denard robinson cook

11/26/2022 – Michigan 45, Ohio State 23 – 12-0, 9-0 Big Ten, Big Ten East Champions

I had to have a strange conversation with my son on Saturday about why I was watching the television with the sound off. In his experience the TV is generally better when the images on screen are paired with explanatory messages into his ears. I tried to tell him that I really wanted Michigan to win this game, I thought they were about to get hammered, and that I did not want to hear the exultant cries of central Ohio's finest as they dunked Michigan into the center of the Earth. He seemed to understand in the distant way you understand that someone has a particular moral compass you cannot comprehend but nonetheless accept.

My son thinks Michigan is good at stuff, so he asked why I thought Michigan was going to get dunked into the center of the Earth. I told him that Michigan's best player—the best player in America—could not play because he was injured, and that Ohio State was very good at football and this was likely to be the determining factor.

He shrugged and resumed playing Ultimate Super Ultimate Smash Brothers Super Ultimate. Some time later, he saw Michigan was ahead by a lot and wondered if I would turn the volume back on.

I turned it back on. There were four minutes left in the game.

----------------------------------

I took him to the hockey game that night. Our current pattern is that he watches the first period, I get him some ice cream during the first intermission, he eats the ice cream during the second period, and then he can have my phone during the third. The ice cream is spectacularly frozen. It is held in a freezer that is colder than the infinite depths of space. His only entry into this chocolate heaven is a flimsy spoon that would fall apart if Zak Zinter looked at it wrong, or even kinda right, and he spends an entire period of hockey trying to chisel out atom-thin slices of ice cream. The person who decided this was a good marketing tactic is a hero and a god.

So he's chiseling away halfway through the period, getting most of it in his mouth but leaving a celebratory residue around his face (inexplicably, this includes his forehead) and liberally painting his shirt.

The football team appears from stage right.

The first person I see is Mike Morris, and my brain thinks "hey, that's Mike Morris." Then I am given to understand that there are many of them there, the football players. They climb the stairs. Their Big Ten East Division championship hats universally have the tags still attached. JJ McCarthy high-fives various people.

There is a break halfway through the period to clean up the ice, whether or not the game is on TV, and it soon becomes apparent that this is a mistake. A mandatory one, perhaps. A mistake nonetheless. The Zamboni doors open up, as they always do, and then Jim Harbaugh is on the ice. It is clear that this is unplanned. I watch this happen. Harbaugh is behind the rope they pull to indicate that you should not walk out onto the ice in the middle of a hockey game, and then he is not behind it. He motions the entire fucking team to come onto the ice. Some of them do, because some of them are spiritually golden retrievers. McCarthy is one. He bro-hugs Erik Portillo, Michigan's starting goalie. The brief break to clean up the ice is now over, and the football team is still on it. The officials look very cross indeed as they attempt to shoo a half-dozen extremely large men in sneakers away. I am bracing for a delay of game penalty that does not actually come, because the football players and their coach do eventually slink back off the ice.

During all this I've gotten the child to put down his ice cream, and I pick him up so he can see all the mayhem that's going on. He is not entirely sure of the implications but does understand that everyone around him is very, very happy.

-----------------------------------

There was another story developing in my head for most of the first half. One in which Michigan does not recruit like Ohio State and cannot take hits to their roster like they can. They unearthed a running back who'd had one carry all year—who'd been playing linebacker—and he was crunching through the Michigan defense. He transferred in from Arizona State, picking Ohio State over Michigan despite the fact that Michigan actually wanted him to play running back. Michigan put CJ Stokes out there and the moment was too big for a freshman three-star out of South Carolina.

When JT Barrett gets knocked out of a Michigan game, Dwayne Haskins comes in. When Denard Robinson doesn't get to OSU healthy, Michigan's done, in part because they moved their backup QB to wide receiver because they didn't have enough wide receivers. Michigan is one of the most talented teams in the country annually, but they do not lose Aidan Hutchinson and replace him with Aidan Hutchinson 2. Ohio State just opens up the box of five stars and extracts Marvin Harrison Jr.

The story I was working on is the one I told my son: Michigan has some dudes and they need all of them if they're going to beat Ohio State.

Then Mike Sainristil, a nobody recruit from nowhere, Massachusetts—a converted wide receiver—made up more ground than I've ever seen made up in my life. Sometimes when you're watching a football game some bit of pattern recognition clicks into place and you suddenly have a vision of the near future. This happened on OSU's throwback play. My eyes went to the tight end, and I saw the arc of the ball, and I audibly groaned "oh no." The only hope was that the back-foot heave was going long. It was not going long, and then it didn't matter.

My son was roused by my agony morphing into to ecstasy. He looked up from his screen, saw the score, and asked why Michigan wasn't getting hammered into the center of the Earth. I didn't really have an answer. He is six so he always has an answer for everything. Most days I walk him home from school and he tells me that the school flooded with anti-gravity water. I badger him about why I did not see this very newsworthy event on Twitter. He gives me some crazy explanation, I shoot it down, and he comes up with another one.

He said that maybe Michigan's best player was out there, but in secret. That he had snuck back out on to the field and spearheaded Michigan's performance. I said maybe he was. Maybe Michigan is more than a couple of dudes holding the whole edifice together. Maybe even when Blake Corum's watching from the sideline, Michigan's best player is somehow still on the field because it's not just a player. It's a program. That Michigan is now greater than the sum of its parts in a way Ohio State is not.

He was no longer listening, but that's okay.

AWARDS

Known Friends and Trusted Agents Of The Week

even when they got beat it was like this [Barron]

you're the man now, dog

#1(T) Mike Sainristil and Rod Moore. The way this works is that the only collective that gets in the chart, uh, collectively is the offensive line, but what I want to do here is to give all of this to Michigan's back seven. Michigan's back seven dropped into coverage over and over again and beheld the OSU receivers fanning out from the line of scrimmage like so many extradimensional tentacles. The front four's pressure was… occasional. And they did not get nuked.

Sainristil and Moore in particular came up huge on many plays. Sainristil punched out a sure touchdown and PBU'd another potential TD; he helped Colson stuff the third and three pitch; he fell off so many attempts to get him out of position on crack blocks. He got beat sometimes, sure. He fought OSU to a standstill. The converted WR.

Rod Moore, meanwhile, picked up two stunning PBUs on plays Michigan safeties just do not make and also racked up a TFL. Moore also stands in for the safeties writ large since there were zero (ZERO) times in this game where Michigan got hit over the top other than a very ill-advised safety-level blitz on the Harrison touchdown.

Full points for both. Plus one. Screw it.

#2 JJ McCarthy. Completed half of his passes. That's not good! Averaged 21 yards a completion. We'll take it! Ohio State entered this game daring McCarthy to beat them and only amped up the dare after Corum went out. McCarthy beat them, first by firing a pure arm-strength back-foot laser to Cornelius Johnson on the hitch TD, and then finally, at long last, changing the angle on his deep shots to slow his guys up when they were open by a billion yards on long TDs to Johnson and Colston Loveland. In the second half Michigan turned to his legs on a few critical plays, and it's no coincidence that Donovan Edwards blasted for runs of a million yards once OSU started accounting for him.

Also, ayyyyyyyyyy:

1) Ball batted down by Zach Harrison, who gives him a stare down. McCarthy gives him a little point and takes out his mouth guard to say something.

Could've been pretty easy to be intimidated by that, but my bet is McCarthy was smiling about that / Harrison's stare down. pic.twitter.com/sFP18F90gZ

— Stephen Osentoski (@StephenToski) November 28, 2022

Did he just Fonzie an Ohio State defensive end? He did. Then he hugged Michigan's goalie in the middle of a hockey game. This man's vibe is Denard 2.0. Full 8 points. Screw it.

#3 Cornelius Johnson. Rope-a-dope, my friend. Certain members of the Michigan media who will go unnamed hyped up Johnson to the ends of the Earth entering this season and were raked over the coals for the incorrectness of said take, only for Johnson to rip through a tackle attempt on a 69-yard touchdown and turn an Ohio State safety into a smoking pile of ash on a 75-yard touchdown. All is forgiven. Full eight points. Screw it.

#4 Donovan Edwards. Give him a crack and he's gone. Toughed out a bunch of good second half runs with Stokes not up for it and OSU laying back more. Full eight points. Screw it.

Honorable mention: Spiritually everybody. Who was Michigan's worst player in this game? I don't know. Everyone gets a million billion points forever.

KFaTAotW Standings.

(points: #1: 8, #2: 5, #3: 3, HMs one each. Ties result in somewhat arbitrary assignments.)

51: Blake Corum (#2 CSU, #2 Hawaii, HM UConn, #1 Maryland, #2 Iowa. HM Indiana, T2 PSU, #1 MSU, T1 Rutgers, #3 Nebraska, #1 Illinois)
29: JJ McCarthy (#1 Hawaii, #2 UConn, HM Maryland, HM Iowa, #3 Indiana, HM PSU, HM MSU. HM Rutgers, #2 OSU)
23: The Offensive Line (#3 Iowa, #1 PSU, HM MSU, #3 Rutgers, #1 Nebraska)
18: Ronnie Bell (HM CSU, HM Hawaii, #1 UConn, #2 Indiana, HM PSU, HM Nebraska, HM Illinois)
17: Mike Morris (T3 Hawaii, HM Maryland, #1 Iowa, T1 Indiana, #3 PSU, HM Rutgers), Donovan Edwards (HM Hawaii, T2 PSU, T1 Rutgers, #4 OSU)
15:  Kris Jenkins (#3 UConn, T3 Hawaii, HM Iowa, T1 Indiana, #2 MSU, HM Rutgers, HM Nebraska)
14: Mazi Smith (#1 CSU, T3 Hawaii, HM Maryland, HM Iowa, HM MSU, HM Nebraska)
13: Mason Graham (HM Hawaii, HM Iowa, HM Indiana, #2 Nebraska, #2 Illinois)
12: Rod Moore(HM CSU, HM Indiana, HM MSU, T1 Ohio State)
11: Mike Sainristil (HM Maryland, HM Indiana, T1 Ohio State)
9: Cornelius Johnson (HM Hawaii, #3 Ohio State)
7: Gemon Green (HM UConn, T2 Maryland, HM PSU), Jake Moody (HM PSU, #3 MSU, #3 Illinois).
5: DJ Turner (T2 Maryland), Junior Colson (#3 CSU, HM UConn, HM PSU), Luke Schoonmaker (T3 Maryland, HM Iowa, HM Indiana, HM MSU), Michael Barrett (#2 Rutgers).
4: Eyabi Okie (HM CSU, HM Iowa, T1 Indiana).
3: Derrick Moore (HM CSU, T1 Indiana), Jaylen Harrell (HM CSU, T1 Indiana),
2: Roman Wilson (HM CSU, HM Hawaii), Max Bredeson (T3 Maryland), Joel Honigford (T3 Maryland),
1: Braiden McGregor (HM CSU), Makari Paige (HM Hawaii), Rayshaun Benny (HM Hawaii), AJ Henning (HM UConn), Caden Kolesar (HM UConn), RJ Moten (HM Maryland), Will Johnson (HM Rutgers), CJ Stokes (HM Nebraska), Andrel Anthony (HM Nebraska), Colston Loveland (HM Illinois)

Who's Got It Better Than Us(?) Of The Week

Donovan Edwards bursts between Oluwatimi and Zinter for a 75-yard capper, that was then capped.

Honorable mention: Said 85-yard cap of the capper. Cornelius Johnson wakes up the offense with a 69-yard TD. Cornelius Johnson is blitheringly wide open on a 75-yard TD. Colston Loveland catches a 45-yard TD. Pretty much all the long TDs.

?MARCUS HALL EPIC DOUBLE BIRD OF THE WEEK.

Blake Corum is clearly not right and exits after two carries. This likely costs him the Heisman.

Honorable mention: Stokes misses a huge cutback lane on his second carry, reinforcing feelings of doom. Stroud drops a dime to Harrison for a long TD. Michigan gets stuffed on a third and one Mullings carry. Most of the first quarter on offense.

1 hour and 26 minutes

We couldn’t do it at the Residence Inn Ann Arbor Downtown because Brian was on offspring duty. Note the distinct difference in comfort and quiet when you’re not at the Rez Inn.

We Couldn’t Have One Without the Other

We can do this because people support us. You should support them too so they’ll want to do it again next year! The show is presented by UGP & The Bo Store, and if it wasn’t for Rishi and Ryan there would be VERY long hiatuses between podcasts.

Our other sponsors are also key to all of this: HomeSure Lending, Peak Wealth Management, Ann Arbor Elder Law, the Residence Inn Ann Arbor Downtown, the University of Michigan Alumni Association, Michigan Law Grad,Human Element, Lantana Hummus and new this week introducing Ecotelligent Homes

---------------------------------

1. Michigan’s Quad

starts at 1:00

Michigan’s in Wichita, which doesn’t sting but c’mon MSU in Detroit? Previewing Montana, Houston, North Carolina. Don’t want to face SDSU (we don’t like zone teams with big fours!) but Houston looks capable of taking them out. Good draws otherwise: Michigan can run these PG-oriented teams off the line. UNC will be there if we make it to the Sweet 16—we like Providence more than the SEC mess. Ohio State-Gonzaga is a disagreement. Purdue against anybody but Nova.

2. Bad Bracket Opinions

starts at 22:40

Almost as bad as three of four ESPN analysts picking Michigan State as if they hadn’t watched every game (except the one) where they scraped by a mediocre team. Don’t take Oklahoma. We’re not picking against Clemson because of Donnal it’s because they lost a big man (which makes them play another Donnal).

3. Gimmicky Top Five: Bracket Outrages

starts at 44:37

Should Kenpom be on the teamsheets? Michigan-UNC Greensboro for the non-FBI national title. Not enough MSU schadenfreude. Too many weegionals. No regional in Anchorage. Tough for Saint Mary’s, not so tough on PSU and Notre Dame. Michigan State doof’s unbelievably bad KPI model, which doubles down on the worst parts of RPI and gets on the team sheets because Mark Hollis. Also Syracuse?!? The silly quadrants were important after all! Recommend Seth Barnes as the best ranking system.

4. Ace’s Hockey Podcast wsg David Nasternak

starts at 1:13:25

It is a visual, silent podcast. Death to posts. Michigan doesn’t look like they don’t belong on the ice with 1 seeds anymore. Quinn Hughes really coming into his own. Bench is tighter than under Berenson.

---------------------------------

MUSIC

• “P-Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up)”—Parliament
• “Knee Deep”—Funkadelic
• “Can You Get to That”—Funkadelic
• “Across 110th Street”

THE USUAL LINKS

• Helpful iTunes subscribe link
• General podcast feed link
• Direct download link
• What's with the theme music?

“SGA for the uneducated is Shai Gilgeous Alexander, who sounds more like a wizard I made up in DnD than any player since God Shammgod.”

10/21/2017 – Michigan 13, Penn State 42 – 5-2, 2-2 Big Ten

I'm still trying to figure out how this is a wicked burn [Patrick Barron]

Got a new mattress. Wife had been saying we should get one, and then I read this article about the crazy Online Mattress War between dudes who had gotten millions of dollars in affiliate sales as mattress reviewers and a leading mattress company that sued them. The company was kind of right that the mattress guys were not fully on the up and up, but neither was the company. The twist ending: company just bought the site and magically their problems were over, man.

Everyone wins, except the average Joe just looking for an honest mattress review. Insofar as that is possible. Which it's not for an idiosyncratic product that is supposed to hold up for years and years.

This article still convinced me that I should just buy a mattress online, because any industry that has people in that level of desperate hand-to-hand combat is a place where The Online is legitimately disruptive. Also I went into an Art Van once and felt like I needed a shower after I left. I bought one office chair. Guy said I was making an amazing choice buying this office chair. I had an incredible eye for office chairs. Nobody in the world could have picked out an office chair finer than the one I had just acquired, and at such a price. And so forth and so on.

So: I am sold that mattresses are vastly overpriced and open to disruption. Also I am the kind of person who would rather roll the dice on Amazon reviews than talk to someone who works on commission. So I went with the company at the beginning of the article that purveyed a mattress the vaguely shady review guy returned. They were not mentioned again and thus seemed to be more on the up and up than everyone else. I dislike angle shooters.

Here is an internet mattress. It comes in a white box that seems far too small for a mattress. After you hack through an Amazon's worth of plastic coverings to unroll it there is a final layer of protective covering. Pierce that with the steak knife you've commandeered and the mattress will take in a great gulp of air, like a drowning man who suddenly finds himself at the surface. Then you have a mattress.

It's springy. Good? I don't know? I slept on it. It was fine.

It is odd somehow, but that's probably not its fault. It's probably always odd to get a new mattress. It's doubly so for us since the monstrosity we are replacing is an old hand-me-down "pillow top" that's like a foot taller than this thing. The hand-me-down is the 1955 Buick of mattresses. It could double as a boat or siege weapon. You couldn't put it in a trebuchet unless you wanted to flatten something three feet away, but it would do quite well as a battering ram. Nice and roomy underneath. The padding above would mute the impacts of various rocks, arrows, and other sundry implements of murder being flung at your head. The tag you're not supposed to take off swears that flammability is not an issue. And when you get that thing going, momentum is going to take you right through that door. Have fun storming the castle!

Anyway, the placement of the reading lights in our bedroom now makes way more sense.

----------------------------------------------

The child—who goes by Denard Robinson Cook on the internet because I want his Google results to be his fault, not mine—lost his mind at this whole procedure. One of the great challenges of deploying the internet mattress was getting the little goober off the box spring long enough to simultaneously have a bed and an un-suffocated child.

He bangs the box spring and finds its texture pleasing. "BANG," he says, sort of. Getting the plastic off the mattress is a longer than expected, so he runs off to look at the old mattress, which is not in the spot it's been literally his whole life. "OH WOW," he says, distinctly and repeatedly. When the mattress arrived he pointed at the box and exclaimed "OH WOW" for two solid minutes, at varying levels of intensity. The intensity varied from much to lots.

Perhaps he has been raised to find beds and bedding to be a delight. Later I would discover that when my wife makes the bed there has evolved a certain strange ritual. There are four pillows, and after each is sheathed in its cover the wife will promise the child a "boof," which consists of whacking him surprisingly hard in the face with the pillow and throwing it on the bed. The child falls to the ground, cackling merriment, and gets up demanding to be boofed again.

After the pillows are all on the bed the child is thrown onto it, whereupon he flings himself onto every nook and cranny mutter-yelling "boof." Should an adult have the temerity to join the child on the bed, he or she will be shooed away. The child will cry "ah-weigh" until the offense is repaired, and then resume boofing itself.

This was the only part of the mattress procedure with an unpleasant whiff. It is now clear that the child enjoys throwing himself headlong at things, and having things hurled headlong at himself. He thus might want to play football, which is a sport of no account whatsoever that all thinking people rightly condemn.

AWARDS

Higdon, not Long above[Eric Upchurch]

Known Friends And Trusted Agents Of The Week

you're the man now, dog

#1 David Long? I guess? Long intercepted a pass on PSU's third drive, forestalling the beat down until the second half. He was considerably assisted in this endeavor by a Penn State miscommunication, but the other choices here are guys with under 50 yards of offense or other members of a defense that didn't do great. On a day when Michigan got bombed, just one tackle for Long is probably a good thing.

#2 Karan Higdon? Averaged three yards a carry and this felt sort of noble in the circumstances, with half his carries buried at the line by a defense with no respect for the pass and another fair chunk actually decent.

#3 Khaleke Hudson? I guess? TFL, PBU, and a QB hurry, whatever that means in the box score. Notably did not get torched by anyone unless my memory has failed me, which, thanks, memory. Doin' me a solid.

Honorable mention:

KFaTAotW Standings.

8: Devin Bush (#1 Florida, T2 Cincinnati, T2 Air Force, #1 Purdue)
5: Chase Winovich(#1 Air Force, #2a Purdue), Mo Hurst (#1 MSU, #2(T), Indiana), Karan Higdon (#1 Indiana, #2 PSU)
4: David Long (T3 Indiana, #1 PSU)
3: Mason Cole (#1, Cincinnati), Ty Isaac (#2, Florida, #3 Cincinnati), Lavert Hill(#2 MSU, T3 Indiana))
2: Quinn Nordin (#3 Florida, #3 Air Force), John O'Korn (#2 Purdue), Rashan Gary(T2 Indiana), Khaleke Hudson (T2 Cincinnati, #3 PSU).
1: Tyree Kinnel (T2 Cincinnati), Mike McCray(T2 Air Force), Sean McKeon(T3 Purdue), Zach Gentry (T3 Purdue), Brad Robbins(#3 MSU), Brandon Watson (T3 Indiana).

Who's Got It Better Than Us Of The Week

Michigan punches in a touchdown from the six by loading up in a three-TE set and manballing it in with power. This briefly saw Michigan come within a point and was the last event in the game that could be read as hopeful.

Honorable mention: David Long's INT; other touchdown; several plays on which PSU did not score a touchdown.

MARCUS HALL EPIC DOUBLE BIRD OF THE WEEK.

Quinn Nordin misses an extra point, which made it clear that it was about to be that kind of night.

Honorable mention: Most of the rest of the game. Saquon Barkley's opening touchdown rather stands out amongst the writhing mass of events. About one minute in to the game everyone was like "okay this is a huge loss," and they were eventually correct. Would rather that did not happen.

[After the JUMP: mattress SEO mattress links mattress reviews mattress coupons mattress mattress]