Ah, another season of Michigan football.  I said last year I wasn’t sure if I’d right recaps for these early games, and I don’t see myself doing so for UNLV or BGSU.  But I figure I might as well give it a shot for the first game at least.  This is going to be pretty short and anodyne because, well, this was a pretty short and uneventful game.

Worst:  Both Victim and Villain

Now, I promise that the rest of this column will be (mostly) upbeat, as a 30-point blowout over a competent opponent (I refuse to acknowledge the most James Franklin of FGs to end the game) is hard to pick apart.  But the drama heading into this game mostly stemmed from off-the-field issues, chiefly Michigan self-imposing a 3-game suspension of Jim Harbaugh and select members of the staff.  Y’all know what this stemmed from, as Harbaugh had the “temerity” to tell some failson of an NCAA investigator that he didn’t remember/give a shit about taking two guys out for a breakfast burger during a recruiting dead period when they were on campus.  Now, various knobs online, from fanbases with “State” in their name and sunglassed selfies in their avatars, whined about how Harbaugh’s violations were far more severe, including somehow claiming they were as bad as what happened at Arizona St with Herm Edwards because they apparently did no further research than “hey Siri, what other coach was fired for something something COVID” and Nick Rolovich was harder to pronounce.  It was exactly as reductive and obnoxious as you can imagine, but that’s the nature of online fan discourse especially on what is now the cratered remains of Twitter/X/Mid-Life Crisis.  The situation remains completely absurd, a dying organization desperate to flex its muscles listening to a twice-fired troll with an axe to grind dropping as much dirt as he could find on Michigan and the Wolverines collectively shrugging and that being even more infuriating to the NCAA brass.  Which is largely why this situation got to this point, with the NCAA rejecting the 4-game suspension that apparently was previously negotiated between the school and the NCAA because (AFAICT) the NCAA didn’t like that nobody gave a shit and Harbaugh wasn’t going to admit he was wrong.  Somehow the NCAA had turned Michigan, the winningest program in college football history and a team that has lost exactly 1 regular-season game in 2 years, into a sympathetic victim.

So Harbaugh wasn’t on the sideline for this game, nor was Sherrone Moore, and instead Jesse Minter was the man with the headset.  Michigan’s first possession started inside their own 2 and was functionally a waste, but on their next offensive possession the Michigan players made a symbolic gesture for their coach who, again, was sitting at home with about as significant a punishment as Tennessee (lost scholarships in the era of NIL lose a lot of their bite) got for hundreds of NCAA violations.

https://twitter.com/sportingnews/status/1698010705960550430

It was a bit cheesy but in a season where we already saw Northwestern players wear shirts saying “Cats Against the World” because their coach got fired for (checks notes) allowing a locker room culture of sexual humiliation and hazing to fester for decades, it was a harmless sign of support for their suspended coach.  Most people seemed to agree in this assessment, though a couple of the usual suspects such as Steven Godfrey, whose entire personality appears to be just the physical manifestation of Calvin pissing on a Chevy logo and has a burning hatred for Michigan that seems to emanate from some time when Brian called him an idiot online, tried their hardest to make it some convoluted, premeditated middle finger from Harbaugh to the NCAA, as if Jim doesn’t have access to a pulpit (and used it) when he wants to roast his enemies.  Regardless, we’ve got two more weeks of this insanity before Harbaugh returns to the sideline, but at this point it remains a bit surreal that a team as cocky (and good) as Michigan helmed by the deeply-weird and sometimes off-putting Jim Harbaugh would be receiving so much public support, but apparently the NCAA was able to mine deep enough into the core of the world in their search of continued relevance to cause that type of tectonic shift in public perception. 

 

Best:  QB1

Last year the key storyline coming into Michigan’s first couple games was about who would emerge as the starting QB from the duo of Cade McNamara and JJ McCarthy.  McNamara had led Michigan to their first outright Big 10 title since the early 2000s (for perspective, when Michigan won the conference title in 2003 the name “Big 10” was only slightly misleading as there were 11 teams in the league; when they won it in 2021 there were a Conference Alignment Baker’s dozen of 14), and had emerged from camp with the more consistent reviews in terms of on-field performance.  McCarthy was the star-studded QB of the future, who had played in spurts during his true freshman year and shown great potential but was more erratic, and had struggled somewhat in the offseason after recovering from shoulder surgery.  But in what has since been dubbed the “Michigan Method”, Harbaugh put forth a competition between his two signal-callers, giving each of them a shot to start a game against one of the early-season tomato cans while the other would serve as the backup.  Against Colorado State McNamara got the nod and produced a mediocre performance in a blowout win.  He struggled at times reading the defense, his passes were slightly off, and he suffered from breakdowns in blocking.  McCarthy played for parts of the 2nd half and ran in a TD, and in general looked more poised under center.  That carried over to his start against Hawaii, where he averaged nearly 20 ypa on 12 passes, throwing 3 TDs and securing the starting spot.  McNamara’s season-ending injury against UConn removed any future controversy about who would be leading this team in 2022.

What followed those first 3 games was, in hindsight, a predictable up-and-down season for a first-year starter.  McCarthy played well enough against Maryland and on the road against IU and Iowa, keeping the offense moving and minimize mistakes.  Michigan’s ground game was so stout and their defense so ferocious that he wasn’t asked to do more, and in particular teams like Indiana and Iowa could only have stuck around if those games if UM gave them short fields via bad drives or turnovers.  Obviously McCarthy had his moments, including a Tarkenton-esq scramble against Maryland and good recovery TD throw against Iowa to break that game open.  But not too much was put on his plate.   Penn State was a different level of challenge, with NFL-level corners and athletic defensive linemen, and that was a game where you started to see some of the seams show.  He threw a pick-six that briefly let PSU take the lead, and on the day only threw for 145 yards on 24 throws because the Wolverines were gashing the Nittany Lions on the ground to the tune of 418 yards.  But that kicked off a stretch of 4 games where McCarthy failed to crack 200 yards in the air and failed to complete 50% of his throws twice and a third time by a mere 1 completion (Illinois).  His YPA dropped from 7.8 to 6.4, and that included facing terrible secondaries like MSU and Nebraska.  This scuffling wasn’t wholly unexpected; as teams get tape on signal-callers defensive coordinators figure out ways to disguise coverages to mess with their reads as well as alter how and where pressure comes from.  McCarthy also became a bit of a victim of his own success, looking for the downfield shot when perhaps it wasn’t always there and then failing to connect when opportunities were found.

In the macro sense, McCarthy’s struggles didn’t mean much to the team’s long-term performance, with Michigan still blowing teams away.  But when Corum went down and the running game sputtered McCarthy was tasked with carrying the offense more, and he struggled to do so against Illinois until the very end.  Next week against OSU the team spent much of the first half flailing on the ground, with CJ Stokes and a 1-armed Donovan Edwards running into stacked boxes and getting very little.  McCarthy was under pressure and missed some easy throws but didn’t panic, and then he got a couple of breaks and that was it.  The running game re-emerged with Edwards taking the lead and Michigan proceeded to roll in Columbus.  That largely followed the next weekend against Purdue, and then Michigan matched up against Purdue in the first round of the CFP.  His play was up-and-down, with some great throws and runs offset by two dreadful pick-sixes and some manic moments under center where he tried to do a bit too much.  Still, a solid first year as starter and one that portended an even better junior season.

Now, this was just one game and the opponent wasn’t particularly stout, but the potential fans saw in 2022 is again there but is now supplemented with a level of mature play that was spottier last season.  ECU brought pressure in this game, tried to get McCarthy off his spot, and unlike in past years where McCarthy might have turned away from the line, scamper around, and try to make the huge play, JJ simply stepped up into the pocket or ran toward the sideline, eyes always downfield, and find Roman Wilson or Johnson or Loveland wide open.  Two of McCarthy’s 3 TDs came when the pocket broke down but the offensive play didn’t, if that makes sense.  McCarthy just kept looking downfield, kept looking for guys to break away into the open field, and then delivered strikes to them.  At one point he completed 15 straight passes and the something like 18 of 19, with the one incompletion being a great effort by an ECU defender to get a hand on a nicely thrown ball into the endzone that would have been a TD otherwise.  McCarthy didn’t panic when ECU sold out to stop the run, and while you could tell he was instructed not to run with the ball he looked more than capable of doing so if the time called for it.  I doubt we’ll see much different of a performance the next couple of weeks but McCarthy looks to have taken that next step in his development and is one of the better QBs in the country, full stop.

 

Worst:  Rocking That Paper

I’m interested to see how the RPS scoring on offense shakes out this week, as this was absolutely the tale of two halves.  Since midway through last season (I clocked it against Indiana but it may have snuck in earlier) opposing defenses made it clear that bullet point 1-3 on the whiteboard was “stop the run at any costs” and fashioned defensive approaches to accomplish that.  Typically that meant putting 8+ guys within 5 yards of the line of scrimmage and having a “deep” safety who was hauling ass basically at the snap on anything that wasn’t a clear passing down.  That would work in instances where Michigan would dutifully try to mash their way down the field, typically resulting in a couple of yards as Corum or Edwards would get through that initial line of defense but get hit by the second wave of defenders.  And when Michigan decided to utilize the threat of the run via play-action, it typically led to winning one-on-one battles between WRs and TEs vs. overmatched defenders, culminating in Michigan leading the nation in yards off play action on plays like these ones.  And even when teams didn’t shake from their “stop the run” mantra reality they could be bit by over-aggressiveness, embodied in runs like this against PSU and OSU where one missed assignment meant acres of fertile green acreage ahead of a back.  And that’s the rub - great offenses do this to defenses; they force them to pick their poison and rely on the fact that football is sufficiently random to keep the game close.  PSU was within spitting distance of UM in that first half because McCarthy threw a Plinko pick-six, Clifford scrambled for a huge gain because a linebacker was out of position, and UM settled for FGs after marching up and down the field.  OSU had all-world WRs and the #2 pick in the draft at QB, and basically banked on that keeping pace in the event their aggressive run defense let up, which ultimately was their downfall.  Illinois was probably the closest all regular season at getting away with this approach, and even then it required 3 top-70 draft picks in the secondary and Blake Corum getting hurt for them to almost win.

ECU came into this game with the strength of their defense being along the defensive line, but even they knew “pretty good G5 run defense” wasn’t going to stand up against a team that last year put up an average of 250 yards per game against the 4 top 25 rush defenses they faced.  So it came as little surprise that the Pirates adopted the tried-and-true “8 guys in the box and a safety on his way” look. 

And that was after Michigan had completed 9 of 10 passes for 9.8 ypa and a DPI where Roman Wilson had clearly beaten the ECU defender.  The result of the play above?  a 24-yard completion to Loveland in which the TE was open by between 7 and 10 yards.  And ECU is a well-coached team; they had guys who made solid tackles and limited the damage after the fact.  But they were still a team that knew their corners and safeties couldn’t have with UM’s WRs, definitely couldn’t defend UM’s plethora of freakish TEs, and STILL thought their best course of action was to sell out against Corum and Edwards gashing them.  And in the first half, to Michigan’s credit, they took the ECU defense constantly throwing Paper and dropped a fair number of scissors on them.  Ignoring that first drive where UM started inside their own 2-yard line and called 3 straight runs to give themselves some breathing room (and yes, I too was annoyed they tried to run into the teeth of a defense and nearly gave up a safety in the process), Michigan threw the ball 19 times versus 9 times in that first half, including on a 48-second drive to end the half that ended with them kicking at 50-yard FG as time expired.  And while a couple of those runs were for big gains (21 and 37 yards by Corum), they were generally stymied due to the aggressive ECU defense.  And to UM’s credit they didn’t get flustered or try to “tough” out yards on the ground; they took those significant mismatches in the air, marched down the field, and scored largely at will. 

But in the second half, likely due to some combination of wanting to get guys carries while also working on blocking with a rejiggered line, not wanting to run the score up against a clearly overmatched team, and Michigan’s lizard brain not going down without a fight, the gameplan at times felt far more akin to those infuriating gameplans against Rutgers and Indiana, where the goal seemed as much to destroy the core tenets of rock-paper-scissors as actually matriculate the ball down the field efficiently.  Michigan threw the ball 8 times on the first drive of the 3rd quarter, ending in Roman Wilson’s third TD of the game.  After that point, though, Michigan ran the ball 15 times to 6 pass attempts, netting out a mere 40 yards and no points.  The nadir of this mindless wall-bashing was UM’s single-minded goal to get Donovan Edwards at TD from 6 yards out, which resulted in 5 straight run attempts into a 10-man box that, predictably, ended in no TD and a McCarthy fumble on 4th down.    As Alex noted in the post-game write-up this single-mindedness was likely strategic and conscious, and Stephen King’s excellent analysis further highlighted how even some of the “bad” runs were decent calls with a missed block or missed read dooming them.  Now, could Michigan have still worked on their blocker IDing and gotten guys touches while ALSO tossing a couple more passes to wide-open receivers in that second half?  Sure, and my guess is that we’ll see such adjustments even though next weekend’s opponent, UNLV,  just gave up 179 yards and 4.5 ypc to Bryant University, numbers the Bulldogs eclipsed exactly once last year and that was only against Division II Southern Connecticut State University.  But these early-season games were never designed to tax this team athletically or really schematically, and so it would have been nice had the Wolverines treated the second half a bit more like the first and tried to take advantage of holes in the defense and not seemingly just throw bodies into the breach because they wanted to get the game over as soon as possible.

 

Meh:  Getting Touches

Again, I don’t want anything in this column to come across as overly critical of a blowout; there’s really not that much to read into a game where Michigan scored on basically every meaningful drive they ran while giving up virtually nothing of consequence defensively.  But one of the concerns I had coming into the year was how UM would distribute the carries between Edwards and Corum, especially as the season progressed and guys naturally started to settle into roles.  We talk about this all the time with linemen, that lines gelled as they became more familiar with each other and get into a rhythm.  A number of the running minuses in this game were from guys clearly not being on the same page and either locking onto blocks for too long or failing to ID defenders at the snap, areas you expect to see improvement in as they get more snaps together.  Well, efficient running games also succeed when these linemen get a feel for the style of the guy(s) running behind them, which can be as subtle as how long it takes them to hit a hole or if they’re inclined to burrow between gaps or try to bounce it outside.  Blake Corum runs differently than Donovan Edwards, just like how Corum and Hassan Haskins were different backs in 2021.  Both last year and in 2021 there was a running back committee of sorts early in the season but by the end the pecking order shook out largely due to injuries.  In 2021 Haskins turned into the bellcow with Corum serving as a change-of-pace, while last year Edwards’s injuries and Corum’s improvements as a runner made the latter the carries leader until his season ended against Illinois and Edwards, one hand and all, was pressed into duty with largely spectacular results.  Not that controversy or animosity was even hinted at in those years, but a lot of “who do you give the ball late in a close game” was handled organically from player availability.

Coming into this year Michigan clearly enjoyed an embarrassment of riches in the backfield, with both Edwards and Corum entering the year as two of the best running backs in the country.  Corum probably would have won the Doak Walker Award and been invited to NYC had he not gotten hurt to end the year, and Edwards is the quintessential modern running back as both a decisive runner as well as a walking mismatch as a receiver both out of the backfield as well as lined up in the slot.  And Michigan’s offense has shown the ability to utilize contrasting styles of runners in the backfield to great effect, and I have little doubt that the coaches won’t draw up plays that will allow both of these guys to flourish.  But it’s still an offense that needs to unlock J.J. McCarthy’s full repertoire as a passer, feed the ball to barely-covered receivers like Johnson and Wilson as well as defensive nightmare Loveland, and gash teams on the ground to fully realize their potential and at some point there’s only so many plays to go around.  I guess what got to me was that sequence in the third quarter referenced above where Michigan just ran Edwards into the line 5 times from 6 yards out to get him a score.  Yes the game was not in doubt, and yes Edwards had done work on that drive to get the team into a position to score.  But grinding between tackles and diving over piles really isn’t his game, and the playcalls became so predictable that on 3rd-and-goal from the 2 this was the look:

That’s not going to work, or if it’s going to work it’s going to be unnecessarily ugly.  Edwards flaring out and taking an overmatched LB or safety with him, or doing a read-option with McCarthy, or really anything else other than smashing him into the line would have been a better play and still likely would have gotten him the score there.  And if not, then maybe next week’s game he picks a couple extra carries.  It just felt like someone on the Michigan sideline had a clicker on who had the most carries and the staff was trying to even them out as much as possible instead of just trying to run the play that would lead to a score.  Again, I’m probably just reading too much into this but Michigan’s natural instinct already is to smash opponents into fine particulate up front and if they have either a spoken or unspoken mandate to make sure guys get the ball the “right” amount that’s only going to exacerbate this predisposition.  It won’t matter against 85% of the teams on the schedule but it was annoying to see this play sequence pop up again after last year’s appearance.

Best:   No Second(art) Looks

Caveats about opponent and injuries aside, I thought the secondary looked great in this game.  Sainristil picked off ECU on their second drive by immediately recognizing the play and then undercutting a bad throw, Josh Wallace had a great play on the sideline that would have been a pick had a dumb rule not existed, and young guys like Keon Sabb and Zeke Berry saw a lot of snaps and acquitted themselves well.  Perhaps the biggest concern coming into the year was who Michigan would slot in opposite Will Johnson at corner, and with Sainristil being a flexible option and Wallace looking competent it feels like they have some options out there at least.  Obviously they’ll need to play well against the better receivers coming up but *looks at Nebraska-Minnesota box score* that may not happen until November.  Until then, it was relaxing to see few completions to guys in coverage and sure tackles made when they did. 

Best:  The Pressure Is There

I saw some consternation both on the blog and elsewhere about Michigan’s lack of sacks in this game.  Much like last year against Hawaii and UConn, that felt more a function of offenses bailing on throws almost immediately versus Michigan’s rush being stymied by the ECU offensive line.  Officially Michigan was credited with 3 pressures, two coming from the interior via Jenkins and Grant, and my guess is you’ll see a couple more pop up in the UFR.  For example, on Wallace’s non-pick pick Michigan only rushed 3 linemen (and brought a corner blitz) but still saw Jenkins depositing the left guard into the QB’s lap as that throw came out to a tightly-covered WR.  A drive later both Harrell and Graham flushed the QB out almost immediately, and it netted ECU 3 yards  on a QB scramble.  Those pressures are “working” even if they aren’t resulting in sacks.  Overmatched teams like ECU know they can’t hold up against the rush and absolutely can’t afford to lose a QB in a meaningless game like this, so the ball comes out quickly and they live to fight another day.  Last year Michigan picked up 8 sacks in the three non-conference games but 7 of those came against Colorado St., who inexplicably thought their patchwork line would give their QBs enough time to push the ball downfield.  And during that first half I saw guys like Stewart, McGregor, and Moore get around the edges and get hands on the QB, either moving them off their spot or flushing them out of the pocket completely.  Now, this isn’t going to be a 2021-type pass rush, where you had two first-round talents who could disrupt offenses without assistance.  But Michigan was able to generate more sacks last year than in 2021 by being creative, and in my eyes it’s way more important to be able to disrupt an offense’s rhythm consistently than it is to simply pin your ears back and play big risk/big reward by trying to get guys in the backfield.  Case in point – Louisville led the nation last year in sacks with 50…but also gave up 7.1 ypa, 58th in the nation.  Michigan “only” had 37 sacks but also limited attempts to 5.9, which was #6 in the country. 

I don’t expect to see much different from UNLV or BGSU coming up, but teams aren’t going to be able to nickel-and-dime their way down the field against these Wolverines, and at some point opponents who faintly have a chance at winning the game are going to try to pass downfield against them and I suspect we’ll see these pressures turn into sacks and turnovers.

Worst:  Making the Bad Parts Longer

I was somewhat sanguine about changes to the time clock coming into the year.  Yes, I knew they were largely going to lead to more ads and not a faster overall game, as the entire reason the NCAA apparently exists anymore is to ensure that I see 95 Ford commercials and 37 confusing Duck Duck Go ads every 3 hours.  But it was still jarring to see Michigan only get in 5 drives in that first half despite none of them spanning more than 4:43 on the clock.  Last year UM got 7 in against CSU in that first half, even with one drive spanning nearly 7 minutes.  Now, long-term I’m not sure if that’ll equate to demonstratively different outcomes in games; comparing basically a week of games to all of 2022 shows a dramatic drop in total plays run but negligible per-drive, and so many of these games were blowouts that it’s hard to differentiate the signal from the noise.  But at least thus far watching the game it feels even more disjointed than in years past, and for little on-field payoff.

Meh:  This Conference

I was going to break down the other games involving conference teams this weekend but they were so unremarkable that it doesn’t feel all that necessary.  OSU and PSU looked…fine against bad teams but each showed distinct weaknesses (OSU passing the ball, PSU running the ball) that will be worth tracking going forward.  Iowa looked semi-competent offensively with McNamara at the helm but couldn’t shake the Brian Ferentz Stink completely off in that second half and wound up only scoring 24 points on the day.  MSU was in a dogfight with CMU for a long time, and while Noah Kim put up nice numbers in the end the fact MSU barely cracked 100 yards rushing against the Chippewas feels not great in the 4th year of Mel Tucker’s regime.  Washington is going to have a field day against them in a couple of weeks.  Illinois barely beat Toledo, thanks largely to an insane 4th-down heave to a covered receiver.  Rutgers beat up on Northwestern but still looked limited offensively, and both Nebraska and Minnesota played a game best described as an open bottle of bleach strewn about a football field for a night.  Obviously week 1 and everything but I’d be shocked in UM isn’t a 20+ point favorite against everyone they see before they head to Happy Valley in November.

Next Week:  UNLV

Bring on the Fightin’ Jerry Tarkanians.  .  I’m not going to be writing a Diary in all likelihood next weekend; both BGSU and UNLV are a step below ECU and even this weekend felt a bit unnecessary.  At some point even copy-pasting “Michigan beat up on a bad opponent but wasn’t perfect” gets old.  Maybe we’ll see something new against Rutgers.  But regardless, football is back and it was a relaxing weekend again.  Hard to complain.