queensbury rules football

[Patrick Barron]
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Not Technically A Private School
Brian • January 2, 2020 • 1:27pm

1/1/2020 – Michigan 16, Alabama 35 – 9-4, 6-3 Big Ten, season over

Well, that could have been worse.

The last time Michigan played Alabama I was rapidly drinking a beer in the second quarter because that was the obvious thing to do. I think it was the second play from scrimmage when Roy Roundtree tried to run a route up the sideline and the Alabama cornerback blasted him five yards into the sideline. The outcome was never in doubt, only the exact nature of the humiliation.

This, by contrast, was a football game. It was a football game despite early indicators that it would be another ritual spanking. Michigan had a halftime lead, and it felt like they should have had a bigger lead. This was a correct take since Michigan scored zero second-half points and Alabama covered easily. But until Shea Patterson threw an interception directly at Josh Jobe, it was worth your time.

Yes, this is a low bar to clear. I love low bars to clear. I love stepping over a six inch obstacle and celebrating like I have cured polio. I have successfully breathed in and out several times while writing this paragraph and am high-fiving myself madly. I am an accomplished individual. I clear bars. Do not ask where they are located.

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And heck, almost everything that's relevant for next year was pretty good. Josh Gattis came out with an excellent gameplan that saw Michigan put up nearly 300 first half yards before Alabama adjusted and Michigan had to rely on out-executing the Tide with a crew of people who are mostly not five stars. Zach Charbonnet got a lot of work done on the ground and in one memorable pancake in pass protection. Giles Jackson popped out for downfield completions, and by the end of the game Alabama was popping kickoffs to the 35 to prevent him from getting the ball. Chris Hinton survived as a lone nose tackle, mostly.

If the point of a bowl game is to encourage you about the next season this was about as good as a win. If the point of a bowl game is to win it, well… that was not as good as a win.

This is because the loss largely went back to Patterson, who threw zero passes longer than 15 yards that a receiver could touch, let alone catch. As documented on this site, Patterson's late-season yardage surge was always a false dawn based more on Josh Gattis giving him eight-yard RPO throws that Michigan turned in to great piles of yardage. But even at his meh-est, Patterson was always a guy you could rely on to throw an arcing deep ball that gave his receivers a chance. This was in fact his greatest strength.

In this game his deeper throws were weirdly flat and always off. Early, Nico Collins beat a Josh Jobe jam badly enough that on a ball that hit him in stride Jobe was either going to make a shoestring tackle or give up a touchdown; Patterson zinged a rope that the king of catching radius couldn't get a finger on. And that was pretty much his day until he threw it right to Jobe right after Eubanks had turned his route up at the sideline, wide open. That was the ballgame in a neat little bow.

To a large extent it also was the season. Michigan had two other major issues—defensive tackle and Gattis transition costs—but Patterson dropping from a guy PFF ranked ahead of Dwayne Haskins to a guy nine slots behind the noodle-armed dude Michigan played in the opener (as of week 12) was the biggest single factor in a disappointing season and the one most emblematic of the frustrating spot Michigan finds itself in. A lot of TV stats are weird, cherry-picked, and meaningless, but Michigan going 0-20 against top 15 teams in road/neutral games since Lloyd Carr retired does actually say it all about where it's at.

And while I said it badly right after the Ohio State game, the thing that sticks with me after this season are the two relevant quotes from the OSU/Michigan rivalry. Justin Fields is in the football building so eternally that he described the campus where he is nominally a student like it was a European city he'd like to visit some day. Josh Gattis on Patterson before the season:

"I was a little bit worried about him coming into camp, because he spent so much time on the golf course this summer," Gattis told media Wednesday in Ann Arbor.

Michigan has a recipe for a nice little program that never beats anyone of import.

Michigan is the Papa Doc of college football. Pretty good at its subject matter. Rolls deep. Excellent at beating up on the Cheddar Bobs of the world.

Fundamentally, though, Michigan is named Clarence and went to Cranbrook. They'll let some guys into school but not other guys. If they're bagging they're the worst school in the world at it since they managed to turn the Michigan money cannon into zero guys ranked higher than 92nd in this class. The culture of the program is such that the starting QB gets called out for golfing too much.

Then they pretend to some sort of nobility. But there's no such thing as halfway crooks.

[After THE JUMP: Gattisization complete though]

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