One caveat on JJ's boxscore - he very nearly had 3 TOs that we were fortunate to recover, or the INT that went out of bounds by inches. The 2 fumbles both came on the missed FG drive, one of them saw JJ's shenanigans make the FG longer, the other one very well could've been 3 the other way. The INT came on the late FG drive. Those 3 plays don't really show up on the box score. I don't think the game was quite as close as the score but had any one of those plays gone different (or of course the opening kick) and the game would feel much dicier.

I think JJ will grow and improve the D overall looked good - the secondary did great. Don't want this to sound like doom and gloom. But it deserves context.

I'm sorry... theme from "Too Close to Comfort"? What's next... Trapper John MD for the injury update segment? 

Ted Knight for the win, every day and twice on Sundays.

Everyone watching on TV thought Michigan scored in 3 seconds because they showed what was allegedly the game clock as they went to commercial after the TD and it was 14:57. I ran it back just to be sure because I couldn't figure out how. And everyone else kept saying it took 7 seconds. 

A good podcast overall - glad some people may be coming back around on the "this shit is hard" re: the QB position and not undermining what Cade did last year.

McCarthy was fine but some of his misses downfield were bad both because he overthrew a guy and also because he missed other open guys.  He'll get better at that with more reps but we might have taken for granted how easy those looked.

I agree about MSU looking into a talent abyss - I noted earlier this year that most of their top performers are holdovers from the Dantonio era and they're mostly aging out now; there's not a ton of young talent (especially on defense) and Tucker really hasn't been that stout on the recruiting path to offset for it, especially given the number of transfers out he's had.  

CORRRECTIONS ADDED AS PER COMENTS BELOW. I BLAME ALCOHOL AND AGE.

Maryland brought out this game early previous seasons and beat Texas twice and WV with it, so we should be glad we did not suffer the same fate. Could be that Maryland just gets easier to scout throughout the season by not having an ability to reserve any aspects of the playbook early on and little ability to add wrinkles to it as the season progresses? Dunno.

That said, and I got chastized for this in the game thread for some odd reason by people calling it a "weird take" that I don't really think is weird at all. This team is paying a price for having 3 complete doormats to start off the season, as I don't think anyone, especially the coaches, learned very much in those games and had little useful film to work with in identifying weaknesses and having the opportunity to correct them. Partially because of level of competition, partially because the starters played less than a half of almost meaningless snaps for review. There are obviously deficiencies on the team that weren't evident previously and we don't have anything to go on yet in terms of if/how and to what extent they can be addressed or mitigated. Given that this is the prevailing opinion of the vast majority of people that have any depth of knowledge about actual football (I most wholeheartedly confess to not being one of them) after that game, I'm going to stick with "not weird."

Prior to this game many were prognosticating that we were sure, if not highly likely, to head into the OSU game undefeated, some pundit actually posited that Michigan was better than Georgia (this is prior to their not perfect game against Kent State), which I certainly think is still possible, but not quite the cakewalk that some had envisioned. I was laughingly accused of going complete BPONE by some after the first half when I indicated that what I just saw (barring halftime adjustments to the contrary) was causing me to recalibrate my expectation for the season, meaning that I thought an undefeated run to OSU was less a an 80-90% probability and more like a 50/50 one, which is far from calling the season a total loss and calling for heads to roll. 

Since Iowa is literally the converse of Maryland in terms of playing football, I fully expect to see the team face an inverted set of challenges next week and probably learning new lessons and revealing or confirming the presence of weaknesses discovered against Maryland, the result being a closer than expected (prior to Saturday I was mentally set to see them just roll Iowa) M win. Although, who knows? Maryland is certainly not what everyone thought, maybe Iowa isn't either? 

Here's hoping that the Maryland game results in enough teachable moments on film to make some headway in a week of practice and M shows up next week on a whole other level, completely possible.

As always though, Go Blue!

I was getting a little annoyed at the “prevent defense” at times in the second half. I know the whole point was to not let Jarrett et al take the top off of the defense (which proved successful), but it seemed like it was allowing clear RPS losses for no reason. 
 

Example: Maryland 3rd and 4 in the 3rd quarter around the Maryland 35 or something. Sainristil is covering Jarrett in the slot and gives a 7 yard cushion. There’s only one covering safety behind Sainristil and then Turner above him, but it’s a moot point because Jarrett runs a quick curl at 5 yards and gets the first down. Any QB could see that 5 free yards on 3rd and 4 is your pre-snap read.

Was this Sainristil’s fault? If not, why play so soft? Seems like you should be able to play prevent defense without handing out free first downs.

I hope M can develop a decent rushing DE before we meet OSU and CJ, otherwise it may not be much of a game. I think if our offense was scoring more points this would have been a big blow out. The D (if you take away the last prevent drive) did a better job than I expected, keeping MD under 20 points for most of the game. But lack of pass rush is concerning for our final game this season. CJ needs to be sacked and hit hard. He loses accuracy when he gets hit hard!

Haha the Homer Simpson method…

Is that State’s motto for the season??

”the lesson is…never try”