2023 national championship

I apologize for this taking awhile to get out but gravity hasn’t been functioning properly since last Monday night, and it’s hard to type when your feet won’t touch the ground. I was also trying to wrap my head around all of the parts of Michigan’s pass defense to show you, until I realized that’s going to require an entire UFR (that and the Rose Bowl one forthcoming).

So let’s do something simple that you can show your friends and relatives for equal enjoyment, that being the Michigan run game that blew a big enough hole in the Washington defense to drive a national championship parade through it.

The star of the Michigan running game, once again, was Duo, the Schembechler favorite that Harbaugh re-popularized in the middle teens. This was foreseeable. Washington has weak DTs and linebackers prone to big mistakes they can’t fix with Alabama LB athleticism. Even without Zak Zinter, Michigan has an experienced, large, mashing offensive line. But to really make it work against Washington, they had to have so much more. And while these plays are probably already being talked to death, when we talk about Michigan’s offense, we ought to understand how much value all of these parts are bringing to a running game that won them the Championship.

[AFTER THE JUMP: Big runs]

Problem with the timing of a Monday game is our roundtable posts the same morning as THE PODCAST, which is 4 hours long, way more in depth, and below.

[Hit the JUMP for this one, scroll for the big one.]

Bama Links: Preview, The Podcast, FFFF Offense (chart), FFFF Defense (chart).

SPONSOR NOTE. We still need your help to keep our team. Last year, Champions Circle® launched the One More Year Fund to support key Michigan players like Blake Corum, Trevor Keegan, and Zak Zinter who elected to return to Michigan for One More Year. Now, we’re launching the Those Who Stay NIL Campaign.

Our rivals are coming after many of our key players, trying to induce them to leave Michigan. It's time for the Michigan Family to show our players how much we appreciate them and want them back in Maize and Blue!

To keep the momentum going, please contribute now.

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Something's been missing from Michigan gamedays since the free programs ceased being economically viable: scientific gameday predictions that are not at all preordained by the strictures of a column in which one writer takes a positive tack and the other a negative one… something like Punt-Counterpunt.

PUNT

By Bryan MacKenzie
@Bry_Mac

Sometimes in the morning, I am petrified and can't move
Awake, but cannot open my eyes
And the weight is crushing down on my lungs, I know I can't breathe
And hope someone will save me this time

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I sit here like the rest of you. Not knowing how I feel, yet feeling it with uncomfortable, unyielding, unsustainable intensity. A million thoughts and nothing coherent to tie them together because AHHHHHH. I mean, look at the title of this post. Read it aloud. Picture tonight. Imagine toe meeting leather. Hear it in your mind. Now reduce that to words.

Yeah, me neither.

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In August of 2009, on the heels of the worst season of Michigan football in living memory, MGoBlog put together a somewhat atypical preseason hype video, set to Rilo Kiley’s “A Better Son/Daughter.” The gist of it was, “yes, that sucked, but it will get better.”

(As if any Michigan fan could forget how THAT season went, the fact that a similar video set to the same song was created the following year should remind you.)

A Better Son/Daughter might seem like an odd choice for a hype video. Aside from spending the first 100 seconds with nothing but melancholy vocals and an organ accompaniment, the lyrics detail the struggles of a person battling bipolar disorder and trying to find happiness, knowing that the highs and the lows will never truly be separable. In the post explaining the editorial thought process, Brian explained: “in desperation there's that shred of hope; people who are down and not desperate are resigned. I could be ignorant or desperate.”

[After THE JUMP: Sometimes when you’re on.]