Note: Sorry for the delay in publishing this. Had some computer mishaps which led to a decent chunk of this being lost so had to rewrite on the fly. As such, it's a bit shorter than usual which, I'll admit, doesn't jive with the marathon party of sideline warnings and wounded duck throws out of bounds that was this contest.

Best: Hart

Right up top I wanted to mention how scary it was to see Mike Hart suffer an apparent seizure on the sidelines midway through the first quarter of this game. He is in stable condition and stayed in Bloomington overnight but was responsive as he was stretchered out and (I assume) will be returning to Michigan soon. Now, I originally had some punny title for this section related to an 80's hair metal staple but this was a bad situation that luckily seems to have turned out okay for Hart. I'm older than Hart but in the same cohort and it's scary to see a peer go down like that, and without getting too deep into one's sense of mortality I just wish him and his family the best.

As for the impact his medical event had on the team, it was pretty clear the team was rattled by it and that seemingly cast a pall over the rest of that half. I'm not sure how much his absence as run game coordinator had on a vanilla series of play calls, but it definitely felt like whatever wrinkles they'd have called to handle IU either ID'ing or just selling out to stop the run went out the window with him no longer on the sideline. When Joel Klatt is calling out upcoming running plays because of some Teddy KGB-obvious tells you have in your formations that's not great. You have to assume Hart would have helped in that respect at least. Plus, it definitly seemed that once the team got to the lockerroom and received an update on Hart's condition they returned with a bit more bounce in their step.

Again, in the grand scheme of things football is irrelevant compared to Hart's health, and hopefully he'll be on the sideline when he's ready and able.

Meh: A Tale of Two Cities

As I've aged my memories of high school have faded into a muted tapestry of bad haircuts, bad fashion, and bad music sprinkled with "memories" from movies, TV, and vibes. I remember pockets of those years, certain moments that elicit nostalgic flutterings in my mind, and my assumption is they'll either become set in amber or be lost forever in the coming years. But one of the last memories I do have from that time of my life was being told I had to read the book A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens and finding it both inscrutable and almost criminally uninteresting.

The think is, I like to read and write. Hell, I've been writing this dumb diary every weekend for going on a decade for free because I find it intellectually interesting. I try to read at least one book a month, sometimes more, and across a decent spectrum of topics and genres. And HS me was this turned up to 11. I loved the written word, marvelled at how writers weaved tales of glory, passion, and sacrifice with mere language, and that included a fair bit of "classic" authors like Dickens. But to this day every time I've tried to read that book I've come away with the same level of exasperation and disinterest in the story being told and the characters involved. Honestly, the most enjoyment I've gotten out of this tale was the time in The Simpsons when the monkeys he chained to typewriters in his basement tapped out 80% of the book's iconic opening line.

Now, this being a Michigan blog I'm sure there are dozens of people who can fill me in on the nuances of this tale and why it has such a legacy in literature and is viewed as one of Dickens's best. I'm also, after 25+ years, absolutely sure I do not care to know anything more about this book or whatever message it's trying to convey.

So why, then, take the reader on this tortured walk down memory lane, you may ask? Because in addition to the title being a trite analogy to the nature of this game - a tale of two halves - I couldn't think of a better way to convey how it felt watching this game play out. There are generally three teams I dislike watching Michigan play every year, and they are Michigan State, Iowa, and Indiana. Michigan State because, for obvious reasons, it's a game against a rival that is almost completely unilateral in the impact of the outcome - if Michigan wins it's expected and if MSU does it's treated as their Super Bowl, with all the attendant pomp and circumstance. Iowa mostly because it's always just a muck of a contest, a low-scoring affair wherein Kirk Ferentz takes an entire bottle of that pill Bradley Cooper took in Limitless before kickoff and suddenly remembers the past 20 years of college football strategy and tactics and deploys it all without remorse. But Indiana may be the worse because it's so damn annoying and non-sensical.

Now, if you just skim the final scores of these games you'd wonder why I'm so annoyed with the Hoosiers - Michigan is 61-10 against them all-time and have won 26-1 in the past 27 games. But basically since Carr left and IU became an agent of abject chaos they've typically been the root canal of football games to consume. The 2009 game ended on a simultaneous catch/pick and turned out to be the last win against an FBS team UM had that year as the defense absolutely cratered. 2010 required a huge performance by Denard to escape. They didn't play again until 2013, a game that ended 63-47 because nobody played a lick of defense (1300 combined yards) and nobody could stop Jeremy Gallon (a team-record 369 yards on 14 catches) or Devin Gardner (503 [!!!] yards and 2 TDs on 29 passes as well as 81 yards and 3 TDs on the ground). 2014 was uneventful because IU was starting a backup QB and neither team was particularly good (UM finished 5-7 and Hoke was out that off-seasons), but 2015 was absolutely bananas 48-41 double OT game where The Rudockening began. 2016 was the post Iowa game where there was some snow, John O'Korn (subbing in for an injured Wilton Speight) did the complete opposite of Rudock and threw for only 59 yards, and DeVeon Smith carried UM to a win. 2017 featured John O'Korn throwing for even fewer yards (58) and Michigan again winning in OT behind 200 yards from Higdon and in spite of 16 penalties for 141 yards, the most penalties UM has had in at least the past 20 years. 2018 felt not unlike this game in which Michigan was clearly the better team but kept scuttling offensively and settling for FGs and IU was able to string together a couple of drives in the first half to take the lead before UM asserted itself more in the second half and won comfortably. And 2019 was the last win of the year for the Wolverines, a comfortable plastering featuring 5 TD throws from Shea Patterson that, even in the moment, felt a bit like fool's gold. 2020 it was clear IU was the better team (and Joe Milton was decidedly not quite ready to be QB1) while 2021 was a reversal under center but was also the week after the MSU loss when feelings around the future of the team were still pretty raw and splintered.

So yeah, that's over a decade of angst and annoyance against the Hoosiers, a team that, again, Michigan has dominated but still gives them and outsized fight across a multitude of iterations. And for about 40-ish minutes this game felt like another one of those grinding tootaches of a contest. Even though Michigan scored on their first drive of the game, highlighted by a 50-yard scamper to the 1 by Corum that, perhaps a precursor of the issues everyone would have with the officials and announcers all day was originally called a TD before being reversed seemingly on a whim. Indiana did counter, scoring two drives later on a classic college bullshit drive wherein they threw approximately 100 screens against a defense that apparently had no idea that was coming and were aided by some dubious officiating. The teams then traded FGs and blocked FGs as neither offense could do much in the redzone. The half mercifully ended approximately 17 hours after kickoff with the score tied 10-10 and Michigan clearly reeling. Blake Corum couldn't really get going on the ground outside of that big run, McCarthy wasn't pushing the ball downfield and despite making most of the easy throws given to him was playing a very game manager-y gameplan, and the defense seemed off-kilter save for the front line. Indiana hadn't done anything amazing but they had taken advantage of Michigan's issues tackling, predictability on offense, and the vagaries of awful officiating to put together an inspired half.

The second half started with IU moving the ball in spurts before having to punt and, at first, recording a touchback. And offsides penalty by UM gave IU another chance at the punt and this time the Hoosiers pinned UM down at their 2, which then became at their 1 when Corum false-started on the first play. Michigan nearly got a huge gain when McCarthy threw a nice ball to Johnson on the sideline but Cornelius dropped it, but Michigan responded with a nice catch-and-run by Bell to get the first and out of the shadow of their own endzone. Michigan then featured a nice mix of run and passes to march down the field and Cornelius Johnson redeemed himself for the earlier drop witb a nice play for a TD to go up 17-10. The teams then traded possessions for the rest of the quarter, with McCarthy throwing a bad pick in the redzone, but Indiana's offense wasn't have nearly as much success moving the ball and you could sense the field tilting in UM's favor. Michigan then scored twice in the 4th quarter while holding IU to -12 yards on 12 plays (and 29 yards total on 28 plays the entire half) to comfortably pull the game out on the scoreboard if not in our memories.

I'm not sure if we'll think much of this game in a week; last year UM played a similarly bullshit exercise against Northwestern and we all sort of agreed to never speak of it again. Like the past 2 games, the "closeness" of the game itself always felt artificial, an unsustainable stretch of play keeping the score closer than the overall yardage and performance would suggest. On the day Michigan finished the game averaging 6.2 ypp compared to IU's 3 on offense, and my guess is the win expectancy never dipped by 75% all game. Given this was Indiana and the history outlined earlier, I think our best hope as a fanbase is to hope this game falls into that gray area where we all sort of remember it being an annoying-but-comfortable win but nothing more. I feel a bit bad for Seth and Brian that they're going to have to rewatch it for UFR this week, but maybe at the very least they can do so with the volume turned down to save themselves from the announcers. But regardless, watching this game felt like homework that you just have to grind through and survive. Michigan did and now they've got Penn State, the first real challenge they've faced all year. They're going to have to play a lot better against the Nittany Lions than they did here in order to win, so hopefully this showed UM where they needed work and they'll be able to fix those areas this week.

Best: Adjustments

A big reason this game shifted in the second half from "ugh" to "okay" was the massive improvements on defense to slow down IU's screen-heavy offense and continue to apply pressure to Connor Bazelak. On the day Michigan picked up 7 sacks(!) from 7 different players (!!) and 4 QB hurries on 49 drop-backs, and honestly those numbers probably under-represent the near-constant bombardment the IU QB was under from the jump. Everybody got into the action, with Michigan consistently generating pressure both with a 4-man front as well as via blitzing (for example, Junior Colson's sack saw him line up basically behind Morris at the end and then come looping around him when the tackle realized that side was overloaded). IU knew they weren't going to be able to hold up in standard pass protection so they tried to get the ball out quickly to their receivers, particularly Simmons and Henderson, and that worked in the first half as IU's tempo and Michigan's continued struggles at coverage by the linebackers led to mismatches and missed tackles. But in the second half Michigan tightened up their tackling, the defensive line was able to get hands in the middle of throwing lanes (Okie nearly picked off an errant pass as he dropped into coverage) and the safeties got more closer to the line.

Now, it's fair to ask why it took a half for Michigan's defensive brain trust to adjust to...the offense Indiana has been running all year and has shown absolutely no inclination to shake up. While one hopes Minter and co. had at least watched a couple of YouTube compilations before this matchup, the fact UM was consistently out of position in that first half does make me wonder the level of prep/shit they gave to this opponent.

And while Indiana never had a ton of success running the ball and aren't set up to do so, the interior of the line, particularly Smith, absolutely dominated for long streteches and didn't allow Bazelak a pocket to step into as the ends crashed down. There was one play in particular where Smith pulled an Aaron Donald and seemingly one-armed Shivers from picking up a first down as he ran through the middle. Like most tackles Smith's stat line doesn't jump off the page (5 tackles, 4 solo) but he's playing like an all-conference player right now.

I also do want to highlight the secondary, which I thought did a fine job in this game and were victimized a bit by the awful refereeing with a couple of penalties. Green was rarely challenged and while Turner did get picked on a bit but other than one penalty held his own fine; he got called for a PI despite the ball being massively overthrown and off-target because the receiver sort of fell down. He's a bit handsy and that may get him, but he's still a lot better than most of us expected based on early returns last season.

So yeah, this defense isn't as good as last year's because they don't really have a stand-out unit like the pass rush of last season, but the dirty secret of last season was that the defense was still a B+/A- affair that had three first-rounders on it so they could beat most offenses they ran into. This year's squad lacks some of star power but probably has a similar ceiling because even with the issues at LB they have a more consistent level of performance spread out across the 11 positions. I'll likely go to my grave with Michigan struggling with tempo but it was nice to see Minter make adjustments in that second half and expose IU's weaknesses. That's the goal I had coming into the year - a decent-enough transition to the third DC in 3 years - and early returns are that's happening.

Worst: The Critic

I spent a good chunk of last year defending Cade McNamara's play at QB (my preseason HAWT TAKE was that he'd be the starter for the year, a position that was met with a rueful acknowledgement of the state of previous UM QBs) and I'm sure people are tired of hearing it. But the one thing I really wish this fanbase would pump the brakes on is heaping hyperbolic praise on McCarthy for being a perfectly adequate QB in his first year at the helm. He's doing well as QB1, generally getting the ball out to his playmakers in space, using his legs judiciously, and not panicking too much when the defense tries to confuse him. He looks every bit the 5* talent in an offense that doesn't demand, nor really allow him, to "air it out" the way some hope he would.

https://twitter.com/SpaceCoyoteBDS/status/1576273552667705346

But right now, after 3 conference games, he looks adequate managing the offense and the gameplan Harbaugh, Weiss, and co. want to run. He's struggled thus far connecting downfield to his receivers but anything within 10-ish yards has been solid. His two leading receivers are Ronnie Bell, a great possession receiver with a little git-up, and Luke Schoonmaker, his reliable backup TE who's stepped in seamlessly for Erick All. In conference play he's completed 74% of his passes (64/86), for 6 TDs, 1 pick, and 7.9 ypa. For comparison, last year McNamara's first three games featured 59% (48/82), 2 TDs, 1 pick and 7.5 ypa. McCarthy has been much more accurate throwing the ball (I'd argue his receivers are better this year than they were early last season with Bell out and All still rounding into the player we saw to end the year) and has more TDs, but overall the two offenses have scored basically the same number of points (92 this year vs. 90 last year) and the ypa is about the same.

There was a stat early in this game that said McCarthy was 50/53 on passes under 10 yards in the air. That's great and shows how, especially when on the moving, McCarthy is delivering catachable balls to his receivers. But McCarthy also came into the game attempting 84 passes overall, which means the majority of his passes have been shorter throws and his accuracy further downfield (15/31) is less spectacular. And in this game you saw a similar pattern where McCarthy threw the ball on shorter throws so that guys like Johnson, Bell, and Schoonmaker could make plays in space. In fact, all three of his TDs likely traveled fewer than 10 yards in the air but allowed his teammates to rack up big YACs. And that's a good thing - if the defense is going to let your playmakers get loose you should make them pay.

So none of this is intended to throw shade at McCarthy, only point out that he's doing well in his current role but there still are areas where he's needing to improve. And yet, when you bring up those areas you get tweets like this from Nick Baumgardner after the McCarthy pick in which fans rightfully pointed out that instead of trying to muscle in a ball with 2 defenders nearby to Bell he could have thrown a TD to a wide open receiver in the corner or, you know, just not thrown the ball. McCarthy had a couple of plays like that this game - he should have thrown a pick that Bell fought from the corner on a bad throw, another sideline pass he nearly overthrew to a wide-open Bell on the sideline, a couple of times where he almost immediately dumped the ball off to Schoonmaker before any of his receivers had run their routes - that show he's still got space to grow. Pointing these issues out doesn't make you a hater, nor should anyone be concerned he'll read these comments and immediatelt flee for the portal.

But right now McCarthy is helming an offense that feels a bit stuck in neutral, and I have to think some of that is due to the staff not wanting to push him too much or overwhelm him. That's totally reasonable, and they've got a solid run game to help out. He improved this game running the ball and, other than the one time he did the spin-away-from-a-defender-into-a-tackle, stayed safe and away from harm. But he's still got some growing to do in the position and it doesn't help the discourse to act like he's been playing better than that.

Worst: The Whole Kit and Caboodle

To say this game was a clusterfuck would be an insult to both clusters (of anything) and fucks. Michigan came into the game with a total of 14 penalties for 134 yards called against them in the year; they racked up 10 for 85 in this game alone, and would have had a couple more held against them had IU not turned them down. I know it's cliche to complain about referees and particularly gauche to do so after a 21-point win but...come the fuck on. When the announcers (who'll I'll get to later), including Gus Johnson, a man who has a loose grasp on yardage and an even looser hold on how that applies to a football game, is agreeing that the referees are "having a rough day" you know you're in trouble. And yes, the referees made bad calls against both teams, so don't take this as a purely partisan complaint - this was incompetence across the board and both teams undoubtedly felt railroaded. But this is now the second game this year where Michigan received what can charitably viewed as a "bad" whistle - don't look know but Maryland STILL leads the conference in penalties called despite inexplicably having 1 penalty called against them when playing the Wolverines. And before you ask, no these are two different teams of referees who woke up Saturday morning and chose violence.

This wildly inconsistent whistle is why that first half felt so surreal; for the game IU picked up nearly as many first downs by penalty (4) as they did by rush (5), and in the first half UM was called for 5 penalties for 54 yards, including multiple ones on defense that kept IU drives going when they were sputtering. Particularly egregious was the "unsportsmanlike" penalty Harrell got for a non-throat-slash celebration after a sack, in which you could tell the referee realized after the fact wasn't a penalty but lacked the ego to just pick up the flag and instead just puttered along. And then the refs returned the favor by calling an equally egregious unsportsmanlike penalty on the IU corner for trying to dislodge a ball out of Ronnie Bell's hands as he took him out of bounds on a completion. So again, the awfulness went both ways.

Indiana had spurts of offensive competency in this game but both of their scoring drives were kept alive by dubious penalties. Now, I do think D. J. Turner was a bit handsy and defenders weren't always in position, but much like holding (something IU was doing on a ton of plays even though UM still picked up 7 sacks) that happens on most plays and so you either need to call it evenly or at least consistently. In this game UM got called for 4 PIs and were assessed 3 while IU escaped unscathed on that front despite similarly being physical with UM receivers. And there were multiple instances where the referees tried to mess things up, such as the low Schoonmaker catch where he clearly had his arm under the ball yet the line judge 15 yards away called it down even before the ball arrived, but were foiled by instant replay or, seemingly, a flag falling out of a line judge's pocket by accident and them scrambling to make sense of it all. Hell, Michigan wound up calling a TO on a 4th-down call because the refs misplaced the ball by a good yard and a half and wouldn't budge despite seemingly 75% of the stadium screaming they were wrong.

Again, it feels obnoxious to complain about referees after a win, and credit to the defense in particular for tamping down on the penalties in the second half and simply demolishing IU's offense. But one of the reasons I hate playing Indiana is because almost all of their games take on some shade of stupid and at least when it's #chaotteam it's "football" stupid and not this game where it was "old guys starring into the sun" stupid.

Quick Hits

• I mentioned earlier but the announcers were having a rough day as well in this game. Gus Johnson seemed to be on tape delay, responding to plays seconds after they happened and not really knowing down and distance. Klatt was...fine but also fell into the habit of trying to make IU's performance sound more impressive than it was. We'll likely get them next week against PSU but at some point I wouldn't mind a different crew of people calling these games - it's starting to feel we're all a bit bored with each other.
• Michigan's offensive playcalling in that first half was beyond infuriating because of how predictable it was. I don't think Klatt was right when he said the run/pass plays were signalled by movement before the snap but it sure seemed like that was the case. This team doesn't have the line or stable of running backs they had last year, and asking Corum to be both thunder AND lightning isn't realistic, but it feels like this offense should be more dynamic than it has shown at times on the field.

Next Week: PSU

PSU is a team I have no read on. They're a bit better running the ball than last year, and even with Dotson in the NFL they have enough playmakers that their passing game is dangerous. But their best win is on the road against Purdue, a game they probably should have lost had the Boilermakers even tried to run the ball with the lead. Beating Auburn in a game where the Tigers were able to move the ball but sputtered in the red zone feels even less impressive than it did at the time given how the Tigers have cratered, and the past couple of weeks they've muddled along against mediocre-to-bad teams. I don't read much into the NW game because of the stormy conditions but Clifford still feels like a wildcard and Michigan absolutely can generate some pass rush to get him jumpy. PSU's defense is solid, especially in the secondary, but they've not really been challenged in the air like Michigan can. I'm still leaning toward Michigan because it's at home and you can never go wrong underestimating James Franklin but this feels like it'll be not unlike last year's game in terms of a close finish.