Best: Their Men, Not Machines

The biggest takeaway from this game, beyond the final score, beyond the 2-game winning streak in the series, beyond HOW these past two games have gone, is that whatever mythos that existed around the Ohio State Buckeyes as a team and program has evaporated into the ether. And it didn’t evaporate slowly, like a glass of water left out on the porch during the summer.  No, it was flash-boiled like you dropped that glass on the surface of the Sun, and it all happened about when Donovan Edwards ran basically untouched for the second of two 75+ yard TD runs in the span of about 4 minutes and choo-choo’ed the Buckeye faithful into their late-afternoon festivities.  Up to that point, even with Edwards having ripped off a huge TD run the last time he touched the ball and Stroud throwing a pick on the previous drive, the game was still vaguely competitive given OSU’s potential offensively.  For most of the game UM’s defense had been the definition of bend-but-don’t break, letting OSU churn out yardage between the 20s but keeping them out of the endzone (on the day the Buckeyes made 4 trips to the redzone and only scored a TD on 1 while also turning it over once), and had survived by winning way more of the high-leverage moments than we’ve come to expect in this rivalry.  And so it makes poetic sense that when Michigan was finally going to slay this beast once and for all, to destroy the notion that the invisible hands of fate worked for the Buckeyes, to drive the Akron teenager playing NCAA Football so OSU wins a bunch of titles to such despair that he throws his controller into the wall and rage-quits, it would be via a one-handed running back sprinting through a perfectly-blocked gap on 3rd-and-3 deep in UM’s territory and going straight to the fucking house.

I’m not sure how this diary is going to go – I’m writing it running on fumes from a lengthy Thanksgiving driving experience, recovering from a collective family illnesses of various nasal varieties, and an emergency-ish root canal.  Last year’s column was, for many reasons, a cathartic moment, a chance to write about a happy end to a season that didn’t include “hey, at least UM beat Florida.”  It was written by someone who was old enough to remember taking this rivalry for granted, who always assumed that trading victories and being spoilers one year and the target the next was just how college football played out.  But it was also written by someone who had lived through the past 20 years of this rivalry, who watched one team keep rising while the other got stuck in mediocrity, going from rationalization to anger to acceptance as the Buckeyes kept pilling up the wins, the conference titles, and the national acclaim.  It’s hard to explain to younger fans now but there was a time not that long ago when OSU wasn’t a juggernaut.  They were good, mind you, but from basically the end of Woody Hayes to the the beginning of the Tressel era Ohio State was only that – a good football team – and the Game was just as likely to be a contest where Michigan had more to play for than the Buckeyes.  2011 had felt like a mirage even in the moment, a scratch-and-dent Ohio State team that was an errant deep ball away from STILL beating the luckiest Michigan team I’ve seen in decades, and right-as-rain OSU fixed the glitch and were back to hamblasting Michigan for another decade.  There had been some close calls along the way, from Devin Gardner’s near-miracle in 2013 and 2016’s infamous spot, but even those brushes with victory further reinforced the foreboding sense that Michigan was trapped in this Sisyphean struggle for competitiveness and equality with the Buckeyes that they’d never attain.  Last year felt different, it absolutely did, but as a Michigan fan I’ve been conditioned to at least clock that one cloud in an otherwise bright blue sky, to not necessarily ignore the bright side but recognize the existence of a not-so-bright one.  And so, even with a fresh victory fueling playoff dreams and redemptive titles, I openly wondered if the dynamics of this rivalry had really changed or if Michigan had finally flipped tails, that even a rigged game sometimes has to pay out for the mark in order to keep him playing.

I wrote this in 2019 and it held true all last year as well – there wasn’t some magic bullet, some once-in-a-generation hire who could “save” Michigan because salvation wasn’t what Michigan needed.  They just needed a break, a chance to break through.  That was what made the early Harbaugh years so draining – they had some chances, some opportunities to make this a rivalry in more than an historical sense once again. Do I think this win over OSU will upset the pecking order in college football going forward?  No, because college football isn’t a land of heroes and villains, where good triumphs over evil in a splashy, cinematic battle.  Teams like Alabama, Ohio State, Georgia and the rest operate at their level because of recruiting, player development, and culture that doesn’t disappear because of a loss on a snowy Saturday in November.  But maybe THIS game, in THIS season, coming as it did after the tumultuous 2020 season necessitated a reevaluation of the program and staff by Harbaugh and the University, portends Michigan’s arrival into that upper tier of college football once again.  One’s stay in that spot is always ephemeral (ask Clemson, Oklahoma, FSU, etc. about it), but Michigan has every right and ability to stick around a while, to make most season-ending matchups with the Buckeyes de-facto conference championship games.

I’m going to spend the rest of this column digging into the nuts-and-bolts of this win a bit, trying to put into context just how complete this victory was over a team that most figured was a shoo-in for a CFP spot.  But above all else I want to leave you with the sense that this isn’t 2011, where Brady Hoke’s motley crew escaped against a shell-shocked OSU team, a mirage of competence and a brighter future.  No, this was Michigan out-coaching, out-executing, and in many ways out-talenting Ohio State when the Buckeyes were (largely) the fully-operational battle station they are supposed to be, and UM did it without playing a perfect game.  They looked as fast, as strong, as coherent as the Buckeyes on both sides of the ball, and it always felt like they had an answer for what OSU would throw at them.  Now, Michigan will have to repeat this performance going forward every time they face the Buckeyes, but this is the proof of concept that it works, that “Michigan being Michigan, fergodsakes” works against their biggest rival, and that should be enough for every Wolverines in 2021.

If last year’s game was a proof-of-concept, a prototype of what Michigan could be under Harbaugh, this year’s game was that model going to production and being on store shelves in time for holiday shopping.  Michigan is “back”, and not in the way Texas, Notre Dame, or even previous versions of this squad have been “back” for the better part of 2 decades, teasing validation of their blue-blooded status before stumbling back into mediocrity.  Last year wasn’t a blip: it was a reset, and Michigan and Ohio State looked poised to make this a true rivalry, with national stakes more often than not, for the foreseeable future. 

Best:  Left-Handed

Last year’s win against OSU was cathartic for so many reasons on the field – Michigan’s defense finally getting the better of a fully-operational OSU offense, a rushing attack paving the way after so many failed iterations have unsuccessfully tried the same, quarterback play that was sufficient and non-self-destructive – but at the same time there was some credence to the claim that Michigan was “fortunate” in a lot of ways.  OSU had demoted/chained-Kerry-Coombs-to-a-desk-with-a-list-of-top-level-recruits’-Snapchat-numbers-and-told-to-go-to-work and were scrambling most of the year to field a competent defense, especially against the run (4 teams wound up putting 200+ yards rushing up on the Buckeyes last year).  Michigan had two of the best defensive ends in the country in Heisman runner-up Aiden Hutchinson David Ojabo, which let them generate a consistent, organic pass rush without having to resort too often to exotic blitz packages or otherwise dedicate extra resources to disrupting CJ Stroud in the backfield that could otherwise be deployed slowing down OSU’s plethora of first-round WR talent.  The weather, despite not being the blizzard-like conditions OSU fans lamented afterwards, was cold and windy enough that it materially affected what OSU could do offensively.  If reports are to be believed*, various OSU players were suffering from flu-like symptoms that hindered their preparation and even in-game performance.  And it was a home game, one that Michigan was clearly psyched to play in front of a raucous crowd.  Obviously Michigan still had to perform in the spot but a Buckeye advocate could point to a number of decks stacked against them.  And so when Michigan won convincingly, they did so right-handed.

The context of this year’s game, by comparison, was markedly different.  First off, it was on the road in Columbus, before a pumped crowd who were tired of hearing for a whole year how Michigan had beaten their favored Buckeyes.  The weather was perfect for the time of year, sunny and calm and downright comfortable temperature-wise.  Michigan came into the game down (or with limited capability) a number of key contributors.  Blake Corum had suffered a pretty gnarly knee injury against Illinois, tried to come back with limited success, and during warmups in Columbus sported a massive knee brace that clearly hindered his mobility.  Mike Morris dressed and played the first series of the game but were clearly hobbled and (AFAIK) didn’t see the field much afterwards.  Luke Schoonmaker was on the field and caught a pass but looked somewhat limited.  Donovan Edwards, who had missed the previous couple of games with a hand injury, basically had his entire right hand immobilized in a protective cast and was handling the ball exclusively with his left arm.  Oh, and Michigan’s offense sans Corum looked markedly less efficient both on the ground and through the air, as McCarthy and co. had failed to consistently make downfield throws for basically the entire conference slate.  Defensively the team lacked that organic pass rush, with a whole lot of B+ guys at end but no real standout who could beat a tackle consistently.  Stroud had struggled the previous game because Hutchinson and Ojabo kept moving him off his preferred spot; lacking that discomfort he’d have time to find guys like Harrison Jr and Egbuka downfield even against good coverage.  Everything that seemingly could work against Michigan in this contest was, in some form, there on Saturday, and so a win was going to require Michigan to play a great game in spite of game conditions and not because of them.

But that’s exactly what Michigan did.  In the first half they struggled mightily offensively without Corum, clearly having a couple of “break in case of emergency” plays to compensate for a lack of a stud running back but, logically, not being able to completely pivot their identity in a week.  The Buckeyes took the opening drive of the game into the endzone, mixing run and pass well and converting on a number of short 3rd-down plays to score.  Michigan followed it up with a bit of a janky drive that survived thanks to some 3rd-and-long conversions but sputtered after an intentional grounding (that probably isn’t called if a lineman didn’t swat at it first) left them in 2nd-and-20.  A Moody 49-yard FG got UM on the board but it was foreboding to say the least since Corum was clearly not going to be able to play with his usual explosiveness and OSU was daring UM to beat them through the air.  OSU marched down the field again, aided by a facemask penalty, but the defense stiffened a bit and held them to a FG.  What followed was one of the more pivotal stretches of the game because Michigan’s offense couldn’t really do much (2 straight 3-and-outs) but OSU couldn’t quite cash in due to some great defensive efforts (Harrell breaking up a pass on 4th-and-short) and then UM got a break when McCarthy, under intense pressure, flung a ball to Johnson near the 1st-down line on 3rd-and-9 after OSU brought the house.  Johnson pivoted, shook the defender, then kept his balance despite an ankle swipe and ran untouched to the endzone for t he game-tying TD.  UM fans’ minds harkened back to the PSU game, where a couple of high-leverage plays by the Nittany Lions let them stay in a game where they were being dominated.  But this was also perhaps a sign that OSU’s highly aggressive, we’re-going-to-sell-out-against-the-run-and-dare-you-to-beat-us-downfield gameplan had an thermal exhaust port; if you don’t make every tackle in space, if you do bite on great route running, you’re not going to have any backup to clean up the mess.  And that’s basically what happened the next time UM got the ball, as Johnson absolutely abused the OSU secondary and got so wide open that McCarthy nearly underthrew the ball because he was clearly surprised it was that open.  But Johnson reeled it in and suddenly UM was up 17-13 despite not really playing all that well.  OSU answered back with a Marvin Harrison TD on good coverage that just sometimes happens when you’ve got elite talent at that spot, but this was a game at halftime mostly because Michigan hit their big plays and OSU couldn’t quite break it open.

It’s a bit crazy to think in the moment but that was the last lead OSU would have in this game.  The second half started with UM scoring on their opening drive, aided by a great McCarthy run and OSU freaking out so much about his legs and various misdirections that Loveland got screamingly wide open for the third 40+ TD pass of the day.  OSU went 5-and-out on their next drive, UM went 3-and-out, and then OSU nearly clawed all the way back from 1st-and-35 but elected to punt on 4th-and-10 after seemingly planning a fake punt but getting called for a false start.  The most interesting part of that 3rd quarter was OSU punting both times basically at midfield on 4th-and-reasonable, and while I’m not one to subscribe to the notion of “choking” there’s little logical reason why OSU should care about field position against Michigan in this game given what they’d seen thus far.  But you could tell OSU had gotten spooked by those big plays, realizing that maybe Happy learned to putt and if that’s the case then their entire gameplan for stopping the Wolverines was in trouble.  Regardless, Michigan took the last drive of the 3rd into the 4th, scoring on a 15-play, 80-yard drive with a 3rd-and-goal McCarthy run into the endzone where he ran past his blockers and barreled into a defender.  Michigan was suddenly up 11 and OSU looked shocked.  The teams then traded possessions, including a missed 57-yard FG by Moody and a made 27-yarder by Ruggles at the UM 9 and the score was 8 with about 6-7 minutes to go in the game.  But then the flood gates opened and the running game, which had until that point picked up around 70 yards mostly on McCarthy scrambles, came alive with Edwards rumbling for huge TD runs as OSU’s defense so completely sold out to stop them that they didn’t have a defender more than 8 yards from the LOS.  After that first TD run OSU got in panic mode, rushing down the field but the defense was started getting more pressure on OSU as the Buckeyes (who hadn’t run the ball particularly well all game anyway) completely abandoned that aspect of the game.  Stroud wound up throwing a bad pick on 3rd-and-10 in the redzone as he was being tackled, and Edwards followed it up with the go-home TD run above. 

It’ll likely be lost in the hoopla and good vibes around this win and what it says for the future of this season but I hope fans remember how unexpected this win was, especially how significant it turned out.  Michigan was without their Heisman-level RB, their top defensive end, and had injuries and uncertainty across the lineup.  They were outplayed for long stretches of the game, and made critical mistakes that would have submarined previous iterations.  But this team made the majority of their high-leverage plays, didn’t lose their heads when things went sideways on them, and executed their gameplan so well that by the 2nd half it weirdly felt inevitable that Michigan would find a way to pull the game out while OSU would try not to lose.  It’s insane to say that now after the past 20 years but Michigan is the team that finds a way to win even without their best hand to play, and its hard to see that changing any time soon.

* This will likely not get much attention but between his claims the team was ill last year and this year’s claim that this loss shouldn’t define OSU, despite them spending a whole year talking about how they’d win this game and set the world right, Stroud has shown a weird disconnect from the meaning of this rivalry for a while now.  College football fandom is transactional to a significant degree – if you win big games fans will generally like you more – but guys like Denard and Gardner are still looked on fondly despite having losing records against the Buckeyes because they seemed to get how important the game was and didn’t mince words about it.  I get a sense that OSU fans will hold these losses against Stroud more than he deserves in part because of comments like this that come across as, if not excuses, at least trying to detach oneself from the outcome of the games.

Best:  Mea Culpa

I’ve written for weeks that the passing game has struggled this year due to a combination of underwhelming WR play from guys like Cornelius Johnson and QB play by McCarthy.  I pointed out that McCarthy had a game manager-type season thus far, averaging a bit less than 7 ypa in conference and rarely throwing the ball much downfield.  And Johnson had struggled to hold onto the ball or consistently get open against better defenses.  Now, while McCarthy still didn’t have a consistent day passing (he was 12/24 and 189 of his 263 yards came on 3 passes, two of which were screamingly wide open and the third a play where Johnson did all the work) he made huge plays when they needed them, and just as importantly didn’t turn the ball over and generally played within himself.  He picked up 3 first downs with his legs and was enough of a threat both throwing and running the ball that OSU did have to respect him, and that helped open up the running game later on.  As for Johnson, he showcased all of his skills on that first TD play, breaking on a slightly errant throw, breaking tackles, and beating everyone to the endzone, and then showed his NFL-level route running on the second TD as he smoked the OSU defender so badly that Martinez probably wanted a hug afterwards. 

Now, do I think the passing offense is fixed?  Jury is still out; OSU put them on islands and UM made them pay but especially if Corum remains out defenses will compensate and make those windows smaller and tackle better.  McCarthy still airmailed a couple of balls and his second-half numbers (4/10 for 59 yards and a TD) weren’t great.  But at least for a weekend he made those downfield throws and that was enough in a huge game to win going away.  Hopefully he can build on this against Purdue and beyond.

Best: Crazy

You have to be crazy to win in this series. Urban Meyer was an awful person but he was a bit unhinged and that made him good. Harbaugh is a good guy who is also insane . . . and he's starting to win. Ryan Day seems like a decent guy who clocks in, works hard, and likes the steady paycheck and doing well. He looks like a banker or a lawyer and that's sort of the vibe he gives off. That might get you pretty far but this rivalry goes to the craziest, the most rabid, and right now that's Michigan.  Last year they were stealing teams’ traditions and raising folding chairs, and this year they’re donning fancy shades after turnovers and going to Columbus without All Americans and feeling pretty confident.  You saw that on the field Saturday; OSU’s defensive linemen would wag their tongues and stomp their feet after every stop but their defensive scheme was also selling out to stop the run even after Michigan had smoked them in the air; for all the bravado they were terrified that Michigan was going to smash them on the ground like they had the year before.   By comparison, Michigan didn’t flinch when OSU got up on them multiple times and stayed with their defensive gameplan but made subtle adjustments when necessary.  And they kept running the ball because when it finally started working…oh boy did it work.

I 100% believe Ryan Day “cares” about this rivalry but I’m not sure he lives it the way Harbaugh, Meyer, Tressel, Carr, and everyone else before him did.  You gotta be obsessed with this game to win it consistently, and right now I do wonder if that’s an advantage UM enjoys.

Best:  Maximal Position Flexibility

I wish I could write more; I really do.  There are so many great performances in this game.  But I’d be remiss if I didn’t highlight Mike Sainristil going from a little-used slot receiver to a guy who made maybe the biggest defensive play all year for this team with an endzone breakup on 3rd down.  The joke around these parts is that a guy switching positions between offense and defense almost always speaks poorly for both the position and the player, but his move to defense both solidified a key spot in the defense and also may have stamped his ticket to the NFL.  I can’t think of a more impressive transition at Michigan, and if he returns next year I fully expect him to challenge for all-conference honors given how well he’s play for the bulk of the year.

Quick Hits

• I understand that every fanbase has a vocal contingent of loons and cranks but it’s been enlightening to see the OSU faithful melt down these past two years as their teams have fallen to (in their eyes) vastly inferior Michigan teams.  The calls for Ryan Day’s head, though probably still premature, do make sense especially given the fact that their unspoken safety blanket backup – Luke Fickell – just signed up to be the head man in Wisconsin.  This follows the signing of Matt Rhule at Nebraska, another top-line coach who’s had success elsewhere turning struggling programs into top-level contenders.  Though certainly not as extreme as the ACC was with Clemson or the Big 12 was under the Lincoln Riley era, where seemingly only one team seriously contended for a playoff spot every year, but the Buckeyes enjoyed a veritable monopoly in the conference basically for a decade and that’s probably not going to be the case anymore and that’s before you even consider USC and UCLA joining.  I don’t think Day is destined to be a mediocre coach or that OSU won’t still be a Death Star but after turning over your defensive staff and getting beaten even worse at home I do think he’s feeling a bit of a hot seat.
• Mullings making that throw on 3rd-and-short after having already been used on an earlier, failed short-yardage conversion felt like a great gameplan decision as much as a great in-game play.  Obviously you wished the first conversion attempt had worked as well but seeing Mullings twice sold the “it’s not a gimmick play” vibes you needed for that Schoonmaker play to work because you’d already shown your hand earlier.  Just a fun wrinkle in a game with a couple.
• This OSU team absolutely doesn’t run the ball the way those Meyer teams did and it makes defending them much easier.  Don Brown got eaten alive with crossing routes and the like because he loved aggressiveness and put a ton of pressure on his corners in space, but those OSU teams really beat him up because they had good backs like J.K. Dobbins and real running threats at QB and that’s what allowed them to carve up UM’s defense consistently.  Day’s offense just doesn’t put that pressure on UM’s defense anymore and you can tell it frees them up to throw guys into the secondary and mess with passing lanes.  OSU only had 143 yards on 29 carries in this game, and that’s coming on the heels of last year’s 64-yard output.  It’ll be interesting to see if Day tries to bring more of the running element into the offense next year because that feels like a natural area of weakness.
• I’m going to get into this more in next week’s column but I’m immensely happy Michigan didn’t move on from Harbaugh after 2020.  Feel free to check out what some of those hot coaching names have done since then if you want but it’s why I generally think believing in a person and a process wins out over even a year-or-two sample size of results.

Next Week:  Purdue

Michigan’s back in the B1GTGQRC…PV7…whatever it’s called.  They’re yet again playing against an overmatched West division team who can do a couple things well but also backed into the title game due to the general mediocrity of that part of the conference.  Purdue can throw the ball a bit (even though O’Connell has suffered a step down in production this year) with Jones but this still feels like a 1-handed team that Michigan can absolutely gameplan for.  My guess is Corum and Morris both sit out this game to rest up for the playoffs, but I guess we’ll see.  Regardless, this annual tradition where Michigan eats the soul of OSU and then plays for a conference title is a lot of fun and should continue going forward.  10/10, no notes. 

Go Blue!