"The Game That Change College Football" - UM vs Northwestern, 2000

You would think that the team on the losing end of that game would have been humble enough to learn from it, learn to defend it, and most importantly, adopt that style of offense for their own so that they could combine talent with an offensive system that was ahead of the curve.

But alas, our heads were too far up our asses. So far, in fact, that we still haven't pulled them all the way out.

As poorly prepared as we were for their offense, we still should have won. A blatant offsides on a recovered onside kick for them and of course the A Train fumble at the end. Definitely a high scoring shoot-out that we weren't used to being in.

Lloyd Carr was known for a lot of *good* things... adaptation was not one of them.

I was in the group that approved of moving on from Lloyd if only that it was becoming obvious (by the mid 2000s) that he was not keeping up with the changes in the CFB landscape.  That said, I was not on board with a complete overhaul (I wanted Les over RR), but was willing to see it out after the fact (and think RR should have been given at least one more year).

None of it matters much now except LEARNING SOME DAMNED LESSONS FROM IT ALL.

I'd take a loss to NW to beat ohio state

I remember this game because my parents were in town and took me to Red Lobster (my favorite, don't judge) for my birthday, and we were watching the game from there.  Just needed a first down, we get the first down, and god damnit A-Train. Get down! Ugh. Still had a fun birthday, but that put a damper on it.

Thanks for bringing this one up. Haven't had nearly enough dong punches this year.

Nice to see we learned nothing between this game and 2007

There was a topic on 97.1 a couple of days ago about toughest losses for either Michigan or Michigan State since the 13th was the 30 year anniversary of the Desmond 2 point trip in the endzone.  Many referenced the Hail Mary, Trouble with the Snap, Timeclock Bob, App State, The Spot (all very commendable and heart breaking), but to me, the NW game is a very honorable mention given what it cost us that season.  

Lloyd did many great things such as beating OSU early on but he had too many head scratching losses to teams we should have beat which ultimately cost us Big 10 Titles and Rose Bowl appearances.  

I remember watching that game with two of my buddies in that snack-bar thing in the basement of Markley. It def had a Pac-12 After Dark or Big XII no-defense-track-meet feel to it. I remember being pissed about it, esp that fumble, but I also remember coming away from it like 'that was a great game.'

Lloyd Carr was a pretty decent coach and a pretty decent person, but he was not a creative or adaptable coach/person. For most of the 2000s, it seemed like he was TRYING to win every game 17-10.

There WAS a glimmer of late-career hope, but that died the day Antonio Bass got hurt. [Bass is up there with Devin Gardner in the what-if category in my book]

I was a huge Jim Herrmann advocate after his Broyles Award winning season in 1997.    The luster slightly wore off after his defenses got decimated by the likes of Donovan McNabb (TBH, McNabb did that to everyone) and Jarius Jackson (definitely not Donovan McNabb) in 1998, but I still held hope that he would eventually succeed Lloyd Carr as HC and keep our program in good hands.

But the Northwestern game was the true bellweather for me.   As Lloyd Carr's quotes above indicate, no strategic defensive adjustments seem to have been made to alter the course of the 2000 Northwestern game at halftime.   This was a true indictment of poor game planning and in-game adjustments.   I had forgotten that we were also coming off of a bye week, which renders the game planning angle somewhat moot.   Sure, the likes of Kurt Kittner (a very good B1G QB) and Drew Brees (he's Drew Brees) also sliced and diced those late 90's and early 00's defenses.   But the 2000 NW game is when the Herrmann defensive shine ended for me.   

I live in Chicago and was at that game with some co-workers who are Northwestern fans.  That was probably one of the most fun games I have ever been to just because up until that time we hadn't seen a game like that before.  The game was in the bag until A-train fumbled AFTER going past the first down marker.  I know hindsight is 20/20 but go down there and the ballgame is over.

One of my co-workers who has since left the company makes that stupid cat sound  (sound played after big plays in most stadiums with wildcat names) every time i see him now.....

I was 11 years old. My dad was doing some yard work and every time he would walk into the room to check on the game, N'W scored or Michigan had a blunder. He walked in right as A-Train made that absolutely awful fumble. 

I blamed him for the loss and cried in my room. 

I wish I didn’t remember it. 

What I remember most is Damian Anderson running a wheel route into a completely uncovered end zone only to drop the game winning touchdown ( I think ? ). Luckily for him they ran the same exact play back the next down and he was just as open the 2nd time and made the catch. 
 

This is typical Lloyd,  just didn’t respect the spread enough to prepare for it

I was at that game and it was a horrible feeling when the A Train fumbled.  We had dodged a bullet and just needed to run out the clock.  The D line that year was young and very green.  They were pretty ineffective generating a pass rush against NW’s quick dump off passes and got pushed around in the running game.  They seemed gassed at half time.  The D never really came up with any adjustments that made sense.  Some banzai pass rushes blew up in their faces.  The NW fans around us got progressively more obnoxious as the game wore on.  I view our last minute wins in the past ten years as payback karma.

An All-Time Classic, in many ways.

I lived in Chicago then and worked across the street from Mustard's Last Stand in Evanston (which is right next to Dyche Stadium / Ryan Field). My wife was born in Evanston and is a hardcore Northwestern fan. We were newlyweds at the time. We thought it would be FUN to invite her parents (her father is an NU alum), her siblings, my parents, and my siblings to the game. Since we were both the oldest children, this was essentially a group of 4 older adults, the 2 of us, and 6 siblings all in college or high school.

I walked over to the ticket office during my lunch break the first day tickets were for sale and got 12 together in the south end zone (the end zone where the end of the game activities happened). My family is all Michigan fans, my in-laws all Cats fans.

Let's say that the big tailgate meal we had before the game was the last enjoyable part of this experience for all of us. Absolutely heartbreaking game but also glad to have been there. I hated walking past that stadium the rest of that season, seeing Damien Anderson for Heisman shirts and oodles of "54-51 Game" shirts along Central Avenue for years to come.

"I think they had the ability to, but chose not to. To me, this was a perfect embodiment of Lloyd Carr's mindset: we are going to run what we always run, no matter what the other team does."

This wasn't just Lloyd—this was the definition of Schembechler's mindset. Bo was a great coach in terms of teaching fundamentals and overall leadership, but he was never going to try out-think the opposition strategically—he always relied on superior execution, which was Vince Lombardi's philosophy, and Bo had tremendous respect for Lombardi.

The only game I can recall during Schembechler's entire tenure that employed a truly unexpected and surprising strategy was against Purdue in 1980; here's the wikipedia summary:

On November 15, No. 11 Michigan defeated No. 16 Purdue by a 26–0 score on national television and before a crowd of 105,831 at Michigan Stadium. Prior to the game, Michigan, Purdue, and Ohio State were tied for first place in the Big Ten. Purdue, ranked fourth in the nation in total offense and second in passing offense, was led by senior quarterback Mark Herrmann who entered the game as the all-time NCAA career leader in pass yardage and completions. Michigan defensive coordinator Bill McCartney used six defensive backs to contain Herrmann, a formation Michigan had never employed before.

I attended that game with my brother, who at the time was a new faculty member at Purdue. I was as shocked as he was at the outcome, but I was just as shocked that Bo deigned to do something different, which he virtually never did in any significant way. I don't believe that it's a coincidence that McCartney eventually led Colorado to a NC—he was a damn good coach who wasn't as risk-averse as Schembechler was.

If Bo had made the determination that he needed to change things up for Rose Bowls against USC instead of going with game plans and strategy that the Trojans could easily study on game film, I think he would have won at least one of those games during the '70s, but for some reason he thought Michigan could just out-execute a team that usually had more NFL talent than Michigan.

One of the most frustrating games ever...

This turned out to be a great thread, despite the potential for many of us to revive severe fandom PTSD symptoms due to excessive dong punching memories.   It surprisingly also didn't devolve into a nasty hate spewing session of pro-Carr versus anti-Carr factions (FWIW, I have mostly fond memories of Lloyd Carr intertwined with mixed emotions of many opportunities lost with very talented rosters - similar to the Bo years?).    

Nice job, Moleskyn.   Nice job, board.   I look forward to more threads like this in the future.   

Carr was a great coach, but there were so many instances where you just have to look back and say he exhibited textbook Michigan arrogance. A refusal to adapt to the times and to how the game was evolving because hey, we're Michigan, we're gonna run the ball down the gut until you cry uncle because that's how the game was always played. And we're gonna beat you because we're Michigan. Mindsets like that got us this game. Got us App State. Got us the Oregon shitshow that immediately followed. Got us pretty much every single game against Tressel that followed, because he recognized the value of having a highly mobile QB that could skate circles around opposing defenses. Carr didn't. The results indicate as such. 

Thankfully Harbaugh is a guy who's shown he's willing to adapt his scheme to modernize his program, but it still seems like Michigan is evolving 3-5 years slower than the heavyweights. By the time Michigan catches up to where OSU was 5-6 years ago, OSU still remains 5-6 years ahead. 

Lloyd was similar in one coaching respect to Tressel. Each won a NC fairly early in their tenure and it colored their approach for years afterward. Lloyd won his in 1997 with an historically great defense with an all time player (Woodson) surrounded by several other very good players and a solid but unspectacular offense, featured a solid ground game and a QB (Griese), who except for the Iowa game, played fundamentally sound football with few mistakes. Unfortunately after that, Lloyd game planned and game coached as though he still had that 1997 defense, even though he didn't and he had much better offensive talent than in 1997. Lloyd never really did change except in games where we were a clear underdog (as in his last game where Fla was favored by 10 pt.) or in the second half of the Orange Bowl vs Alabama.

Tressel won his early NC with a really strong defense, great kicking, a running back who was outstanding at the collegiate level and a game manager QB (Krenzel, not even as good as Griese). When Tressel then had much better and more complete offensive talent he still played very conservatively and kept lesser teams in games, risking upsets, until he finally realized what he had in Troy Smith and opened the offense up. Then Meyer comes in, completely opens up the offense, and the rest is (sad) history.