12/2/2023 – Michigan 26, Iowa 0 – 13-0, 9-0 Big Ten, Big Ten Champs

Two years ago this game was a coronation, a delight, a confection. Michigan broke out a halfback pass in the first half, and a reverse that went a billion yards, and sort of exuberantly leaned on Iowa until they capitulated in the second half. Michigan's lead at halftime in that game: 11.

Michigan's lead at halftime in this game: 10. It wasn't more largely because Colston Loveland dropped a pass at his facemask while a couple yards clear of the coverage, set to run a great distance down the sideline. But things felt different.

I believe it was Matt Hinton who said that Michigan fans almost didn't care about getting shredded by the Georgia buzzsaw because everything after Ohio State was gravy. As someone who attended that game and was in largely Georgia section, the "almost" is doing some work in that sentence. But it is largely correct. The disappointment faded quickly, replaced with a lingering sunset of beating Ohio State and winning the Big Ten.

Two years later, there is still that lingering sunset, yes. Especially given all the nonsense surrounding this year's edition of The Game. You KNOW I am sensitive to winning against Ohio State for the third year in a row.

But!

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

Michigan is not staring down the Soon To Be Philadelphia Eagles this time around. Georgia looked kind of off kilter much of the season and lost to Alabama, which means the SP+ rankings of the teams in the playoff look like this:

1. Michigan
6. Texas
7. Alabama
11. Washington

Texas is 7.5 points adrift of Michigan. Alabama is 8.4. Washington is 13.7. I do not quite believe this, largely because Penn State ranks 4th and Michigan is getting credit for stuffing them in a locker when pretty much any top-ten defense would have done the same. Vegas installed Michigan as a mere two-point favorite over Alabama, so they don't either. But this is a huge departure from what usually happens these days, which are lines that hew so closely to SP+ projections that Bill Connelly occasionally crabs about it on Twitter. Usually the numbers are good enough to get Vegas in line, but maybe not when the numbers would install Michigan more than a TD favorite right after Alabama beat Georgia.

Or you could visualize it like this:

Every single way you can systematically evaluate college football teams has Michigan a sizable favorite to win the national title. Connelly's numbers have it 50/50 between Michigan and the field. The reasons you would not believe those numbers range from misunderstandings of the way Michigan plays football (with maximum contempt for most opponents) to legitimate but probably not sufficient to close the gap. That latter is primarily Zak Zinter's injury.

In short: it all happened. There was a month-long storm of nonsense in the middle of it but nothing could knock Michigan off their perch. At the beginning of the year, it looked like The Year:

Every single one of us has stared grimly at the wall wondering if it would ever happen. Well. Here it is. It might not happen, by by God they're gonna try.

Let's go name some wild dreams, on three.

Even in the most optimistic world this is still a coinflip for immortality. Heads or tails?

AWARDS

Known Friends and Trusted Agents Of The Week

[Patrick Barron]

you're the man now, dog

#1 Mike Sainristil. Two(-ish) forced fumbles leading to turnovers, a near-interception, and a postgame interview that caused Mark Ingram to exclaim "oh, you polished!" Running for Senate in the future. Or maybe becoming Michigan's head coach down the road.

#2 Semaj Morgan. Did one(1) thing, and then let a couple of punts drop that were questionable decisions. But did the thing, and if people were joking about 3-0 being game, 10-0 really was game.

#3 Junior Colson. A billion tackles at the line of scrimmage… and pass breakups? Filing under Played Iowa. But still! But filing under played Iowa.

Honorable mention: Cornelius Johnson had many catches for not many yards. Mason Graham, Kris Jenkins, and Kenneth Grant stuffed the ground game. Jaylen Harrell had a TFL and a PBU; Braiden McGregor had a strip-sack that Grant recovered.

KFaTAotW Standings.

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

53: JJ McCarthy (#1 ECU, #1 UNLV, #2 Rutgers, HM Nebraska, #2 Minn, #1 IU, #1 MSU, HM PUR, HM PSU, #1 OSU)
29: Kris Jenkins (HM ECU, T2 UNLV, #1 BGSU, HM Rutgers, #1 Neb, HM MSU, T2 OSU, HM Iowa)
28: Mike Sainristil (T3 ECU, HM BGSU, #1 Rutgers, HM IU, HM MSU, #1 MD, #1 Iowa)
25: Mason Graham (HM ECU, T2 UNLV, #1 Minn, HM IU, HM MSU, T2 MD, T2 OSU, HM Iowa) 
22: Blake Corum (HM ECU, HM UNLV, #2 BGSU, HM Rutgers, HM Neb, HM IU, #1 PSU, HM MD, #3 OSU)
21: Kenneth Grant (T3 ECU, T2 UNLV, #2 PSU, T2 MD, T2 OSU, HM Iowa)
14: Roman Wilson (T2 ECU, HM UNLV, HM BGSU, #3 Nebraska, #2 PUR), Mike Barrett (HM UNLV, T3 Rutgers, #2 IU, T1 PUR, HM MD, HM OSU)
13: Colston Loveland (HM Rutgers, T3 IU, T2 MSU, HM PUR, HM MD, #3 OSU)
11: AJ Barner (HM BGSU, HM Neb, HM Minn, T3 IU, T2 MSU, HM PSU),
11: Braiden McGregor(T3 UNLV, #2 Nebraska, T1 PUR, HM Iowa)
10: Will Johnson(#3 Minn, #3 PUR, HM PSU, #3 OSU), Jaylen Harrell (HM UNLV, HM BGSU, HM IU, T1 PUR, #3 OSU, HM Iowa)
9: Junior Colson (#3 BGSU, T3 Rutgers, HM MSU, #3 Iowa)
8: Cornelius Johnson (T2 ECU, HM UNLV, HM BGSU, HM Minn, HM Iowa)
7: Derrick Moore (T3 UNLV, HM Neb, HM MSU, T1 PUR),
5: Tommy Doman (HM ECU, #3 MD, HM OSU), Semaj Morgan(#2 Iowa)
4: Ernest Hausmann (T3 ECU, T3 Rutgers), Max Bredeson (HM Rutgers, HM Neb, T3 IU), Josiah Stewart (HM Minn, T1 PUR), The Offensive Line (HM Minn, #3 PSU),
3: Donovan Edwards (HM ECU, HM PSU, HM OSU)
2:  Josh Wallace (T3 ECU), Semaj Morgan (HM Rutgers, HM PUR), Rod Moore (HM PUR, HM OSU), Quinten Johnson (HM Rutgers, HM OSU)
1: Tyler Morris (HM UNLV), Kalel Mullings (HM Minn),Keon Sabb (HM Minn), Ben Hall (HM IU), Rayshaun Benny (HM PSU), Cam Goode (HM MD), James Turner(HM OSU)

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

Semaj Morgan sets a Big Ten championship game record for longest punt return:

Honorable mention: Sainristil forces two fumbles, the second of which sends Brian Ferentz into a conniption fit. Nobody gets hurt.

MARCUS HALL EPIC DOUBLE BIRD OF THE WEEK

Colston Loveland drops a pass midway through the second quarter, turning a catch and run down to the 30—maybe 20—into a punt and causing Consternation amongst the Faithful.

Honorable mention: Barner drops a pass on third and thirteen that would have set up first and goal inside the five. McCarthy nearly throws an INT on a ball well behind Loveland. A Tommy Doman punt is possessed by the spirit of the corn and bounces ten yards backwards instead of ten yards forwards.

NICK SAMAC PATHETIC DOUBLE BIRD OF THE WEEK

Big Ten commissioner Tony Pettiti congratulates the conference champions with a memorable speech: "…"

Dishonorable mention: The CFP committee excludes a 13-0 conference champion in favor of a team that barely escaped 6-6 Auburn a week ago.

OFFENSE

this was probably for three yards [Paul Sherman]

A day dominated by one consideration. JJ McCarthy was 22/30 in this game and still managed just 4.9 YPA. Do you know how hard that is? It is very hard. Michigan receivers had a long of 14 yards. Cornelius Johnson averaged 7.1 yards a catch on nine catches. There were zero deep shots of any variety, zero cover-two hole shots, and just one ball anywhere near an Iowa defender, that an attempt to hit Loveland that was thrown well behind him.

This gameplan was "do not turn the ball over and we win."

I'm not concerned that JJ won't be aggressive enough against Alabama, FWIW. I don't think the guy who was ready to dial up a shot back across his body to Cornelius Johnson in the fourth quarter against OSU is going to be in a shell in a game where Michigan will need to dial it up to win. He's been very good about reading the room this year and doing what's best for the W.

A big part of that YPA. This isn't quite "you can't do that against Iowa" but you can't do that against Iowa:

And the final example of some voodoo doll bs going on:

Colston Loveland has the best hands of any TE in the league, and there’s plenty of video evidence to back that up.

He’s wide open, JJ puts it on the money, and there’s lots of yards after catch ahead of him. Maybe a TD.
pic.twitter.com/O0Melm1WHD

— Due# (@JDue51) December 4, 2023

If Loveland doesn't drop that it looks like a desperation ankle tackle by the DB or he's inside the 20.

Stripes Hate Trente Jones. Second consecutive week that Trente Jones gets hit with a ludicrously weak holding call when JJ McCarthy breaks the pocket and Jones has an infinitesimal moment between realizing the defensive end is chasing JJ outside and letting go of the dude. In these situations you might stop and re-evaluate these plays and come to the conclusion that there is something Jones is doing to draw these calls, or you could watch them again and issue refs –3. This is what I am doing in the cold light of day, especially given what we see happen to the Michigan DL on a weekly basis.

The Jones hold was consequential: it turned a first and ten around the Iowa 40 into second and seventeen. Michigan tossed another short pass, this one to Peyton O'Leary for some reason, and then faced third and twelve.

These are the two events that made first half offense seem bad. Michigan drove the field for a FG on their first drive and probably attempts to convert on fourth down if playing anyone but Iowa. Second drive starts on the five. Third drive is the one with the hold. Iowa gets a three and out on the next drive, and the two minute drill features the Loveland drop. Margins are thin against a team like Iowa, and Michigan had some big errors stall them out.

Probably not a thing you'd expect to recur since we have a season of data suggesting it won't.

[Barron]

What are we doing with Donovan Edwards? There were a number of plays on which Iowa showed man-to-man coverage with Edwards split out. Edwards invariably motioned back into the backfield when this happened. They never took a shot at Edwards, or even looked him up on a slant.

Even more frustrating were times when Iowa would show and run man coverage and Edwards would leak out of the backfield and sit down in front of a linebacker. One angle route there and Edwards is running for a million yards. I don't know; it just seems like something is off with him. And the coaches.

Here’s another example of some weird juju.

What is Donovan even doing? Trippin on shrooms?

100% positive he didn’t know the play.

I feel certain we won’t see weird stuff like this against Bama. pic.twitter.com/GXm16SHEXA

— Due# (@JDue51) December 4, 2023

He's barely been used in the pass game. #1 must fix before the 'Bama game. Alabama has lockdown corners; Edwards needs to be a factor.

[Barron]

Orji + Mullings + Edwards: let's go. Look I'm just saying that Bama gave up 300 yards rushing to an Auburn team that had no threat of the pass but did run the QB a bunch. We got a month to install the single wing, let's go.

You can't get away with that against Iowa. Michigan covered a slot receiver a couple of times; on the second they threw a flare screen to Corum. On both plays the Iowa DB over Wilson was crashing the line of scrimmage on the snap, because Wilson cannot go downfield. Wilson picked up a holding call on the second.

Maybe there are defenses out there that won't notice a covered slot. Iowa is not one of them.

Wilson: not Bell. Michigan has to stop running plays where they expect Roman Wilson to be a tiny tight end. Every single time they tried it in this game they just added someone to the box and Wilson did not get an effective block. I didn't like this even when it was Bell; Wilson is smaller and less experienced at attempting to get blocks in the box.

DEFENSE

large man has ball [Barron]

No? I got nothin' here. I mean, we were back to first-half snaps for DJ Waller and Amorion Walker in this one. When Michigan plays bad offenses at the beginning of the season it's still kind of interesting because there are new guys working their way into the lineup, second- and third-year players who might make a leap, etc. When you play the worst offense in college football in game 13 the mission is to not get hurt. Mission accomplished.

I do have a couple things.

A daring overturn. The officials ruled the second Sainristil forced fumble an incomplete pass on the field, and then they went to commercial. When we came back, Michigan had the ball and Brian Ferentz was stalking the sideline like Biff The Wolverine, having lost his damn mind at the overturn. He was given a penalty.

I'm kind of with Ferentz here? In my zaprudering of that play it seems like there's a couple frames in which Hill's hand is coming forward, so for the replay official to overturn the call on the field instead of doing the default cop-out "stands" is extremely strange. We go from this:

To this:

There's a period of time where the ball is moving forward and then Hill cocks it back to throw, stalling out the motion of the ball, and again it seems like there's a frame or two where it's moving forward before Sainristil gets it. It is not at all clear that Sainristil got it, and in that case you just let it stand. To overturn it is, uh, bold.

I don't think the recovery aspect of the play is nearly as controversial. It hits the ground, ref signals incomplete, and nobody has a prayer of recovering the ball except Wallace, who grabs it. That's fine. But overturning a 50/50 call is odd.

The bigguns. Michigan actually got to run their "base" defense in this game, what with Iowa doing two TEs a lot. Michigan added a DT to the equation and clubbed the Iowa run game.

This may be relevant for the Rose Bowl . Bama has three mediocre TEs who have about 1200 snaps between them. Their most-used player, OL JC Latham, has 808 snaps. I calculate that Bama averages 1.44 tight ends per snap. If Bama does not deviate that means that about 44% of the time Michigan gets to chuck a bonus DT on the field while Alabama puts on a worse player.

A dollar says that Bama dumps ~all of their 2TE sets. If don't it should be advantage M.

Good job, team. Next.

SPECIAL TEAMS

[Barron]

It was over when. It was kind of over when Michigan kicked a field goal to go up 3-0. It was very over after Semaj Morgan summoned the Ghost of Breaston Past, ghosted past two gunners, set up the second phase of his return, and set a record for the longest punt return in a Big Ten championship game:

Semaj Morgan nearly housed the punt.

: FOX/@CFBONFOX pic.twitter.com/i8NSGqRakd

— Big Ten Football (@B1Gfootball) December 3, 2023

This was the flashiest bit of Michigan out-Iowaing Iowa.

You don't portal out of Iowa, but… the kid who tracked Morgan down is from Ypsi and is kind of the next guy at safety for them. I might drop a line to his high school coach.

James Turner: smooth. A couple of bumps early but he's on fire down the stretch. Randy Sklar's hot take on the podcast was that he's better than Moody, and that's a good hot take because it's not true buuuuuuuuut…

MISCELLANEOUS

The elusive Pettiti, spotted in the wild.

[Paul Sherman]

Our man was there and everything. Shame about the greatest scandal in college football history and all.

Iowa's got shirts. Iowa has better shirt game than anyone else in the nation.

[Barron]

I don't know why this is so funny to me. But it is:

pic.twitter.com/cdbA3leSl2

— Prettyman (@HoracePrettyman) December 3, 2023

I enjoy the contrast between Morgan, who had some notable things to say after last week's game, and Sainristil. Takes all kinds. You gotta have some Guys Who Can Play For Florida, and Morgan has that in spades.

Am I paranoid? A strange thing happened to me while watching this game. I put it on, never paused it, and in the third quarter I checked twitter to find out that Sainristil had caused a second fumble (more or less) while I had not even started the commercial break that preceded it. I spent the rest of the commercial breaks asking google to fast forward, and got to skip two entirely before I got caught up. I would not put it past the powers that be to insert bonus commercials into streaming services.

I may just be paranoid, but I was very confused as to how I managed to end up 3-5 minutes behind the rest of the world.

Conservative decisions, fine. Michigan elected to kick a field goal on fourth and one after going for it on fourth and seven from the plus 36 on the same drive. Against any other team they are going for it in that situation; against Iowa that field goal was literally the winning points.

Correct decision-making gets more conservative the worse the opposition offense is, which is why I was fine with Michigan's fourth-quarter approach against Penn State but somewhat cranky after Maryland. I'm not sure there's a way to be too conservative when you're up 10-0 against Iowa.

HERE

Best and Worst:

Worst:  Profile in Courage

Anthony Petitti, former president of a totally real “Sports and Entertainment Sector” at noted not-shitty-place-to-work Activision Blizzard and the guy responsible for multiple Super Bowl broadcasts including the time Janet Jackson became a social pariah because Justin Timberlake pulled her top off, was hired about a year ago with basically one responsibility:

As one college sports insider describes it, Petitti is a safe and solid hire who needs to only “keep the [Big Ten] train running on time.”

That’s it.  Unlike this author he went to Harvard Law School but like this author he barely practiced law and instead just turned to being a business guy, the type of stuffed suit who comes in and looks like a Getty image babbling about “synergy” while some fourth-year associate is missing the birth of his first kid so that he can hammer out an agreement with leagues that makes a lot of already-rich people richer while making absolutely sure as little of that goes to the athletes as possible.  He’s never come across as particularly intelligent or thoughtful, and outside of playing baseball at a DIII college his involvement in college football seems to be as a self-proclaimed “lifelong” fandom of the sport.  Before becoming the Big 10 commissioner he’d never served in an administrative capacity within organized athletics at all, let alone collegiate sports.  If you told me he walked into the wrong interview with a briefcase full of pot but showed some chutzpah explaining it away and that earned him the gig I wouldn’t be totally shocked.   He was in the right place at the right time, when a league in need of a new head man also walked into a huge media deal bolstered by the unexpected exodus of big-name programs due to the dissolution of the Pac-12.  He didn’t “earn” this spot, his bona fides being that he’s a “TV guy” who’s negotiated media deals in an era where leagues negotiate media deals for billions of dollars.  Mind you, those negotiations aren’t like how they’re portrayed on TV and in movies, where some steely-eyed men argue in broad generalities while everyone looks on in awe, but instead an almost mind-numbing number of terse emails and lengthy calls between conference rooms full of lawyers red-lining Word files to within an inch of their lives over the meaning of articles like “a”, “and”, and “the”.  Petitti seems like nothing more than an number of mediocre start-up CEOs we’ve all met, who looked the part and got funding because of low interest rates in spite of dubious business value, but rarely has he been pressed to handle a thorny issue that required real leadership.

At Activision Blizzard, for example, he laid off 50 people and then left a month before a massive lawsuit by the CA Department of Fair Employment and Housing, and after that worked at a place called the 33rd Team that puts out short video clips of former coaches and players discussing, as far as I can tell, basic analysis of all-22 clips from NFL games.  He’s clearly been well-compensated over the years but like a lot of these guys who lucked into getting checks because they can wear a suit, he thought his “excellence” extended beyond that and thus he took over the conference head job.  Now, running a conference comprised of disparate colleges and administrations is quite difficult, as we’ve seen over the years with how poorly some leagues (cough Big 12 and Pac-12) have handled tough spots, and in the brief time he’s been at the top we haven’t witnessed a ton of leadership.

Iowatch!

One-Sentence* Summary:

So much pain. (RIP Tasha)

Win or lose, Iowa games are painful. Anyone who was surprised about how this game went has not been reading Iowatch. I understand that’s most of you…but, umm…shame on most of you. I informed you thusly. Kirk Ferentz’s trophy room is littered with corpses of OCs who thought to themselves “that #1 defense is a mirage; certainly that won’t happen against my team!” and ended up having their QBs throw the ball straight to a Hawkeye in coverage.

And I’m not saying that Kirk Ferentz is DEFINITELY hunting OCs like he’s General Zaroff in "The Most Dangerous Game." I’m just saying that he stalks the sideline muttering “life is for the strong”, and that his lake home recently added a suspiciously Walt Bell-shaped rug to the foyer.

When playing against Iowa, everyone becomes Iowa (complete with a case of the dropsies). The fact that this game was never even remotely in doubt means that, for the first time, someone out-Iowa’d Iowa.

WAR DAD TIME:

Cornelius Johnson at the Battle of Chapultepec

In September of 1847 a war between the two largest armies in the Americas was drawing to its close. While the conflict between the Republic of Mexico and the United States of America was incredibly hard fought by both sides, the outcome of nearly every battle were equally as one sided. The unavoidable Mexican defeat was merely a long line in a series of humiliations of a people who had descended from the first conquerors of the New World. Once, the hooves of Spanish cavalry and the might of their heavily armed gallons had crippled empires and struck fear into their fellow Europeans but those days were gone forever. Since Spain's departure, the nation they left in their wake, despite having all the pomp and pretenses of a powerful army, had known nothing but defeat.

The United States was following the opposite path. Having thrown off their own colonial shackles only forty years before their Mexican neighbors, the United States had grown infinitely more powerful in the intervening years. If Mexico was in its inevitable descent into irrelevance, the writing was clearly on the wall that the United States was on its way towards domination.