Michigan 20, Northwestern 17
[Fuller]
It’s not just that they came back to win, it's how quickly things turned in the beginning. Michigan had the braggadocio to take the ball after winning the coin toss; they were then hit squarely in the face, took a nasty shot to the body, then took another one to the face. These were not the kind of hits that come together over a long stretch to wear someone down. These were the kind that rock you to your core, that are designed to get you to pack it in and move on.
They didn’t, though. It took those three shots to jar much productivity out of Michigan, which gained –1, 1, and 21 yards on its first three drives. But on the fourth drive, Michigan was able to find success with both the conventional (a handoff to Ben Mason on 3rd-and-1, Karan Higdon’s violent running up the middle) and the bizarre (a play featuring jet action with Ambry Thomas followed by a faked handoff to Higdon and a flipped ball to Donovan Peoples-Jones on an end around, which resulted in DPJ outrunning The Gaz up the sideline and 25 yards).
That drive didn’t do much to cleanse the palate, as both teams played hot potato with offensive futility on the next four drives. Northwestern’s offensive line had difficulties throughout the game, particularly with heart-consuming Chase Winovich and his defensive line compatriots. The line pushed Northwestern to 3rd-and-13 on their fourth drive only to be granted a fresh set of downs on a Lavert Hill hold. That fresh set didn’t matter, as it ended with Winovich running down a play from the backside and Winovich bulling back a lineman and diving at the legs of Clayton Thorson as Kwtiy Paye unloaded on him.
Michigan, which ended the day with 11 penalties for 100 yards, saw 4th-and-3 from Northwestern’s 41 on their fifth drive turn into 4th-and-8 when Zach Gentry moved early. On their next drive, a 15-yard Shea Patterson run was wiped out on a Jon Runyan hold, flipping 1st-and-10 to 2nd-and-20. Nico Collins caught a quick pass from Patterson and ended up with 17 of the 20 necessary yards, but he stayed in bounds, allowing the clock to dwindle. Collins caught a pass on the next play as well, but his toe was out of bounds and Michigan’s chance to cap the half with optimism went out with it.
Until Pat Fitzgerald stepped up to the plate, that is. Fitzgerald wasted two of his timeouts trying to…ice Will Hart? Maybe? No, that’s not a thing. He wasted the timeouts anyhow, ran one play after receiving the ball, then let the clock run out, giving Michigan the biggest, best gift you could ever get Don Brown: halftime.
[Fuller]
Northwestern had the ball six times in the second half. On those six drives, they scored zero points. In the third quarter, they ran the ball seven times for two yards and passed two times for 22 yards. In the fourth quarter, they rushed five times for –11 yards and passed four times for 43 yards. Brown and his safeties adjusted to Fitzgerald’s All Slants offense while the defensive line continued its dominance irrespective of personnel; Rashan Gary was injured in the third quarter, and his absence opened the door for increased rotation from some of the younger linemen. Kwity Paye looked capable, generating pressure often and finishing with two TFLs and two sacks. Michael Dwumfour flashed his Hurstian first step a few times and found himself flushing Thorson into converging teammates on third down on Northwestern’s next-to-last drive. Josh Uche also finished with two TFLs and two sacks, including the one that sealed the game.
Michigan did not have the lead until the four-minute mark in the fourth quarter, with two third-quarter Nordin field goals keeping them within striking distance. Then, on Michigan’s tenth drive, Shea Patterson started to look like himself. Patterson’s throws looked hurried and slightly off their typical dead-on placement until he hit Zach Gentry for 13 yards on an out to the sideline and again for 22 yards later with a ball that arrived just before the Northwestern defensive back’s hands. Karan Higdon took care of the rest, bouncing for a yard to the Northwestern five-yard and then running into the end zone almost untouched on the next play; he finished with 115 yards on 30 carries.
[Barron]
Higdon was a key component of Michigan’s final drive, taking a second-and-10 carry five yards, then seeing a cutback lane on the next play that he hit hard only to come up a yard short. Michigan let the clock run down to 46 seconds, took a timeout, and sent the offense back onto the field. An attempt to draw Northwestern offside proved futile, however, and Michigan took the delay of game penalty in order to punt.
Northwestern’s panic offense found some success, completing passes of nine, 10, and 15 yards to move from their own 15-yard line to almost midfield. Then, on 2nd-and-10, Winovich found himself the recipient of a double team, while Uche bent the corner on the opposite side and wrapped up Thorson with form that had to make defensive line coaches around the country smile. The clock ran out, and Michigan escaped with the slim lead they took all game to build.
There will be another football with a winning score placed in the glass display case at Schembechler Hall, but that doesn’t leave Michigan without much work to do. The offense looked out of sync most of the evening, with receivers sometimes seeming to not anticipate the ball coming their way. Receivers also flubbed opportunities to eek out extra yards or run out of bounds and stop the clock. The defense, for as much work as they were able to do at halftime, will be looking once again at how to stop quick slants.
And then there were the penalties. Minus the phantom holding call on Karan Higdon (!), Michigan gave away field position, ended drives, and breathed life into Northwestern by way of mental miscues. The silver lining in the sloppiness is that Michigan will not only get an opportunity to work on those things from the friendly confines of Michigan Stadium next Saturday afternoon, but they will get an opportunity to work on them with their larger goals still intact.
September 29th, 2018 at 11:43 PM ^
Poor clock management at the end by Franklin...
September 29th, 2018 at 11:53 PM ^
I am encouraged by how well our second unit of defensive line played. The pass protection was again pretty good.
September 30th, 2018 at 5:22 AM ^
Agreed. Gary is good and all that but Uche and Paye felt like they put a lot of quick pressure on the QB
September 30th, 2018 at 12:48 PM ^
Gary > Uche / Paye . . . but Uche / Paye > hurt / tired Gary.
That's actually progress, since Gary will get hurt / tired throughout a long season, and he'll be gone next year.
September 29th, 2018 at 11:56 PM ^
I don't know much, but one thing I do know: We would not have won that game without Chase Winovich. He was an absolute beast.
September 30th, 2018 at 12:06 AM ^
Gonna miss him bad.
September 30th, 2018 at 12:53 AM ^
He's not done yet
September 29th, 2018 at 11:59 PM ^
the general problem with football is that its rules are too complicated and getting more complicated. I would rather have AI call the game instead of human. At least AI is going to be impartial if it misses calls.
September 30th, 2018 at 12:04 AM ^
I have never seen more bias officiating in my life. A new low for the B1G. Just totally sucked.
September 30th, 2018 at 12:29 AM ^
You must have missed the Alamo Bowl against Nebraska, the 2016 Ohio State game and the SMU game.
September 30th, 2018 at 12:04 AM ^
NEWS FLASH: The MSU game will be exactly like this one, no matter how shitty they look now.
September 30th, 2018 at 12:26 AM ^
With the same result? I'll take it.
September 30th, 2018 at 12:51 PM ^
Me too. Hands down.
I don't care if it's on a freak play that's decided by a blatantly bad call with minus one second left on the clock in a monsoon tornado.
September 30th, 2018 at 12:12 AM ^
Officials were total dung. Worst shit in maybe 30 years of watching football games. How is this happening n 2018 with the eyes on the games.
September 30th, 2018 at 12:16 AM ^
IS IT TIME TO LEAVE THE BIG TEN ????
September 30th, 2018 at 12:18 AM ^
I should also add that I loved the Michigan fans at the game doing the Go Blue chant. You could hear them loud and clear on TV and Brandy brought it up on the radio.
September 30th, 2018 at 6:41 AM ^
I was bummed at the beginning of the broadcast when the overhead shots of the stadium showed little yellow. Later on, after enjoying the Go Blue chants, etc. I figured out that much of what looked purple from overhead was actually blue jackets on M fans. Good stuff.
I need to get to a game in Evanston one of these years.
Oh, fuck Jim Delany, his BS officiating crews and scheduling BS.
September 30th, 2018 at 12:54 PM ^
Reminded my of the basketball Big Ten Tournament Championship game against Wisconsin.
September 30th, 2018 at 12:24 AM ^
Michigan's games in Evanston are always weird, I am not surprised by this result....they got the W and moving right along.
September 30th, 2018 at 12:44 AM ^
Wow. I’m glad we won. I am very happy about Winovich and some of the other D-line play. Not happy about the whole being shell-shocked on the road for the first part of the game. It reminded me of the ND start. I am also happy that after I mentioned that we should throw the ball to our 6’8” guy who is being guarded by the lollipop kids, we started doing that and it worked. Lastly, I am happy that our kicker drained 2 out of 2 attempts. Those kicks are the difference between a win and a loss. Kudos to wild thing.
September 30th, 2018 at 12:51 AM ^
survive and advance.
September 30th, 2018 at 1:52 AM ^
Right now it seems like the ceiling is beating Sparty and Wisconsin. I just can’t see this squad going on the road and beating PSU or OSU (recency bias perhaps).
September 30th, 2018 at 2:18 AM ^
MSU is on the road, PSU at home.
September 30th, 2018 at 7:52 AM ^
PSU has not looked all that great, IMO. They played OSU well last night but their defense struggled with App St and Illinois, of all teams.
With the game at home I expect a W.
September 30th, 2018 at 12:55 PM ^
I don't expect a win, but we can get a win.
September 30th, 2018 at 9:30 AM ^
all we have to do is stay tight with penn state and wait for the james franklin MAGIC.
September 30th, 2018 at 3:55 AM ^
Didn't watch the game, but it sounds like Patterson had similar game to Haskins. Should be a banger come November. That defense is scary.
September 30th, 2018 at 6:09 AM ^
He made some huge plays with his feet to keep drives alive and then to help kill the clock at the end of the game. He's a gamer.
September 30th, 2018 at 3:59 AM ^
For some reason Michigan always has trouble playing games @ IU, @IA and @NU. I thought the 2016 team was good and should have beaten OSU but they almost lost on the road at IU and did lose at IA, which knocked them out of any possible at large team into the playoffs, even with the OSU loss.
September 30th, 2018 at 4:18 AM ^
IU? Indiana? Indiana was a home game in 2016.
September 30th, 2018 at 8:01 AM ^
Probably referring to both the 2015 and 2017 IU games which we won in OT.
September 30th, 2018 at 5:17 AM ^
Everyone wanted to see Shea run; we got to see him do that. We all watch through a magnifying glass, but his completion percentage was, in the end, okay. Teams are going to score on carefully orchestrated early-game drives at times; I'm more concerned about the penalties.
I do sometimes feel our play-calling lacks dynamism, but I am going to keep praying that Harbaugh is holding the wrinkles back.
September 30th, 2018 at 7:09 AM ^
Do you people not read neck sharpies?
September 30th, 2018 at 7:55 AM ^
It seems like this happens more than it should, I.e. Don Brown needing halftime to make adjustments. Shouldn’t he and the other coaches already have a pretty good idea of what Northwestern’s hand is going to be? Or did Pat Fitzgerald do something unexpected?
September 30th, 2018 at 9:30 AM ^
NW had a bye last week, so they had two full weeks to prepare something. And don't think that Larkin's retirement was a surprise at the last minute to them, like it was for us. They probably had the better part of two weeks to plan around whatever Moten does well. Not to mention the feels part - they were amped and pointing to this game for awhile. And for all that, they got 17 points and the first quarter.
I don't think that's so shabby...
September 30th, 2018 at 9:32 AM ^
other teams do indeed have coaches that game plan and stuff.
September 30th, 2018 at 8:47 AM ^
I hope Michigan brings up Higdon’s phanom hold with the Big Ten. It was inexplicable, easy to get right, and it killed a crucial drive. In the old days teams could submit film on bad calls to the Big Ten front office and officials would be graded. The official who made that call should be suspended.
September 30th, 2018 at 9:32 AM ^
The B1G's top ref, Dean Blandino, sent out a text last night saying that the official called the wrong team on Higdon's hold. How they didn't get that corrected... There will be no other statement, or any response, from the B1G for that egregious call. Nor will there be any suspension.
The sad thing is that the B1G claims, every year, that each officiating crew is graded after every game. Whatever...
September 30th, 2018 at 1:01 PM ^
At some point since this happens so often, when the Big Ten admits there was an absolutely egregious mistake, the victimized team should get a pass that they can use in a future game to nullify a call of their choice.
A de-facto make-up call that everybody knows about in advance.
I'm not even kidding.
September 30th, 2018 at 9:01 AM ^
One of these days I’d like to see Don Brown beat his opponent before halftime.
September 30th, 2018 at 2:40 PM ^
You’re right, he never does that
September 30th, 2018 at 9:13 AM ^
shit performance vs a shit team
September 30th, 2018 at 9:22 AM ^
If Matt Millen can get paid to ramble on and make no sense, I'd like my turn to ramble on for free: According to College Football Stats.com, Michigan is 118th out of 130 teams with 9.2 penalties a game, up from 6.6 a year ago. Compare that to some other teams:
MSU- 100th- 7.8 this year up from 6.5
OSU- 109th- 8.4 this year up from 6.9
PSU- 62nd- 6.0 this year up from 4.2
Alabama- 78th- 6.8 this year up from 5.2
Georgia- 60th- 6.0 this year down from 6.6
Clemson- 21st- 5.0 this year , 5.0 last year
While many other Top 25 teams appear to be little changed, the top 4 teams in the Big Ten have seen a good increase- no one more than Michigan. I believe that Michigan is committing more PI than previous years, but we all know that Noah was working in the woodshop the last time Michigan drew a PI call. I'd hardly argue a hold against our O line, but at the same time, Gary and Winovich never notch more tackles in a game than the OL playing across from them. The end line is one side of that Michigan has the opportunity to improve, and that's all they can do.
September 30th, 2018 at 9:35 AM ^
Northwestern doesn't have a ton of talent. But they didn't turn the ball over, had very few penalties, didn't drop passes, didn't shank kicks, didn't blow coverages...
September 30th, 2018 at 9:50 AM ^
Great recap, great flow.
September 30th, 2018 at 10:11 AM ^
Honestly, in the first half the main issue seemed to be that Shea didn't trust what he was seeing. He had great protection for the most part (my Northwestern alumni friend was complaining that he had time to make a sandwich every snap). He was just very hesitant to throw the ball when he had receivers open which was actually quite often. He got over that in the 2nd half but he was still somewhat off with his throws early in the half.
September 30th, 2018 at 10:11 AM ^
Amazing come back win. Go Blue!!!
September 30th, 2018 at 10:15 AM ^
we are what we are at this point, 4 years into the Harbaugh era.
This is the offense
These are the results
We aren’t and will never be OSU or PSU or Alabama.
We are a perennial 7-5 to 9-3 team. We all wanted more than that, but it’s what the AD and this institution will accept - so we have to too.
I believe Harbaugh lasts another 4 years max and then moves on - the pressure and stress and anger over lack of titles and beating rivals makes he decide it’s not worth it.
September 30th, 2018 at 10:48 AM ^
5 straight first and 10's, and Harbaugh ran the same fucking play - slamming Higdon up the middle for 1 yard. The definition of insanity. I am so fucking sick of our offensive play calling. Its a joke. At least our defense is fun to watch.
October 1st, 2018 at 12:40 AM ^
So don’t watch because you clearly don’t understand what you’re watching. First of all, it wasn’t the same play and the fact that you say it was further exemplifies your ignorance. Second, it worked, Michigan won. That’s 100% Harbaugh’s goal. He’s got a world class defense, a world class punter and a big-legged kicker. Why give Northwestern a chance by doing something to tip the balance? Because you’re sick of seeing it? Ok, let me know how that goes for you.
You do understand that it’s that very play you hate so much that is the play that opens up everything else in the offense? Did he get ultra conservative, not really considering that throw to Gentry and the QB run that got called back. Michigan was not “playing not to lose” like some in here say. They were choking the life out of Northwestern but also being very careful to not get hit with a flailing fist or to let go too soon.
How pissed would the naysayers in here be had Shea chucked a late INT. I can here it now, “good teams run the clock out when they have to ... “ would rain down on the board like brimstone! The problem is, IMO, many people in here bitch about everything no matter what it is. They’re never satisfied and no matter how a game is called these so-called fans come up with a fault to raise hell about. It’s pathetic.
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