Best:  TLDR – Every Iowa Game Ever

The actual game recap is going to be pretty short because this was exactly how every Iowa game has gone for years now – the Iowa offense is terrible, the defense tries to keep them in it, and if the opponent is mediocre they can maybe spring the upset and if they aren’t it’s just a slow-motion beatdown for 4 quarters.  Since Michigan is the #1 team in the country and not the desiccated husk of Nebraska or Wisconsin this game went the way of the latter, with the Wolverines never seriously challenged but also sort of plodding along to the tune of 109 yards on 30 carries (removing sacks) and 4.9 ypa on 30 passes.  But they had a big punt return from Morgan to get their first TD, cashed in on fumble deep in Iowa territory for their other TD, and stifled the Hawkeye offense on basically every drive.  It got so bad for Iowa and their soon-to-depart OC/failson Brian Ferentz that the Iowa “highlights” offensively in this game were one kickoff return for 30 yards and a couple of third-down throws by Hill.

Yes, Michigan’s offensive line looked leaky, and while McCarthy’s top-line numbers were fine (22/30 for 147 yards) when viewed in context of Iowa’s general impregnability in the air he ran into a couple of sacks and looked a bit tentative at times against the Hawkeyes.  At the same time, the only way Iowa was going to make this even close to competitive was if Michigan turned the ball over a ton so a safe, boring plan from their QB wasn’t unexpected.  But the running game again seemed stuck in 2nd gear, and there were times when Drake Nugent apparent injury further discombobulated what the line was able to do and the amount of push they got up front.  They’ve now got some weeks to heal up and get right, but some of the cracks and fissures exposed by Iowa, especially up front, have been season-long ones and are probably just baked in at this point.

As for the defense, it yet again snuffed out a bad offense to a degree that is basically opponent-invariant.  Iowa’s offense is terrible but other than the one bad Doman punt that set them up in Michigan territory, the Hawkeyes got past the 50 for exactly 5 plays, one of which they immediately followed up with a false-start penalty that punched them back onto their side of the field.  At no point was Iowa even in spitting distance of scoring a touchdown, and they wound up going for it on 4th down 3 times, which is 1/3 of their season total, failing to convert on all those occasions.  Mike Sainristil further cemented his name in Michigan football lore with 2 forced fumbles on the day, one on the first of the aforementioned 4th-down conversion attempts and the other the Deacon Hill fumble deep in Iowa territory.  Braiden McGregor also got a fumble along with a sack, and on the day the Wolverines recorded 4 sacks, 5 TFLs, 8 pass breakups and 5 QB hurries.  Again, at no point was this game in doubt and credit to that falls squarely on the defense’s shoulders and their season-long ability to shut the door whenever an opponent even begins to peak an eye through.

So yeah, I’ll write a bit more about specific aspects of the game but if you want a longer recap than “it’s Iowa circa 2020-onward against anyone with a pulse” you might want to look elsewhere.  Hell, once Michigan went up 17-0 I called it an early night and finished up the rewatch in the morning.  While there are lots of issues with conference expansion and how it’s allowed the worst people in the sport to make a ton of money while fans and players suffer, not having to be subjected to the best team in the conference play the 5th- or 6th-best in a "title" game is one of the few silver linings going forward.

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.

He sounded completely lost early on when discussing NIL, asking Congress to step in so that players can have “true NIL”, whatever that means, because he clearly wanted the hand the buck off to someone else while demurring on the notion of universities and the league treating athletes like employees.  Jim Harbaugh, by comparison, has repeatedly been vocal about treating athletes as major contributors to this billion-dollar enterprise and ensuring they get a healthy piece of the pie.  When news broke in the offseason about Pat Fitzgerald and Northwestern’s at-best “mishandling” of years-long hazing on the football team (and more generally across the athletic department), Petitti pointedly didn’t get involved and deferred to the school’s external investigations.  This despite evidence that the school initially tried to sweep these abuses under the rug and the offenses clearly involving player safety and well-being.  When Michigan State flashed an oversized image of Hitler (I guess there’s no “appropriately sized” image of him but one dwarfing both the Meijer and Nike logos definitely is too big) on their scoreboard before a game against Michigan Petitti and the conference were silent.  At literally every opportunity outside of Michigan, when he’s had to display leadership or a sense of self in his duties he’s deferred, looked for the easy way out as a means to not ruffle feathers or have to defend a stand.  With Michigan he hasn’t displayed leadership either, instead just getting bullied by disingenuous ADs and bad coaches who can’t do their jobs well enough to beat the Wolverines, but he at least made a controversial decision and suspended Harbaugh for the final 3 games of the years.  Unfortunately for him, Michigan still won those games and wound up in Indy as prohibitive favorites, so instead of possibly getting to hand a trophy to a giddy Ryan Day he was looking down the barrel of being on a crowded stage with a bunch of Michigan Wolverines, the team he tried so hard to deny this spot.

And so after this complete demolition by the Wolverines, Petitti knew he’d have to share a stage with Jim Harbaugh and hand him yet another conference trophy.  I’m sure it was daunting, to know that your intellectual laziness and toothless leadership might actually have negative consequences, as his “fucking around” with MSU and OSU fanfic led to “finding out”, as the kids say.  But that’s what the money’s for, and while I’m sure Petitti wished he could pull a Pete Thamel and make baseless claims about personal safety in a crowd on national television, he knew he had to do the bare minimum and physically hand the trophy to someone in Maize and Blue.  And that’s exactly what he did, meekly handing the trophy to a hobbled Zak Zinter before squeezing his way to the back of the stage.  He didn’t say a few words like Kevin Warren did in 2021 and  2022, who spoke to the crowd even as fans booed him lustily.  No, Petitti fled from consequence, from even the slightest bit of comeuppance from a man who he didn’t even announce he was suspending until the plane was in the air on the way to Happy Valley.  No, he ran away and my hope is that as he stood there on the podium it dawned on him that nobody in this conference has any respect for him.

Because that’s the thing – he’s been a useful idiot for the whinier portions of the conference but they have no love for him or his role as commissioner.  He’s shown no gumption, no spine in the face of adversity, and I’m sure the next time scandal that hits this conference far worse than grainy iPhone videos (and you know it’ll happen at some point) he’ll fumble that as well.  And that’s the warning I’d give to all the other teams, one that I’ve echoed for weeks now – you’ve set both a precedent that petty grievances can be excessively punished by the commissioner’s office given enough pressure and that you can’t trust the head office to be consistent throughout the process.  My guess is the latter revelation will lead to the demise of Tony Petitti, as whatever value Petitti provides as a flak jacket wears thin quickly and can be easily replaced with yet another stuffed shirt.  Now, don’t shed a tear for him because he’ll just fail back into some “advisor” role clearing more money than most of us will see in a lifetime, but it must be said that when he is fired from this job college football will be in a better place because of it.

Best:  Regaled Dominion of Mike Sainristil

For years this site has (correctly, I will add) professed the greatness of the Blessed Order of Jordan Kovacs, a who-dat walk on who wound up earning an all-conference nod as a junior and senior and was the team’s MVP in 2012 before embarking on an NFL career where he got a couple of cups of coffee with various NFL franchises.  He wasn’t the fasted or biggest guy on the team but, well, I’ll leave it to Seth to distill his essence as a player:

This was the Kovacs you had to be a bit of a wonk to fully appreciate, but over the course of 2011 the Kovacs who was ALWAYS THERE when that guy was supposed to arrive was the main thing giving viewers a sense of peace they hadn't felt since the days of...Jamar Adams? Marcus Ray? Tripp? When an option pitch went outside the last defender on the screen, it was Kovacs who appeared, already at top speed, at the perfect angle to end it at the sideline. When a linebacker went the wrong direction on a stretch run and you braced for a long chase, Kovacs came. He was our binky.

That’s Kovacs in a nutshell – a guy who was always there when and where you needed him to be maximally impactful.  Every team has guys like that in their lore, the guys who maybe flew under the radar but were the glue that held together their teams and were more often than not the players who came up big in key moments.  Mention them in casual conversation with fellow fans and you can tell who was around for their eras vs. who missed them by the subtle head nod, the wistful shaking of the head and the brief smile that crosses their faces when they remember the time he erased a QB from the timeline.

Now, Mike Sainristil wasn’t a walk-on but was still a lightly-regarded player from Massachusetts, a state known more for its law firm-named high schools than high-level college football players.  He came to Michigan and floated around the WR depth chart for a handful of years, showing some promise but given his size usually being relegated to limited snaps in the slot and not much else.  But his recruiting profile was pretty evenly distributed between teams that saw him as a WR and who saw him as a cornerback, including a Virginia Tech staff that tended to ID good corners.  So his move in 2022 to the third nickel wasn’t as foreboding as the usual positional switch, especially given the praise and optimism the coaches spoke about him from both the physical and mental sides of position.  At worst he projected as a competent third option in the defensive backfield with some size limitations, and at best the general consensus was he’d be an above-average Big 10 defender at the spot.

And then 2022 happened and Sainristil was rock-solid at nickel and earned all-conference honors in 2022, delivered an impassioned speech on the sidelines in Columbus and then shut the door on the Buckeyes in the 4th quarter of that game.  Have a 2022 like that and people start talking about you in hushed tones, putting you on the cover of magazines and looking at draft boards.  But then Sainristil decided to come back for one more season, one more chance at a national title, and had he just duplicated his 2022 performance fans would be over the moon.  But instead he elevated his play even more, becoming the best nickel corner in the country and one of the most disruptive players in the game.  He is tied for 5th in the country with 5 picks and 2 TDs, forced 2 fumbles against Iowa. and leads the best defense in the country with 6 PBUs.  He’s 7th on the team in tackles and 8th in TFLs, and when other guys on the defense have gone down, from Will Johnson to various linebackers, he’s seamlessly morphed his responsibilities to adjust to their absences.  And after this game, Sainristil joined Hutchinson as the only defensive players to ever win the Big 10 Championship Game MVP award, a mouthful to say but no less meaningful for Sainristil.

Sainristil hopefully has a couple more games in his college career to go but he’s already a legend at Michigan not just because of what he’s done on the field but his impact on this team, on the comradery and unity we’ve seen these past 3 years that transformed a somewhat-snakebitten group into a 3-time conference winner.  He’s been a captain for 2 years and along with guys like Michael Barrett and Jaylen Harrell has helped rebuild this defense from the fractured one it was at the end of the Don Brown era to the elite unit it is now.  Michigan fans have enjoyed watching his blossom into the player he is now and hopefully he’ll be able to make a couple more big plays before his career is done in Ann Arbor.

Worst:  No Block Party

One of the comments Brian made on an early podcast was that when an otherwise-good offense struggles (so not Iowa) it’s usually because one guy made a mistake and that’s enough to submarine the play.  If there’s been one consistent negative for this offense this year compared to past seasons, especially as it relates to the running game and its lack of explosiveness, it’s that those one-mistake plays are far more frequent than in the past.  At times it has been with home-run threats like Donovan Edwards missing a lane or Blake Corum not quite being able to beat a guy to the edge.  Other times it’s been Michigan’s unwillingness to consistently throw play-action passes and McCarthy sometimes missing open guys when they are deployed. But by far the most consistent source of these busted plays has been blocking, both across the offensive line but also at the tight end position.  Drake Nugent is a step down athletically from Olu, the tackles have been both slightly underwhelming and also been in flux due to injuries and a somewhat-inexplicable early-season rotation, and while both Barner and Loveland are solid blockers (and Barner has exceeded my expectations) they’ve also missed some key blocks in space that have limited successful plays. Now, it’s certainly not a major issue and hasn’t severely hamstrung this top-10 offense, but if you're looking for a key reason why Michigan went from having the 5th-most plays of 40+ yards in 2022 to 110th in 2023, it’s definitely a factor.

In this game, Michigan was clearly not going to break out much new stuff offensively given the opponent and various injuries sustained both before and during the contest.  But there were was an end-around with Cornelius Johnson (you can direct your special thanks to Fox for making it impossible to find a clip) where both Nugent and Loveland failed to block either Iowa defender, turning a perfectly-designed wrinkle play into a 2-yard gain.  And there were instances with even "conventional" playcalls, like this run by Corum, where if Bredeson didn’t miss an easy block Corum might well have picked up a big chunk of yards.  That’s been the issue all year – holding a block for an extra half-second, IDing that last safety or linebacker between the ball carrier and the endzone, that one final cut that needs to be made to get through the hole, they’ve been missed more often than in seasons past.  It’s led to these longer drives that, while still quite effective, put more of a strain on the offense to not makes mistakes.

Do I think this will be the difference between Michigan winning a national title or not?  Unlikely, just because great teams (and Michigan is one of them) tend to overcome these missteps in other ways.  Michigan’s passing offense has taken a step forward, with McCarthy showing improved accuracy and an ability to make big throws under pressure.  And the running game has been fine; it’s hard to convey to rival fans how little off a shit this offense has wanted or needed to give for 80% of the schedule.  There are plays in Moore’s bag that he has brought out when necessary and they’ve worked, and my guess is they’ll bring out some more against Alabama.  But so often this year I’ve looked at the box score and said "man, they left 10-14 points on the field" and it’s usually because of missed blocks like these.  With a couple of weeks to prepare, adjust to the loss of Zinter, and to heal up I suspect the offense will look much better.  How much better may well hinge on getting these extra yards and points they’ve left on the field.

Quick Hits:

• I thought the refs were...fine in this game except holding was apparently turned off except for the Wolverines, who got called for two holding calls.  The one on Wilson wasn’t too egregious but the one on Jones felt very ticky-tack, especially when there were multiple instances where Iowa’s tackles just grabbed Michigan defenders as they came around the edge and closed in on Hill.  Also, how this german suplex wasn’t deemed a personal foul or roughing the QB is beyond me.
• The Deacon Hill fumble was dicey in real time but on replay looked like the right call, as the ball only went forward because he hit it as it left his hand.  That was a heads-up play by Wallace to pick up the ball even though the refs had called it an incompletion, and was why Michigan got possession upon review.  This was no more or less “controversial” than Roman Wilson’s TD last weekend, meaning it wasn’t remotely controversial if you know how football rules work.  What made it feel so inexplicable was the fact that Fox just sort of came back from a commercial break and dropped viewers into UM on offense with no real warning.
• Semaj Morgan having that big punt return makes me think he’ll be the chief punt returner next year provided he can field the easy ones as well.  Morris never quite broke thru and let balls hit the ground more than you’d like, while Thaw was touted as more reliable but had his missteps (including in this game allowing a ball to roll 30-ish yards) without the dynamic return element.  Morgan is going to be a big part of the offense next year but he’s got the perfect combination of shiftiness and speed to be a real asset in the return game.

Next:  Alabama in the Rose Bowl

First off, media types trying to make Michigan’s surprised reaction to Alabama getting in over FSU and assuming that’s because UM wants to “duck” the Tide are both being purposely disingenuous and also hypocritical.  The surprise was what most fans felt seeing the announcement, as somehow two 1-loss programs leapfrogged an undefeated P5 conference champion because they’d be playing the playoff games with a backup QB, something that’s only happened approximately 44% of the time in the playoff era.  Also, as the #1 seed Michigan absolutely would have liked a weaker first-round opponent because that’s what every time hopes for.  Alabama certainly didn’t mind getting Cincy in 2021 instead of Michigan or Georgia, nor did they complain when they got the likes of MSU or Notre Dame in favorable first-round matchups.  And honestly, I’m not sure FSU is all that much worse a team on a neutral field compared to the Tide, who tried incredibly hard to lose to Auburn a mere 2 weeks ago and needed lingering injuries to Ladd McConkey and Brock Bowers to slow down the Georgia offense just enough to win that game as well, to say nothing of multiple close-calls all year against the likes of Arkansas, USF, Texas A&M, and LSU.  FSU’s offense without Travis has been rough, but that defense is incredibly nasty and who’s to say with a couple of weeks to prep and regroup they couldn’t win 2 games?

Regardless, Michigan drew the Crimson Tide and while they’re a really good team it has to be stressed for people who haven’t seen them play a ton this year this isn’t your vintage Alabama team.  Jalen Milroe is a big guy with a lot of speed and an evolving passing sense but you can still mess with his reads and force him into mistakes.  People talk about the 4th-down throw to beat Auburn but seemingly ignore him bobbling the snap and then running across and back over the LOS on the two previous plays that set up that play.  He made some big plays against Georgia but also got sort of lucky he didn’t fumble the ball on a scramble at the end and also threw some balls that probably should have been deflected/picked off.  He’s way more of a willing runner than McCarthy but that sometimes leads to him bailing on plays too early, and I can’t quite shake the feeling that a Tommy Rees-led offense can be messed with especially given the fact their non-QB running game has been mediocre most of the year.  Also, Texas has a pair of pass-rushing interior linemen and that disrupted Alabama’s offense in their game; Michigan’s got a couple of those guys as well and so we’ll see how that goes.  Defensively the Tide are really tough at the edges with Dallas Turner headlining but Chris Braswell and Justin Ebiogbe each putting up at least 7 sacks on the year.  McCarthy has shown an ability to make plays on the move and off schedule but this will be like PSU in that he’s likely going to be under stress on more dropbacks than he’s used to and it’ll be imperative on the rushing attack to keep the ball moving.  All that said, Michigan has faced the #2, #3, and #4 defenses over the past 4 games and done fine against them all, so Alabama at #9 is (relatively speaking) a reprieve.

At this point Michigan is the slight favorite in this game, and I tend to agree.  The uncertainty around Michigan mostly has to do with effort; they were never in danger against the Hawkeyes and, as they’ve done most of the year against overmatched teams, the Wolverines didn’t try to extend themselves.  By comparison, Alabama has had to work quite hard the past 2 weeks to win those games and so we’ve probably seen a more engaged Crimson Tide.  On the one hand being tested early and often and knowing how you’d respond can be galvanizing, while on the other hand having to dig deep against 6-6 Auburn and 4-8 Arkansas maybe points to a lower ceiling than what Michigan has displayed.  All four teams in the playoffs this year could conceivably win a national title, and that couldn’t be said every season.  But it’s going to be a fun couple more weeks in what has become an annual tradition of Michigan challenging for a national title.