Wisconsin 24, Michigan 10
A somber scene as Brandon Peters was down on the field. [Patrick Barron]
Michigan led undefeated Wisconsin, 10-7, in the third quarter at Camp Randall Stadium. Then Murphy's Law struck.
First, Wisconsin quarterback Alex Hornibrook shook off a shaky start to thread two inch-perfect throws to A.J. Taylor. The first victimized freshman Jaylen Kelly-Powell, who was on the field replacing injured starting corner Lavert Hill. The second was a touchdown up the seam to give the Badgers a 14-10 lead. Adding to the frustration, the drive only stayed alive due to a third-down pass interference call on Tyree Kinnel despite Hornibrook's throw hardly looking catchable.
Then disaster really struck. Facing third down on Michigan's ensuing possession, Brandon Peters took a hard hit from Andrew Van Ginkel, who stunted up the middle unblocked. Peters, who'd shaken off some huge hits in his last couple games, stayed down. As the team gathered around him, Peters took a cart off the field. According to MLive's Mike Mulholland, he was wheelchaired to the locker room, then transported to the hospital via ambulance. In postgame, Jim Harbaugh confirmed Peters has a head injury; he's expected to rejoin the team for the plane ride home.
That took the wind out of Michigan's sails. Wisconsin struck quickly, with a one-handed catch by Danny Davis setting up a 32-yard end-around touchdown for Kendric Pryor at the end of the third quarter. John O'Korn took over for Peters, and the offense never threatened to score. UW's Rafael Gaglianone eventually tagged on a field goal to provide the final margin.
A.J. Taylor's touchdown catch stood as the winning score. [Bryan Fuller]
Before it all fell apart, Michigan hadn't just scraped out a lead, but missed some opportunities to really put the Badgers on their heels. Wisconsin struck first when Nick Nelson picked up a punt off the bounce and worked his way past some poor coverage for a 50-yard touchdown. Peters had a chance to tie it up on the next series, but underthrew an open Zach Gentry, allowing Natrell Jamerson to recover for a pass breakup.
On Michigan's next drive, an apparent touchdown from Peters to Donovan Peoples-Jones was ruled incomplete, and despite replay showing that DPJ's left foot touched inbounds a fraction of a second before his right landed out, the call stood. On the very next play, Peters fumbled while scrambling for the end zone, and Michigan came up completely empty.
The young quarterback bounced back, though. Peters finally connected on a deep ball to Peoples-Jones, getting Michigan out to midfield, then made consecutive sharp throws to Chris Evans and Sean McKeon to set up a one-yard Ben Mason touchdown plunge. That knotted the score at seven heading into halftime.
After Devin Bush picked off Hornibrook to give the offense great field position, Quinn Nordin snapped his cold streak with a 39-yard field goal to give Michigan a short-lived 10-7 lead. Instead of compounding his prior error, Hornibrook morphed into Aaron Rodgers, and everything went terribly wrong in a hurry.
All other concerns at the moment are secondary to the health of Peters. If he can't recover in time to take on Ohio State next week, the odds stack even higher against Michigan unless Wilton Speight can make a remarkable comeback from his fractured vertebrae. As it stands, optimism for The Game is going to be hard to come by.
November 18th, 2017 at 11:51 PM ^
November 19th, 2017 at 12:08 AM ^
November 19th, 2017 at 3:48 AM ^
Jim is recruiting QBs like Beilein recruits centers. They have the right measurements, take 3 years to coach up, then are OK and considered a success. The eternal search for Kevin Pittsnogle must end, we must recruit athletes. How many Mark Donnals and Speights have there been?
November 19th, 2017 at 7:32 AM ^
Hoke recruited Speight.
November 19th, 2017 at 10:12 AM ^
For these posters today, that is but a technicality.
November 19th, 2017 at 12:08 PM ^
November 19th, 2017 at 9:10 AM ^
All this griping about coaching has been adequately proven to be misguided thinking by later posts in this thread, but here's my two cents: I don't know who I would want to even consider to replace Harbaugh and his staff as a whole. Yes, Drevno should be on the hot seat, and perhaps less is more if you eliminate him from OC responsibilities and put him simply as OL coach. Otherwise, this team is severely plagued by injuries and no senior leadership on the OL or QB. I know this is so anti- 21st century college football, but this program and this staff need time to sort this out. We'd be foolish to scrap it and repeat the past 10 years all over again. Although, John Bacon would have more writing material......
November 19th, 2017 at 9:10 AM ^
All this griping about coaching has been adequately proven to be misguided thinking by later posts in this thread, but here's my two cents: I don't know who I would want to even consider to replace Harbaugh and his staff as a whole. Yes, Drevno should be on the hot seat, and perhaps less is more if you eliminate him from OC responsibilities and put him simply as OL coach. Otherwise, this team is severely plagued by injuries and no senior leadership on the OL or QB. I know this is so anti- 21st century college football, but this program and this staff need time to sort this out. We'd be foolish to scrap it and repeat the past 10 years all over again. Although, John Bacon would have more writing material......
November 19th, 2017 at 9:14 AM ^
Lots of reasons and angles on the M loss........but I think most will agree that Wisonsin was exposed as a playoff pretender. Does the big ten really want to send a team that will get shredded?
November 19th, 2017 at 9:25 AM ^
November 19th, 2017 at 9:47 AM ^
November 19th, 2017 at 2:43 PM ^
November 19th, 2017 at 9:54 AM ^
November 20th, 2017 at 1:30 PM ^
It goes back to OL play. When your starting QB gets his neck broken on a play where a guy comes in unblocked, when you can't run the ball in a rainstorm.against Sparty, when you let a guy get a running shot at blasting Peters into a head injury you will lose games against decent teams. And not many teams have good seasons having started 3 different QB's.
Yes, a lot of guys are young but it's hard to establish an identity offensively when you have young WR's and RB's who don't have time to make plays because the OL is getting overpowered. Add in an understandably gun-shy JOK in the middle of it and you have a rough season.
I think the OL will improve next year but I'm still concerned that there is no apparent direction to the QB position.
November 19th, 2017 at 10:23 AM ^
That is obvious. The degree of ineptitude on offense is astounding. The thing is though, this offense, as bad as it is, did show some signs of improvement this year. The run blocking improved for sure as did the output from our backs. The D has been strong all year with only a bad outing against a really good Penn State squad. We lost a ton of starters to the NFL. A drop-off from last year was pretty much a given.
Fact is, Harbaugh isn't Urban Meyer. A down year for OSU is 2 regular season losses. Having said that, calling for him to be fired after an 8-4 season with this much youth, inexperience and decimated by injuries is insane. Last year, MSU went 3-9 and had in attrrocious offseason. Yet, here they are sitting at 8-3 with only Rutgers left and they return just about their entire team next year. Let's hope that this year is a perfect storm of circumstances that produced a down year and that the translation for "down year" under Harbaugh is 8-4 with a team returning hardly any starters and is decimated by injuries. Hopefully next year this team is a contender (I'm growing impatient with "next year" too). A copule of years ago Nebraska fired their head coach after a 9-3 season because that wasn't good enough. They've been garbage ever since. Harbaugh is it. We have no Plan-B and there aren't any better coaches available anyway.
November 19th, 2017 at 11:00 AM ^
November 19th, 2017 at 11:51 AM ^
I️ can understand the team making mistakes due to youth. And I️ can deal with a bad call here and there. I️ suppose I️ can tolerate stupid play calling.
But what troubles me and makes it hard to watch this team is the lack of passion, energy and enthusiasm that I️ see from most of the teams we have played. Even the ones we beat.
#uninspired
November 19th, 2017 at 3:30 PM ^
November 19th, 2017 at 12:17 PM ^
Unlike the MSU game, which we SHOULD have won had we not lost the TO contest 5 to 0, I didn't go into this game thinking a loss would be a failure.
As long as Peters can be healthy and ready for the bowl game, he showed me enough to feel good about next year.
Whether it's Drevno, etc. next year, no excuses for getting beat so easily and so often by stunts. Our own D-line should be practice enough for our O-line.
November 19th, 2017 at 3:28 PM ^
November 19th, 2017 at 5:29 PM ^
November 20th, 2017 at 12:35 AM ^
November 20th, 2017 at 8:15 AM ^
Untimely and crucial intervening of the referees and an injury to our QB took away our chance at winning this game. I thought our team played hard enough to deserve a chance.
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