Ohio State 56, Michigan 27
Michigan had the pieces in place. The offensive gameplan produced passing yardage in chunks, led by a healthy senior quarterback throwing the ball as well as he had all season. They scored on the first drive. When Ohio State hit the defense with consecutive scores, the offense hit back. The deep corps of receivers were up to the task of beating a Buckeye secondary missing their slot cornerback.
But the Wolverines could not overcome their mistakes, and there were many. Quinn Nordin missed the initial extra point because the team's swinging gate frippery caused them to get set late in the play clock. Carlo Kemp and Aiden Hutchinson meticulously untied and removed OSU running back J.K. Dobbins's shoe in full view of an official who had no choice but to call a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct. A crossing route from Justin Fields to Garrett Wilson went for 41 yards because senior Khaleke Hudson got picked in man coverage. Three plays later, Dobbins juked inside Hudson for a six-yard touchdown and 21-13 lead.
the beginning of the end [Patrick Barron]
Shea Patterson led the offense back down the field, only to drop a good snap, and OSU's Robert Landers dove on the ball to kill a precious scoring opportunity. When it appeared Michigan had stopped the following Buckeye drive to stay within a possession, Hudson jumped offsides on a fourth-and-four punt. Wilson beat Vincent Gray on the very next play for a 47-yard gain and Dobbins ran in his third touchdown of the half from five yards out.
Again, the Wolverines shot themselves in the foot. Patterson quickly got the offense into a goal-to-go situation and appeared to have his second touchdown pass to Donovan Peoples-Jones, but an official correctly ruled the ball came loose as Peoples-Jones went to the ground. Down 15 points, Jim Harbaugh decided to send out Quinn Nordin for a 23-yard field goal. Ohio State would get the ball back to start the second half with a 28-16 lead.
Yet again, mental errors doomed the underdogs. Hudson lost contain on a 41-yard Dobbins run, then Cam McGrone hit Fields late out of bounds, which combined with a Lavert Hill holding call to give OSU a first-and-goal. On third down, Fields hit KJ Hill on a quick hook, and the decision to kick the field goal before the half became, fairly or unfairly, more difficult to defend.
The next few drives functionally ended the game. Ronnie Bell dropped a Patterson dart between two defenders on third-and-16 near midfield, giving Harbaugh little choice but to give it up, and Will Hart's punt barely made it into the end zone. After a serious knee injury scare, Fields reentered the following series with a knee brace and found Wilson alone in the back of the end zone; for the second time, senior safety Josh Metellus had let a receiver behind his zone for a touchdown.
suboptimal [Fuller]
Michigan got a little life when Wilson muffed a punt after a three-and-out, only for the offense to go three-and-out again, then see Harbaugh choose a 45-yard Nordin field goal to cut the OSU lead to 23 points. I began writing this post shortly thereafter.
The fourth quarter was academic. The Wolverines managed to get within 15 on a short Hassan Haskins touchdown run, but after the defense gave them a potentially critical stop, the offense fell short when Haskins was stuffed on a fourth-and-one wildcat keeper—on which he missed a huge hole. Four plays later, Fields connected with Austin Mack for a 15-yard touchdown. Dobbins added a fourth touchdown on a 33-yard stroll to break the 200-yard barrier. You probably stopped watching well before this.
The only drama left was whether the Buckeyes would exceed last year's 62-39 beatdown. By margin, they accomplished that. A great Ohio State team left little room for error. Michigan made many errors. The Buckeye win streak is at an OSU-record eight games, passing the seven-game run from 2004-2010. Now it's time for a familiar, exhausting song and dance.
[Hit THE JUMP for the box score.]
November 30th, 2019 at 4:19 PM ^
As someone who refuses to watch Ohio State play against anyone other than UM, the talent disparity on the two rosters was alarming... and UM recruits at a Top 10-ish level. I don't know how you "fix" that.
November 30th, 2019 at 4:23 PM ^
Everyone knows how to fix it. You stop acting high and mighty and put cash in a bag like everyone else who brings in top recruiting classes year after year. If you're in a bidding war, you increase your offer until you win. We have the pockets. We don't have the stomach.
I have no doubts our recruiting is not 100% clean. But it's not as unclean as it needs to be, and there is nothing unethical about paying players for their services.
November 30th, 2019 at 4:32 PM ^
It isn’t that man. Ohio State wins. They win big games. Success breeds success and kids want to play there. We had a chance to turn the narrative 3 years ago and just couldn’t finish it.
It is what it is now. It is football purgatory in some ways. It really does start to feel like, why bother continuing to follow this. We know how the book ends, and there is no reason to think that a different ending is coming.
What I can’t take, and what actually may drive me to not care anymore, are the mental errors. HUGE mental errors. Jim Harbaugh May know football, but he also may not be very smart. The amount of fucks up he has accumulated when OTHER TEAMS ARE PUNTING TO US is staggering. To me, that is the stuff that is fireable. Thanks wholly God that you forced a punt and set up a return. Other coaches seem to understand that is a win. Ours does not, and he does not learn from his mistakes. We are embarrassingly undisciplined, and OSU is completely nails, 100% of the time.
November 30th, 2019 at 5:09 PM ^
You are nuts if you don't think OSU is one long list of recruiting violations. Nobody ever used to amass talent like the big 4 teams do now. Especially redneck inbred schools like Clemson and Georgia.
OSU and Michigan have been historically elite. Nobody used to go every year never losing or losing once. Michigan is one of the 3 best teams in the country that actually plays college football. No team that does things like M does is going to beat the 4-5 professional teams.
November 30th, 2019 at 5:26 PM ^
We could have beaten Ohio State today man. The reason we were not leading today at halftime was because of us, not them. The extra point bullshit, the punt offsides, the embarrassing unsportsmanlike conduct, safeties running completely out of position, the crucial drop, two horrible Patterson running plays on first and fucking goal. We lost the game today not because of recruiting violations, but because once again the team fell apart on the field. They have more talent than we do, yes. They often did in the nineties to and we beat them half the time.
November 30th, 2019 at 7:15 PM ^
It’s nice to think that we are close enough to win if we can just clean up the errors, but I doubt it.
Dobbins was getting through the LOS every time he touched the ball, meanwhile we had to abandon the run complete. Especially in short yardage situations, that makes a massive difference.
For me, contrasting two plays pretty much summarizes the game: on one hand, Olave smoked Metellus for an easy TD. On the other hand, DPJ almost secured a TD but the DB (Arnette?) ripped it out.
We’ll win this game the day that Metellus can cover Olave deep, while DPJ is able to haul in the TD pass. Although these aren’t the only examples, they pretty much summarize the difference between our programs right now
November 30th, 2019 at 7:29 PM ^
We can't win regularly with the talent disparity, but we could win occasionally. We can't manage that, and in today's case it was horrible mental errors and dropped balls from NFL caliber WR's that helped the loss greatly
November 30th, 2019 at 8:48 PM ^
Yeah, I mean I guess we're splitting atoms at this point, but we had no chance today. OSU was fully weaponized in everything from the running game, the screen game, and the deep game. Of course mistakes don't help, but I am fucking tired of them being stacked at every position and us wringing our hands about how we could win if we could just play a perfect game.
December 1st, 2019 at 8:37 AM ^
Congratulations on having the honest, objective assessment. Interestingly, this is something coaching has a significant impact upon-teaching your kids to perform in those critical fractions of a second. Here, counter-intuitively, often it is over-coaching, that elicits these uneven results. Coaches can over-emphasize points so much that they actually cause players to freeze from fear of failure when the actual moment presents. The art of coaching revolves around both the teaching of the principle and the freeing of the player to make the play. (Watch Michigan basketball right now. It appears as though Coach Howard and his staff are in the elite category in this regard.) Everyone fails aplenty-how one responds to said failure is a huge difference-maker...and here, Michigan football has responded very poorly...they allow failure to snowball. They are decent front-runners but wilt under adversity...and this is what has shocked me most about Jim Harbaugh coached Michigan teams-no intestinal fortitude-NONE.
December 1st, 2019 at 10:39 AM ^
What are the coaches supposed to do, if the OSU player is pulling Nico's arm?
It's a pattern. Michigan executes early. THEN the weird calls/no calls start happening. Eventually the self-inflicted wounds take over and multiply.
If it walks like a rigged duck and quacks like a rigged duck I would need a lot of convincing this is actual college football. More of a rigged TV enterntainment product.
I don't care anymore - even the odds. Pay the recruits or we are not playing on the same field.
November 30th, 2019 at 6:39 PM ^
Excuses .....
November 30th, 2019 at 6:39 PM ^
Excuses .....
November 30th, 2019 at 5:52 PM ^
The talent disparity is vast - and it will widen if every UM star leaves after 3 years because they recruit more each year and then enough stay 4 or 5 years with their depth.
Name one position with more talent at UM?
November 30th, 2019 at 6:21 PM ^
WR. And yet our #1 wr drops 100 passes, including a TD, our high 4* runs a 9 yard route on 3rd and 10, and our best wr gets like 3 targets a game.
November 30th, 2019 at 7:32 PM ^
The Band?
November 30th, 2019 at 6:36 PM ^
sometimes w/ Harbaugh I wonder about CTE...
December 1st, 2019 at 12:52 PM ^
BS. Georgia, Clemson and Bama turned it around before they started winning. How? Ca$h that’s how. When Saban took over Bama they sucked as bad as M under RR and Hoke. Within 2 years they had the #1 recruiting class and started winning.
December 1st, 2019 at 12:52 PM ^
BS. Georgia, Clemson and Bama turned it around before they started winning. How? Ca$h that’s how. When Saban took over Bama they sucked as bad as M under RR and Hoke. Within 2 years they had the #1 recruiting class and started winning.
December 1st, 2019 at 6:14 AM ^
I don't think the stomach is the problem: 'Leaders and Best' isn't just a football jingle, we are a world class academic institution. That is the source of pride for the University, integrity not withstanding. That is the true spirit of Michigan, unlike other places where they just play school. Unfortunately, this is the reality for football right now; schools with lower academic standards, as well as those with other, lower 'standards', are going to have the upper hand until we can pay players legally. The answer is not to hire bagmen for us to recruit players like those kind of schools do. For one thing we're not like that; we wouldn't do it right! We would get caught and we would get burned, to the joy of every man, woman, and child who hates Michigan with a passion.
December 1st, 2019 at 8:50 AM ^
You stop acting high and mighty and put cash in a bag like everyone else who brings in top recruiting classes year after year.
Surely(not Shirley) you're being facetious. If you have proof to back up your claims, I'll listen.
Coaching matters. Recruiting matters. Training matters. OSU has the best strength and conditioning coach in the country, by far(Mickey Marotti). If Urban would come out of retirement(again) to coach UM, I have no doubt he would turn the program around in two, three years max. The talent level is not that far off, IMO.
December 1st, 2019 at 10:42 AM ^
Of course those things matter, no question.
That doesn't mean Urban would ever be able to replicate his formula here. Almost nothing about the environment he would be coaching in, is the same.
November 30th, 2019 at 4:23 PM ^
Damnit. What I DON'T know how to fix is this crappy website. Oh wait, yes I do. The solution is the same as the recruiting problem: money. Make it a pay site if you need to, but the site should be able to handle game day traffic.
November 30th, 2019 at 8:50 PM ^
I only come here to interact with all you guys. We could just as easily make a reddit sub and go take our frustrations over there
November 30th, 2019 at 10:17 PM ^
Do it.
November 30th, 2019 at 4:47 PM ^
The only success we had vs Ohio in the past 60 years, was when we took a rib of theirs, in Bo... he brought OSU guys with him, and the recruiting contacts, and more than half the team was stocked with Ohio players, who knew how important this game was....it forced them to keep up.... Mo was fired, and slowly over time we got less Ohio recruits / staffers, and they got stronger.... then we dropped ball further with RR... Hoke tried to get back into the state and did somewhat, getting guys like Charlton and Wormley.... not a coincidence he beat them. Harbaugh comes along and by that time Meyer was there, and with sanctions... if there ever was a time to get back in, was then. He didn't...and started taking California guys who would transfer after and had we won that game the refs stole from us on the 4th down, it probably would have turned the tide... notice when we brought Warinner in, with his contacts and knowledge, things picked up... We need to can Brown and bring in more Ohio staffers. Sounds superficial, but it isn't. A player from California will care less about the Game than an Ohio kid, who had to sacrifice everything to play here... watch that clip with the Borens, how they all said they only considered playing for one or the other...thats the only way we get back, when both sides get roughly the same top players....
November 30th, 2019 at 7:18 PM ^
You're not wrong, but literally Ohio's 10 best players are from out of state. Even they realize Ohio talent is a thing of the past. Dobbins, Young, Okudah, Fields - none are from Ohio.
November 30th, 2019 at 7:37 PM ^
Mattison was tired of losing. The damn turncoat. Then again, he coached at ND too.
November 30th, 2019 at 7:54 PM ^
Yeah, let's steal Mattison back.
November 30th, 2019 at 4:48 PM ^
The only success we had vs Ohio in the past 60 years, was when we took a rib of theirs, in Bo... he brought OSU guys with him, and the recruiting contacts, and more than half the team was stocked with Ohio players, who knew how important this game was....it forced them to keep up.... Mo was fired, and slowly over time we got less Ohio recruits / staffers, and they got stronger.... then we dropped ball further with RR... Hoke tried to get back into the state and did somewhat, getting guys like Charlton and Wormley.... not a coincidence he beat them. Harbaugh comes along and by that time Meyer was there, and with sanctions... if there ever was a time to get back in, was then. He didn't...and started taking California guys who would transfer after and had we won that game the refs stole from us on the 4th down, it probably would have turned the tide... notice when we brought Warinner in, with his contacts and knowledge, things picked up... We need to can Brown and bring in more Ohio staffers. Sounds superficial, but it isn't. A player from California will care less about the Game than an Ohio kid, who had to sacrifice everything to play here... watch that clip with the Borens, how they all said they only considered playing for one or the other...thats the only way we get back, when both sides get roughly the same top players....
November 30th, 2019 at 4:19 PM ^
The tragedy of this game is how much we shot ourselves in the foot independently of OSU doing anything. The missed XP. The dropped snap. The offsides on the punt. The drops. We could have easily gone in ahead or tied at halftime and it feels like a different game coming out.
Haskins missing that GIGANTIC hole on 4-and-1 finally broke me.
November 30th, 2019 at 5:33 PM ^
Yeah, the talent difference on the lines was real and perhaps enough to decide the game, but there were some obvious blown opportunities today that should have the coaching staff kicking themselves. The breakdowns across the roster on both sides of the ball were just tough to watch.
November 30th, 2019 at 8:03 PM ^
Those multiple “miscues” are also a function of talent difference. Players made those errors not coaches.
November 30th, 2019 at 4:20 PM ^
Can’t wait to see these guys sleepwalk through a garbage bowl game in late December
November 30th, 2019 at 4:20 PM ^
Stars matter.
For years OSU has always had the player or two that made the difference. Michigan has had a lot of good players, but there’s always a hole or two. This year? DT. It’s not a surprise, mind you. We knew it was weak going into the year, and Wisconsin shredded our DL.
Michigan just hasn’t had the players to match. And the players know they’re underdogs, because the over-excitement led to several back-breaking mistakes the team couldn’t afford.
Gattis’s game plan was outstanding. Chase Young was a non-factor, and Shea had open guys to throw to. Shea’s stats in the second half look terrible, but they are due in no small part to a boggling meltdown by the receivers as the game was slipping away, at least a half dozen galling drops.
But OSU is just a better program right now and I don’t see how this changes in the near future. Firing Don Brown would change the scheme, but it’s not going to make 4/5-star corners magically appear on the roster.
Honestly, we might just be stuck here hoping the NCAA NIL rights rules change, so that Michigan-supportive businesses can bring our personnel up to parity.
November 30th, 2019 at 4:57 PM ^
That's the thing - at some point you can't beat a juggernaut. Like, I'm watching Alabama play Auburn and the Tigers are winning because Alabama is worse than they were the past couple of games. Michigan had a gameplan that worked against everyone else, but OSU has continued an unprecedented run of domination that I just don't know what you can do against. I guess hope Ryan Day fucks it up somehow.
November 30th, 2019 at 5:15 PM ^
Take Fields out of the game like Tua and we would have won as well
November 30th, 2019 at 7:40 PM ^
Ah, no. We took him out for nearly a series and the backup moved the suckeyes down the field and Fields came in to score the td. They’re too stacked.
December 1st, 2019 at 6:20 AM ^
Really. If they wanted to they could have handed the ball off to JK every play and they would have steamrolled us. Or the second string back. Or the third. Aside from our miscues, I felt their O-line was the biggest difference in the game. And JK. Fields was good. Their secondary...sorry, I digress. Their O-line was as road gradier as they get.
December 1st, 2019 at 8:48 AM ^
Absolutely not. OSU could have chosen to not throw the ball at all and they still would have won. JK Dobbins was unstoppable and their Oline was pushing our guys around all day. Dominated.
November 30th, 2019 at 5:30 PM ^
To me, the only insurmountable talent difference in this game was on the DL. There was nothing Don Brown could possibly draw up to stop that run game. But there was absolutely nothing from a talent perspective stopping us from scoring more points than them.
It should have been tied at half time. Even after all the mistakes, it should have been an 8 point game if Haskins follows Bredneson on 4th and 1.
Watching this game, I don’t think the right takeaway is that the talent gap is the reason we’ve lost 8 in a row. The big difference is our players don’t make the plays that are right in front of them. These are not difficult plays. They are plays an average high school player could make. It’s just that the pressure is turned up to 100 and the mental block of having lost so many in a row.
November 30th, 2019 at 6:34 PM ^
There were a couple awful mistakes, yes, but great teams make mistakes, too. No team plays perfectly on every play. The reason those mistakes feel huge is because Michigan was under so much pressure because they almost never got defensive stops.
I imagine that if you hop into an OSU forum this evening you won’t find multiple people bringing up their muffed punt in every thread, nor the bad missed passes Fields was throwing early on. Why? They wasn’t crucial to the outcome because they outplayed us. Even last week, when OSU coughed up multiple turnovers, they won by double digits, because they are well coached and more talented.
The thing is, there’s some sort of talent issue every year. It’s a QB problem or a nickel corner problem or a DL problem. Only in 2016 did Michigan really have the same talent level, and even then our QB made multiple bad mistakes and our OL simply could not make first downs to protect a lead, and OSU’s offensive skill talent made the most of one vanishingly close bad ref call.
November 30th, 2019 at 6:41 PM ^
I think it's both. Our players absolutely made a lot of killer mistakes that torpedoed our chances. But even if we don't turn it over in their redzone, jump offsides, drop some catchable passes, make that right cut . . . it's not necessarily a Michigan victory, it's a close game. That's the thing. A mistake-free Michigan game still makes this only about a coinflip. OSU is so good right now that our margin for error against them is tiny.
November 30th, 2019 at 7:28 PM ^
The mental blocks are expected. They are the culture under harbaugh. Day goes for it early on 4th vs psu and they get and and it creates the play to win mentality. While we stick with the play not to lose schtick. Harbaugh is the problem because we are at his ceiling. Game has passed him by.
November 30th, 2019 at 5:34 PM ^
The change in the NIL rule does seem like Michigan's best hope. As much as they're on national television (ESPN, Fox, and ABC), players might be able to make more money in AA than in most places. That said, OSU is on national TV a lot too.
You're right, I think, to point to recruiting. Yes, Michigan made mistakes today. But you're not keeping pace as a program if you are a handful of mistakes away from being blown out. You will lose most years if that's the situation.
The truth is that there is no good answer as far as catching OSU. There is no remotely obvious change to make to the staff or to strategy. No coach who Michigan could realistically land will be better than Harbaugh. And we'd be hard-pressed to do better than Brown too.
As things are now, there is nothing to suggest that Michigan will catch OSU anytime soon. Strange things happen in life, so that's not a prediction. But it is, I think, a realistic assessment.
December 1st, 2019 at 12:51 AM ^
Sorry, NIL isn’t changing shit. Teams like OSU, Alabama, Clemson etc. will always find a loophole to pay their players more.
December 1st, 2019 at 6:23 AM ^
Hookers, dancers, cars. Man, makes me want to be recruited by OSU...
November 30th, 2019 at 7:22 PM ^
Your views align 100% with mine. Every year we think we can hide a weakness, but OSU usually finds it in the first quarter. The reason they can pick and choose what to exploit, is because they don’t have any real weakness themselves. Wanna attack our DL? No problem, Dobbins got it covered. Wanna Hit crossing routes? NBD. Deep balls? Got that too.
And yes, I also hope for some structural change from the NCAA because this is getting pretty old.
December 1st, 2019 at 6:29 AM ^
It's like they said during the broadcast, all 22 starters are potential pros. It is what it is. Furthermore, beating Michigan is HUGE in their culture. I don't know if it's an inferiority complex but they don't feel good about themselves if they aren't beating us. The Toledo Blade took a poll and asked what would they prefer most, beating Michigan but losing the National Championship or losing to Michigan and winning the National Championship. 40% voted for beating Michigan and losing the National Championship.
November 30th, 2019 at 4:24 PM ^
Harbaugh apologists need to come up with a number of years where this lack of production remains acceptable. When are we allowed to get upset about not beating Ohio State or winning a division, much less conference, championship? Is it 7 years? 8? An entire decade? Tell me when it becomes okay to be upset.
If I had Ohio State 4th and 4, I am telling my special teams unit to not even line up on the LoS, maybe an extra yard of space? I'm sending no pressure. It's a f'ing miracle that you convinced Ohio State to punt the football, and you screw it up. You screw up the coverage unit not downing it at the 1. Don Brown screws up the defensive scheme all day. You run the ball on 2nd & 11 so you can get it to what, 3rd & 10? Tell me how that makes conversion more likely. AND, you kick the field goal in the red zone AND you kick a FG to make it 42-19. That one is an all-timer. I dare you guys to defend that call. I get the numbers behind it, but the only way that makes sense is if you manage to shut out Ohio State for the remainder of the game, which we knew had a 0% chance of happening. Making the FG asinine. This guy cannot manage a game, which people in the national media like Klatt should know by now. But I'm sure they'll come up with excuses because Ohio State was so unfathomably dominant that Michigan had no chance before kickoff.
November 30th, 2019 at 6:58 PM ^
Bad game management to be sure, but UM defensively is outmatched in this game. That more than anything else is why UM was blown out.
There isn't anyone out there better than Harbaugh is for Michigan.
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