I had to cut some stuff from this diary because it was running way too long, mostly having to do with the signs scandal.  I might try to throw another B&W about the updated rulings and legal stuff later this week.

Best:  Simply Tough

https://twitter.com/AaronBDesigns/status/1723454673749742001

In an admission that probably won’t come as a surprise considering the fact I’ve been writing ~5000 words/week about Michigan football for a decade, I enjoy consuming football in many different, from watching it to playing it to reading about it.  In particular, I find the history around football so intriguing because its very nature drives this nitro-fueled evolution seemingly every handful of years.  I’m currently reading a really interesting biography/historical account of Hal Mumme called The Perfect Pass, which chronicles his attempts to rewrite the game of college football with the vertical passing game in an era where it was decidedly 3 yards and a cloud of dust.  Mumme was the inventor of the “Air Raid”, which was inspired partially by BYU’s offense under legend LaVell Edwards but even more aggressively vertical, with the goal being to simplify the gameplan on his end while endlessly confusing the defense with small wrinkles and adjustments by the receivers.  With his first offensive line coach being Mike Leach and a veritable who’s who of offensively-minded coaches drawing from him over the years either personally or by inspiration, his impact echoes throughout the sport at all levels. 

As to be expected when trying to upset the apple cart, the college football establishment when Mumme was coming up frowned upon his approach, as they viewed passing the ball as the “feminization” of the sport and had a 66% chance of going badly every time ball left the QB’s hands.  This was the still the era of Schembechler, Hayes, Darrell Royal, John McKay and others, where student body left and student body right were the norm more than the exception, and attrition was the name of the game as much as offensive wizardry.  It was all about “toughness”, of basic physics from point A to point B and the tonnage of bones and muscles occupying the space between, because football has always been as much a morality play as it was a sport. We’ve long romanticized baseball and boxing, one for its nonchalant intricacies and the other for its stark brutality, but football has always felt like the perfect melding of both, with proud, virtuous men on both sides enacting violent battles between the lines.  The violence was both the point of the exercise as well as the fuel driving it all, personal virtue measured by every ounce of blood lost and every yard gained.  And at the time Hal Mumme was trying to change the game, the story of football rigidly held onto the same 3-act structure that expected this toll to be paid on the ground, where you won a game less because of X’s and O’s and more with the size and strength of your Jimmy’s and Joe’s.

Now, there were a number of misconceptions around Mumme and his approach, chief amongst them the idea that the size and complexity of the playbook was the best barometer for measuring offensive effectiveness.  Compared to the tomes that certain coaches required their players to learn, with intricate run formations and their variations, Mumme’s playbook both on the ground and in the air was relatively paltry, with a dozen-ish running formations and not many more in the passing game.  In Mumme’s eyes there was limited time you could spend repping plays with college students, so instead of having them try to master a lot of plays with relatively few reps per formation, he focused on perfecting a couple of plays with a ton of repetition.  The book highlighted how he got around certain rules by having 5 QBs throw 5 different patterns at the same time, with a WR running said routes only for specific QBs as they rotated thru.  His rationale was that if his guys knew where the ball was going and had prepped extensively for their plays, it really didn’t matter what the defense tried to do to stop them.  Now, this was somewhat borne out of necessity – coaching at small liberal arts colleges in Iowa and elsewhere he lacked access to high-end talent, so spreading out defenses and allowing his linemen to increased the distance between themselves and defenders bought his QB time – but it also made sense practically, as whatever talent discrepancy existed could be more easily overcome by running your plays consistently that it would be transforming player bodies.  Basically, he was a grinder and knew that even if his approach only gave him a slight advantage on a per-play basis, you exploit that advantage enough times and it’ll equate to a meaningful winning percentage.

And it largely worked.  His teams threw the ball well but also churned up yards on the ground, as exhausted defenses would spread themselves too far and the backs would scamper through the gaping holes left behind.  His defenses weren’t usually great but they could be a bit more aggressive knowing their offense could pick them up.  And in an era where almost everyone else wasn’t equipped to win a shootout, Mumme’s teams welcomed it.  It must have felt like playing a service academy today, where you knew if you didn’t get a score every time you had the ball you might not be able to keep pace. Mumme ran his system regardless of score and context because he knew it worked in the long term and exploited basically whatever defense you threw at it.  It was disciplined and tough in the way any well-oiled machine was, and it drew on the confidence that proper execution trumped everything else when played out long enough. 

Watching this game, particularly in the second half but really from the start, you could tell Michigan had a gameplan and they weren’t going to deviate much from it not because of stubbornness or fear but because they knew it would ultimately work.  Much was made of last year’s drubbing in Ann Arbor, where the Wolverines picked up over 400 yards on the ground on a number of big runs by Corum and Edwards, and how this year’s team seemingly lacked the consistency, the talent, the execution of last year’s unit to just grind teams down.  The Wolverines came into the game averaging a “mere” 167 ypg, which was around 45th in the country and nearly 70 yards per game fewer than they averaged all of last year.  They had become more of a QB-driven unit, with J.J. McCarthy playing like one of the best QBs in the country and a receiver room that is one of the best in the league, if not the country.  Blake Corum led the nation in TDs due to his preternatural ability to sniff out the endzone in short-yardage situations but after averaging 42 runs per game last season the Wolverines only averaged 37 coming into this contest.  Now, the past couple of years this shift would have been met with more concern, a dread that perhaps Michigan’s offense was faltering from its optimal path and that they had lost some “toughness” up front. 

Early in this game you saw Michigan try to run the offense they had basically fielded for the past 9 weeks, and PSU’s aggressive line play, particularly at the edges, made this tough sledding.  Karsen Barnhart in particular just couldn’t stay in front of Chop Robinson, which wasn’t a total surprise given Robinson’s bonafides as a pass rusher.  But after two early drives where Robinson and Dennis-Sutton were able to get pressure on McCarthy, that was basically it for the Nittany Lions living in the backfield.  McCarthy went a perfect 5/5 for 41 yards the rest of the half, with a couple of timely scrambles mixed in.  He threw on the run effortlessly and got a screen pass out to Morgan so fast that approximately a two-thirds of PSU’s defense didn’t even react.  And the running game just kept chugging along with the necessary adjustments, moving away from a pure north-south inside running approach to one that attacked the edges of the Nittany Lion defensive line with both speed and mass.  At first blush you’d see formations with F and G gaps and wonder if you’ve been transported back to the 1970s, but this wasn’t “Manball” in the derisive form, a relic of an unimaginative time.  This wasn’t Moore shrinking from the moment and hoping to grunt his way to a win, to leave it to the defense to carry this team home.  No, this was an offense with design and purpose behind it, one that knew if it executed as expected they’d break through in the end. 

And that’s basically what happened.  You could tell Manny Diaz and the defense realized they needed to get negative plays and perhaps buy their offense a short field because while the scoreboard didn’t reflect it, PSU clearly knew they couldn’t keep pace with Michigan.  After an Iliad-esque 10-play, 75-yard TD drive to end the half that required multiple 4th-down conversions and a rather egregious hold on Mason Graham, Penn State’s next 5 drives went as followed:

1. 6 plays/24 yards (and a fumble)
2. 6 plays/21 yards
3. 3 plays/-3 yards
4. 3 plays/1 yard
5. 4 plays/4 yards

Over that same stretch Michigan’s drives were:

1. 13 plays/45 yards (FG)
2. 3 plays/19 yards
3. 6 plays/25 yards
4. 3 plays/8 yards
5. 1 play/30 yards (TD)

PSU’s starting field position in the 2nd half was their own 24, while Michigan’s was their own 40.  The joke around college football this year is that PSU is Iowa with a finished basement, and it was hard to shake that imagery in this game.  PSU’s offense panicked with Drew Allar flinging balls sort of in the vicinity of receivers except when they weren’t, including the first time I’ve ever seen a flea flicker turn into an intentional grounding.  And it started at the top, with James Franklin calling for a 2-point conversion after the aforementioned TD to end the first half despite at the time only being down 14-9, which then necessitated another another (correct this time) 2-point conversion attempt after PSU’s late TD in the 4th.  The Nittany Lions got neither, and on Sunday Franklin fired Mike Yurich after possibly throwing Drew Allar a bit under the bus  while excusing his own coaching missteps.

Even with Harbaugh barred from the sideline like he’s Jim Cornette, Michigan kept to their gameplan, executed it to their best ability, and emerged victorious because of it.  Sherrone Moore deserves a ton of credit for that, but it was a team effort and one that gives me hope that however the off-the-field matters turn out this team knows its identity and can persevere because of it.

 

Worst:  Caring Isn’t Creepy

I’m warning you right now – the rest of this diary is mostly going to be about feelingsball.  I’ve been sitting in front of my computer for a while now, rewatching the game and thinking about what’s transpired the past couple of weeks, and I just can’t separate the analytical part of my brain from the narrative one, the head and the heart around this football season if you will.  And it feels a bit absurd to even talk like that, as I have absolutely no real stake in how this team performs or what happens to anyone involved with Michigan athletics.  I’m a dumb fan living 700+ miles away from Ann Arbor, who watches them on TV and reads about them online but whose relationship exists in a very parasocial way.  Sure I attended the school, but my closest brush with the football team was cleaning up their plates after they ate at South Quad’s dining hall, and in general the beginning and end of my interactions with the team occurs with a screen between us.  And that’s sort of how sports should be; it can be passionate entertainment but as Connor Stalions showed us too much of an attachment can lead to some bad decisions. 

But the past couple of weeks have etched a scar in my fandom that doesn’t scab over in a weekend, that doesn’t just fade away once the final whistle sounds and Michigan is once against triumphant.  I spoke earlier about the cinematic nature of football but the past couple of weeks have transcended “sports movie” cliches into greater theatre, from hard-boiled legal thrillers to melodramas to humor.  You’ve got a guy cosplaying as Ed Norton at a CMU night game, you’ve got dueling legal briefs and late-night restraining order filings, you’ve got petulant letters being leaked to the media while Harbaugh and co. are en-route to Happy Valley, and all against the backdrop of 2 playoff-level teams going at it.  And while I’m sure the players and coaches were as focused as they could be, blocking out as much of the outside noises and distractions as possible, finding out your head coach would be suspended less than 24 hours before kickoff had to have felt like a gut punch to the players and coaches because it absolutely felt like one to the fans.

And so, after the game Sherrone Moore showed some emotion during his interview, tearing up while professing his appreciation for this team and Jim Harbaugh with some colorful fucking language.  It was one of the more genuine displays of emotions you’ll see out of a coach in today’s game.

But because you’ve all been on the internet before, you already know how this was received by a subset of people out there.  Matt Fortuna, who apparently has a newsletter about college football but has never heard about Hugh Freeze, opined that this display of callous disregard for (checks notes) the ears of college football players might cost him a job.  Dan Dakich, yes that Dan Dakich but also THAT Dan Dakich, opined about the loss of masculinity because of Moore’s outburst, because the person we definitely should listen about handling his emotions is a guy who yells at college swimmers online and got fired for calling a HS student a meth head.  Feel free to look up his tweet if you want; I already feel gross sending traffic to Elon Musk’s failed mid-life crisis without also signal-boosting a dipshit who weirdly didn’t have much to say about Ryan Day voice-cracking his way through an interview earlier this year.  Sort of a mystery why one coach’s display of emotion was deeply offensive to Mr. Dakich and not the other, but I’ll leave that sleuthing up to the intrepid Twitter timeline searcher.

But the mere fact that this display of emotion, that caring about something as cosmically inconsequential as who wins or losses a football game, is “bad” has always bugged me.  Yes, I know that being ironically detached around sports is what the cool kids do, the idea being that if you act like it doesn’t matter then it won’t.  But that’s bullshit, and it’s a rough way to go through life.  It’s why I’ve always had issues with your Godfrey types and, to an extent, the Every Day Should Be Saturday crowd, who sometimes feel like they’re trying so hard to make a joke out of everything that they fail to hide how much they care about whose in the punchline.  Caring about sports is fine, and getting caught up in the moment is part of the deal with being a fan.  Honestly, for 99% of us that’s the point – we’re all living vicariously through the actions of people we’ll likely never meet and won’t ever know our names, while we’ll know their heights and weights, how they run and how they block and how they act on the sidelines and on social media.  And as long as you maintain proper boundaries, that’s perfectly fine.  I’ll admit that on gamedays, despite being twice the age of basically everyone playing the game, I’m nervous.  I get antsy, I get fidgety, I can’t quite look away from the screen but sometimes I get up and just walk around my house, or take my dog outside to go to the bathroom for the 10th time that day, or talk to my kids or my wife about something that’s sorta close to football but not enough to bore them.  I yelped multiple times last year as Donovan Edwards sprinted down the field in Columbus, and I pumped my fist when he ran in for a TD against PSU on 3rd-and-forever.  I care way too much than I should about what happens for 12 weekends every fall, and yet I can’t see myself caring any less. 

And I’m just a fan; I can’t imagine what it must feel like to be in Michigan’s lockerroom, to have a bunch of knobs like Ben Axelrod, who wrote a book about how great Urban Fucking Meyer was, making fun of JJ McCarthy’s celebration toward the end of the game.  And I’m sure if you asked him about it he’d say he was being ironic, that “trolling” fans is what you’d expect from a guy at Awful Announcing.  But you always hear from former players how the locker room was one of the most perfect distillations of comradery and brotherhood/sisterhood you’ll ever experience in your life, of pulling toward a series of goals despite external forces trying to stop you.  And so when you overcome one of those obstacles, that catharsis has to wash over you a bit, has to drive down all that bile and gunk in your gut and let, if only for a moment, that joy and exuberance bubble to the surface.  Sometimes that’s in the form of a huge smile and symbolically crowning everyone around you, and sometimes that’s ugly crying while you’re praising the college kids you helped coach to a victory and the guy who hired you and set you up to pick up the win.  But however this emotion is displayed, the world would be a better place if we saw more of it.

 

Best:  Who You Are

If nature abhors a vacuum, college football abhors a lack of narrative.  Every year a season plays out like an epic, with teams rising and falling, heroes and villains laying claim to their role in the tale, and in the end someone emerges victorious with a new chapter in the story.  And every year perhaps the guiding trope is teams and players trying to either return to what they once were or to “change the narrative” around them compared to past years.  That’s why year you hear about teams being “back”, about once-gilded programs that had slid back into mediocrity pushing their way back into the spotlight.  Miami’s been trying to do that for 20 years, Notre Dame has been listening for echoes for quite some time, and Texas may finally regained their perch atop the Big12 just in time to leave it all behind.  You often hear about a once-moribund program getting a jolt of excitement and life into them, this year being Colorado and Deion Sanders playing about 6 weeks like a team that didn’t turn over 85% of their roster, or Nebraska opening up the windows and letting some fresh air cleanse them of the Scott Frost stank.  And you usually hear about schools and players trying to change what they once were into something greater, to addressing some fatal flaw that held them back.  Last year it was OSU bringing in Knowles to fix their leaky defense, and this year it was USC trying to shore up their own bad defense while Iowa pledged to up their offensive production significantly.  And as it pertains to the Big 10, both OSU and PSU have been trying all year to shake labels around softness and not belonging in the most demonstrative ways possible.  OSU and Ryan Day have made it their mission to show they can move the ball on the ground even if that’s clearly not their strong suit, while PSU has been stung for a couple of years by their inability to beat Michigan or Ohio State and rise up from the third best team in the division.

And that’s been the common thread amongst the other two marquee programs in this division – they keep trying to be something they aren’t, and it’s allowed Michigan to take ahold of this league.  PSU generally, but Franklin specifically, wants to come across as a maverick, a “ballsy” guy who isn’t afraid to match wits with the best coaches in the country and come out on top.  Ryan Day and OSU want to show you they aren’t just a finesse team that rolls out an assembly line of NFL receiver talent but can beat you in the trenches like the days of old.  But that’s not their nature, not their expertise, and so you see Franklin calling timeouts all the time before punting on 4th down or going for 2 late in the first half, or Day howling at the moon in the hopes that Lou Holtz will recant his questioning of their toughness.  But it’s all for show, and it comes across as teams cosplaying at what they are instead of embodying it fully.

In the second half of Michigan’s game against PSU, the Wolverines threw exactly 1 pass and it resulted in a defensive pass interference penalty on PSU as Kalen King ran into A.J. Barner as he tried to adjust a McCarthy pass on first down about a third of the way into the 4th quarter.  On the other 28 non-kneeldown plays of the half UM ran the ball right, left, up the middle, around the edges, basically anywhere matriculation was possible.  Corum ran the ball 17 times, McCarthy 6, and Edwards 8.  Against the #1 rush defense in the country coming into the game (and #3 afterwards), Michigan telegraphed, smoke-signaled, sky-wrote, Zoomed, and Bat-signaled their intent for 30 minutes of football and the Nittany Lions ultimately couldn’t stop them.  Michigan averaged 4.3 ypc on those 28 runs, solidly unspectacular and yet still a good half-yard better than any team had averaged against PSU on the ground all year.  For the game Michigan averaged 5.3 ypc on 44 carries, more than double what teams had been averaging on the ground coming into the game.  That’s their backbone, even with McCarthy at QB and a plethora of good receiving options.  They play “Harbaugh” football, and just like it would be weird to see Michigan purposely throw the ball 50 times just to prove they can, it makes sense that when they need to keep salting away a game they’d rely on their defense and running the ball behind 13.5 personnel.  We’ll see what happens in a couple of weeks against OSU but this game really drove home the fact that Michigan’s identity is baked in their DNA and they won’t deviate from it, and being comfortable in your skin even when it feels like the world is closing in can be a godsend.

 

Best:  Freakish

One of the common refrains from rival fans around this whole scandal is that it’s “clear” Michigan started winning when Stalions started stealing signs, and they point to UM’s recent dominant run (35-3 since 2020) compared to their good-but-not-great record beforehand (49-22 in Harbaugh’s first 6 years) as evidence.  I mean, I didn’t realize that 3 10-win seasons and another 9-win one was particularly “down” especially compared to the previous two regimes, but 2020 apparently broke a lot of people’s brains.  But regardless, if the only thing that happened between 2020 and 2021 was that Jim Harbaugh and Michigan hired the greatest signal stealer of all time and Michigan then went on a run of domination in this league we haven’t seen in Ann Arbor for decades, then maybe there'd be some credence to that claim.  But of course football is not binary like that, and what also happened prior to 2021 was Michigan letting ago Don Brown at defensive coordinator and replaced him with, first, current Ravens DC Mike Macdonald and then also former Ravens DB coach Jesse Minter.  Don Brown is one of the great college DCs and a man who, as the saying goes, has forgotten more about football than I could ever hope to understand.  But his hyper-aggressive style just wasn’t working against the better teams in this league, resulting in some lopsided losses to OSU as well as a hollowing out of the interior defensive line.  Now, Michigan had some good defensive linemen come thru during his tenure – Kwity Paye, early Hutchinson, Taco Charlton, Ryan Glasgow, etc. – but they lacked the athleticism and heft up front that you needed in today’s game, where getting push up front bought time for your ends to disrupt passing games that relied quite a bit on rhythm and a clean pocket. 

The new DCs changed Michigan’s approach, drawing on a variety of concepts colloquially referred to as Amoeba, and that paid off with great performances against high-powered offenses like PSU and OSU.  Michigan had good defenses under Don Brown but they went to another level under Macdonald and Minter, and that’s a huge reason why Michigan’s been able to break thru nationally in a way they hadn’t quite before.  But beyond the scheme changes, what drove this rise was newfound depth and talent in the middle.  I noted a couple weeks ago that Michigan used to flip backup offensive linemen to interior defenders somewhat regularly, and who can forget Ben Mason once being deployed as a tackle.  But since Brown left Michigan’s enjoyed a renaissance inside, with guys like Mazi Smith, Chris Hinton, Mason Graham, and Kris Jenkins emerging into top-level tackles and, just as impressively, guys behind those guys also performing well and provided depth.  Cam Goode went from a guy who they pulled off the scrap heap at UCF to picking up 3 solo tackles against PSU on the road.  Guys like Smith, Graham, and Jenkins have all regaled fans with feats of strength and athleticism you don’t believe are possible with guys of their size, such as Smith earning the top spot of Feldman’s “Freaks” list a couple seasons ago.  But in this game I saw a play that blew me away. 

https://twitter.com/JDue51/status/1723692632054898877

That’s Grant starting from the backside of the play running down Kaytron Allen to possibly save a touchdown.  Allen was a top-200 player in his class and while not a speed demon he’s still quite fast.  He had a lane and a couple steps on Grant but it just didn’t matter, as Grant got on his horse and ran him down like he was Larry Allen against the Saints.  And the thing is, Grant also displayed these wheels during Sainristil’s pick-six against Rutgers, leading the convoy and catching everyone off guard as he rumbled down the field.  That Larry Allen play remains the greatest display of athleticism I’ve seen out of a player of that size, but Grant’s had two this year that were up there.  And Michigan’s got a couple of guys on this roster who are capable of feats like that.  And great teams have guys like that – when Alabama was great they were loaded to the gills with elite linemen, same with Georgia now.  You need those freaks to hold the line against the run, give you some pass rush inside, and grind down offenses that have moved more toward the passing game and “speed in space”.  So while I’m sure the more tin foiled of Sparties and Buckeyes want to believe that Michigan only got good because somebody got ahold of some iPhone videos, the far more likely reason is Michigan’s got some dudes up front that they didn’t have before.

 

Worst:  Being a Victim

It’s a small thing but one of the common refrains I heard about Harbaugh being suspended was that nobody got hurt in the process, that sign stealing was victimless but so was suspending him without so much as a hearing.  And sure, in the grand scheme of things a vast majority of scandals in the sport didn’t damage anyone significantly.  Players getting handed McDonalds bags full of money, or money being funneled to some dad’s church/charity/offshore bank account, or players being able to trade shoes and pants for tattoos and cash, none of those really “hurt” anyone.  Hell, my guess is that Jimbo Fisher just got paid more money to not coach football than what has ever been found to be given to players under the table to play it.  In fact, the only real scandals with palpable victims are those involved heinous, illegal actions like what we saw at Baylor.  Guys getting paid money or cheating on exams simply doesn’t rise to that level of concern.

But that also doesn’t mean teams and players aren’t affected by decisions that can feel petty and vindictive, that they can’t be “victims” of a shitty system run by idiots and bootlickers.  The Big 10’s decision to suspend him from gamedays only isn’t life-altering, and clearly the team responded well with him absent from the sidelines.  But UM isn’t playing “the victim” by pointing out how shitty the whole situation is, how before a notice of allegations has been served to Michigan for Harbaugh taking two commits out for a burger and some staff members watching a player go thru a workout virtually, let alone the current scandal involved Stalions, Harbaugh has already missed 4 out of 10 games.  Maybe he’ll be able to coach this weekend against Maryland if the TRO is granted but that’s still unknown, which would make it 5 out of 11 and potentially half the year if upheld through the OSU game.  That’s before any adjudication has occurred on either count.  That’s more games than Brian Kelly served after a student died on his watch or after multiple players were found to be academically ineligible.  DJ Durkin was fired from Maryland but AFAIK was never suspended since he came back as a DC at Texas A&M despite overseeing a player’s death and fomenting a pretty awful culture at Maryland.  Herm Edwards violated innumerable COVID-19 protocols but wasn’t suspended, instead only getting shitcanned because he wasn’t coaching well and his team was 1-2 and had just lost to EMU. 

So yeah, when Michigan players tweeted “Bet” once the news broke that wasn’t them playing the victim.  When they released a photo of Blake Corum’s bloody face, that’s not being a victim.  Moore crying because he was emotional about his boss not being out there wasn’t being a victim.  Michigan players and coaches rightfully feel picked on, singled out by a conference that seemingly bowed to the roiling masses and enacted mob justice.  And there’s real harm in this decision – having your OC and OL coach also have to serve as HC puts a strain on your system, highlighted (in my eyes) by UM wasting two TOs because they couldn’t get the play set in time.  That happened earlier in the year with Harbaugh out and has largely disappeared more recently, which makes sense because now you’ve got one fewer guy available to help juggle a pretty big part of the down-to-down system.  If head coaches weren’t important, if prepping all week is a big part of their job and little is needed from them on Saturday, then why don’t we sit Ryan Day and Jim Harbaugh in a booth on November 25th and just let the assistants call the game.  I mean, Day certainly can’t be all that valuable if Jim Harbaugh is apparently just a bystander.

So yeah, I’m getting a little tired about people acting like Michigan’s not being wronged here just because you don’t like the Wolverines.  That’s fine if you want to have that bias but own it, don’t minimize this bullshit like it’s normal or not meaningful.

 

Quick Hits:

• I saw Chris Vannini opine during the game that you wonder of McCarthy can pass this team to a road victory, seemingly forgetting about last year’s game against OSU or his various other performances.  McCarthy was fining throwing the ball in this game, and I’m certain he could have thrown the ball just as well in the second half if necessary.  Michigan’s decision not to throw the ball in the second half was intentional not because they didn’t trust McCarthy’s arm but because they clearly trusted their offensive line and backs to make plays on the ground, and McCarthy contributed as well.  Drew Allar, by comparison, looked lost out there to a degree McCarthy never looked even in his worst moments last year, and is giving off strong Graham Mertz vibes to me. 
• Manny Diaz tried to troll Michigan earlier in the week about stolen signs but in the end it was his aggressive defense that allowed Michigan to pick up 10 first downs on the ground, including on multiple 3rd-and-longs, as he failed to adjust or execute consistently enough to really disrupt Michigan’s offense.  PSU has almost always been able to field high-quality defenses because of their talent, but it’s weird to see Diaz basically call the same defense two years in a row and fail to adapt when it’s clear UM is working through it.

Next Week:  Maryland

I have no read on what’ll happen on the sidelines but I fully expect this game to be a bit of a bloodbath.  Michigan is locked in and Maryland barely held on to beat Nebraska.  It’ll be a solid test for Michigan’s secondary because Taulia is a solid QB and Josh Gattis does run the 18th-best 2017 offense around, but this feels like a tune-up for the big fight where the Wolverines break a sweat not not much more.