Penalty Yards: Michigan-85 Minnesota-10

Submitted by Maizen on

Is it too much to ask to watch one Michigan game where the refs aren't totally incompetent or out to get us? Even guys like Jake Long and Grant Newsome went to twitter to complain about the refs. There's clearly an anti Harbaugh bias so thank god we have superior talent to Minnesota and I realize this is probably low on the list of concerns given tonight's drubbing but I'm totally expecting the B1G to shaft us in Madison in two weeks. Just disheartening.

J.

November 5th, 2017 at 9:01 AM ^

So, the two teams are about the same age.  One team is coached by a hypercompetitive control freak. (But he's our hypercompetitive control freak!) One team is out there making repeated hits after the whistle.  And you're going to tell me that it's Harbaugh's team that's undisciplined?

I suppose Purdue is more disciplined than Michigan too, right?

Goggles Paisano

November 5th, 2017 at 6:30 AM ^

They obviously aren't up to speed on college football.  Rob Stone knows very little.  Robert Smith looks like he just wanted to be anywhere else.  Wanstedt is just one of life's great head scratchers - he seems so aloof and yet managed to hold down head coaching gigs in college and the NFL.

How about Higdon/Evans breaking the record of Rob "Little" and Gordon Bell - wtf man?

Earler in the day, they were showing the Auburn/A&M highlights and the video was not lining up with what Rob Stone was saying.  He was looking for a Stidham handoff to Kerryon Johnson.  Next clip is a go route to a tall skinny WR wearing #81 and Stone says, "is that Kerryon Johnson"?  I can't make this shit up.  How in the hell can you cover CFB as the lead talking head for FOX and not know who Kerryon Johnson is?  

At least Karan "Hogdon" had himself a day.  

 

 

Michigan4Harbaugh

November 5th, 2017 at 1:01 AM ^

Brando got into that Twitter fiasco with M fans about Harbaugh after the Purdue game. He was being a total jackass about the depth chart, when the real topic was player safety. Tonight he was trying his best to kiss ass with all his chummy stories about Bo and JH. The hell with that guy.

corundum

November 4th, 2017 at 11:55 PM ^

The intentional grounding was more penalty yards than that alone, and most of Michigan's penalty yardage came from dumb shit like holding on kick returns and lining up in the neutral zone.

I did think the PI on Kinnel was bullshit, though.

bacon

November 5th, 2017 at 3:15 AM ^

It's a weird penalty because it's usually not much of an actual penalty for the offense. Like in the game: The qb was about to get sacked, he threw the ball away, the refs essentially acknowledged he should have been sacked instead. Result of the play is the same. So why not always throw the ball (outside of the risk of a turnover)? Sometimes the refs won't call it and you avoid the sack. The penalty isn't a penalty.

Red is Blue

November 5th, 2017 at 7:40 AM ^

Seeems like it ought to be 5 extra yards from the spot. Also instead of no penalty if outside the tackle box and past the line of scrimmage it seems like this ought to be a penalty too. I realize they instituted this rule for qb protection but it is frustrating to watch your defense working so hard and getting so close only to have the qb just blindly Chuck the ball way out of bounds. As a compromise, maybe the penalty in this instance could be less sever.

J.

November 5th, 2017 at 9:09 AM ^

There are a few parts of the football rulebook that are poorly thought out.  Intentional grounding is one of them.  The incentive is to throw the ball away; as long as you get it out of bounds, and Charles Woodson isn't the opposing QB, there's effectively no downside.

Pass interference is similar.  Even the NFL rule isn't really a penalty compared to a completed catch. The NCAA rule -- 15 yards or the spot of the foul, whichever is less -- is basically an invitation to offend.  I'm not sure I want to see the NCAA rule changed, though, until someone can teach the officials what actually constitutes pass interference...

Alton

November 5th, 2017 at 11:52 AM ^

The NCAA rule used to be the same as the NFL rule, until 1981.

In 1980, the officials in the Michigan-Notre Dame game threw an absolutely terrible Defensive Pass Interference flag on Michigan for a 30+ yard penalty in the last minute of the game, putting ND in range for their game-winning field goal.

I do agree with your point that we really don't need officials at this level given the power to award that many yards to a team, because we have all seen too many times how that works out for Michigan.

J.

November 5th, 2017 at 4:34 PM ^

I wasn't old enough to appreciate the '80 game, but somehow that doesn't surprise me at all.  The number of rules that exist because of Michigan games (official time kept on the field, for example) is staggering.

Of course... you can no longer stop the clock by intentionally lateralling the ball out of bounds while downfield.  This goes back to Michigan / Indiana, the play before the AC catch.  So, I guess we've got that one going for us...

kevin holt

November 6th, 2017 at 9:06 AM ^

I guess that's the thing, it's not a penalty kind of like illegal touching (catching the ball after stepping out of bounds and coming back in). They throw a flag but it's just a loss of down. If they called intentional grounding every time it happened this would make sense. Unfortunately, as we know, they don't do that. I agree it should come with penalty yards (and I guess even if they called it every time the incentive is to ground to avoid getting hit, fumbling, etc).

J.

November 5th, 2017 at 1:14 AM ^

The officials should have tossed themselves out.

That scrum was a direct result of the officials absolutely refusing to call late hits against Minnesota.  There were quite a few, from an unnecessary bump of an already-tackled ball carrier to repeated post-whistle shoves away from the ball.

If they do their job and call those when they occur, they keep the game under control, and the Minnesota player likely doesn't decide that there will be no consequences for throwing a punch.  Instead, they made it clear that they had no interest in policing that kind of activity, so it escalated.

To be fair, the officials did miss a couple of calls against Michigan, including a McCray offsides and an unnecessary block in the back as DPJ was being tackled at the end of one of the punt returns.  But they seemed to miss a lot more against Minnesota.  On the return that was negated for the rarely seen holding during the kick -- as opposed to during the return -- Minnesota not only committed a facemask that everybody in the stadium except the eight officials saw; that was also one of the plays with a late hit.  And yet Michigan took what was effectively about a 30 yard penalty, and Minnesota got called for nothing.

umaz1

November 5th, 2017 at 9:18 AM ^

I didn't get to see a lot of the replays of the bad calls, but I did notice that they were waiting WAY too long to blow the whistle when one of our ball carriers forward momentum was stopped. I was screaming at them to blow the whistle as more and more Gophers were hitting Higdon and Evans. It was absolutely ridiculous.

war-dawg69

November 5th, 2017 at 1:47 AM ^

Really, he just watched an o-lineman smash a teamamte in the face. Glad I will never have you watching my back. Go hang out with Brando and that other inept fool calling themselves announcers. You get thrown out for throwing punches not getting thrown around by your face mask. There is an obvious bias against Michigan when it comes to the officiating. I still don't know what the penalty on Kugler was as you can block below the waist. These officials were just making things up as they go. It really is getting obvious and disgusting.