I think you're misunderstanding how the hindsight gets value. We're not out to just assign narratives; we're trying to understand what happens by testing old hypotheses with new data. I watched a bunch of Nebraska film and coaching competence and a smattering of good players. As soon as I got to rewatch the game (you never trust your initial instincts because you don't see everything live) I started seeing a lot of mistakes by Nebraska, not a lot of great play by Michigan. Brian saw a lot of the same things. Michigan leaves a linebacker unblocked in the hole, the linebacker runs himself too far outside and can't make a tackle. When you see that and go back to revise an opinion, it's to downgrade Nebraska against expectations.

Specifically I think in their first few games Nebraska was able to get great play out of WLB Mohamed Berry, and surprisingly okay play from their MLB Young, who was terrible last year. I clipped a bunch of plays to demonstrate it in FFFF and suggested that this improvement was likely coming from being allowed to make very simple reads. That comes with a cost and Michigan exploited it (the subject of my Neck Sharpies this week). What I didn't expect was that once their reads betrayed them they started reverting to bad habits that made them so bad. Ditto their secondary; they made big mistakes in this game that I didn't see in other games. I looked to see if they were forced by Michigan and sadly they were just mostly players doing bad things. That data goes to prove Nebraska's secondary is worse than they looked in their first two games, and the most likely reason we missed this is because two games are not a very good sample size.

Some parts of that game played out exactly as expected, and don't change opinions. I said their OLBs are not good and their DL doesn't generate pass rush, and that proved one of my best scouts to date. Harbaugh is a clever offensive coach, and that was reinforced too. Michigan's got a great defense that is very well coached and as predicted the things Michigan does well were the kinds of things that a very clever offensive coach can't do much about. Nebraska indeed had a good offensive game plan--they had an RPO that could have been a long touchdown on their first drive except Michigan tipped it and intercepted instead. Also they fell behind so quickly that the fight went out of them, and that edge is crucial for pulling off any kind of upset.

Michigan isn't bad either. Chase Winovich, Devin Bush, Rashan Gary, Karan Higdon, Cesar Ruiz, and Shea Patterson are all playing between very and extremely well. Chase and Devin are probably all-Americans.

These knowns. They were not disproven by losing to Notre Dame. We maybe got to see that Michigan is finding ways to keep JBB's run blocking on the field by sacrificing some of the downfield TE passing game to help him. We still know little about Runyan as a pass blocker.