at MSU in the clock fiasco and 3) OSU.  It's all hypothetical but I don't think it's a stretch to think UM wins those 3 games with Henson.

UM probably loses to Miami but who knows how the second half of Carr's tenure turns out.  That would have made '97-'01 a heck of a 5yr run.

bacon1431

November 24th, 2014 at 10:40 AM ^

Yep. Henson's return would have been huge. At the very least, I feel very certain that we'd be Big 10 champs and playing in the Rose Bowl. Tressel's tenure doesn't start off as great and they finish the season with three straight losses (if they lost their bowl game as well). Not much momentum going into the next season and not as much confidence playing Michigan going forward. 

But alas......

UM Indy

November 23rd, 2014 at 10:08 PM ^

I thought about this myself right after the game. 293 rushing yards or something like that?! Definitely not normal to rush for that kind of yardage and lose. One minor correction, 1987 game against Ohio St was at Michigan.

Jevablue

November 23rd, 2014 at 10:13 PM ^

It used to be said about football, that if someone can pass on you, they MIGHT be better than you AND if someone can run on you they are DEFINITELY better than you.

It is that we have a very rare combination of ineptitude whereby we could indeed find a way to squander what should have been an unbeatable advantage and scenario.  This coaching staff cannot get out of its own way. It needs to get out of the program's way.

Jevablue

November 23rd, 2014 at 10:28 PM ^

What does the spread do?  It schemes folks out of the box and makes for extreme difficulty stopping the run when the QB has to be accounted for as a running threat.

And M's most explosive running plays came out of the shotgun.

I love that modern offense.

tybert

November 23rd, 2014 at 10:17 PM ^

Was at the game, at least physically. Remember D Brown and his propensity to throw balls into quadruple coverage ala Devin G. Was so Peppermint Schnopped that day didn't remember we ran for 300+ yards, but knew it was a game we SHOULD have won, based on stats.

Good news, if we can ever confess this, is Earle finished 81-26-1 at OSU and was canned. Imagine winning over 75% of your games and getting canned? The guy got screwed but we got to hang 2-10- vs. Coop.

caup

November 24th, 2014 at 1:03 AM ^

Freaking cold game. I was near the top of the bowl in the NW corner (student section) and I got pretty bad wind burn. My face was bright red the rest of the night.

 

I remember those stupid-ass red clown shoes that OSU wore, and we clearly outplayed them but still lost. Bo wasn't too fiery that game for some reason. 

 

They carried Bruce off of OUR fucking field.

 

Thanks for bringing back yet another shitty M football memory, dude.  Sigh.

LSAClassOf2000

November 23rd, 2014 at 10:44 PM ^

I went over to the stats archive and 316 was the positive yardage but the net was 271 overall. Part of that was Demetrius Brown managed -31 yards on 6 attempts.

I just didn't know if you chose that number just to illustrate forward runs specifically. Either way, it's interesting that it came on 56 carries distributed among 8 players, which puts the YPC a shade south of 5 yards per carry at 4.8 yards. 374 net yards of offense and 20 points across 71 snaps makes for 0.282 points per play, which is "meh" as an efficiency measure.

Yeoman

November 24th, 2014 at 4:05 PM ^

this is the complete list of non-wins since 1949:

  • 10-7-67 vs. Navy, lost 26-21 despite 308 yards rushing
  • 9-20-75 vs. Stanford, tied 19-19 despite 322 yards rushing

I'm trusting the o.p.'s work on the period since 1980--I only checked the ties.

 

 

 

Yeoman

November 24th, 2014 at 4:33 PM ^

It's happened at least ten times in FBS just this year--New Mexico's done it four times themselves, most notably when they ran for 505 against Boise and lost 60-49. It's mostly wishbone teams on the list (at least as far as I got--I didn't run a full search) but Auburn's on there too, against TA&M.