Bama Links: Preview, The Podcast, FFFF Offense (chart), FFFF Defense (chart).

SPONSOR NOTE. We still need your help to keep our team. Last year, Champions Circle® launched the One More Year Fund to support key Michigan players like Blake Corum, Trevor Keegan, and Zak Zinter who elected to return to Michigan for One More Year. Now, we’re launching the Those Who Stay NIL Campaign.

Our rivals are coming after many of our key players, trying to induce them to leave Michigan. It's time for the Michigan Family to show our players how much we appreciate them and want them back in Maize and Blue!

To keep the momentum going, please contribute now.

-------------------------

Something's been missing from Michigan gamedays since the free programs ceased being economically viable: scientific gameday predictions that are not at all preordained by the strictures of a column in which one writer takes a positive tack and the other a negative one… something like Punt-Counterpunt.

PUNT

By Bryan MacKenzie
@Bry_Mac

Sometimes in the morning, I am petrified and can't move
Awake, but cannot open my eyes
And the weight is crushing down on my lungs, I know I can't breathe
And hope someone will save me this time

- - - - - - - -

I sit here like the rest of you. Not knowing how I feel, yet feeling it with uncomfortable, unyielding, unsustainable intensity. A million thoughts and nothing coherent to tie them together because AHHHHHH. I mean, look at the title of this post. Read it aloud. Picture tonight. Imagine toe meeting leather. Hear it in your mind. Now reduce that to words.

Yeah, me neither.

- - - - - - - -

In August of 2009, on the heels of the worst season of Michigan football in living memory, MGoBlog put together a somewhat atypical preseason hype video, set to Rilo Kiley’s “A Better Son/Daughter.” The gist of it was, “yes, that sucked, but it will get better.”

(As if any Michigan fan could forget how THAT season went, the fact that a similar video set to the same song was created the following year should remind you.)

A Better Son/Daughter might seem like an odd choice for a hype video. Aside from spending the first 100 seconds with nothing but melancholy vocals and an organ accompaniment, the lyrics detail the struggles of a person battling bipolar disorder and trying to find happiness, knowing that the highs and the lows will never truly be separable. In the post explaining the editorial thought process, Brian explained: “in desperation there's that shred of hope; people who are down and not desperate are resigned. I could be ignorant or desperate.”

 

[After THE JUMP: Sometimes when you’re on.]

Eight years and two head coaches later, Michigan Stadium introduced a new anthem for the University of Michigan Football Program. One that was tonally happier but thematically similar:

Mr. Brightside is the story of a man determined to be positive despite discovering that his significant other had been cheating on him. It’s been played at the Big House for every game since the start of the 2017 season, as well as some notable neutral-site games.

No one really knows why.

- - - - - - - -

Then you hang up the phone and feel badly for upsetting things
Crawl back into bed to dream of a time
When your heart was open wide, and you loved things just because
Like the sick and the dying

- - - - - - - -

I’ve been doing this column for eight seasons now, and for most of that time it’s been easy. Week after week, year after year, this column spewed forth from my fingertips like Force Lightning because the premise is so painfully simple: a vibes-based preview of a football game. A Rorschach Test with no wrong answers and no need to show any work, where stupidity and sophistry are awarded bonus points. And if that doesn’t work, just tell a dumb story or open a random Wikipedia page.

I’ve been writing Opponent Watch even longer—eleven seasons, to be precise—where the premise is even easier: describe what just happened to twelve football teams. Even MORE bonus points for stupidity and sophistry. These things are not serious. They are not hard.

But they became hard for me.

This has been a difficult couple of years for me, for reasons both good and bad. I consider myself to be a pretty lucky guy both personally and professionally, and my ‘problems’ are not the kind that spawn GoFundMes or Dateline episodes. They are the ordinary, inevitable burdens of being an adult with adult responsibilities and adult fears and adult thoughts. Sometimes the world gets heavy.

But that heaviness bled over into my attempt to write. Every week the words became harder to come by. They took longer to write. Every joke felt forced, every analogy strained. I suffered (and suffer) from a serious bout of Imposter Syndrome, especially as Raj continued to drop banger after banger with the level of energy I used to feel. I started a Substack to try to recapture some of my zest for the written word, thinking that maybe it was a format problem. I’ve posted to it once in the last six months.

So, when the transition to a new job forced me to put Opponent Watch on hiatus for the season (a thing that really did happen and really was the reason I called it quits, NOT the highly suspicious timing that may have strongly suggested that I was secretly Connor Stalions and this was all part of The Scheme), it almost came as a relief. As light as the task may have been, I was too heavy to bear it correctly.

- - - - - - - -

And sometimes when you're on, you're really fucking on
And your friends they sing along and they love you
But the lows are so extreme, that the good seems fucking cheap
And it teases you for weeks in its absence

- - - - - - - -

Life does not offer many unburdened moments. Every joy carries with it a pain or angst or sorrow. The unbridled joy of holding a newborn baby is inextricable from the terror of “oh my god how do I keep this thing alive and fed.” The love and companionship of a puppy carries the knowledge that some time in the next decade you’re going to have a terrible, terrible week. That 4th* beer simultaneously signals “tonight is gonna be a good night” and “tomorrow morning is gonna suck.” The world does not allow you to uncouple the good from the bad. Rich tapestry and whatnot.

*Your mileage may vary

One of the things we love about sports is the promise of a winner and a loser. Two teams meet in a discrete, finite clash. There is a victor. There is a vanquished. The outcome is absolute. The result is noted and recorded. And then we repeat. Today you are a loser, and you experience nothing but the Loser Feelings. Hopefully tomorrow you will feel the Winner Feelings.

But even in sports, that’s not the case. The lizard portion of the brain stem that governs sports fandom, basic though it may be, will not allow us to remove these things from their greater contexts. Anyone who says they felt the same before the 2014 Michigan-Ohio State game and the 2023 Michigan-Ohio State game is lying. Once the euphoria of beating Ohio State for the third straight season (a thing that DEFINITELY HAPPENED AND THERE IS VIDEO EVIDENCE IF YOU DOUBT ME) died down, we all realized that we were going to have to watch at least one more game that would cause us to feel like we were dying a million deaths, whereas Ohio State got to drift off to a peaceful Cotton Bowl slumber. The burden of expectations is real. The burden of failure is real. The burden of uncertainty is real. It’s part of the deal.

Between the lines, the 2023 season has been magnificent. But it has been as burdened as you can possibly imagine a 14-0 season to be. Burgergate and Stalions and Harbaugh suspensions and the Harbaugh NFL rumors and Bama in the gotdang Rose Bowl and the weight of this being Capital-T Capital-Y The Year.

- - - - - - - -

I’m going to remember a lot about this team. JJ McCarthy spending most of the season as an unstoppable throw-god. Running the ball until morale improved against Penn State. Rod Moore calling “game” against Ohio State. Blake Corum’s touchdown against Alabama. Zak Zinter. Mason Graham. Trente Jones. Mike Barrett. Mikey Sainristil. My god, Mikey Sainristil.

But the thing I’ll remember most is how they simply refused to be burdened. Ever. They were called frauds and cheaters and paper tigers and the Greatest Criminals In The History Of Sports Crime, and their response against their in-state rival was “haha touchdown printer go brrrr.” Their head coach was suspended MID-FLIGHT on the way to a Top-10 road matchup, and they responded by clowning the hell out of that team’s Defensive Coordinator while running the ball 32 consecutive times. Their best offensive lineman shattered his leg, and they responded by scoring a touchdown on the next play. They found themselves needing a 75-yard touchdown drive against Alabama, and they made it look easy. Every time something bad happened, the team reacted by not giving the slightest iota of a shit.

They were faced with more than anyone could reasonably ask, and they responded, “bet.” Using their indoor voices. No exclamation points. They felt no need to yell it.

This team is going to win a national championship based mostly on the fact that they decided to. It’s been an act of collective will the likes of which I can’t recall. It’s not a Team of Destiny. It’s a team of Because We Said So.

- - - - - - - -

Writing this column — these columns — for all these years has been an honor. Your indulgence with my years of vapid stupidity and poop jokes, and your patience with me in these last few months while I tried to get my brain more better, have been a blessing. I genuinely don’t know if these are the last words you’ll see from me on these fine electronic pages, at least on a regular basis. Life is still A LOT at the moment (for good and bad, as with all things). But either way, please know that you, Dear Reader, have lightened me in heavy times, and I hope I have been able to return the favor at some point (though, I mean, Rutgers talk will brighten ANYONE’S day).

- - - - - - - -

Mr. Brightside isn’t Michigan’s official fight song, nor (obviously) is A Better Son/Daughter. Fight songs are, universally, happy songs. They tell of victory and glory and the inevitability of triumph over one’s weaker, less worthy foes. The Victors takes it one step further, telling not of an impending victory but instead of one that has already come to pass. The Wolverines ARE the victors. The conqu’ring heroes. The champions of the West.

But that’s not how these things go. Fandom, like life, is fighting and making it through, and faking it if you have to, and showing up for work with a smile. It’s being weak but not giving in to the cries and the wails of the valley below. It’s swimming through sick lullabies, but opening your eager eyes because you remain convinced that destiny is calling you.

Today offers you the rarest of moments: joy unburdened. A moment with no baggage and no anxiety. A moment removed from all the other crap. After this, some fools will try to burden this moment for you. They’ll talk about how somehow beating four Top 10 teams in a six-game span is tainted because Connor Stalions left an evil spell over those opponents, or that Harbaugh might leave, or that Michigan’s title might still be vacated if Mike Pence has the courage.

Forget ‘em. You’ll be happy. And that is enough. Michigan 34, Washington 23

 

----------------------------

COUNTERPUNT

By Internet Raj
@internetraj

I am typing this from an altitude of 39,000 feet, cruising at 655 miles per hour, and on hour 14 of a 22 hour journey from Singapore to Houston. I have been staring at a blinking cursor for the better part of the last 20 minutes, at a complete loss of what to write. I could chalk it up to the mini hangover I have from the 4 glasses of Bordeaux I drank during the first two hours of the flight. Or maybe it’s the deliriousness that comes with traversing multiple timezones across the Pacific Ocean in the dead of night. Or maybe it’s the United Airlines hot fudge sundae, which has now mixed with all of that Bordeaux creating a sort of hot molten lava erupting volcano in my stomach that is making me wish I hadn’t left my antacid in my checked luggage. There are countless excuses for writer’s block at my disposal, but I suspect the root cause is something much deeper and simpler: we are in uncharted territory and my brain is broken.

The first cracks in my now shattered brain began to appear with 3:30 remaining in the fourth quarter of the Alabama game. Faced with a fourth-and-short with the season on the line, I watched with the play unfold not with eager anticipation but with foreboding acceptance. I was sure Michigan would not convert. Not because Michigan was sputtering on offense the entire half. Not because I saw something schematically in the alignments that led me to believe the play was doomed. Not because of the personnel on the field. No, it was because that’s just what happens when a decade-plus worth of BPONE residue is still stubbornly clinging into the inner depths of your psyche. Those hard-to-scrub bits of malignant negativity like the burned food scraps at the bottom of a stainless steel pot that you’ve abandoned in the sink for 3 days. The calcified remnants that can’t even be power washed away by 3 consecutive years of beating Ohio State and 3 consecutive Big Ten Championships. Those little nuggets of fatalistic gloom lodged in the deepest crevices of your cranium that have only been further ossified by two straight Playoff flameouts. So, you have to forgive me when my neurons immediately began calculating all of the permutations and combinations of how things could go disastrously wrong on that fourth down. As JJ McCarthy dropped back to pass, I settled on a classically depressing denouement: the batted pass that anticlimactically thuds to the ground. A deeply frustrating and jarring conclusion almost perfectly tailored for the oft-embattled Michigan fan.

My brain after the Rose Bowl

But that’s not what happened. Instead, a deliciously clever play design freed Blake Corum for an easy catch and run into Alabama territory. A flag was thrown but it didn’t negate the first down. I couldn’t believe it. I reflexively shouted in glee and jumped up and down. This was the first crack in my brain. I was not used to this. I was not ready for this.

At this point, my cynical negativity was quickly crewing ground to a rush of exhilarating optimism. But then, JJ dropped back and threw a ball to the boundary that appeared to be fluttering in the air just a tick too long. A sprinting Alabama defensive back flashed on the screen and leapt in the air. My stomach dropped.I braced myself for Chris Fowler’s dramatic exclamation of “picked off!” But that didn’t happen. In the type of miracle that is never, ever, ever, ever reserved for Michigan sports fans, McCarthy’s pass shook off a tip at the line of scrimmage and somehow retained its spiral all the way into Roman Wilson’s outstretched hands. I was left in a shocked stupor. The crack in my brain had now fractured into a rapidly expanding spidering web. The rest of the game was a blur, but every moment of potential negativity was emphatically vanquished by a Michigan team that simply would not lose.

Oh no, we’re going to do all of this only to get stood up at the goal line.
Oh no, we’re going to go for 2 to go for the win and not convert.
On no, we’re going to miss this extra point (again) and lose.
Oh no, we left Alabama too much time on the clock.
Oh no, Alabama is going to recover this muffed punt.
Oh no, this game is going to end on a bizarre safety.
Oh no, we lost the overtime toss, and will lose the game because we settled for a field goal.
Oh no, Alabama is going to score here because of course Jalen Milroe is a wrecking ball that can muscle his way to the end zone.

Michigan somehow, some way surmounted every one of these opportunities to falter. And every time they did, the cracks in my brain grew deeper. And then, just like that, there were no “Oh no’s” left to be had. In the final play of the game, Michigan wrecked the Alabama offensive line, stuffed Milroe, and the ESPN score-bug updated to “Final”. My brain was shattered and neurons, dendrites and axons were pouring out of my ear canals as I lay in in a stupefied coma of exuberance on the floor next to my TV while 1 year old and 3 year old climbed all over me asking “What happened Dada?” What happened?

I don’t know what happened. In my years of Michigan fandom, there was no precedent for this. We beat the big bad evil SEC empire. We are going to play for a national championship. We are going to play for a national championship. We are going to play for a national championship. My brain is saw dust. Grey matter detritus floating aimlessly in my skull. This team broke my brain in the most delightful way possible and proceeded to use a Dyson vacuum cleaner to suck out every last, lingering negative thought left inside. I couldn’t, and still can’t, process what’s happening. Do you want objective proof that I’m not exaggerating? I impulsively booked a 10,000 mile flight to Houston to watch the game. What am I doing? I have no idea. What will Michigan do? I have no idea. But I have surrendered myself to this brave new world of not knowing, or understanding, what the hell is happening or going to happen. There’s only one constant anchoring me in this dizzying realm of uncharted territory: Go Blue.

Final Score: I Got No Fucking Clue but LFG