9/18/2021 – Michigan 20, Rutgers 13 – 4-0, 1-0 Big Ten

Well, at least it took 3.5 games to get back to the same old feeling. The grim one, where you're staring grimly at the grim field where grim things are happening and then Michigan and its steamroller of a run game takes a delay of game penalty instead of attempting a fourth and one. After that there's another penalty before Michigan can finally punt. The color drains out of the world until you forget where you are and momentarily think you're at Eastern's stadium, which is now gray—not just gray, but gray-gray, ultragray—in some sort of marketing stunt turned guerilla art installation.

Say what you want about the Eastern Michigan Eagles' proficiency at football, but never slander their perspective on the fatalistic trudge we call life. Football is healthy and good to have influence your thoughts.

At times like these the man with the mustache arrives in my head.

You can find him by googling for "sad Florida State fan," and you will discover that this is now a bustling corner of the image search internet populated by folks in glitter and surrender cobras from sea to shining sea. But mustache man is still first, because he is a perfect distillation of the emptiness of a bad football game where your team gets to do the fun parts three plays, and only three plays, at a time while the opposition dunks on you.

He is also a tribute to the human ability to read nuance into facial expressions. What makes Sad Mustache Man so compelling? He merely stares ahead, stoic. His brow furrows slightly. The way he communicates the existential angst of Ole Miss punching your face in is mysterious. Blindingly clear, and somehow impossible to define. He stares into the middle distance and attempts to keep all his atoms in the same place.

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Since Michigan was playing Rutgers, "dunks on you" means "scores ten points in a half and still loses." The feeling is still the same. Michigan's second half didn't lose this game; it felt like it lost future games. At some point down the road when Michigan gets conked everyone watching will think about how the second half of Rutgers foretold this woeful fate.

Which, I guess, fine, okay, yeah. I predicted this team would go 7-5 and so did everyone else. Even after… that, a reversion to that level of pessimism is not reasonable. A reversion to the same old thing—9-3 or thereabouts, losing most of the exciting games, not being particularly competitive against Ohio State—is, and here we're in the same treadmill it seems like we've always been on.

Michigan can exceed expectations this year and still put up something entirely unsatisfying. Too good to fire, not good enough to enjoy. That's not fate, of course: maybe Greg Schiano is pretty good at this and Michigan will receive a wake-up call and actually bomb someone worth bombing on the road. One half doesn't erase the other halves.

But when you keep walking down the same road year after year it's hard to expect that something's different until it actually is. Until then, a steady stare into the middle distance is always a good option. Doesn't usually get you put on TV unless you're a perfect distillation of sadness, and even then there's usually someone just as sad but dressed more outlandishly.

AWARDS

Known Friends and Trusted Agents Of The Week

I AM DETECTING AN ILLEGALITY [Barron]

you're the man now, dog

#1 Aidan Hutchinson. Didn't have a massive game statistically but is likely to check in with a monster UFR number. Had a sack, bowled over an OL on the direct snap to Pacheco, probably should have drawn multiple holding flags. Making up for meh performances otherwise.

#2 Nikhai Hill-Green. Shuffled through traffic on the second to last Rutgers drive to stick folks short of the sticks on critical plays. Led team in tackles, a fair few of which were important. Preseason hype seems not crazy.

#3 Brad Robbins. Ok he had a bad one but the one he dropped at the three that took a right turn out of bounds was important, and he limited the dangerous Cruicshank to just one punt return attempt.

Honorable mention: Josh Ross turned in a good performance with one thunderous TFL before leaving; Chris Hinton got off a block on one of the key Hill-Green stuffs to help; Dax Hill was a bit up and down but did stuff some perimeter stuff.

KFaTAotW Standings.

(points: #1: 8, #2: 5, #3: 3, HMs one each. Ties result in somewhat arbitrary assignments.)

16: The OL (#1 Wash, #1 NIU)
14: Aidan Hutchinson (HM WMU, #2 Wash, #1 Rutgers)
11: Blake Corum (#2 WMU, T3 Wash, T2 NIU)
8: Ronnie Bell (#1 WMU)
7: Hassan Haskins (HM WMU, T3 Wash, T2 NIU)
6: Nikhai Hill-Green(HM NIU, #2 Rutgers)
5: Dax Hill (#3 WMU, HM NIU, HM Rutgers)
4: AJ Henning (HM WMU, #3 NIU),
3: Donovan Edwards(T2 NIU), Josh Ross (HM Wash, HM NIU, HM Rutgers)
1: Andrew Vastardis (HM WMU),Mike Sainristil (HM WMU), Brad Robbins (HM Wash), Jake Moody (HM Wash), Mazi Smith (HM Wash), Gemon Green(HM NIU), Cornelius Johnson(HM NIU), Chris Hinton (HM Rutgers)

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

Michigan's opening drive is a 17-play marathon featuring two passes, a touchdown, and the absorption of half a quarter.

Honorable mention: Hill-Green gets back to back sticks to functionally end the game; bonafide RPO gets Roman Wilson a chunk on Michigan's second efficient TD drive to start; ditto the Sainristil catch; officials ignore a blatant block in the back on Henning's return.

​MARCUS HALL EPIC DOUBLE BIRD OF THE WEEK.

Can I say the entire second half? No? Okay, uh, McNamara missing three straight open receivers on one of the three-and-outs. (Sainristil could have caught the first one, yes; still low.)

Honorable mention: The rest of the second half.

[After THE JUMP: up up up up nope nope nope nope]

OFFENSE

A cliff, visualized. Via Seth:

Many people have already noted that the flattening out exactly correlates with McNamara being on the receiving end of a targeting penalty. The big jump at play ~32 is the strike to Sainristil and the ensuing ejection, and after that it was a slow drip of disaster. McNamara went from 8/9 to start to 1/7 to finish. The possibilities there:

• coincidence,
• McNamara was hurt and either nobody noticed or he successfully concealed some mild concussion symptoms, or
• McNamara wasn't hurt but was rattled.

I think coincidence is the most likely, especially because the amount of data we have on him is so limited. But we're again in a spot where we're wondering if this guy is actually the guy and glancing at the five-star freshman. One negative of the monster run game is that Michigan's called fewer passes than anyone outside of service academies, so we have a tiny amount of data.

The coaches have more and their reticence to open things up may be an indicator.

Jeremy Gallon graduated. McNamara's lone incompletion before the cliff was this:

[Barron]

That's a perfect corner route that got broken up by an excellent no-look play from the DB, but also maybe this should be someone other than Sainristil. (I saw some back and forth online about whether Sainristil should have brought this in. My opinion is no, there's really no opportunity to out-beast a guy who punches the ball the instant you touch it.)

A frustrating contrast. Rutgers does not have Michigan's talent level but stuck in this game and significantly outrushed Michigan with a bunch of janky college crap. Swing it to the flat, run the quarterback, run with some WRs, use a lot of misdirection, etc. It felt like Michigan did almost none of that. There was a significant amount of variation in the between-the-tackles ground game, but once Rutgers adjusted and started dispensing a bunch of two-yard runs Michigan did not have a plan B. Nor did they make any attempts to get janky college yards until very late.

WR screens? 0. AJ Henning touches? 0. Perimeter run plays of any description? 1, that coming on a bash play to Corum deep in the fourth quarter. QB runs? 1, which Rutgers predicted and blitzed right into.

It's mystifying. Seems like we have one out of every three games where the Speed In Space has arrived and then it goes back in the bin. Shades of the Army game from a couple years ago.

Reads: scanty. Michigan got a couple of chunks off of RPO action, which are the first of the year IIRC. Otherwise it did not feel like the QB was live in the mesh point until the very end of the game, when Rutgers correctly anticipated Michigan would go to the QB run well and shot a LB directly at McNamara:

The one time we keep, it's the wrong read. You can blame the QB but when you hardly ever run a true Zome Read, and constantly give to the RB, you're not gonna be very good at it. pic.twitter.com/uHkm8uR1pp

— Due# (@JDue51) September 26, 2021

You have to wonder how live that read is or if it's just a pull with the expectation that the LB will go after the RB. We've been through this with QB after QB after QB and I have no expectations this will change going forward.

that guy's never going to catch you [Barron]

Running back détente is always temporary. Seth's likely to have a fair number of negatives from this game for Haskins and Corum; on my rewatch I caught a number of plays where gaps did open up but RBs did not hit them, and I thought Corum in particular had at least a few opportunities for a bounce as Rutgers overplayed the interior.

In one sense this is a testament to Corum's RB instincts. It's unusual for little fast guys to not try to Mike Shaw it a bunch, usually to their detriment. On the other hand, I mean try it a few times? Fast, you are fast.

DEFENSE

unsettling [Barron]

That was more in line with expectations. This was not a good run game—to say the least—entering the game but Michigan ended up having a lot of problems because the defensive tackles were largely a non-factor. Grinding up the middle with Vedral as Pacheco took linebacker attention outside was effective for Rutgers because Michigan's DLs could not win one on one battles and Hutchinson was being followed around by a posse of dudes*.

I don't think there's much to do about this. At certain spots you are who you are, and Michigan is pretty meh at DT.

*[One notable instance of this was on the last Rutgers drive, where they spent a slot WR to blindside him and knock him down on a pass rush.]

Endurance. Michigan rotated heavily, which on the one hand was somewhat alarming. On the podcast I suggested that if you have eight defensive tackles you don't really have any. On the other hand that did seem to come in handy late when Michigan's defense stiffened—not at all what you would expect when Rutgers is the only team staying on the field. Having eight meh defensive tackles is better than having two, I guess.

Jordan Whittley did not play, which feels like it was a bigger loss than you might expect for a guy who's only going to get a dozen snaps.

this is not going far [Campredon]

WHAT ARE WE DOING? Takes a special kind of baffling thing reoccurring repeatedly for me to start swearing in the stands at this late date, but Michigan's defense accomplished that by repeatedly offering Rutgers a free eight yards on simple hitches on the outside. Completely bizarre. You are playing Noah Vedral!

Rutgers has two long passing plays against FBS opposition this year; they were a TE seam and a five yard hitch. I find it difficult to believe that Vedral hitting a back shoulder throw on the first Rutgers third down threw Michigan's pregame planning into a tizzy. Covering the flats was a problem early against NIU, and then Michigan adjusted. It was baffling, frustrating, and inexplicable that Michigan was handing easy yardage chunks to Rutgers deep into the second half.

Vedral's other attempted shots at the sideline both went OOB. [shakes hands violently]

Slow your roll. Dax Hill had two different clean shots at Vedral on slot blitzes RU did not pick up and whiffed both. This tends to happen when really fast guys come off the corner—I am currently thinking about Brandon Harrison and his remarkable ability to get dodge by quarterbacks—and hopefully he'll be able to gear down a bit and finish those plays.

SPECIAL TEAMS

Got away with one. Entertaining sequence on the AJ Henning punt return where I saw an obvious block in the back, the officials threw a flag, then picked it up, then got to watch the stadium scoreboard demonstrate that the obvious block in the back was very very obvious.  I was shocked when the next play did not have a holding call; one dollar says the extremely weak roughing the passer call a few minutes later was related to picking that flag up.

Orin Incandenza business. This ball done be remote controlled.

Look at that bounce. @UMichFootball P Brad Robbins does it #ForTheBrand. pic.twitter.com/HsOw1aoYS0

— Big Ten Network (@BigTenNetwork) September 25, 2021

Robbins celebrated like he'd birthed the savior of the world and fair enough.

Noped out. Rutgers tried a couple kickoffs to Corum and while he didn't break one he was close enough that Rutgers decided pop-up kicks were the better part of valor. Michael Barrett had a nice catch and return on one of them to get out to the 35.

MISCELLANEOUS

Oh no baby. Greg Schiano's decision to go for it on fourth and ten with 29 seconds left in the half was completely bizarre. The score was 17-3, which means okay yeah scoring at the end of the half would be an important boost. But 1) fourth and ten, 2) you are Rutgers, 3) you're probably giving Michigan another possession.

The ensuing slant was both broken up and short of the sticks, and then Michigan immediately hit a big RPO to get down to the Rutgers 5. Only a post-targeting McNamara miss on to an open Schoonmaker prevented the worst case scenario.

Shortly after. Michigan elected to kick a field goal on third down with five seconds left in the half. This I'm not too ticked off about that because the thing they probably should have done—throw a goal-line fade—is not likely to convert. But it's coming down before five seconds run off the clock.

We are the premiere Crean Documenting Service in the Midwest. Puttin' a lot of weird guys on the sideline:

[Barron]

This gives me an excuse to put this here.

This photo with Tom Crean was posted by a Georgia recruit

Not strange at all pic.twitter.com/auawYF2vlC

— Matt Jones (@KySportsRadio) September 24, 2021

Thanks, Tom.

HERE

The State of our Open Threads:

So, how did we feel about as it was happening? I will just say that there were fewer fucks given than I would have actually thought - only 176 of them, to be exact. Still, when you consider that we only generated 18 of them last week, that's 9.8 times the fucks and probably a corresponding overall increase in fan stress. It's charted in comparison to "fire" here:

In the Harbaugh era, and in the Hoke era when this collection effort began, there has always been at least a mild correlation between our use of "fuck" and our wanting of heads, and while four games isn't telling, you can see they do trail each other somewhat. Normally, this relationship will solidify by the time the OSU rolls around. I can only imagine why that is.

Stephen King on the eternalness of Michigan's offense:

What is telling, to me, about these analyses is that if you change some details, they could be written about Saturday's win over Rutgers. This, despite a complete overhaul in the offensive staff in that time. We've seen the OL coach change twice, the OC change once, different attempts at WR coaches, and now a new RB coach as well. The offensive personnel is completely different as well. The only things those offenses have in common with this team is the uniforms and the head coach.

Best and Worst:

And so with every 3-and-out by the offense and every interminable odyssey by the defensive series it felt like the game was not so much slipping away as getting unnecessarily close.  It’s difficult to describe and probably comes across as homer-ish, but this game never felt quite like last year’s contest in NJ, where Rutgers raced out to a big lead behind superior play.  I’m not saying you should but if you so inclined, go back and re-watch even just the highlights of that game.  Rutgers put up nearly 6 ypp in that game and had 486 yards of total offense while also committing 12 (!) penalties on offense for 99 (!!) yards.  Their defense struggled in the second half but they were consistently getting pressure early on and Michigan barely had 100 yards of total offense before McNamara came in.  Rutgers looked like the better team in that game and Michigan was lucky they were able to stay close enough.  Those were two equal-ish teams in terms of talent and execution playing a defensively-challenged game of chicken, with Rutgers finally blinking in overtime.  It felt not unlike a lot of Big 12 games in that respect.