This turned out shorter than I wanted because I had to deal with various household disasters over the weekend.  Depending on how the Maryland game goes I might take a more holistic approach to the season next weekend.

Best:  Good and Lucky

One of the hallmarks of recent Michigan-PSU contests is that the home team typically blitzes the bejesus out of the road team early on and then watches as the visitors futilely try to come back.  In 2019 PSU scored the first 21 points, in 2018 Michigan scored the first 42 points, in 2017 PSU picked up the first 14 points in the first 2 drives, and in 2016 Michigan put up the first 28 points.  In all those games one team clearly looked better prepared than the other and out-executed on both sides of the ball.  This game felt a bit like a continuation of that pattern, as PSU ran 34 (!) plays for 145 yards while Michigan only ran 6 (!!) for 15 yards, including 2 false-start penalties that ended their 2 drives before they even had a chance.  The announcers even noted that the play disparity in that first quarter was the most lopsided in college football all year, which felt about right in real-time. 

But unlike those past blowouts the score after 1 quarter was only 3-0 PSU, as the Nittany Lions blew a rather obvious fake FG attempt on 4th-and-goal from the 2 yard line on their second drive.  And how PSU strung together those two 14-play drives was less “shock and awe” and more a janky rollercoaster.  To get those 3 points Penn State had to convert 4 of 9 3rd/4th down conversions, including 3rd-and-17, 3rd-and-8, and 4th-and-6 (with a fake punt that UM had pretty much sniffed out by Quinten Johnson but then misplayed the pass).  On the one hand getting those conversions against a robust Michigan defense were good signs for PSU, but how they were doing it didn’t necessarily feel sustainable especially as they were also giving up sacks and relying heavily on Clifford in the running game.  On the other side Michigan couldn’t sustain a drive but both were undone more by false starts on first or second down than the PSU defense swarming UM’s offense, and you could tell they were missing Corum in the passing game early on.  But the plan was there to exploit their advantage against PSU’s interior line and because PSU hadn’t raced out to a big lead Michigan wasn’t forced to deviate from that.  And so after PSU was forced to punt on their first drive of the second quarter (after recovering a forced fumble by Clifford, something PSU did twice in this game), Michigan rode Haskins down the field for a TD, highlighted by a 4th-down run and a big 3rd-down pickup of his own, and suddenly it felt like Michigan had weathered the storm and started to look like the better team on both sides of the ball. 

After gaining 141 yards on their first 3 drives, it was PSU that proceeded to struggle moving the ball with any consistency.  For the rest of the game they were 3/13 on 3rd down (and 4/6 on 4th down), picking up a total of 191 yards over their next 8 drives while Michigan was able to grind out 250 yards on their remaining 8 drives and converted on 6/13 3rd downs.  And that’s a big difference between this Michigan team and years past; they have shown resiliency and consistency when faced with adversity, especially on the road.  I know some will rush to the comments to point out how they lost in East Lansing, but they also fought back against Nebraska on the road when they had every reason to give that up and they also stood tall against PSU after that hellacious first quarter and then that disastrous TD-fumble-FG series.  Even the game against MSU featured them coming back and taking the lead after MSU tied the game, then forcing a punt that could have led to a game-sealing drive had, you know, THAT not happened.  Michigan’s good enough this year on both sides of the ball that they “make” their own luck to a degree, whether it be via a bruising running game, an opportunistic and improving passing game, or a defense highlighted by the best pair of ends in the country and an emerging secondary.  This is a game good teams win, and Michigan has been one of those all year. 

Best:  Unstoppable Force vs. Very Movable Objects

James Franklin’s PSU teams are known for a lot of things – big-play offensive weapons at WR, consistently talented and usually dominant defenses (they’ve been ranked in the SP+ top 25 every year he’s been there and are usually safely in the top 15), and a stable of highly-ranked RBs.  But they’re also known for having some of the worst offensive lines in the country, consistently giving up sacks, TFLs, and untold pressures regardless of how many highly-ranked guys they bring in.  And that’s the thing – PSU has a lot of talent on these lines most years, with this year’s starting 5 featuring 2 top-100 recruits, another top-240 guy and a 5th-year transfer from Harvard who was going to Auburn before the coaching change.  And yet, despite bringing in talented guys who do wind up in the NFL PSU has always struggled to keep their QBs upright and their running backs clean behind the line of scrimmage.  Like, here’s their per-game sacks allowed and rankings nationally every year Franklin’s been in Happy Valley:

• 2014 – 3.39, 124th
• 2015, 3.00, 113th
• 2016, 1.71, 44th
• 2017, 2.23, 75th
• 2018, 2.39, 85th
• 2019, 2.46, 101st
• 2020, 3.11, 105th
• 2021, 2.70, 93rd

And here’s his per-game TFLs:

• 2014, 7.77, 123rd
• 2015, 7.23, 112th
• 2016, 6.36, 94th
• 2017, 7, 113th
• 2018, 5.31, 35th
• 2019, 6.23, 86th
• 2020, 6.22, 65th
• 2021, 7.3, 112th

And that 2016 year featured Saquon Barkley, Miles Sanders, Trace McSorley, Chris Godwin, Mike Gesicki, and an emerging DaeSean Hamilton.  I really can’t explain 2018’s (relatively) solid TFL numbers except that it clearly was a one-year blip since they’ve basically only gotten worse since.  And it’s been like that for years; famously Temple set the AAC conference record for sacks with 10 (!) against the Nittany Lions in 2015, including giving up a sack on a 2-man rush (!!) that still seems like a Madden glitch more than real life.  At the time people defended/excused some of these struggles due to the lingering effects of NCAA sanctions that severely limited scholarship counts for a couple of years, and that absolutely played a part in it.  But Franklin’s been at PSU for 8 years now, and hasn’t been dealing with reduced scholarship counts for 5 of them. 

PSU’s ceiling as a football team has been set by the mediocre offensive lines they put out every year under Franklin, and their sub-par line submarined this year because Iowa was able to knock out Clifford, then they couldn’t break 100 yards on the ground against Illinois (!), then they gave up 12 TFLs, 4 QB hits, and 7 sacks to Michigan on Saturday.  And those numbers are deflated by an almost absurd number of holds; here was the only holding call made the entire game:

Here’s a play only a couple offensive player earlier:

And here’s one 5 plays later:

I mean…

And yes, I understand that offensive holding and defensive back holding happens all the time and calling it consistently would is untenable for a sport that wants to actually see the football matriculated down the field.  But I wanted to harp on this because despite how bad PSU’s offensive lines have historically been and how bad they were in this game despite a plethora of shortcuts taken, David Ojabo and Aiden Hutchinson still picked up 5 sacks, 2 forced fumbles, and 7 solo tackles between them.  Ojabo and Hutchinson currently lead the conference in sacks with 10 each, with Ojabo picking up 9 in the past 6 games.  And they started the party early, with 2 sacks on PSU’s opening drive.  And when they didn’t bring Clifford down they forced him on the move and out of the pocket, which clearly caught UM out of sorts early on given the fact Clifford hadn’t been much of a threat on the ground the past couple of weeks (17 carries for –51 yards the past 3 weeks).  But as the game progressed and the hits kept coming, you could see Clifford start to throw a step earlier than he’d wanted or tried to escape pockets that, if not clean, weren’t cratering at quite the rate his brain’s air raid siren was undoubtedly intimating.  Clifford wound up carrying the ball 16 times for 16 yards, but the math of how he got there tells a different story as he had 61 rushing yards and lost 45 along the way.  For the game PSU only averaged 3.9 ypp, a full yard worse than they put up against OSU on the road only a couple weeks ago, and that was the story basically all game even when the Nittany Lions broke out a fake punt to set up their first FG drive or converted on what seemed like 15 4th-down conversions on their loan TD drive.  Michigan’s defense just kept coming and PSU’s offensive line couldn’t hold up nearly long enough to let guys like Datson and Washington break free (the one long completion of the day for PSU was a short pass to Washington who was wide open and scampered for 44 yards), so PSU had to methodically work their way down the field, conceding yards and then trying to pick them back up with chunk plays that, more often than not, fell short.

We’ve often spoken about how special this season is with the pair of running backs Michigan has, and Haskins and Corum absolutely deserve those platitudes as one of the more dynamic backfields in recent UM history.  But Hutchinson and Ojabo are having equally special seasons, doubly impressive because they’re doing it under the guidance of a first-year DC and an overhauled staff.  It’s very likely that Ojabo will be joining Hutchinson in the NFL next year, and that’s going to sting after he felt like a sleeper for next year, but still what they’ve been able to do against basically every offense they’ve seen this season is immensely impressive and, one hopes, they can continue this performance for at least a couple more games.

Best:  Passing Tests

Don’t look now but Michigan’s currently #8 in the country in terms of yards-per-game given up in the air at 178 ypg.  Now, caveats and all about competition but it’s still a defense that hasn’t given up 300 yards in the air to anyone (Nebraska and Washington [!] both cresting 290 and only PSU being the only other team to break 200), and perhaps more impressively has only allowed teams to complete 54% of their passes after 59% last year and 57% the year before that.  Teams are averaging less than 6 yards per attempt thus far on good volume (30 pass attempts a game), so this isn’t purely a by-product of teams shying away from the pass.  For comparison purpose, MSU has faced 48 pass attempts a game and have given up 329 yards on average at 64% completion percentage, while OSU has faced 39 pass attempts a game and given up 62% completions for 261 yards a game.  Coming into the game a big concern was how UM would handle their first “real” test against an elite WR in Jahan Datson, PSU’s league-leading WR.  Now, I’d argue they had already faced a pretty potent receiving threat in MSU’s Jayden Reed and largely held serve, but Dotson was the type of shifty, elusive WR that had burned UM in years past.  Plus, Michigan came into the game down Gemon Green, the presumptive #1 cornerback for most of the year.  If Michigan was going to lose this game, most fans assumed it would be because they couldn’t stop Dotson as he wound his way through the secondary all day.

And yet, Michigan largely held him in check.  Yes, he still picked up 9 catches on 16 targets, but they amounted to only 61 yards (with a long of 17) and only 33 yards after the catch.  Repeatedly PSU tried to single up Dotson against DJ Turner or Vincent Gray and, save for PSU’s one TD drive when the threat of Clifford’s running ability on short yardage limited UM’s ability to bracket him, that largely went in UM’s favor.  Both of them were sure tacklers on screens and short passes to Dotson in traffic, and the few times PSU tried to send their receivers downfield UM’s corners were with them step-for-step.  In fact, Clifford probably got lucky on a couple of his throws because had then been a bit more accurate UM might have come away with a pick.  All year we’ve been waiting for Gray, Turner, or Green to be exposed, for Hawkins and/or Hill to get burned like they did last season, and for the most part that hasn’t happened.  They aren’t a perfect secondary and have busted a couple of times but overall this has been a steady, improving group all year.  Does that mean they’re poised to shut down OSU’s passing attack?  Of course not; that’s an unreasonable standard for all but the best teams in the country.  But I’m comfortable believing they’ll make life harder for the Buckeyes than they expected when the season starts, and are playing the type of coverage that could frustrate a QB in Stroud who can get a little squirrely when under pressure.  Maryland will be a test this week because they can’t run the ball to save their lives but this feels like a passing defense that is rounding into form precisely when UM needs them to.

Worst:  Pushing Forward

If there’s been one consistent complaint about Michigan’s offense all year (and there have been a few) it’s their predictability running the ball on early downs.  Early on people assumed Michigan’s run-first approach was due to concerns at QB, a likely concern but also one dictated a bit by the team’s strengths at RB and especially offensive line.  With players like Keegan, Zinter, and Vastardis inside Michigan and Haskins in the backfield, they’ve had the ability to move most defenders around at the line of scrimmage and just pound defenses into submission for 4 quarters.  And honestly, it’s worked pretty well even when defenses (like Wisconsin and PSU) had the playmakers in the front 7 to at least match up against them.  And yet, there are still instances when they’ve struggled to break out of this predictability when the opposition has held up well against them.  Earlier in the year both Rutgers and Nebraska found some success defensively at the point of attack by disguising their linebackers hitting various gaps, and MSU’s big tackles were able to reset the line more times than not in East Lansing.  And when that happened Michigan was sometimes slow to adjust, continuing to run into stacked boxes for minimal gains early on in series even when it was clear the defenses were ready.  And when it came to short yardage, the lack of a credible run threat from McNamara tended compress those fronts even more, further hurting UM’s 4th-down conversion rate on runs.

In this game Michigan Hassan Haskins ran on the first play 10 out of 11 series (and on the 11th, McNamara threw a short pass to Haskins), typically for a couple of yards.  Now, there’s nothing wrong inherently with wanting to run the ball especially if you want to keep yourself in manageable down and distances.  But, like, the kid who keeps throwing “rock” in rock-paper-scissors because he thinks rock can punch through paper isn’t doing anyone any favors.  Midway through the 3rd quarter Penn State was practically begging Michigan to run anything else on offense and yet every first drive was a handoff to Haskins for 2-3 yards.  And on their 2 4th-down conversions, PSU just crashed directly into the line and Haskins had to make a pretty Herculean effort on one and was swallowed up on the other.  And yes, Michigan’s tackles were struggling against pressure for parts of the day, especially Hayes, and running game seemingly got better the more times Haskins carried the ball, but the lack of diversity on first down in this game set up more difficult 2nd and 3rd downs than needed to be.  I do think this is a pattern with Gattis (and really a lot of OCs) to settle into a routine early on in series, and to his credit he did scheme some nice plays to get Erick All open on the game-winning TD as well as cash in on their two red zone-ish trips (Wilson’s first TD was from the 21-yard line), but this felt like a very uneven game after a couple of good ones against MSU and IU.

Best:  Doing It All

So it was typical Hassan Haskins day, which meant he rushed for well over 100 yards (156) at a good clip (5 ypc in this one) on solid usage (31 carries) and rarely failed to pick up positive yardage (his only negative play was a 1-yard loss on 4th down).  That’s the 4th time in 5 weeks that he’s crested the century mark on the ground but perhaps more importantly he’s started to emerge as a credible receiving threat, with 5 catches for 45 yards including that big 3rd-down catch where he spun off a couple of would-be tacklers.  We all love the Haskins Hurdle but he remains such a punishing runner with a low center of gravity that I can’t imagine how tiring it must be to try to bring him down 30+ times a game.  With Corum out of the lineup and unlikely to return until OSU, Haskins will remain the focal point of the offense and his emergence as a credible receiving target should help them retain a bit of the Corum-in-space magic that was so dangerous earlier in the year.  Obviously Haskins isn’t the same type of pure athlete with the ball in his hands but he’s been able to run away from defenders after the catch in a couple of games already and there’s no reason to believe Maryland will be much different. 

I want to write more superlatives about his performance these past couple of weeks with Corum sidelined but Haskins has done this for years now – when the weather gets colder and the games get more physical he rises to the occasion.  Kenneth Walker is still the best running back in the conference and a deserved Heisman front-runner given just how atrocious that offensive line is, but right now there isn’t a running back in the country I’d rather have in UM’s backfield than Haskins, and it’s not even close.  For what this team wants to do offensively, he’s the perfect compliment of size and speed and is quietly going to break 1,000 yards despites sharing carries for most of the year with another dynamic playmaker.  Just a great final year for him.

Best:  Red Zone-z!

After weeks of being the team that settled for FGs instead of punching in TDs and being “scared” to throw when they got close to the opponent’s red zone, Michigan only scored TDs in this game and did so throw the air.  Cade had a solid game overall despite being under consistent pressure from PSU’s line but he made some great throws to score close, including a bullet to Wilson on the second TD that I’m still not sure how he got it through traffic.  The passing offense has taken off the past couple of weeks even if the stats haven’t been exceedingly gaudy, in part because Erick All has emerged as perhaps the best TE under Harbaugh (and yes, Jake Butt was a better receiver but All is on another level as a blocker) but also because the receivers have settled into their roles and McNamara is seemingly more comfortable in the offense overall.  Does he still sometimes miss bigger plays post-snap?  Absolutely, and in this game he missed a couple of bigger gains downfield by checking down to the “safer” option.  But PSU has a great defense and taking what they gave you allowed Michigan to methodically move the ball downfield when they needed to as well as bust the big play when necessary.  I still don’t know how this team will look against OSU in a couple of weeks but this is a passing offense that should be able to move the ball against the Buckeyes and that’s all you can hope for in that matchup.

Next Week:  The Toitles

Maryland will be looking for the upset and has the firepower offensively to make it a game for a bit.  They may have lost 40-21 against MSU this week but they didn’t punt in the 2nd half and were able to move the ball pretty consistently in the air.  Admittedly MSU’s secondary is hot garbage but they’ll be another test for UM’s corners.  Still, this should be a game UM wins comfortably and, more importantly, healthy, setting up a winner-takes-all (if OSU wins against MSU) game for the division crown.  Given expectations to start the year, no fan should be complaining.