Programming note: This is going to be shorter than usual. When a game begins at the totally-reasonable hour of 7:30 pm Saturday and yet somehow ends on Sunday, it's not leaving me with a ton of time to process and write about what I saw.

Best: W.

Yes, it's Rutgers. Yes, it's a triple-overtime game wherein Michigan was down 17-0 midway through the second quarter, gave up nearly 400 yards passing, and missed 3 FGs. Yes, it's a game where after finally taking an 8-point lead Michigan gave up 16-play, 75-yard TD + 2 pt drive to head to overtime, featuring a Rutgers QB dragging multiple Michigan defenders 4 yards into the endzone (!) on a designed QB sneak (!!) to tie the game. And yes, Michigan is still 2-3, likely looking down (at best) a 4-4 regular season with a battered, ineffective defense, a janky offense, and no marquee wins in this, Jim Harbaugh's 6th year at his alma mater.

All of that is true, and yet I don't care. Michigan had every reason to pack this game before kickoff, with 3/5th of their starting offensive line out to go along with their 2 all-conference/all-american defensive ends. They have even more reason once they were down 17-0 to Rutgers, having accumulated 118 yards of total offense on 5 drives that featured a fumble, yet another failed 4th-down short-yardage run, 2 punts, and a missed FG. If Twitter, Reddit, and this site are to be believed, Michigan would have been best served rounding up all of the coaches on a tarmac in suburban New Jersey, taking anything of value they may have on their persons, and shipping them off to a volcano to be sacrificed as tribute to the gods to lead Matt Campbell or Luke Fickell to Ann Arbor. In a season of lows, being blown out by Rutgers felt like the 6 inches of concrete you put around the coffin nailed shut by Indiana and Wisconsin; an unnecessary but emphatic coda to a lost year and, likely, yet another underwhelming coaching regime.

And yet, the players seemingly never gave up. Cade McNamara relieved Joe Milton and led a 3-play, 63-yard TD drive featuring a wide-open bomb to Cornelius Johnson. After a rare 4-and-out by the defense McNamara valiantly fought against Michigan's inability to run a hurry-up offense and got the team down into reasonable FG range (thanks to maybe the longest second in recorded history since Spartan Bob was at the controls) which, because reasons, Michigan couldn't convert due to a high snap forcing Quinn Nordin to double-clutch his approach (leading to a memorable if deeply ironic "Do your job!" exclamation from Nordin to no one in particular as they went into halftime).

Still, there was life for what felt like the first time since early in the MSU game, and Giles Jackson added fuel to the fire by taking the second-half kickoff 95 yards to the house. Rutgers responded by letting Michigan's defense try to cover Bo Melton, and the Scarlet Knights bumped the lead back to 10. But Michigan didn't panic, and Cade McNamara completed perhaps the biggest pass of the season thus far with a 3rd-down strike to Erick All on the ensuing TD drive. And I don't mean that hyperbolically - Erick All has struggled holding onto the ball and Michigan is one of the worst 3rd-down converting teams in the country. That's a play Michigan hasn't made with any consistency this year, and yet it looked almost "easy". Haskins followed it up with a big run to get into scoring range and Eubanks pulled in McNamara's 2nd TD throw of the evening.

Rutgers came back with a long FG drive featuring yet another inexplicable downfield completion between multiple Michigan defenders but you could sort of sense Michigan had found its groove offensively. They punted on the next drive but were mostly done in by penalties and some bad luck, and the defense responded with a quick 3-and-out. Michigan then worked down the field, including a 21-yard 4th-down catch-and-run by Chris Evans that really felt like "speed in space" at it's purest, and Michigan took it's first lead in any game since Minnesota in week 1 (!!!!!) on a really nice pick play to Mike Sainristil. The defense yet again forced a punt and Michigan marched down the field one more time, McNamara throwing his 4th TD of the half to Johnson to take an 8-point lead. I distinctly remember looking at the clock and thinking "okay, this game featuring a broken game clock that repeatedly threw an '8' in front of everything might be done at a reasonable hour."

As you can tell by the fact you don't see another section divider directly below this paragraph, such relief was not granted. Instead, Rutgers marched down the field on a nearly 5-minute, 75-yard TD drive featuring multiple 3rd-and-long conversions and a final 4th-and-9 TD throw, as well as the aforementioned QB run, to tie the game and send it into overtime.

After a VERY detailed description of OT by the head referee who appeared to both have a bus to catch and possibly starting to feel the effects of something he popped around halftime, Michigan missed their 3rd FG of the game in rather spectacular fashion, and all Rutgers needed to do was kick a very makeable FG to win it all. And yet, because Fate has a sense of humor, Rutgers missed the ensuing FG and I made a sound that I cannot describe but apparently was able to summon the configuration menu on my smart TV to pop up.

The teams traded TDs on the next two drives and so we entered 3OT, where both defenses looked absolutely gassed and the offenses were just throwing plays against a wall and hoping they stuck. After a holding call Michigan found itself looking down the barrel of a 3rd-and-18 that Michigan picked up on a DPI. Then on 4th down they finally picked up a TD at the goal line but missed the 2pt conversion. But the defense held firm on the ensuing drive, with Daxton Hill (who had an up-and-down bad game to say the least) finally picking off Rutgers in the endzone on 4th down. And with that, Michigan won a game they were lucky to pull off, and yet I still don't care.

Worst: The Bad Place

I've been accused around here of being an unrepentant, borderline obnoxious optimist/apologist for this team and the coaching staff. Part of it is that the level of fandom has dulled over the years, the joys not so euphoric and the venom not so potent. I just can't get too out-of-shape about any sport that relies on unpaid college athletes trying to matriculate an oblong ball up and down a field for 3 hours every Saturday. This year in particular I'm less caught up in the weekly outcome of games because, and I want to be careful with my words, it is fucking insane we are still playing football despite weekly cancellations nearing 30% due to a completely predictable re-emergence of COVID-19. It's gotten to the point that huge rivalry games are being cancelled because teams can't meet the most basic thresholds of uninfected bodies, and anyone with two working eyes and a rudimentary understanding of north and south can look at a fucking graph and see it's going to get worse before it gets better. At least 1500 people died on Saturday from COVID-19 and 178k new positive cases were reported, and the US has been setting records on a daily basis in that department for weeks. But that's all been said before so I'll leave it at that.

But perhaps the biggest reason I'm not as bent out of shape about this season as others appear to be is that I didn't expect a ton from this team. I've mentioned this a couple of times but Michigan came into this season with precious little returning experience; in fact they were 125th in that department per Bill Connelly's numbers and that assumed both Nico Collins and Ambry Thomas were in the mix. Remove those two and they were probably in sub-LSU country. And then over the past couple of weeks they've lost (likely for the season) NFL prospects like Hutchinson and Mayfield, with key starters like Paye and Hayes also missing games. In this game, Michigan also started down Andrew Vastardis, their starting center, and ended the game down Cam McGrone (likely for the year if rumors are to be believed) and Brad Hawkins. If you're keeping count at home, that's 5 starters on defense and 3 on offense, 6 and 4 if you add in Collins and Thomas. That's nearly half of the roster, one that also graduated 10 guys to the NFL plus their senior QB. Dylan McCaffrey, the presumptive starter at QB coming into the season, inexplicably decided to sit out the year (yet showed up at a rally to re-start the season after it had initially been delayed), further limiting Michigan's options.

And so the starting QB spot basically came down to Joe Milton and Cade McNamara, and while it's clear Milton made strides he's still a guy who completed less than 50% of his passes in HS and wasn't an elite athlete. In a better world he's the backup to McCaffrey, sees game time here and there and maybe passes McCaffrey at some point, but isn't asked to carry an offense that, again, is replacing a ton of production and dealing with a rash of injuries. Even against Minnesota and MSU Milton showed he still had some development ahead of him, locking onto guys and failing to consistently throw balls with the type of touch you need to keep an offense moving. He got away with it more against those first two teams because their defenses are atrocious, but these past 3 weeks he struggled to adapt to defenses that messed with his reads and stressed his field awareness.

On the other side of the field, Michigan's defense remains atrocious to a degree that isn't as explainable due to the unique circumstances of the season. Even before the injuries the secondary couldn't really defend anyone, the linebackers consistently missed assignments and failed to fill in gaps, and the defensive line was muted in their ability to disrupt offenses because the ball came out quickly and effectively on passing downs. While Michigan's corners held up reasonably well in this game (I dare say both Gray and Green were above-average in coverage even with a couple breakdowns) and have shown some improvement since the nadir against MSU, Rutgers repeatedly picked up huge gains on the ground because of awful tackling and missed assignments, never moreso than on Rutgers game-tying 2-point conversion where Noah Vedral carried multiple tacklers 4 yards to pay dirt.

This level of play falls on everyone, from the players to the coaches to, I don't know, the caterers at the team's hotel. I know people kept bringing up the 2014 loss to Rutgers as an analog and there were some similarities in that Rutgers was able to consistently move the ball. But that Rutgers team finished 8-5 and was objectively better than Michigan; while I think Rutgers is improved this year under Schiano and might be trouble in a year or two, they are still decidedly worse than Michigan from a talent perspective. As noted earlier Michigan was dealing with a ton of injuries but still, it's jarring to see. I've seen people describe it at "leaking yards" on defense and you really see it in games like this; Michigan will seemingly have a play dead-to-rights and Rutgers will claw forward for 3-4 more yards with limited resistance. In previous Michigan defenses guys stopped when the defender made contact, but not this year. I've been more on board moving past Don Brown after this season and games like this didn't really change that opinion.

Honestly, flip the MSU game and Michigan at 3-2 feels about right. They are slightly better than the worst teams in the league and decidedly worse than the upper-tier this season. I remain unimpressed with the options out there to replace this staff whole-hog, but it's certainly not a particularly rosy picture this year and would likely be even worse if perennial powers like PSU and LSU weren't looking at least as bad, if not worse.

Best: McNamara Terminal

Cade Mcnamara has now scored 6 TDs in about a full game; keep that up and he'll be Zooming into New York as a finalist for the Heisman. Now, in the incredibly unlikely event that his prolific production slows a bit, there's still a lot to like about how he's played in relief of Milton. I know a common comparison to his performance was John O'Korn setting Purdue on fire in 2017 and then failing to do so against anyone else, and I recognize that "the backup looks good for a week before crashing back to earth" is not an uncommon tale. Still, there's a fair number of arguments that the situations aren't quite as analogous and fans should be cautiously optimistic about.

For starters, he came into a game down 17-0, with a listless offense and facing an aggressive defense, and deftly moved the team downfield by executing the offense reasonably well. O'Korn came in with the game tied at 0 and Purdue not looking all that dangerous; Rutgers had scored on three of their last 4 drives and were close to running away with the game. Second, McNamara ran the offense the way it was designed for the most part; he took those short passes and easy throws that got his athletes into space against the defenders, and when necessary he could rifle a ball downfield with touch and accuracy. Go back and watch that O'Korn game and you see a lot of his biggest plays were broken pockets where he's scrambling and guys break open; it's exciting but probably not reproducible. McNamara largely stayed within himself. Did he get a little lucky? Sure. His first pass got tipped by a Rutgers defender and could have ended badly; he lofted a ball or two that might be trouble against better defenses. But this is still a Rutgers defense that is one of the best in the nation at picking up TFLs and could only muster 2 TFLs once McNamara took over.

But the biggest reason I'm optimistic about this sticking with McNamara has to do with his pedigree. I'm cribbing from a response I made to the post-game write-up, but guys like O'Korn and Patterson came to Michigan has reclamation projects of sorts; both had lost their starting spots at other schools and Harbaugh likely thought he could get them back to their peaks. O'Korn had a promising freshman year at Houston but lost his job to Greg Ward as a sophomore after throwing 8 picks in 5 games against some uninspiring competition. And in his only sustained playing time in 2016, subbing in for an injured Speight against Indiana, he completed 7 of 16 passes for 59 yards (admittedly in a snow storm for part of the game), and about half of those came on a screen to Ty Isaac. Similarly, Shea Patterson arrived at Michigan having lost his starting job at Ole Miss (somewhat due to injury but also inconsistent play) and with stats that were perhaps a bit inflated by absolutely bombing two awful teams (Southern Alabama and UT-Martin) as well as Vandy for 13 TDs and 1 pick. His first year at Michigan he looked pretty good but he struggled in his second year, seemingly never quite getting a handle on the offensive philosophy and seemingly fighting an early-season injury for half the year. I actually thought he played pretty well in the second half of the season until the bowl game, and his top-line passing stats weren't much different than 2018 save for the completion percentage, but his lack of growth remained immensely disappointing. But in both these cases, you had players who had struggled elsewhere and came to Michigan with some red flags (and in Patterson's case, nearly that entire class seemed snake-bitten).

McNamara came to Michigan having thrown over 1200 passes for 12,804 yards and 146 TDs as a HS player. He isn't some reclamation project; he was a top recruit with a ton of experience. He seems comfortable with the offense and makes the plays that are there. He probably has a lower ceiling than some recruits but he's also not some flyer like Milton; you can watch McNamara play in HS and see how he'd translate to a college offense like the one Michigan wants to run. Guys around his level in terms of recruiting are doing perfectly well this year - Dylan Morris is the starter at Washington, Hank Bachmeieir is the starter at Boise St, Taulia Tagovailoa has been really good at Maryland, guys like Jacob Zeno and Jacob Conover are behind senior QBs but seem like good prospects. Him being a pretty good QB who isn't going to win the Heisman but him capably running Michigan's offense effectively isn't remotely unexpected. Will he struggle somewhat as teams get tape on him and figure out his tendencies? Sure. But that's true for anyone in college football, and the fact Michigan went with Milton over McNamara isn't all that insane if you assume the coaches liked Milton's potential early on and may have thought McCaffrey was still the most likely option until he wasn't.

I want to stress that I don't think McNamara is going to right all that is wrong with this team; they still can't run block to save their lives and the defense remains a mess. But watching McNamara just...run the offense as you expected was refreshing, even if it appears they are even less likely to run their QB at this point. It absolutely helps that he's looking at PSU and Maryland (if neither/both games don't get cancelled) instead of IU or Wisconsin, but McNamara being a perfectly competent QB the rest of this year wouldn't surprise me one bit. And that might be enough to get Michigan to 4-5 wins.

Quick Hits:

• Hassan Haskins had a great game despite getting precious little blocking up front; he repeatedly broke free of penetration to pick up meaningful gains with a combination of hard running, patience, and vision. He's never going to be a home-run back but he embodies this quote from his HS coach:

  “We had a Big Ten school that comes in and watches him jump 6’7 and practice, and the guy told me, ‘Well, he can’t break 60 yard runs. Maybe he’ll break a 30.’ And I looked at him and said, ‘Well, give it to him twice.’ ”

• I know it's fashionable around here to claim all bad offensive plays are due to Harbaugh's influence, but Michigan's repeated inability to line up under center and QB sneak for a first down doesn't seem like something Harbaugh would allow if he was meddling in the offense every week. This game featured yet another failure to convert on short-and-four in the first half, and Michigan's go-ahead TD in the third overtime on 4th down was nerve-wracking in a way it really shouldn't be. They absolutely need to figure out how to better prepare for those situations, and perhaps they will now that McNamara is at QB and they don't have a wrecking ball like Milton.
• Michigan has one of the worst TO margins in the country this season, and while a majority of that is due to their own deficiencies they have also been incredibly unlucky. Last weekend they likely had a fumble by Wisconsin overturned because we've never defined what a "football move" means, and this weekend Cornelius Johnson fumbled the ball after a catch with only slight effort by the Rutgers defender, negating a promising opening drive. They then also failed to pick up two fumbles or pick off a number of dubious passes until the very end. Much like last year's early struggles with fumbles ultimately leveling off as the season progressed, I wonder if Michigan is "due" for a couple of turnovers in these coming weeks.
• It says something about 2020 that Dabo Swinney can get on his fucking high horse about Florida State not wanting to play football against Clemson because Clemson brought a COVID-19-positive player to the game and call FSU's administration "chickens" for not letting the game go on. The article points out that the Clemson player apparently showed mild symptoms but kept testing negative until he arrived at FSU and, I assume, was tested in some other manner that it came up positive. Considering Clemson has already had a couple of outbreaks this season, I don't blame FSU for not taking at face-value Clemson's earlier claims about no other positive tests and proper social distancing. I just...I know we're all supposed to stop talking about it because of site rules about no politics, but Swinney has shown his ass throughout this season and seems like a piece of shit generally, so much so that I've found myself rooting for both Notre Dame and Florida State this season, and I'm decidedly not okay with that.
• While the defense overall was bad, I thought both Gray and Green played pretty well. The long TD to Melton was a combination of Green biting on a fake and Hill not playing over the top, but the other long completion felt like a duck that Hill simply didn't play well. Again, not great cornerback play but B/B- effort from two guys who were getting roasted easily early on.

Next week: PSU

Penn State remains one of the few winless teams in the country and just lost their all-everything TE Pat Freiermuth to season-ending injury; that comes on the heels of Journey Brown having to retire from football for medical reasons, Noah Cain being out for the year due to injury, and Micah Parsons opting out for the season. Penn State also has some uncertainty at QB, as both Sean Clifford and Will Levis have struggled. I assume Michigan's defense will be a breath of fresh air for PSU's offense, but the Nittany Lion's have given up at least 30 points to every team they've played this year and have looked outclassed by Maryland, Iowa and Nebraska the past 3 weekends. I'm not assuming anything will go to plan but Michigan seems like the more optimistic pick in this game. Regardless, at least it's at noon so day drinking remains on the table.