Michigan 33, Northwestern 7
If you surfed the Michigan fandom portion of Twitter.com at halftime of this game, you may have gotten the impression that this one was close at one point in time. Michigan held just a 10-7 lead at the long break, and though they had dominated the contest up to that point, tactical errors on offense inside the ten yard line and one ugly defensive bust left the 'Cats within striking distance at halftime. And Michigan Twitter, of course, had a very calm 20 minute break. The Wolverines came out of the half and marched down the field, scoring a TD, followed by a missed Northwestern FG. Two drives later, a Hassan Haskins TD run put Michigan up 24-7 and the game was more or less over. Despite the consternation at halftime, this game was not close.
Things got off to a sleepy start, with no points scored by either team in the first quarter. Michigan allowed just two Northwestern first downs on defense, while the Wolverine offense allowed a drive-ending sack on their opening possession and then failed to click in the downfield passing attack, which put an end to their second drive. Finally on the third drive for the home team, Michigan found their rhythm on the ground. Hassan Haskins and the mounds of meat in front of him moved the pile for an improbable 19-yard run, followed later by a strong AJ Henning carry off the edge, a shifty 3rd & 4 scamper by Blake Corum, and then Corum diving in for the game's opening score.
Not many issues from the defense today [MG Campredon]
A gang sack from Mike Morris, David Ojabo, and Aidan Hutchinson held the Wildcats to a three and out, and the offense went back to work, stitching together a long drive that frustratingly ran out of gas inside the five yard line. The culprit was questionable playcalling. On 2nd & Goal from the 4, Michigan decided to try and test the edge with AJ Henning, which was followed by a swing pass to Erick All. Both of which gained a lone yard, and after a timeout of contemplation, Jim Harbaugh kicked a FG from the two, and Michigan led 10-0.
The drive wasn't what Michigan wanted, but it was what occurred on the next two possessions that sent Michigan Twitter into meltdown. The first ugly run bust of the year happened on Northwestern's opening play of the next drive. The defensive tackles got moved too easily, Josh Ross and Junior Colson couldn't find the holes, RJ Moten let himself get consumed by a block, and Evan Hull took it 75 yard to the house. Suddenly, it was a 10-7 game.
There'll be more QB debate this week.... probably [Bryan Fuller]
The response from Michigan seemed promising. They moved the ball quickly, and with ease. A 16 yard catch and run by Erick All got Michigan to the nine with ~0:45 left in the half. That's when the offense hit the proverbial wall again. The timing on short passes to Schoonmaker and Sainristil were slightly off, and Corum gained three on his only carry. Oh, and the Sainristil pass saw the junior wide receiver fumble, recovered by Northwestern. The visiting team kneeled it down, and the UM lead was just 3 at the half. Commence the internet freak out.
[AFTER THE JUMP: The stuff that made the internet stop freaking out]
If there was anyone who seriously thought that NU had a shot, that conception should have been quickly dispelled by a dominant third quarter, one that saw Michigan outscore Northwestern 17-0 and put the game away. Corum's brilliance scored the first TD of the second half, and Northwestern's first drive saw the 'Cats threaten (in part due to a horrendous DPI call on DJ Turner II), but couldn't come away with points, as Charlie Kuhbander's FG attempt was wide left. NU's next drive was a three and out, followed by a Cornelius Johnson blocked punt that gave the Wolverines excellent field position. Three runs from Corum and Haskins later, and Michigan led 24-7.
Hassan Haskins = Pretty good [Campredon]
The final 20 minutes of play were less noteworthy. The Wolverines scored on their next two drives, a 44 yard Jake Moody FG and a four yard Haskins TD run, the latter set up on short field position thanks to a spectacular DJ Turner II interception. At this point, Michigan led 33-7. The defense continued to do its job, but a Donovan Edwards fumble and a Moody FG miss, his first miss in nine attempts, prevented the home team from pouring on any more points. Northwestern's final drive salted the clock away and the final score stood at 33-7.
In totality, Michigan outgained Northwestern 464-233. Their rushing game predictably sliced and diced the Wildcat defense, running 54 times for 294 yards, a 5.4 yards per rush clip. Corum and Haskins both had 100+ yard days, and both had two touchdowns apiece. The passing attack was more muted, with Cade McNamara going 20/27 for 129 yards, and JJ McCarthy finishing 3/5 for 34 yards. Erick All led the way in the receiving game, hauling in five passes for 34 yards. Michigan seemed hesitant to test the Northwestern secondary, which made sense given the weakness of NU's front seven (which I outlined in FFFF), and the generally solid coverage that their secondary was playing.
Defensively, Michigan's pass rush was tremendous, constantly subjecting Ryan Hilinski to fire, and helping to hold him to just 14/29 with an INT. Aidan Hutchinson dominated RT Ethan Wiederkher, and fire came from plenty of other places on the line, too. The run defense was strong, outside of the one disastrous bust: subtract that one run, and Michigan held Northwestern to 25 yards on 22 attempts (sacks included). The defense struggled with screen passes early, but began to lock in on them once it became the predictable playcall for nearly every 3rd down situation. The defense as a unit forced two turnovers, a fumble and the spectacular interception by DJ Turner II. It was Turner's best collegiate game by a wide margin.
Another strong game from the special teams [Campredon]
As usual, Michigan was decisively better than their opposition in special teams. Moody went 2/3 on FGs and was perfect on XP attempts. AJ Henning had a nice punt return, and of course Johnson's punt block was a major story. Meanwhile, NW went 0/1 on their FG attempts.
Michigan is now 7-0 for the first time since 2016 and just the second time in the past fourteen seasons. They will head northwest to face a fellow 7-0 squad, rival Michigan State, for a massive tilt next weekend. That game is slated to begin at noon eastern on Fox. Buckle in, gang.
October 23rd, 2021 at 5:13 PM ^
During the 3rd quarter, I remarked to myself that I hadn't said his name yet, and I love to, as my son has classmates named Jackson and Saxon and he gets pissed off when I tell him that he needs one named Daxton. What do you know, on the next play Dax made a hit. My guess is Northwestern schemed away from him.
October 23rd, 2021 at 4:59 PM ^
All I really hoped for today was a win and no serious injuries. Looks like we were 2 for 2.
The downfield passing game needs to get more in sync though.
October 23rd, 2021 at 5:05 PM ^
If you surfed Twitter
Why the frick would I do that to myself.
October 23rd, 2021 at 5:17 PM ^
Another solid win. Not going to complain today about being 7-0 and headed for a Top 10 showdown against Staee next week. It doesn't get much better than this as a fan. Nice seeing PSU go down too. Life is good.
October 23rd, 2021 at 5:18 PM ^
When this season is over, I think we'll realize how good this is. That is, we'll realize that we beat Northwestern and Rutgers (and maybe Indiana & Maryland) with our basic offense. Our playcalling was vanilla to a point that it was tough to watch (especially in the redzone) yet we still trampled them. That's a sign of a good team. Obviously need to hit the deep balls at a higher clip but I'll reserve judgement there until after next week. But for now, we're 7-0, have only played 1 actually close game (Rutgers was close on the scoreboard, but we really did beat them thoroughly otherwise). Can't wait to see what the staff has put together for what should be a MONSTER game next week. With Penn State looking weak, there's a decent chance that this team we predicted to be a bit rough could go 11-1.
October 23rd, 2021 at 8:16 PM ^
I sincerely hope to eat crow here, but people always say the play calling is "vanilla" or "simple" because they're holding stuff back for MSU and OSU. But then when Mich plays those teams, the play calling is often more vanilla...
October 23rd, 2021 at 9:55 PM ^
The playcalling wasn't vanilla today. And that was the problem. We got too cute with jet sweeps and screens and frippery in the red zone. Just give it to the stud RBs and crush them (which we did in the second half). We twice had third and goal from the 3 and instead of running twice which would have been TDs 98% of the time, we threw screens that didn't work.
Cade threw 24 passes in the first half. That was almost his season high for a game against a team that can't stop the run. We weren't vanilla enough in the first half and then got back to what we do well in the second half.
And that was Cade throwing just 3 (!!!) times! (he had only 3 official attempts, he did throw twice more - one a PI and one the illegal man downfield). Two of which were on the 3 and out. So the one time they went "not vanilla" and threw on first down, they went three and out. The rest of the time they just ran all over them.
October 23rd, 2021 at 11:19 PM ^
Yeah. All that passing against team that decent D is backfield & run D is atrocious. Almost as if practicing for a team that’s kind of the reverse* next week or something…
*sadly, not atrocious in D backfield, but weaker part of their D for sure.
October 24th, 2021 at 9:10 AM ^
When this season is over, I think we'll realize that we beat Northwestern and Rutgers (and maybe Indiana & Maryland) with our basic offense.
That maybe true, but I personally won't care if we still lose to OSU 60-28. We must find a way to be competitive in that game and this style of offense won't do it. You don't see OSU with a vanilla game plan because they don't want to show their hand. I think the number of plays we save for big games is overrated. A few wrinkles is one thing. An entire game plan style is another. They aren't hiding this wide open offense because they want to save it for OSU. They aren't running it because either they are not capable of it or the coaches don't know how to run it. JH wants to win and he's doing what he thinks is necessary to win. Unfortunately this is one of my problems with JH. This style is great for consistently winning 8-10 games against teams with inferior talent, but it will never match up with OSU and Day's offensive playmakers. And, UM will never attract those offensive playmakers with this style. So, it's doomed to keep repeating itself.
October 23rd, 2021 at 5:23 PM ^
This game next week is the season. Win and 10 wins is well within reach. Lose and . . . I don’t really want to think about that.
October 23rd, 2021 at 10:05 PM ^
10 wins is still well within reach even with a loss. Did you see PSU today? That said, win and 11 is well within reach (likely even?). Let's win it.
October 23rd, 2021 at 5:24 PM ^
Happy for the win, but still concerned with the passing game. McNamara's completion percentage is good, but his down field passing was not. He struggled to complete anything down field. It's hard to say if that's on him, the WR, the play calling, etc. I really think we're missing a true #1 WR. UM also seems a bit predictable on offense. I hope it's purposefully vanilla for a NW team that they didn't need it against. But, there seems to be only either very short passes or deep throws and not a lot in between. I'm also not seeing a lot of RPO or play action or anything that puts the defense in a difficult spot. Anyways, onward. Beat State!
October 23rd, 2021 at 5:44 PM ^
Commence the hate
October 23rd, 2021 at 5:51 PM ^
Twitter isn’t a real place :)
October 23rd, 2021 at 9:36 PM ^
Oh it’s real…but it’s not spectacular.
October 24th, 2021 at 12:51 AM ^
Heaven is...
Heaven is a place...
A place...
October 23rd, 2021 at 6:04 PM ^
We played about as well in the first half as in the second, but the two flukish plays in the first half (run bust, fumble) went against us whereas the three flukish plays in the second half (FG miss, blocked punt, pick) all went our way. This was a routine win despite the halftime score: we were expected to dominate at the line of scrimmage, and we did.
October 23rd, 2021 at 6:11 PM ^
Game recap focused on dummies on Twitter. I don’t get it. If Twitter is so dumb, and I’m sure it is, then why make it a focus?
October 23rd, 2021 at 6:17 PM ^
Michigan fans have a (somewhat understandable) tendency to underrate the significance of simply taking care of business against teams you should beat. Can't take games like this for granted--just ask that team in Happy Valley. Another strong performance by our boys, who never got lethargic or mopey even when things briefly got frustrating and weird
October 23rd, 2021 at 7:08 PM ^
Michigan fans have a (somewhat understandable) tendency to underrate the significance of simply taking care of business against teams you should beat. Can't take games like this for granted--just ask that team in Happy Valley.
I think there's more to it than that. The offense is scoring about 30 pts per game against conference foes. PSU and MSU are not doing much better, if at all. But, OSU puts up 50+ pts against conference foes. Seems like vintage JH...beating up on the bottom half of the league, but potential to disappoint against good teams, which tend to be on the back half of our schedule each year. Personally I'd prefer to drop a game here and there against a bad team if that means you're more explosive and have an opportunity to beat a team like OSU. He seems very adverse to take chances on offense. JH's tenure at UM shows a progressively worse records from Sept to Oct to Nov unfortunately. He won't silence his critics unless he's competitive with OSU and/or beats everyone else.
October 23rd, 2021 at 7:13 PM ^
A good performance by a team coming off a bye, and I'm excited to see how they look against MSU. The running game seems to be rounding back into form and the defense looks capable of traveling well.
October 23rd, 2021 at 7:15 PM ^
I get that folks want to see the passing game improve but the running game is super fun. This team has a chance to have two 1000 yard rushers at the end of season which would be incredible.
October 23rd, 2021 at 7:28 PM ^
JJ undoubtedly has the higher ceiling, he's the guy who can make chicken salad out of chicken shit. Cade is a consistent diet of chicken broccoli bake (IYKYK) I'll die on the hill that chicken broccoli bake was Perfectly Acceptable Fare, but at some point you will want to expand your palatte and we just have to trust that the coaches will pick the right time to do so, since they see everything we do and then some.
October 23rd, 2021 at 9:41 PM ^
I just have a feeling that we’re going to see JJ running around the backfield one day, but instead of a 4th and 3 conversion to a TE , we’ll see a 20 yard sack. But maybe I’m just risk averse.
October 23rd, 2021 at 7:30 PM ^
I thought start playing a drinking game where I drink every time Aiden is held, but I’d never finish the game. NW tackle would just bear hug him at times.
October 23rd, 2021 at 7:35 PM ^
I thought start playing a drinking game where I drink every time Aiden is held
Are you TRYING to destroy your liver?
October 23rd, 2021 at 8:42 PM ^
The liver is evil and needs to be punished, but this would be too much. Even for someone with my skills
October 23rd, 2021 at 7:50 PM ^
That definitely seemed to be NU's game plan, just do an arm-bar on him, but don't grab any jersey. It worked great as there wasn't a single NU offensive holding penalty all game, which is just absurd. It will be interesting to see if msu will try to employ the same tactic. Hopefully, the conference will put out the word for officials to look for it.
October 23rd, 2021 at 8:22 PM ^
Hopefully, the conference will put out the word for officials to look for it.
Sweet summer child...
October 23rd, 2021 at 7:30 PM ^
Those damned swing passes never worked for us.
October 23rd, 2021 at 7:46 PM ^
Two observations...One, it was pretty embarrassing for Klatt and Johnson when they were gushing over the new trophy and called it the "Hewett" trophy instead of the "Jewett" trophy. Two, it was clear that there was a conversation at halftime about what types of plays would be called in the red zone...and that the 2nd half the game plan would be to give it to Haskins and Corum. No matter what you think of UM's offense (or QB), those last 2 drives of the first half featured the most ludicrous play-calling that I can remember. Haskins gained yards on the first play of the first drive (at the 10), and never saw the ball again, and they hadn't stopped either him or Corum in the first half. You salt the game away there, with your bread and butter play, then you come out and take chances in the 2nd half, when you're up by 20. Even the QBs on the Fox show knew that much.
October 23rd, 2021 at 8:39 PM ^
No matter what you think of UM's offense (or QB), those last 2 drives of the first half featured the most ludicrous play-calling that I can remember.
I hope the play where they start a guy in motion and then swing pass it to him, is going to set up something different in the future, because my goodness is it predictable.
October 24th, 2021 at 3:59 PM ^
they start a guy in motion and then swing pass it to him, is going to set up something different in the future, because my goodness is it predictable.
...or you do it because it is a simple read, telling you if the defense is in man or zone coverage. If it's man, throw it to him, if zone, read the coverage and find the open window.
October 24th, 2021 at 12:56 AM ^
called it the "Hewett" trophy instead of the "Jewett" trophy.
Tell it to John Ross.
October 23rd, 2021 at 8:12 PM ^
NOW we turn attention to Michigan State.
Go, Blue. Beat MSU.
October 23rd, 2021 at 8:42 PM ^
Solid, thorough win by Michigan. A few points of frustration in Q2 as UM was far superior, but this team keeps grinding.
Big game in EL next week. Go Blue!
October 23rd, 2021 at 8:42 PM ^
I liked this game for no other reason than, for once, both teams were in their standard uniforms. No blue pants, no graphite gray, no all-white Casper the friendly ghost nonsense, no frippery, just two teams looking exactly the way they should look. Not only is it right, it's aesthetically pleasing.
October 23rd, 2021 at 9:45 PM ^
After 7 weeks:
Michigan has the #2 Scoring Defense.
Michigan has the #5 Rushing Offense.
Pretty damn great, boys.
October 23rd, 2021 at 10:32 PM ^
Gattis out.
October 24th, 2021 at 12:53 AM ^
Just here to note that Aiden Hutchinson was held on Every. Fucking. Play.
Is that how it works?
If you're a star they let you do it?
October 24th, 2021 at 10:20 AM ^
Apparently it is, but it wasn't just him being held. Blatant holds right in front of the official all game.
October 24th, 2021 at 7:41 PM ^
The Nebraska game was even worse.
October 24th, 2021 at 9:00 AM ^
Here's to hoping the LSU or USC grad with a Michigan graduate degree decides this week would be a great time to call Mel Tucker about job openings at a prestigious P5 school....
October 24th, 2021 at 9:50 AM ^
I get a lot of 2018 vibes from this team. Winovich was the locker room outspoken leader and made lots of big plays. Hutch is that guy now. Bush was the leader in the LB area. Ross is that guy, only not as good. Dax Hill is our Lavert Hill. McNamara is a poor man's Patterson. He doesn't make as many plays as Patterson, but plays a lot like Patterson in 2018 where he wasn't asked to throw a lot. Corum has a lot of similarities to Higdon. The two lines are very similar. A few differences is we don't have a David Long, but we do have a Haskins. I see this team beating a lot of teams. They'll probably drop some game somewhere whether to MSU, PSU, or some random. And, they'll probably get blown out by OSU because they just can't stop that offense or score enough points to stay in it. But, there's a lot of 2018 vibes of this team. Lots of leadership, consistent QB play that doesn't throw a lot, great running game, good team chemistry, but lacks the offensive power to stay with elite offenses.
October 24th, 2021 at 3:50 PM ^
Yeah, although the sense we get (being outside the locker room) is this team probably has better chemistry. Cade is cocky in his own way, but not as flashy as Patterson; but he's also less inclined to making poor decisions.
I think this offensive line is performing better, the RB combo is probably better, and the defense is generally more sound. It's going to be an interesting ride...
October 24th, 2021 at 4:09 PM ^
Yeah, it's not perfect, but we also don't have DPJ or Gary. But, there are a lot of similarities with Wino/Hutch, Hill/Hill, Ross/Bush, Higdon/Corum, & Patterson/McNamara and the strong running game and good defense. I think 2018 was a better defense however and probably more talented team overall. Hopefully Stroud doesn't shred us the way Haskins did, but I fear he will.
October 24th, 2021 at 10:47 AM ^
Generally it seems like to me that, at least on offense, this team runs a pretty vanilla (our talent will be better than yours) game plan when we think we have an "easy" game (see Rutgers for more evidence of this).
I think this team absolutely overlooked NW in anticipation of MSU next week. I expect we'll see a much more polished Cade and dynamic play calling next week.
I would also expect the Maryland (and possibly Indiana) game to be back to vanilla. Just a guess on my end, but its hard to get a sense of the Cade roller coaster and dreadful play calling against inferior opposition without something like this going on.
October 24th, 2021 at 3:40 PM ^
I'm not for changing QBs at this time, and I know you can't really work on throwing mechanics during the regular season (and I know Harbaugh doesn't like messing with those too much), but...that snapshot above of Cade throwing the ball is a bit concerning:
his elbow is below the shoulder line and his front foot (and knee) are pointing parallel to (or behind) the LOS, which would mean he's throwing a swing pass, he'd be throwing across his body. Would have to see the rest of the motion though to see how much he opened up,
October 24th, 2021 at 3:40 PM ^
[double post]
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