Michigan out Iowa'd Iowa - and I'm mad!
Michigan had a good win over Iowa but many fans are unhappy with the performance- is this fair?
The only way Michigan was going to lose to Iowa was with turnovers or bad special teams' plays. Michigan's strategy produced a win probability for the game that never fell below 90%!
Iowa won all year by punting and waiting for the other team to make a mistake. Hell, Alabama made it to the CFP by punting and getting a chance to score because Auburn fumbled a punt and then blew coverage on fourth down & 31 to goal!
Yes, Michigan played a vanilla game plan that didn't have any explosive plays and few deep shots. The game plan was to minimize probability of turnovers- On offense this meant a lot of basic runs & very safe passes. On special teams, Michigan only returned one punt - Semaj for 87 yards which was very Iowa of him.
I believe Michigan told Sejaj to only field punts if he could do it with 100% confidence. This led to some balls not being caught and rolling for additional yardage for Iowa. Accepting the loss of yards and avoiding any risk was the right call (and would have been for Auburn!)
Even with with this extra safe strategy, Michigan's punt average net yards after returns was very close to Iowa's M 36.6 versus 38.0 for Iowa
I love how Ferentz said in his after interview that he thought they were in it until Michigan went up17. Really? Once Michigan was up 10 and took Michigan turnovers out of the equation ESPN had Michigan with a 95% win probability.
Yes the running game looked like crap, yes offensive line pass blocking looked leaky. However, Michigan just played the SP+ #2 team in the country last week and lost their #OL player, during the game lost their starting center, and JJ had an ankle injury.
This game is NOT a good measure for how well Michigan will play in the CFP!
Michigan played Iowa in the way that was least likely to give Iowa a chance- and it worked- 26-0, time of possession :
Turnovers: Michigan 0, Iowa 3
December 4th, 2023 at 3:05 PM ^
If we don’t add some wrinkles to the offense that gets us out of playing in a phone booth, it’s gonna be a long game with ‘Bama. The cognitive dissonance affecting Michigan fans is that they seem to not have learned the lesson that what got us here won’t get us where we want to go. We have plenty of evidence going back decades of unimpressive postseason play that has cost us national championships during Bo’s era and going forward. At some point you have to build your team to beat more than just your conference opponents if you are serious about truly competing for national championships.
December 4th, 2023 at 2:20 PM ^
I love how Ferentz said in his after interview that he thought they were in it until Michigan went up17.
They were in the game at that point. JJ threw a gift at the Iowa LB, if he catches it, Iowa at least has a short field and maybe a pick-6, in which case it's down to 1 score. Iowa blew their one chance to get in the game, and it slipped away from them, but they were in it when only down 2 scores.