Michigan out Iowa'd Iowa - and I'm mad!

I wanted a boring game and I got one. Count me perfectly happy. 

It was a safe and very boring game with little imaginative playcalling, but that is what was needed to beat Iowa.  Flashy crap (TCU) can cost you big time.  We didn't give the Iowa offense anything to work with which guaranteed a win.

I just did not like the sacks.  JJ has to have more awareness than that.  He is holding the ball a beat too long.

After witnessing the Rich Rod/Hoke years I swore that I'd never get upset again over a victory.  It's not always pretty but it sure beats losing to teams like Illinois and Purdue.

You care far too much about this.

I've been saying for weeks that Michigan's DNA is set up to out-Iowa Iowa.  (A lot of people say this, but most of them say it after the fact...)  I was as disappointed/frustrated in the offense as anyone else in the game thread, but I also was not surprised it was so safe.  Like PSU, the only way Iowa was going to score was by turnover.  Take those out of the equation, and the game is over.

PSU's defense was a strip sack or pick 6 waiting to happen.  Iowa's defense is a possible turnover on any random play.  Take those options away, and those offenses are done.

Can check my other comments. There's issues here and it can't be hand waived away with "lol Iowa offense is a literal dumpster fire so they didn't need to try."

JJ dropped back to pass multiple times in that game and either ate a sack in 1.5 seconds or no single receiver could get open. It's fine that they don't pull out the reverse or a flood concept they've never shown before. But they still ran Wilson on a drag/out/hitch/whatever route and he couldn't get open. He doesn't have some hidden gear that he's waiting to drop on Alabama's DBs. That's a problem that isn't opponent dependent.

This wasn't a game that required the offense to be explosive.  Just take care of the football and win the game.  Simple as that and the game went as such.  Fuck all the pundits and their bitching about the offense.  I'm sure it will be opened up for Bama.  

Also, Fuck Bama!  Fuck Childers and Neuheisel for still ragging on Michigan and supporting the reprehensible decision to put Bama in.  4th and goal from the 31.  Nice job Committee - you morons.  

I think what we're glimpsing is that there's a clever contemporary way to play--and win--this game that doesn't (necessarily) get you points or numbers, keeps your players fresh, etc. There are a lot of counter-arguments to examine, including questions about whether a guy like JJ is (now) ready to hurl it if you go down two scores. I'd love to see a nice think piece from Seth and/or Brian that looks at this question directly; how close does Fremeau come to taking in all the nuances? I'd concede that I'm naive about this stuff, but I think (?) there are several more layers of complexity that Sherrone and Jim are pointing at.

I went into the game with the attitude that it doesn’t have to be a beauty contest.  Just win because if you lose, you don’t have the benefit of the doubt like the SEC to still get in the playoff.

With that said, I don’t see me going back and watching this game often for nostalgic purposes other than the trophy presentation.  Iowa just does this to the game of football.  It’s just constant ugliness.

On a side note, I am far past the breaking point of having any patience with Fox.  I want the Big Ten to call it quits with Fox and go back to ABC.  They’ve always been commercial obsessed but Saturday night, they may have broken their own record.  They also went back and highlighted the big house crowd cheering for Zinter during the OSU game.  It gave me chills but those of us at home were robbed of that because any injury means another joyous ten minute commercial break for Fox.  F*ck them. 

No sane fan is unhappy with our performance on Saturday. Knowing our defense and Iowa's offense, we could have taken a knee on every single snap after the score hit 10-0 and *still* won in a shutout. Stop dignifying the ramblings of malcontents.

Yes, like PSU did, we out-Iowa'd Iowa, because that's all we needed to do. We've been "sandbagging" the whole year. Time to open it up....

I was getting so pissed listening to Klatt going on and on about how great Iowa’s defense was playing and all the “winning with punts” and yada yada yada; at one point it was 10-0 and he emphatically said “Iowa’s defense is winning!!!”…

Meanwhile I’m like, what you’re saying is LITERALLY WHAT MICHIGAN IS DOING. They were beating Iowa’s ass at their own game and perfectly happy doing it. 

I've never had a feeling before in an important football game where I was bored every time the opponent had the ball just waiting for the inevitable punt.  Sometimes they moved the ball a little bit but after I saw the first couple possessions, it felt like a waste of time for Iowa to even play offense.  You could say it was good practice for the defense, but they practice against better offenses every day during the week.

I kind of laughed at a friend for buying tickets to witness that game in person, it was always going to look ugly and be pretty boring. 

I don't think Harbaugh really cares about style points at this juncture. What he cares about is winning, and doing whatever gives his team the highest probability to do so, regardless of how it looks. 

If that result yields a 59-3 blowout then great. But if it just results a ho-hum 26-0 boring affair, I doubt he cares any more or any less. Give him the W and he's happy. 

Michigan effectively took away that one thing Iowa needed in order to have any chance of staying in this game, much less winning it. I think there will be a time/place for this team to open things up more, and if they happen to make the title game, they might as well go for broke there. But playing that way against Iowa was not the time to do it. 

any time they win, I'm happy

I don't remember Michigan taking a big shot down the field.  Not sure if it was fear of Iowa intercepting or if Michigan was content with the same ole conservative playcalling.  They won by 3+ TDs and it was a shut out.  At no point did it feel like Iowa was a threat.  While some passing TDs would have been nice, I'll gladly take what we got in Indy if that means they're saving their real playbook for bama.

Call me crazy but if you squint just right this graph kinda looks like a boa constrictor squeezing the life out of its prey.

If it was Iowa in the ACC championship game instead of Louisville against FSU. Iowa would have won 12-0.

Did we win?

Some fans must think we can get to a big game, flip a switch that says "Modern offense," and we'll be fine. Why do we seem to take it as a badge of honor that this team rarely reps the concepts (play action and screens most of all) that good offenses use to make things easier on the QB and put up points? I can understand that mindset when we've paving defenses into the ground like we were last year, but not when we've had a mediocre run game all year.