[Eric Upchurch]

9/8/2018 – Michigan 49, Western Michigan 3 – 1-1

Booing used to be a cause for Mad Online battles between booers and non-booers. Gloves were removed and slapped across e-faces as various wings of the Michigan fanbase challenged the very heart of others' fandom. Devastating ripostes flew into REPLY fields. Knuckles cracked in anticipation of the next bombing run against the uneducated heathens on the other side. The forest veritably quaked in response to the raw energies exchanged.

These days Michigan perpetrates a false start on their first drive and runs into the line a couple times and punts and the boos rain down with 13 minutes left in the first quarter of an eventual 49-3 win. They'd already gotten a first down and everything.

The fanbase is testy, folks.

It is our unfortunate fate to know this pattern intimately: you get a year, maybe two, of merciful silence around you. Then the sort of people who Yell Things To Their Section start yellin' em. It didn't take long for those guys to reveal themselves in this game; the depressing moment when you realize you are surrounded by people who are just going to keep saying things like that was a shock and then not at all a shock. The sea done changed. Hooray for that again.

The subsequent demolition of a very bad Bronco team could dampen but not eliminate them. In every football game a little derp must derp, and this was no exception. Josh Metellus got a penalty for flinging a WMU player to the ground a couple steps after both had left the playing field and BAWWWWWW GET YOUR HEAD IN THE GAME THIS HAPPENS EVERY WEEK METELLUS (it does not but don't say anything). Shea Patterson overthrows Sean McKeon in the endzone and BAWWWWWW I THOUGHT YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE SOMETHING (Patterson had been disrupted on the throw but don't say anything).

And so forth and so on. MLive's cheap content idea after a 49-3 win was rounding up BAWWW tweets. (Their game column's title: "For at least a week, Michigan football quiets the critics." False, good sir. False.) A Maize and Brew takeaway was bitching about the gameplan(?):

Michigan won the coin toss and elected to receive, something I am usually NEVER okay with. But the Wolverines took the field on offense first and tried to flex their muscles in the face of an inferior foe.

Instead they did the opposite. After a quick completion to Zach Gentry from Shea Patterson for a first down, the Wolverines got conservative yet again (SHOCKER!) ...

Harbaugh has always been a guy that wants to establish the run game. But the run game was established by the end of the third drive. At that point, why not let the ball loose and see what can happen?

God knows what would have transpired if this game was anything like last year's outings against teams with triple-digit S&P+ rankings. The collective BAWWW would have set off seismic detectors across the state if Michigan had entered the fourth quarter up 24-14 or 19-13, as they did against Cincinnati and Air Force last year.

They did not. And there is a little something there. Shea Patterson can do things, things outside the realm of a Forcier. Michigan can grind very bad defenses into powder while limiting Patterson's exposure to 17 attempts, maybe half of which demanded even a semblance of pass protection. It is possible to squint and see the outline of a functional offense; last year squinting just made the tire fire blurry.

None of that is going to calm the BAWWWW brigade or our internal, censored BAWWWW, but keeping it relatively caged for a week is nice. Relatively nice. Better than last week, at least. BAW!

AWARDS

Known Friends And Trusted Agents Of The Week

[Bryan Fuller]

you're the man now, dog

#1 Karan Higdon. 12 yards a carry is good. Higdon slashed to the backside on a couple of cuts, broke several tackles, and jetted past safeties for those yards. While they were there, they weren't free.

#2 Rashan Gary. Mostly because this happened:

If you ever find yourself wondering “why wasn’t Rashan Gary more productive”... pic.twitter.com/w2JZJHvZBQ

— Bryan Mac (@Bry_Mac) September 8, 2018

This game was strange in that—aside from a couple of guys who were the beneficiaries of WMU defensive largess—everyone got one or two shiny things and nobody stood out without a detailed film review. Since Gary is operating in the above context he gets the nod for the defense on a dominating day all-around.

#3 Shea Patterson. Just 17 attempts but slick on most of them and mercifully detonated that WR TD stat just before it hit critical mass. Throws balls to open people well downfield, which is delightful. Had the one bad Mallett moment when a rollout was defended very well and he tried to chuck it away; was otherwise as promising and you might have hoped pre-season.

Honorable mention: Chris Evans put it on 'em, Ben Mason PUT IT ON 'EM, everyone on the defense was approximately equally good as Gary except they were never triple teamed, and Will Hart also PUT IT ON 'EM. I wanted to slot Hart in at #3 but he only had three punts. Alas. (But not alas.)

KFaTAotW Standings.

3: Chase Winovich (#1 ND), Karan Higdon (#1 WMU)
2: Ambry Thomas (#2 ND), Rashan Gary(#2 WMU)
1: Devin Bush(#3 ND), Shea Patterson(#3 WMU)

Who's Got It Better Than Us(?) Of The Week

Nico Collins runs by a bad safety who set up at like six yards for an easy post touchdown, which you may have heard was Michigan's first WR touchdown since April 16th 1925.

Honorable mention: Most of the rest of the game. Karan Higdon's first big chunk and 69-yard TD stand out. Patterson's sideline throw to Martin. Patterson's corner route TD to DPJ.

MARCUS HALL EPIC DOUBLE BIRD OF THE WEEK.

Quinn Nordin misses a 40-yard field goal. I get nervous about kickers, shut up.

Honorable mention: False start and a couple uninspiring runs help set up a first-down-and-out first drive, causing audience consternation. That is literally the only thing I can think of.

[After THE JUMP: Garrett Rivas.]

OFFENSE

[Upchurch]

Pass protection: ask again later. Just 17 attempts for Patterson with a fair number of those either quick stuff on which protection doesn't get tested or rollouts on which no one has to block. Patterson did get hit—I think—on one deep shot that sailed over his receiver's head but he didn't seem under siege. That doesn't mean much after the larger and more depressing sample from last week, but look! It's a straw! Let's clutch it. Feels good. Yeah.

Speaking of some rollouts. Give or take that corner route to DPJ, Patterson's two most impressive throws in this game were the two sideline specials on comebacks. The first one was particularly impressive as Patterson rolled opposite his throwing arm, got a reasonable amount of pressure, and was able to square up and flick an accurate throw that did not seem at all likely before it got to Oliver Martin. As Harbaugh said after the game, there were some tight windows and Patterson hit them.

As Ethan wrote, that is opponent-invariant and probably the most encouraging thing to take from the game. Patterson's ability pops out at you, and his command of the offense is much less of an issue than it was for Jake Rudock in his first couple games. (Actually six games, IIRC.)

The other Patterson thing. So far so good on the open deep shots. He hit Collins on a wide open corner-post, and hit him in a way that seemed like he knew he had it and the most important thing was to just get the completion. How many times do you see QBs panic at an oportunity like that? Pretty often. Patterson doesn't, and if DPJ and Collins are able to get open deep they'll get hit more often than not.

[Fuller]

More flag football, please. Chris Evans got more run in this game and repeatedly displayed his ability to turn ankles into gelatin. His touchdown was one of those Evans specials where he's in a hole with an unblocked guy who can literally fill the entire hole with his body. One spooky juke later and that guy's filing for disability as Evans heads for six:

He had another one of those on a chunk run later in the game. And whenever he gets into space good stuff happens. His ability as a running back forces the opposition into respecting him as one, so if he comes in and Michigan goes empty he's either going to get a linebacker or giving someone else a LB matchup. If it's the former, get him the ball:

That seems like a tough-to-combat way to pick up yards without unduly exposing Michigan's pass protection. Evans is on pace for about 20 catches this year; I wish that was 40.

THE BUSINESS. Good lord Ben Mason thwacked a WMU linebacker on Higdon's first long run. Dude got blasted back into a cornerback and the cornerback looked like he'd just been lit up by a fullback. Get murderfaced! Woo!

ain't got no one to hit [Fuller]

Moving people. Michigan ran a number of plays with short pulls that aren't exactly power and aren't exactly zone. These get filed as "dart" in the UFR chart. Higdon's 69-yard touchdown featured the playside G pulling to get a kickout at the same time Cesar Ruiz reach-blocked the nose tackle—or maybe just made sure he was to his right and ran by him—and then kept going. He had no one to block because things were going very well. Could come in handy down the road.

A QB keep happened. It was very open. It would have been very open earlier in the game but either Patterson wasn't reading the unblocked DE on a zone read—doubtful—or he was reading it wrong:

Nitpicking the 2nd play from scrimmage on a day we scored 49 pts but why isn’t Shea pulling this? Looks like IZ ZR vs a 6 man box w every WR covered down and a single high safety. Free hitter is the DE who...free hits. pic.twitter.com/MArmvJz7mY

— Manuel Excel (@colintj) September 9, 2018

Patterson is a somewhat reluctant runner and might need to be prodded to pull the ball; he was probably prodded to do so before the late and very open third down conversion on which a crashing end again ignored the idea of a keep without anyone filling behind him.

DEFENSE

Kemp looks the part of a DT [Patrick Barron]

Sure, let's go. In the absence of Lawrence Marshall, Carlo Kemp got the start at three-tech and did pretty well for himself. No one will confuse him for Hurst any time soon; instead Kemp was the kind of DT who consistently gets push into the backfield to disrupt and annoy plays that other folks get the glory for. That's good enough when you've got the surrounding personnel Michigan does and paid off with a number of TFLs that Kemp helped set up.

DoD caveats and all that, but on one scramble WMU managed in the second half I looked up at the video board and noticed that it was Dwumfour on the field and that it rather seemed like the gap the QB was exploiting was his. Meanwhile a couple of sacks for Kemp's teammates feature QBs with nowhere to go because he'd pushed the pocket closed.

Kemp staying in his lane allows Gary to make this sack.

We're watching a guy morph into a dude. pic.twitter.com/uCFAkpOoei

— Due# (@JDue51) September 9, 2018

I'd expect Kemp to get another shot as the starter even if Marshall gets back next week. He is the biggest guy available at 3T and all I want is a little pocket pushing.

Solomon's absence. Aubrey Solomon's lack of playing time against Notre Dame now has an explanation:

Solomon's mother, in a private Facebook post, brought attention to his injury saying that she was traveling to Ann Arbor to be with Solomon as he undergoes knee surgery. Solomon would take to his Snapchat account with a photo that said the surgery was a success.

I thought I saw a photo of Solomon's foot wrapped up post-surgery but whatever. Either way his absence is explained, which is good—there's a reason the five star isn't playing—and bad—the five star is injured. Harbaugh said that Solomon and Marshall would be back sooner rather than later.

BOMBZ. Western really really wanted to hit some deep balls and got nothing on a half-dozen or more shots. Brandon Watson nearly intercepted one; that's fine on an underthrown ball. I was more impressed by Metellus getting over the top and nailing the receiver on what would have been the catch. He was coming from dead centerfield, not a cover-two spot. Also he didn't annihilate the guy in the helmet.

One example and one non-example is not a trend. Local grumbles were loudest when Metellus gave folks a locus for their frustration by flinging Wassink to the ground out of bounds, drawing a PF. That was dumb. If that recurs this space will be just as cranky. It is not a pattern. Metellus's targeting ejection against ND was both obviously targeting and an attempt to make a legitimate football play. Metellus in fact made the legal version of it on the play referenced just above. I'm not going to get on a guy for trying to dislodge a 30-yard pass on third and long.

Downfield Furbush. Furbush's interception was a BRXXXX throw from Wassink, admittedly. Furbush was the main reason that was the case: he dropped and checked the inside, finding no one, then found a WR on an in route. He then redirected when the WR held up and got his INT.

Since his coverage incident against ND was actually good coverage beaten by a perfect throw this might be a thing? Like, not a thing that's going to come up a bunch but a thing that makes Furbush a more versatile defender and gives Michigan options that they didn't have last year when he was in the game.

[Fuller]

Bush stick. The second most impressive thwack of the game (behind Ben Mason's) was Devin Bush allowing 0.0 YAC on a fourth and one stick where he scraped over from a couple gaps. His squirrel rush above also induced the BRXXX throw that Furbush picked off. Bush: still  good.

Ross edging closer to the job? Both Gil and Ross saw significant snaps in this game, same as ND. For the second straight week I liked Ross a bit better. He was able to stick a couple guys, stopping them cold, and when you see both guys running around live Ross seems like the higher upside option. If it's close now and Ross has the better physical package and he's a year younger seems like he'll probably end up with the job sooner or later.

SPECIAL TEAMS

This should be legal. Offsides is for cowards and Soviets.

[Eric Upchurch]

Someone check Zoltan Mesko's chi. If he doesn't have any because Will Hart ate it in a profane ritual this offseason... uh... that's fine. We'll get it back to him in a few years. Until then he can siphon the life force from bats and small dogs and the like. We'll start a Gofundme.

Hart, who you may remember as the very bad punter who got pulled for the other very bad punter last year, is averaging 50 yards a kick(!) on his six attempts so far. These have been bombs. Western managed to mitigate the damage by getting 19 return yards in two opportunities but ND got none, and Michigan runs a pro-style punt so it's tougher for them to limit the damage.

Hart's problem last year was a tendency to shank the ball. By the time he got pulled he'd put three or four in the sideline. A shank-free version of Hart might be—is apparently—great? Sample size is so small you shouldn't look at it straight on in case it evaporates, but Hart is clearly the most pleasant surprise so far and that's not a sarcastic ennui dig: going from 35 yards a punt to 50 is massive.

Return to sender. Michigan's blocked punt was simple: send three guys at a two-man shield. Khaleke Hudson continues to be the beneficiary of Michigan's weird these-aren't-the-droids-trying-to-block-your-punt hand-wave, as the two guys in the shield split to block the two outside guys and gave him an unmolested run up the middle.

I don't get it. You can have a three-man shield, and while I'm a fan of having lots of gunners surely the extra guy in the shield is more important than gunner #8. I also don't get how Michigan is so proficient at this with no response and no CFB-wide reassessment. Their punt blocks are always three guys running at the punter without so much as a whisper of a block from the first level. It seems easy, and replicable, and apparently isn't.

Missed FG. Blah. Blah, I say.

MISCELLANEOUS

DEATHE RAGE. The greatest football name:

Applications for greatest football name of all time are closed pic.twitter.com/NNvs0dbt9Y

— mgoblog (@mgoblog) September 8, 2018

Some people have pointed out a minor league base-ball player with the same surname for reasons that remain obscure to your author. If said player was named Rapidlyaging Fanbase or Unwrittenlaws Againstbatflips, now that would be something. A base-ball player named DEATHE RAGE is a fish riding a bicycle.

Bell: two of two [Upchurch]

Redshirt status. A blowout in the second game provides a fairly good read on who's redshirting and who's not:

• NOPE: Aidan Hutchinson, Jake Moody
• MAYBE: Jalen Mayfield, Ronnie Bell, Ben VanSumeren, Hassan Haskins.
• PROBABLY: Joe Milton, Christian Turner, Mustapha Muhammad, Luke Schoonmaker, Ryan Hayes, Taylor Upshaw, Julius Welschof, Michael Barrett, Cam McGrone, Gemon Green, German Green, Myles Sims, Sammy Faustin, Vincent Gray

On the "maybe" folks: Mayfield appears to be the second team LT and has a fair chance of becoming the first team LT. If that doesn't happen I'd imagine Michigan will avoid playing him in five games. Bell might be needed now—he's listed as an offensive contributor in both games—but could drop out of the rotation when and if Schoenle and Black return. Haskins has played special teams in both games so far; would they burn a redshirt for ST play if a guy is the fifth string running back at best? VanSumeren got in late against WMU; have to figure that Michigan will try to limit him to four games.

Added information. Bonafide Development on the scoreboard: when there's a media timeout it now displays the remaining time. This made said media timeouts more tolerable for reasons I cannot begin to fathom. Brains: how do they work?

HERE

Best and Worst:

To say flashes of 2017 rushed through my brain would be a lie, and while I could fashon excuses such as "never schedule Air Force" and "Luke Fickell planned to stop Michigan for over a decade", that wasn't going to cut it against a team like Western.

Luckily, those uneasy feelings disappaited almost immediately thereafter. After punting on their first drive, Michigan scored TDs on their next 5(!) possessions, averaging 53 yards (!!) in 3 (!!!) plays. Remember when Michigan dropped 78 on Rutgers a couple years ago? That was the last time Michigan scored so freqeuntly, and like that game they did it mostly on the ground. Over that 5-drive scoring binge, Karan Higdon and Chris Evans averaged 16.1 yards per carry on 11 runs, and generally looked like the two-headed monster fans hoped for the backfield when the season started. And while his first big run wasn't as violent as De'Veon Smith's versus BYU a couple years ago, Higdon broke a number of tackles and ran with the mix of speed and blunt force I expected from him this season. On the day Michigan finished with 308 yards rushing on 35 carries, a tidy 8.8 ypc that was depressed a bit by Michigan getting sacked twice for 18 yards.

ELSEWHERE

TTB:

Play of the game . . . Noah Furbush’s interception. There were a lot of good plays, but I really liked the one by Furbush. He started the play at the line of scrimmage feigning a blitz. Then he dropped to his zone, located the receiver running a curl route, and made a nicely timed leap to reel in the catch. That’s pretty good work for a 6’5″, 240 lb. outside linebacker.

Hoover Street Rag:

There were so many things that happened today that you wanted to see.  An elusive Karan Higdon breaking tackles, Chris Evans getting some carries and doing the same.  Nico Collins doing the dang thing again, but this time getting six points out of it.  Shea Patterson eluding, scrambling, and making some questionable decisions (the shovel pass while going down worked, but it could just have easily been picked.  The throwaway when going down that could have been intentional grounding could have easily been much worse.  You can get away with that against Western, I don't know if you want to do that against a Wisconsin or an Ohio State. I like the moxie, I want smart moxie.)  The defense played well, not a bunch of sacks and such (just two, one in garbage time) but held Jon Wassink to a QBR of 11.3 (I know, it's an ESPN stat, but when Shea's was 90.5, you can see the difference.)  When today's biggest Michigan Stadium drama was trying to get my ESPN app to update to see if EMU could pull off the upset at Ross-Ade, well these are the kind of problems you want to have.

Dr Sap explains the DISASTROUS BANNER DEBACLE OF 2018:

THE BANNER – On Saturday, I had the distinct privilege and honor (along with Seth Fisher from MGoBlog) of holding up the coveted M GO BLUE M CLUB banner. It was amazing and a thrill I will never forget!  The adrenaline I had running on to the field to prop up the banner was incredible!  The band was playing, the crowd of over 110,000 was roaring and there I was at midfield setting up the banner!  The banner that Woody Hayes and company tore down in 1973 and tried unsuccessfully to do it again in 1977. The banner that Charles Woodson and that national championship team ran under in 1997. THAT banner!

Twenty years ago I was there when, before the Syracuse game of 1998, the banner was stolen and the M-Men had to run under a make-shift blue nylon sheet. So to be there at Michigan Stadium on Saturday and help hold up the banner was just…AWESOME!!! It was great to see the M Club Banner Crew members spring into action and get things going when we got our queue to take the field. But a couple of unforeseen obstacles had to be over come by the group before the football team came roaring out of the tunnel.

For those of you who were there on Saturday, while it might have initially looked chaotic [Ed. Yes, it did Sap!], things were under control. First off, the banner was not folded up the night before by the M Club Banner Crew in the manner it was supposed to be. That resulted in a different disposition of the banner when it was unfurled.

Once that was resolved, the banner crew looked to orient the poles in their customary locations. That was where the second issue arose. Because the stadium had new field-turf installed this summer, the block M seemed to be different in size. This caused the customary landmarks for pole-placement to be off. Once the banner crew recognized that difference, adjustments were made and the banner was fully upright and ready for the Wolverines to take the field.

Spencer Hall in the aftermath of Florida's loss to Kentucky:

We’re a subprime program now, and it will take years to get back to solvency. Years.

... The offensive line cannot run block, and misses basic slide protections. (Cole Cubelic did a great job highlighting this on Saturday night, which helped explain Feleipe Franks’ anger coming off the field after yet another rushed third down pass attempt.) The defense now not only is thin throughout the secondary, but can’t set the edge on runs. The Grantham strategy of aggressively blitzing works a lot better when both of these things happen. When neither happens, big plays happen. Per David Wunderlich, Kentucky didn’t even have to run a red zone play in the game. That’s letting the opponent feast in the worst possible way.

It’s also really hard to even say what Feleipe Franks is as a quarterback, because he’s asked to do so much, and capable of only some of it, and supported so little in the rest. There was no consistent commitment to the run game outside of making Franks run it too much, and in situations where he could not possibly win. (Franks led the team in carries. Franks is not Tim Tebow or 2017 Khalil Tate.) He misses throws when he presses — and that’s most quarterbacks — but he has to press because without him, nothing whatsoever will happen with the offense. ...

On paper, this is the fifth or sixth best roster in the SEC if we’re being optimistic, and that’s before considering transfers and the damage done by the McElwain era in terms of coaching negligence and lack of development. One offseason doesn’t undo that, particularly when the local competition includes Georgia.

Been there. Hopefully are not currently there? I mean, nah. But Been There.

Columns redone:

Per MVictors, the list of column honorees includes such luminaries as Tom Brady, Mike Hart, Denard Robinson, Jon Jansen, and Garrett Rivas. Rivas has the greatest agent of all time, I tell ya. Also there was a man dressed up as a Wolverine. Don't call him a furry: he's a mascot.

Brenda Tracy's story. Nebraska will be a noon kick on FS1. Solomon and Marshall are "week to week."