11/27/2021 – Michigan 42, Ohio State 27 – 11-1, 8-1 Big Ten, Big Ten East Champions

The thing that cracked me was the folding chair.

I don't know when this happened, exactly, but it might have been around the same time the turnover chain spawned its infinite variations around the country. There are three guys on the Michigan sideline who maniacally wave around folding chairs at key moments. They must be walk-ons. I can discern no rhyme or reason as to what prompts the chair waving. It does not actually seem connected to turnovers—Michigan acquired none in this game. I do not know if it's the same three guys with the chairs or if it's a rotating cast.

But there are chairs, and they are jiggled at high rates of speed on the Michigan sideline, and sometimes they host small gatherings of hype. It feels like a cargo cult. The chairs have dropped from the sky and are venerated because we cannot think of anything better to do with them. Nobody has asked about them yet. Google turns up nothing but ads for folding chairs when asked about this. There has not yet been the Athletic deep dive about the slightly deranged 190-pound defensive end who seized upon the folding chair as his totem, and got his two buddies to join in mostly because the slightly deranged 190-pound defensive end absolutely will not shut up and if they agreed to wield the chairs they could go to the bar before 1 AM.

They are thus a perfect mystery. I cannot understand why this is happening and no one is bothering to explain. The chairs merely are. They are there, so they are there.

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

This year Michigan went around stealing sports valor from the Big Ten. They Jumped Around at Wisconsin. They did the Zombie Nation thing at Penn State. They may have gone HOO HOO HOO when MSU did their 300 thing, but no one puts that on television. Michigan's players would gather at the most hype-adjacent spot they could access to do the thing all the undergrads in the stands were doing. The chairs were there. Grasped and exalted, they were there.

In the third quarter, Michigan had just scored to go up 15 and something was playing during a commercial break. The Michigan sideline went nuts. The chairs were lifted again, and again, and again. They bobbed on an invisible ocean. Pure joy radiated from them.

I've been pretty turned off this season for obvious reasons, and I was turned off for much of this game. I simply cannot expose myself to more emotional turmoil at this point. Hope and joy go hand in hand with loss. So I was stoic, for the most part. Little things squeaked out: a "go!" when Corum broke into the secondary, a "get him!" when Hutchinson flushed Stroud out of the pocket. Cracks in the façade. The impossible coming closer. Lucy, holding the football.

The chairs somehow exist outside of this, in the same way I spent 15 minutes "meditating" to the buh-buh-buh-basketball song at one particularly stressful juncture last year. Was this the stupidest thing I could possibly have done? Yes. Did it work? Yes. The chairs are dada and do not follow the rules laid down by Michigan football. They are otherworldly. They worked on me.  I am now into absurdist Buddhism.

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So. There is a great mass of humanity on the field at Michigan Stadium. I'm sixteen rows up. I am surveying this field rush. There are elevated helmets, and what looks like a "slippery when wet" sign. Children sit on their fathers' shoulders. Somewhere in there a guy I think I saw in my section is putting an absurd gold chain around Brad Hawkins's neck; Hawkins will wear it to the press conference. Soon, Carl Grapentine will gently suggest that people on the field cease hugging and crying on the Michigan players so they can get back to the locker room. This will not work very well, so Grapentine will suggest it more sternly.

That is the near future, though. In the present they're playing Seven Nation Army or that suddenly ubiquitous song about pumping it up, and my eyes are taking in a field rush that has carpeted a football field so fully that not a scrap of turf is visible. And there, at the forty-five yard line, is one of the chairs.

The stupidest fucking thing in the world. A folding chair, held aloft like a beacon. Like it means something to someone, this generic slab of metal and plastic that could be put in a high school gymnasium and lost among hundreds of identical copies of itself. Somewhere on that field was a person who looked at the great black emotional nothing of Michigan football and said to himself "I defy you. This is fun." Then he handed the chair to someone else, and he said the same thing, and somehow the chair won, and then the chair gave something of itself to me.

I wrote a big dumb column last year about how Paul Chryst's mask discipline contrasted with Harbaugh's and that was why this thing that just happened was never going to happen. Because Michigan was too chaotic and unfocused and the masks are the thing. It is the same big dumb feeling when I say that somehow the chairs are the whole thing. Going into Wisconsin, where you haven't won in twenty years, and not sitting sullenly on the sideline when the other tribe is doing their haka. Instead embracing the moment. Saying it doesn't have to be like this. Saying the past does not exist. Saying we can go into halftime up exactly one(1) point and tell them that they're shook.

As teams were headed to locker rooms at the half. ⁦@OhioStateFB⁩ ⁦@UMichFootball⁩
About to be an interesting 2nd H
⁦@CollegeGameDay⁩ pic.twitter.com/knxp97O4Oq

— Kirk Herbstreit (@KirkHerbstreit) November 27, 2021

And then it can be true. All of it can be true.

AWARDS

Known Friends and Trusted Agents Of The Week

legendary [Patrick Barron]

you're the man now, dog

#1 Aidan Hutchinson. On WTKA this Thursday I was asked what needed to happen for Michigan to win this game and the first thing out of my mouth was "Aidan Hutchinson wins the Heisman." Well:

Current Draft Kings Heisman Odds:
Bryce Young, -200
CJ Stroud, +400 (was -200 chalk last week)
Aidan Hutchinson +1400 (first time listed all season)
Kenny Pickett, +1600
Kenneth Walker III, +1800
Matt Corral, +2200
Nobody else with shorter than +5000 odds

— jamie mac (@justcoverblog) November 28, 2021

Heisman voters are and old and crotchety and reliably predictable bunch with no imagination, but you have to figure that if Georgia shuts Bryce Young down the voters are going to blanch at 1) an Alabama quarterback who can't even get them to the playoff and 2) an Ohio State quarterback after Hutchinson dominated a game against OSU in which he had three sacks.

Anyway, yes, three sacks. Yes, a holding call drawn. Yes, Ohio State flipping their first-round OL around in a desperate attempt to find anyone who could stall the guy out. Yes, this:

Aidan Hutchinson had 15 QB pressures vs Ohio State

Most in a game since we started tracking college in 2014 pic.twitter.com/Psmn0Fp6xh

— PFF College Football (@PFF_College) November 28, 2021

Also this:

Aidan Hutchinson did this to potential 1st round pick pic.twitter.com/uHPmZKnOsE

— Anthony Treash (@PFF_Anthony) November 27, 2021

Heisman. Best player in the country. Period.

#2 The Offensive Line. Zero sacks. Zero tackles for loss. One(?) zero-yard run, that on some tempo that got the snap count jumped. By the fourth quarter OSU defensive tackles were doing plainly insane things and getting fed buckets of garbage when that didn't work. Jump to the interior and get escorted past the play. Yeah, McNamara escaped some pressure. Also Hassan Haskins had ONE HUNDRED AND TEN YARDS before contact. Also Andrew Vastardis immediately reached the nose tackle on the long Corum run and the two guards wiped the LB level. Michigan is going to finish this year in the top 5 in sack rate allowed and just put up ~300 yards rushing on Ohio State.

I officially withdraw any concerns about getting rid of Ed Warinner and making Sherrone Moore the OL coach. Give me my hairshirt.

#3 Hassan Haskins. Haskins may have had a lot of help from the offensive line but he picked the right places to go, frequently churning through gaps that didn't seem to be there until he hacked through the thicket of arm tackles. Then he falls forward, every time.

Honorable mention: David Ojabo had a thundersack, drew a hold, and flushed Stroud into a Hutchinson sack. Blake Corum didn't have a lot of opportunity but maxed it out. Donovan Edwards may have had the catch of the year. Erick All was part of the murderous blocking. Vincent Gray and DJ Turner got got, as you will, but survived. Cade McNamara did everything right except for the interception, which was… not great, but I mean. JJ McCarthy hit his one pass and ran his package impeccably. Josh Ross had a massive tackle for loss to kick off the second half.

KFaTAotW Standings.

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

55: Aidan Hutchinson (HM WMU, #2 Wash, #1 Rutgers, #1 Wisc, HM Neb, #2 NW, T3 MSU, T2 IU, T1 PSU, #2 Maryland, #1 OSU)
33: Hassan Haskins (HM WMU, T3 Wash, T2 NIU, #2 Neb, T1 NW, #1 IU, #2 PSU, #3 OSU)
23: The OL (#1 Wash, #1 NIU, HM Neb, HM NW, #2 OSU)
22: David Ojabo (#2 Wisc, T3 MSU, T2 IU, T1 PSU, HM OSU)
18: Blake Corum (#2 WMU, T3 Wash, T2 NIU, HM Neb, T1 NW, HM OSU)
14: Cade McNamara (#1 MSU, HM IU, HM PSU, #3 Maryland, HM OSU)
12: Donovan Edwards(T2 NIU, #1 Maryland, HM OSU)
8: Ronnie Bell (#1 WMU), Brad Hawkins (#1 Neb), Dax Hill (#3 WMU, HM NIU, HM Rutgers, HM Wisc, HM Neb, HM MSU), Josh Ross (HM Wash, HM NIU, HM Rutgers, HM Neb, HM NW, HM PSU, HM OSU)
7: Brad Robbins (HM Wash, #3 Rutgers, HM Wisc, HM PSU), DJ Turner (#3 NW, #3 PSU, HM OSU)
6: Nikhai Hill-Green(HM NIU, #2 Rutgers), Jake Moody (HM Wash, HM Wisc, #3 Neb, HM MSU), Andrel Anthony (#2 MSU, HM Maryland)
5: Cornelius Johnson(HM NIU, HM Wisc, #3 IU)
4: AJ Henning (HM WMU, #3 NIU), Roman Wilson (#3 Wisc, HM PSU)
3: Erick All (HM NW, HM MSU, HM OSU)
2: Junior Colson (HM IU, HM PSU), Mike Sainristil (HM WMU, HM Maryland)
1: Andrew Vastardis (HM WMU), Mazi Smith (HM Wash), Gemon Green(HM NIU), Chris Hinton (HM Rutgers),  Taylor Upshaw (HM IU), Michael Barrett (HM Maryland), Matt Torey(HM Maryland), Vincent Gray (HM OSU), JJ McCarthy(HM OSU)

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

Michigan chasing the beleaguered CJ Stroud out of the pocket on fourth and forever, causing him to hurl up a ball that is well short of the sticks.

 

 

Honorable mention: Hutchinson's sacks; Ross stuffing a third quarter short yardage play; McNamara hitting Johnson deep; McCarthy hitting Wilson; Blake Corum jetting for 55; virtually everything.

​MARCUS HALL EPIC DOUBLE BIRD OF THE WEEK.

JSN makes an absurd catch on third and nineteen, which allows OSU to score a touchdown later on that drive, keeps them in contact, and causes the BPONE portion of your brain to freak out about how that will be the turning point.

Honorable mention: JSN makes a fourth down catch that is bobbled but does not hit the turf; Garrett Wilson skies over Vincent Gray for a touchdown; McNamara throws a red-zone interception to blunt Michigan's first-half momentum.

[After THE JUMP: baffled]

OFFENSE

[Fuller]

A game plan, a package, a canal, panama. Michigan dug into the Box of Harbaugh Past for the McCarthy package, which featured a diamond backfield and a play that I labeled "double iso" in UFR when I saw it for the first time some years ago. Both tight ends plunged to either side of the center and the back picked where he was going; from there Michigan built off that with a swing pass, a QB power, and a bash play that sprung Corum outside the defenders. This culminated in the play action shot to Roman Wilson that McCarthy dropped in a bucket.

I can't say I've ever seen the "we are preparing a special package for our backup QB" thing work, and virtually every facet of the diamond thing worked well, and worked well together. It's like compiling a program for the first time and having no bugs. It happened to me once and I remember it forever.

This was just part of a bravura gameplan that saw Michigan rack up a dozen or more RPS plays. By the end OSU didn't know what they were looking at; guys just stood around.

Flea flickers forever. Michigan State may have just paid Mel Tucker ninety-five gajillion dollars because he had more or less the same team as Nebraska (33rd vs 38th in SP+) this year, but you have to appreciate the fact that MSU ran a flea flicker in almost every game this year. Flea flickers are great and everyone should run one a game. QED.

Excellent work by Michigan to use the wheel there, putting a linebacker in run conflict and not relying on a safety to bite.

uhhhh let's call it trail coverage [Barron]

It's called press coverage for a reason. Kerry Coombs still coaches the DBs:

OSU CB to top

I don't think that's the way they draw it up.

A negative tempo thing. Michigan's initial attempt to go up-tempo on third and short got stoned because OSU was extremely ready for it; all the tempo ended up doing is telling OSU exactly when Michigan was going to snap the ball.

[Fuller]

A positive tempo thing! At least Michigan used the jumped snap on tempo later in the game, drawing Ohio State offsides on a third and one and getting a free downfield shot to Andrel Anthony that was one diving catch away from being a big play. Somewhat alarmingly, the subsequent third and two that ended up being a bomb to Roman Wilson and a PI flag was another situation where Michigan thought they had a free play, but did not. An OSU player jumped at the simulated snap but did not actually cross the line of scrimmage.

Short yardage, though. This space has complained about Michigan's short yardage approach all year, but in this game Michigan's only failure was the aforementioned tempo snap. Most of the rest of the game Michigan kept it as simple as possible and converted by running directly up the back of the center while Michigan doubled the defensive tackles. Michigan actually screwed up its blocking on the first one but it didn't matter because the other double worked and Haskins could fall forward:

By getting closer to the LOS and going straight vertical Michigan had one extra step before those slanters could get to Haskins, and then they were hitting from the side and since Haskins can squat a dump truck he was unstoppable. Sometimes the play hit so fast that it didn't matter that Michigan had screwed it up. This was also from the first drive; Zinter does not chip the DT and he wins inside but he can't do anything because Haskins is already racing past him:

OSU DT to bottom

Directly vertical at pace makes those guys coming in from the side fruitless.

butter [Fuller]

"What? How?" There were more consequential spectacular catches in this game but none were smoother than Donovan Edwards casually spearing a ball low and away from him with one hand and then tucking it in his elbow like nothing unusual had happened. Then he just about got a foot down on a very difficult back-shoulder throw:

A chunk of the offseason should be a bunch of analysts in a lab trying to figure out ways to get Edwards the ball.

Also excellent job on the self-scout by Michigan, anticipating that Ohio State would be paying a lot of attention to Edwards on the swing passes and blasting through red zone issues on the first drive with that statue-of-liberty end-around:

It is an RPS +2 when you score from 13  yards out and only really need one block.

Next time do it in the field of play maybe? Roman Wilson stepped out of bounds on his first quarter catch and then decided he wanted some:

If you're gonna do that might as well get the yards you're earning.

[Barron]

One stretch only. Michigan incorporated some zone stretch as the season went along here but ran it just once in this game. It was kind of a big deal, though. As a person who's probably charted more stretch plays than anything else I love a good reach block, and when you're lined up like this…

…and your nose tackle gets reached, leaving a giant gap and the left guard scot free to to the second level, you are screwed. 86 takes his first step upfield because he's not expecting stretch and Michigan's been hammering it vertically and we are one bum ankle from a touchdown:

Mmm sequencing.

Punched in the mouth. Also, what is Steele Chambers doing on this play? He's frozen. No idea what he's looking at. Barely needs to be blocked. On the very next play Michigan scores and the playside end, Tyreke Smith, doesn't even get blocked either because he's diving inside as two guys pull around him.

Rewatching this game in some detail was a wild experience. This defense gave up nothing on the ground since Oregon, and here you've got key players making mistakes that look like high school tape. The dagger Haskins run saw OSU lined up like this presnap:

That is a total of three players to the left of center and five to the right. Then the OSU line slanted to the top of the screen. The sheer number of plays I ran across where I ended up wondering "what the hell is that guy doing" is remarkable.

DEFENSE

[Barron]

Punched in the mouth, part 2. OSU was shook in this game almost from the start. Michigan went down the field and scored on their opening drive; the ensuing kickoff hit the ground and was placed on the four, and their first snap was an errant snap launched when Stroud had crept up to the line to call out the protection. They would find their footing at times but then one of their terrified tackles would commit a false start, or there would be another bad snap, or holding would finally get called. It was like watching the Ozymandias statue crack apart.

Anyway, this is how you rattle an opposition offense:

Prior to Saturday's game, CJ Stroud had been under pressure on just 22% of his snaps this season, per Pro Football Focus.

Per PFF, Michigan recorded pressure on 45.3% of Stroud's drop-backs. Aidan Hutchinson alone provided pressure on 28.3% (!)

— Zach Shaw (@_ZachShaw) November 28, 2021

It's one thing to do that to Penn State, and entirely another to do it to Ohio State. This is a team that was coming off a 49-point first half against Michigan State and seemed entirely unprepared to get punched in the mouth. 

Stroud kryptonite. CJ Stroud is still pretty young and obviously very good at quarterback things but his habits when he gets pressure are bad. Even a slightly messy pocket will cause him to fail to step into throws and sail them:

There is plenty of room for him to step into it and rifle it but he does not. This meant that on several plays in addition to the ones PFF charted as pressures (probably!) Stroud was more or less pressuring himself.

I don't understand. TreVeyon Henderson got loose for a 28-yard run when Michigan got tempoed. The other 23 running back carries in this game went for a total of 66 yards. That's 2.9 yards a carry.

To me this is the single most baffling thing that transpired on Saturday. OSU's top two backs were averaging SEVEN YARDS A RUSH. Michigan was coming off back to back games against Penn State and Maryland in which their near-exclusive focus on the passing game allowed two moribund ground attacks to crack four YPC. The other top-end rush offense Michigan faced this year, Michigan State, ripped them.

As far as I can tell there wasn't any special schematic tweak that allowed this to happen. Other than a daring zero blitz at the tail end of the third quarter, Michigan was largely content to line up with a light box and live with the results, which were then outstanding and perplexing.

One thing that did seem to help: Michigan substituted their DTs much less frequently than normal. IIRC a lot of the success PSU and Maryland were having was not against Hinton and Smith. On the other hand, Donovan Jeter and Kris Jenkins both turned in big plays, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Aid in understanding. Craig mentioned that he thought OSU had a run/pass tell, and could it have been as simple as "pistol = run"? Via @colintj:

That's quite a split.

The stick. Michigan went up 14-10 and then Ohio State had an opportunity for back-to-back possessions spanning halftime. They got a field goal out of the first one when RJ Moten came up to stick JSN short of the sticks, and then Josh Ross turned in the linebacker play of the year to turn the first drive of the third quarter into a three-and-out:

Michigan scored in three plays after getting the ball back and OSU was never closer than eight the rest of the way.

nope nope nope nope nope [Fuller]

When you can see it coming. The worst feeling in the stands is when the opponent does some motioning and they get a matchup that you can only scream "nooooooooo" about in slow motion, and well here's David Ojabo covering JSN:

At least this was tricky on OSU's part since they put JSN in the backfield to get that matchup. Mike McCray in man coverage against Saquon Barkley remains the all-time worst of these moments of prescient doom.

[Barron]

Corners: fine? Good? Great? OSU got a lot of short stuff on them that Michigan was more or less giving up by design because you have to play bend but don't break against this offense. When they did get hit downfield the corners were generally in great position and the OSU receivers were making absurd catches. There was the 3rd and 19 discussed above, but also the Garrett Wilson touchdown saw Vincent Gray a hair's breadth away from getting a PBU:

Olave had another contested catch, that one against DJ Turner, that I was less sanguine about because that ball was in a much better spot to make a play on and Turner could not. But even considering that the CB vastly exceeded expectations. At no point did any of them get zipped past like OSU's star corner against Cornelius Johnson. Everything was earned.

SPECIAL TEAMS

Not a factor. OSU hit a couple of chip shot field goals; Michigan did not attempt one. Punting was relatively even. Kickoffs were only interesting because I learned that if you call a fair catch and the ball bounces, the fair catch stands but you don't get to go out to the 25. Which is a weird rule, if you ask me.

Brilliant, or lucky? Michigan picked up a kick catch interference call when JSN decided to fair catch the ball at the three. One of the Michigan gunners was also trying to catch the ball at the three and the two guys bumped. I've tried to figure out whether that was a canny play or just another mental mistake by OSU; I started thinking it was the former and now think it's the latter.

First: can't blame the Michigan player in that situation since returners aren't supposed to field a ball inside the ten, let alone the five, and he's concentrating on fielding the punt on the fly, which would have been a huge play if accomplished.

Flybys are not legal. AJ Henning muffed a subsequent punt on which an OSU gunner gave him a flyby right before the punt arrived. Several years ago we learned that you don't actually have to impact a player to draw the kick catch interference flag—I believe it was Steve Breaston who had to avoid an opposing player before attempting to field a punt—and I was expecting that flag to come out because of the muff.

MISCELLANEOUS

Go directly to Louvre. Patrick wins with cruelty:

[Barron]

Previous bullet is only complaint. The Michigan internet was in flames after an erroneous report the day before the game that the same crew that did the 2016 game would be assigned to this one, including the infamous butt-tap side judge. Nope: entirely different crew. And aside from the kick catch interference bullet above I can't really think of another moment where their presence was even an issue, either way.

It's possible that the hold on Ojabo that brought back  the Stroud scramble touchdown was weak, but Ojabo dipped around the outside and appeared to go down because the right tackle had his arm around his chest still—on replay that looked like it might have been Ojabo falling of his own volition but that movement pattern is always going to draw a flag. It's pretty much the only thing that gets called on pass rushes these days. Everything else was pretty obvious and not screwed up.

Property damage: minimal. Hooray:

Hot damn pic.twitter.com/uCewHYySHw

— Patrick Barron (@BlueBarronPhoto) November 29, 2021

Well done? I don't think I should have to say that but here we are.

The classic error. Everyone goes for it on fourth down in the correct way now so we don't have many opportunities to cluck about having Madden kids on your sideline, but here's a thing to cluck about: when you're down 15 and score a touchdown in the fourth quarter you need to go for two so you know how many scores you're down. Ryan Day kicked the extra point and didn't know if he needed to onside kick with five minutes left.

HERE

Best and Worst:

You’ve undoubtedly read and/or seen the crazy stats from the second half, but just in case consider these numbers:

• Michigan scored TDs on all 4 of their non-kneeling drives.
• They didn’t face a single 3rd-down on any of those drives.
• The average length of those drives was 72 yards (!) covered in 5 plays (!!).
• Michigan only three the ball 4 (!!!) times in the half, going a perfect 4/4 for 77 yards.
• They ran the ball 17 times (!!!!) for 190 yards (5x!).

OSU was able to move the ball as well but at far greater difficulty, going 8/15 on 3rd and 4th downs and practically abandoning the run (17 yards on 16 carries) while Stroud was getting pressured on numerous dropbacks despite his tackles committing sometimes-egregious holds on almost every play.  And after every Buckeye score Michigan roared back with an answer, usually on Hassan Haskins’s broad shoulders, to the point that by midway through that 4th quarter OSU’s defenders seemed…um…less-than-enthusiastic about trying to denying him near the goal line.

The State of our Open Threads:

As usual, we shall start with fucks given - there were 303 of these, which is actually quite low for an OSU game in the data I have, but then, this is the first OSU win that I have data for. The record for an OSU game in the Harbaugh era is actually 751, which was the 2016 game, and about 20% of those fucks came around a moment best not discussed right this second. Of course, this was a substantial increase from the mere 78 we gave during the Maryland game, but far short of the 476 we gave during the MSU game. 303 is, however, the second most fucks we gave this season, with Nebraska being a close third at 299, followed fairly closely by Penn State at 285.

A couple more reflections on the win.