All Kinds of Time

Cade McNamara made the most of the opportunity. (Detroit Free Press)

Betting lines should not set narratives in sporting events, but when Michigan was rolled out as an 8-10 point favorite in the early line this weekend over Rutgers, it was simultaneously seen as an indictment of where Michigan is right now because a). I mean, they should be way more of a favorite over Rutgers in a normal circumstance and b). it still seemed pretty generous even with how Michigan had been playing this season.

So when Michigan was down 17-0 in the second quarter and the college football watching portion of the internet began bird-dogging the trainwreck, in stepped Cade McNamara to take the reins at QB from Joe Milton.  Milton's 5 of 12 for 89 yards performance was not inspiring, and several drops or near misses were a source of frustration.  But Michigan needed a spark and McNamara did exactly what was needed.  He hit Mike Sainristil for 14 yards to get Michigan into Rutgers territory, then found a wide-open Cornelius Johnson for 46 yards and Michigan's first score of the game.  Though the two-minute drill left a lot to be desired, Michigan at least had stanched the bleeding and would get the ball back to start the second half.

Giles Jackson's kickoff return for a touchdown to start the second half will be somewhat muted by the fact that Rutgers countered with their own touchdown just three plays later.  But it set the tone for the methodical 8-play drive of its own that Michigan countered with, especially the hard yards by Hassan Haskins to get Michigan first and goal on the Rutgers 10.  Michigan would score two plays later and pull within three.  The offense had settled into some kind of rhythm, and the defense holding Rutgers to a field goal felt like the tiniest of victories.  An exchange of punts later, it was McNamara moving the ball down the field again with a mix of well-executed passes (and a bonus gift of 15-yard penalty for a facemask by Rutgers) and Michigan took its first lead since the end of the Minnesota game.  Hope slowly began to seep back in, like water into someone's unfinished basement, unwelcome but undeniably present.  

When Michigan forced a six and out, aided immensely by a sack by Little Boss Josh Ross, it began to look like Michigan could run a long drive that would salt the game away.  They did just that, to an extent.  A 12 play drive with a solid mix of run and pass burned six minutes of game clock but still left five minutes in the fourth quarter, even as Michigan sat up 8.  Could the defense, as banged up as it is,  find the old magic and get out of New Jersey with an ugly, but still meaningful win in regulation?

No.  It could not. Rutgers made the most of both third and long and fourth and long situations, slipping through the Michigan defense to get a score, and then Noah Vedral dragging Michigan defenders through on a QB draw for the 2-point conversion to knot the game at 35.  It felt like once again the dam of negative feelings was about to burst.

Quinn Nordin's third missed field goal of the day in the opening half of 1OT certainly seemed to confirm the worst.  No way Michigan could hold Rutgers and even if it could, Valentino Ambrosi had been money all night.  The math even backed up the despair (well, not despair, the resignation.)

But Michigan did hold Rutgers to -2 yards on the sequence and Ambrosi missed a 45 yarder to send the game into a second OT and push the game closer to finishing on Sunday morning.  So when Rutgers used a clever pass to get into the end zone on one play, Michigan needed to counter.  And it did, thanks to McNamara continuing to find receivers, Haskins continuing to find ways to get extra yards, and Rutgers continuing to get facemask penalties.  McNamara kept the ball and flipped into the end zone and we headed for 3OT.

Thanks to a DPI prayer on 3rd and 18, Michigan was inside Rutgers 10 once more, and after a pair of Haskins run, they were inside the 1.  People much smarter than me explained why, based on Rutgers' defensive strengths, Michigan did not want to sneak the ball, but it was still maddening to a long-time football observer that Michigan was lined up in shotgun when they needed six feet to get the ball in the end zone.  After McNamara was stopped for no gain on third down, it looked it would be the reasonable question of the day.  But Haskins got in, but the two-point conversion failed when McNamara threw the ball to the wrong side of Ronnie Bell, and now Michigan needed to hold Rutgers off.  Would the defense finally get it done?

Yes.  They did.  They held Rutgers to net one yard on their four plays in 3OT, sealed by a Dax Hill interception in the end zone, to mercifully bring this game to a close, over four and a half hours after this whole affair had begun.

There is no great lesson from this game just as there is no great lesson from this season.  Michigan has a bunch of players injured in the middle of a global pandemic in a season that probably shouldn't be being played, but here we are.  We still came together to suffer collectively but we did it collectively.  It was the most Michigan football thing possible.

New Routine

Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh reacts towards a game official after a call during the second half of U-M's 38-21 loss on Saturday, Nov. 7, 2020, in Bloomington, Indiana.  (Doug McSchooler/AP)

It doesn't hurt at all and I couldn't figure out why.  It's not because I don't care, because I do.  Perhaps not as passionately as I did in my youth, but I still care, but it is a level of caring tempered by realities both small and larger. It's not that it wasn't expected, hardly, I was going to be fully and completely shocked if Michigan managed to pull this off.  No, it was just, it was a game, one of several, being played at noon on Saturday, and Michigan, like a lot of teams in 2020, did not look very good in their playing of it.

It was the last connection to be severed.  Every connection to the Bo era had been broken but one.  That Michigan's last loss to Indiana was in 1987.  A winning streak begun in the dying embers of the Schembechler era, carried through Moeller and Carr, inexplicably moved through the direst ebbs of the Rodriguez and Hoke years, and in spite of some wild endings, carried through the Harbaugh years.  All things must pass* and yesterday in Bloomington, it finally did.  That cutting of that link did perhaps reminds us, finally, that the past is truly in the past.  We can honor the past, celebrate the past, but we cannot be beholden to the past, held prisoner by it.

Indiana earned it, there's no doubt.  Indiana looks like a team in control of what it wants to do and making it happen.  Michigan looks like a team that thinks that they can show up and play and that should be enough.  I am sure that people much better versed in interpersonal group dynamics and 
the like can explain better what is going on with Michigan, but right now, it's just not a very good football team and time is running out for it to get better.

Until next week.




*-unless you're Ohio State, which it was pointed out in an AFLAC trivia question last night that they are they only team in the AP Poll era to never have a 5 game losing streak.

Troubled Times

Well, I mean, at least Blake Corum looked good. (Rick Osentoski-USA TODAY Sports)

And it takes a lot of nerve to ask how she is doing. 

Start with a weak foundation, you will end in ruins. 

The ways the days and hours pass you'll never understand 

Falling like rain through your hands

"Troubled Times" by Fountains of Wayne from their 1999 album Utopia Parkway

It was more troubling than a blowout might indicate because it was a thousand deaths in the margins.  Michigan decided that it would keep doing what it thought it should do on paper, despite the evidence facing them in the game.  Michigan's defense relies on superb DB play to cover in man, and it showed time and again yesterday that it was going to be difficult.  Michigan State's receivers made some absolutely difficult catches, but they made them when they counted, and that was enough.

Michigan's offense kept running up the middle with little to no discernable effect, lighting first downs on fire like they were trying to keep warm in the old abandoned stadium, then looking confused when they were off schedule on third and longs.  Joe Milton did his damndest to keep things going and did a lot more than he didn't, shades of poor damn Devin Gardner. Still, in the end, Michigan State looked like they wanted to win more, were playing looser and freer, and Michigan couldn't get things together for long enough to get out of their own way and try to win the football game.  When you run a wildcat pass inside the five instead of using your 6' 5" highly mobile quarterback, a play that costs you four points in a three-point loss, maybe you're just too committed to clever?

We're looping back to the feeling of being lost, like in 2014, but without any real sense of where to go next.  That sense of dread that Michigan is slated to forever be something like boring Auburn or store-brand Wisconsin.  Good, very good, but not top tier, and maybe not even second tier.  And there's nothing that can be done about it.  Michigan got the best coach it could get, one that everyone agreed would be a great fit and a great coach, and it's basically still what it was for a long time.  This is, admittedly, a significant improvement over the seven years of RR and Hoke, but it's just not going to happen.  In other years, it was more explicable, a loss to Notre Dame to start the season or twin losses to Wisconsin and Penn State on the road.  But this one, this loss, makes no sense on paper.  When things make no sense on paper, people look to intangibles, and there's a lot of not liking what they see.

For so long, Michigan has taken solace in the past, that once was could be again.  "The world has changed, and none of us can go back. All we can do is our best, and sometimes the best that we can do is to start over."  What was isn't any longer.  We can celebrate the past, and we should, but we must remember that it is not a guarantee of the future because no one's future is guaranteed.  You have to work hard to earn what you want, and too often, there is a sense that Michigan presumes a birthright path to the top of the heap.  We want to tell ourselves that we're different, but it's a delusion built on years of arrogance.  We refuse to get out of our own way because we so desperately want that world back, a world from many of our GenX childhoods where Michigan was ultra-reliable as long as it wasn't bowl season.  But even the historical record since World War II doesn't bear out this sense of entitlement.  There is a strange simultaneous tendency to get mad at anyone who dares point these things out and gets mad at anyone who dares not give Michigan its perceived due.  Michigan doesn't hold up its end of the bargain in "the best rivalry in sports" and has trouble holding up its end in the in-state rivalry.  We're wandering aimlessly, hoping for a sign that will lead us forward, a sign that will never come, but instead chasing after false prophets, destined to let us down, time and time again.  Yet, there is no sense that the signal is coming, or will ever come to us.  

I often point to the fact that one of the hallmarks of Michigan fandom is the Michigan fan community, the ties that bind us, in person or virtually, across the years, the good times, and the tough ones.  This just feels different because it's just this strange sense of "I'm not angry, I'm not disappointed, I'm just sad."  When so many people tie up their belief in the possibility of something, only to see those ideas slip away from them, sadness becomes the primary feeling, because we've already been through the other notions of what we can do about it.

This column is probably too pessimistic, too forlorn, probably tapping into other strains of sadness that are running parallel but very close to this stream.  In this strange year, it is difficult to see individual notions of what is making one sad, all of the colors are bleeding into one.  It was perhaps too much to expect and even too much to ask to have Michigan football be something more than it's been in decades to lift our spirits; fervent hope still runs headlong into the limitations of reality.

But it would have been nice to keep Paul home and save the football existential crisis for another week.

Radiation Vibe

The Big Ten returned with, among other things, a fullback diving for the pylon for a touchdown.  Welcome back.
(David Berding/Getty Images)

"Are you alone now

Did you lose the monkey

He gave you backaches

And now you slouch"

"Radiation Vibe" by Fountains of Wayne  from the 1996 album Fountains of Wayne

Like so many of you, I want to start by acknowledging that playing football in a global pandemic is probably not a good idea.  I respect those of you I know who have opted out of your fandom this season on principle.  Were that I had the willpower to do it.  But Michigan football is back and I want to talk about it because, once more, it has brought me joy.

It has been a long road to get here and for many a challenging road with unexpected twists and turns.  The feeling that time has lost all meaning struck me as I was trying to determine which musical artist to use as the theme for this year's game columns and I was reminded that it's only been just a shade over six months since we lost Adam Schlesinger, the multi-talented songwriter known best for his work with Fountains of Wayne, but also a multitude of other projects, including writing "That Thing You Do" for the movie of the same name and being a leading member of the tremendously underrated Ivy.  We've had so much loss, so much anguish, and so much unknown in the weeks and months since all of this began.

Over the last week, I opened up the window to Blogger and began to try to write a column about how everything about this season felt unknown and unknowable.  There was a tempering of the excitement, not just coming from the circumstances of the delay to the start of the season, but the sheer number of things that Michigan was having to replace.  I felt validated in this thinking when Raj said as much, and so much better, in Punt/Counterpunt on Saturday morning.

Could you blame the well-worn Michigan fan for going into a shell when, following a nice run by freshman Blake Corum, Michigan saw Ben Mason earn a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct flag for excessive blocking, then an incomplete, then an eight-yard loss, and then a blocked punt and a quick Gopher touchdown later, everything felt bad and wrong.

So thank you to Zach Charbonnet, who hit a gaping hole in the line and just went for 70 yards and a score in all of 11 seconds to tie the game at 7.  Michigan would never trail again, thanks in part to Michael Barrett's monster hit on Tanner Morgan leading to Donovan Jeter's fumble return touchdown and Ben Mason's pylon dive (as seen above.)  Michigan got the job done. 

(Side note: Welcome back Chris Evans.  The sheer variety of options in the Michigan running backs room brings a smile to my face.)

There was a lot to like last night.  Yes, there are things to fix, concerns over the Dax Hill and Quinn Nordin injuries, there are concerns that Joe Milton will need to do better in the passing game against perhaps more stout Big Ten East opponents.  But on a cold night in Minneapolis, the Jug was retained until at least 2023, the Michigan football family felt like they could celebrate, albeit in a socially distanced way, and Michigan heads into Halloween with a Paul Bunyan Trophy showdown brimming with confidence.  This does not erase the realities of anything beyond football or larger than football.  But, if only for one night, a Michigan football season exists, and a victory was attained.  Shine on.

And now it's time to say

What I forgot to say

Baby, baby, baby

Come on, what's wrong

It's a radiation vibe I'm groovin' on

Don't it make you want to get some sun

Shine on, shine on, shine on.    

ESPN CFB Images of the Decade 2010-2019: Annotations

Continuing a "long-standing tradition" from 2010, here is my annotated list of the ESPN College Football Images of the Decade video for 2010-2019.  I welcome corrections and specifics in the comments!

Here's to hoping the next decade of college football is as good as the last 🤞 pic.twitter.com/0cY2EuWH0z

— ESPN College Football (@ESPNCFB) January 1, 2020

• Instagram Introduction with a Clemson football being kicked off.
• PSU pregame
• FSU pregame
• LSU coach  Les Miles is excited
• Oregon mascot Puddles is excited
• USC pregame
• Michigan players touch the banner
• Colorado's non-animal mascot Chip fires up the crowd
• Georgia players break through the banner
• 2010: Auburn's Michael Dyer was down?  We'll never know.
• 2010: Auburn's Wes Byrum kicks a field goal and Auburn wins the 2010 BCS National Title
• 2015: Clemson beats Notre Dame in the rain and Dabo's happy about that.
• 2016: Louisville's Lamar Jackson hurdles a Syracuse player
• 2017: Oklahoma's Baker Mayfield plants the flag at the Shoe
• 2010: MSU beats Notre Dame on Little Giants
• 2016: CMU beats Oklahoma State at the last second
• 2017: Penn State's Saquon Barkley
• 2011: Baylor's RG III
• 2016: Clemson's Deshawn Watson 
• 2011: LSU kicker Drew Alleman beats Alabama
• 2011: Stanford's Andrew Luck
• 2010: Boise State's Kellen Moore
• 2012: Alabama's Eddie Lacy runs over Notre Dame in the BCS title game
• 2015: Ohio State's Braxton Miller spin move TD beats Virginia Tech
• 2017: Notre Dame's Miles Boykin beats LSU in the 2018 Citrus Bowl
• 2016: Iowa upsets #2 Michigan at Kinnick After Dark.  Harbaugh looks disappointed.
• 2013: Auburn's Nick Marshall throws a 73-yard touchdown pass to Ricardo Louis to beat Georgia at the last second on "The Prayer at Jordan-Hare."
• 2011: Under the Lights - Denard Robinson to Roy Roundtree to beat Notre Dame
• 2014: Mississippi State's Dak Prescott stiff arms an LSU defender en route to a 54 yard TD.
• LSU player
• Wisconsin Player
• Oklahoma coach Lincoln Riley
• 2012: Texas A&M's Johnny Manziel does Johnny Football things vs. Duke in the Peach Bowl
• 2014: Arizona's Austin Hill catches a Hail Mary TD to beat Cal
• 2017: Florida's Feleipe Franks hits Tyrie Cleveland on a Hail Mary to beat Tennessee
• 2014: Arizona State's Jaelen Strong catches a Hail Mary TD to beat USC.
• 2012: Notre Dame makes an OT goalline stand to beat Stanford
• LSU's Leonard Fournette (maybe?)
• One-handed catch at Temple
• Stanford's Christian McCaffrey scores a TD
• 2014: Nebraska's Jordan Westerkamp makes "the butt catch" against FAU.
• 2018: Oklahoma's Kyler Murray scores against WVU
• 2019: Ohio State's Justin Fields points in the air.
• 2015: Michigan State roughs the snapper.  Michigan's Blake O'Neil has trouble with the snap.  Bad things ensue. A meme is born.
• 2018: Alabama's Tua Tagovailoa runs in for a TD at LSU
• 2019: LSU's Joe Burrow celebrates
• 2017: Ohio State's JT Barrett celebrates against Penn State.
• 2012: South Carolina's Jadeveon Clowney dehelmets Michigan's Vincent Smith in the 2013 Outback Bowl.
• 2017: Miami celebrates with The Turnover Chain.
• 2013: Florida State's Kelvin Benjamin catches the game-winning TD from Jameis Winston in the 2013 BCS National Championship Game.
• 2014: The College Football Playoff is born
• 2014: Ohio State's Ezekiel Eliott scores in the 2015 CFP Championship Game over Oregon, Cardale Jones celebrates the first CFB National Championship, Urban Meyer gets a Gatorade bath.
• Instagram interstitial with Boston College's Mark Herzlich
• 2010: Notre Dame pays tribute to the late Declan Sullivan
• 2018: Purdue celebrates the life of superfan Tyler Trent and upsets Ohio State at Ross-Ade
• 2011: Rutgers player Eric LeGrand returns to the field with his teammates after being paralyzed in a game in 2010.
• 2016: Nebraska honors the late Sam Foltz who had died in a car accident the previous summer.
• 2018: Washington State honors the late Tyler Hilinski.
• 2017: USC long snapper Jake Olson becomes the first blind player in NCAA history.
• 2016: Pitt running back James Conner comes back to the field after being diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma.
• 2018: Maryland honors their late teammate, #79, Jordan McNair.
• 2017: Iowa introduces the "Iowa Wave" college football, where after the first quarter, fans wave to patients at The University of Iowa Stead Family Children's Hospital.
• 2010: Auburn's Cam Newton scores in the opener against South Carolina and celebrates.
• 2015: Notre Dame's DeShone Kizer finds Will Fuller with 12 seconds left to beat Virginia and sad UVa fan.
• 2016: Army beats Navy for the first time in 14 years
• 2015: Alabama's Kenyan Drake returns a kickoff 95 yards for a touchdown vs Clemson in the 2016 CFP National Championship Game.
• 2011: Oregon's Chip Kelly asks some people behind his post-game interview with Erin Andrews to shut up.  Erin Andrews thanks him for doing so.
• 2015: Alabama's Nick Saban doesn't even know what your question was, he just wanted to say that.
• 2017: Washington State's Mike Leach calls the postgame celebration after upsetting USC on the Palouse like Woodstock, except everybody's got their clothes on.
• 2018: Oklahoma State's Mike Gundy does not hold a high opinion of Twitter.
• 2017: UCF's Scott Frost wants his Knights to know that the College Football Playoff committee was conspiring against them.
• 2014: At an Oregon presser with Mark Helfrich, 12-year-old reporter Charlie Pape says that the only things that matter at his school are Jesus, Girls, and Marcus Mariota.  Bonus inclusion of 2018: LSU fan Kaileigh Thomas gives the death stare to the camera.
• 2015: Navy quarterback Keenan Reynolds goes into the record books.
• 2016: San Diego State's Donnel Pumphrey becomes the FBS "all-time leading rusher"
• 2015: Western Michigan's PJ Fleck crowd surfs the locker room after a win.
• 2018: Kentucky coach Mark Stoops crowd surfs the locker room after a comeback win over Missouri.
• Iowa State celebrates with water 
• Oklahoma State's Mike Gundy "gets low" after a win
• Clemson's Dabo Sweeney dances in the locker room.
• 2017: Georgia's Sony Michel runs for the game-winning TD over Oklahoma in the 2018 Rose Bowl.  This makes Kirby Smart happy.
• Washington's Dante Pettis celebrates a touchdown over Oregon.
• 2018: Alabama's Jalen Hurts does the Superman celebration after leading the Tide to a win over Georgia in the SEC Championship Game
• 2019: Oklahoma's Jalen Hurts celebrates a Sooner victory.
• 2016: Ohio State's Curtis Samuel scores a game-winning touchdown against Michigan after a VERY QUESTIONABLE SPOT.  NO, SERIOUSLY.
• 2017: USC quarterback Sam Darnold celebrates.
• Oklahoma State's Justin Blackmon celebrates.
• 2019: Clemson's Trevor Lawrence celebrates in the 2019 Fiesta Bowl
• 2015: Alabama's Derrick Henry celebrates during the 2016 College Football Playoff National Championship Game.
• 2018: Texas freshman kicker Cameron Dicker beats Oklahoma in the Red River Shootout with a late field goal.
• 2015: Michigan State's kicker Matt Geiger celebrates after his field goal as time expires helps Michigan State upset OSU in the Horseshoe.
• Oregon's LaMichael James scores.
• A Penn State player celebrates after a score.
• 2013: Auburn's Chris Davis returns a missed field goal attempt all the way and Auburn's gonna win the football game on the Kick Six.
• 2016: Clemson's DeShaun Watson finds Hunter Renfrow for the game-winning touchdown in the 2017 College Football Playoff Championship Game.  Dabo celebrates.
• 2017: Alabama freshman Tua Tagovailoa hits DeVonta Smith for a 41-yard TD in OT of the 2018 College Football Playoff Championship Game as Bama walks off for a national title.  Coach Saban celebrates.

That's what we gathered from this.
Music used: Thirty Seconds to Mars "Walk on Water" and Imagine Dragons' "Walking the Wire"

Semi-Charmed Life

Hey, pictures are worth a thousand words. (John Raoux/AP)

What exactly could I say here that we haven't said at the end of each of the previous three seasons?  Michigan looked pretty good in the first half, had a lead on Alabama going into the locker room, and then did exactly nothing on offense in the second half.  The Shea Patterson experience ended with him missing most of his deep balls, in an increasingly frustrating manner, only to see that in the moments after Michigan's defense got a three and out to give Michigan a shot to get back into the game, he threw a pick that sealed Michigan's fate. 

Part of you may want to be happy that Alabama, even a wounded Alabama, didn't run Michigan off the field.  I respect that because I understand the desire to be happy about the situation.  I also understand that this is who Michigan is now, but simultaneously, this is who Michigan has been (with one not inconsequential blip) pretty much forever, certainly for the last 30 years.  Michigan is back to being what it has been forever.  The problem is that the world has changed and what that was would no longer get the accolades that Michigan got used to when it was this way in the past.  Nothing in the last five years have really shown us anything different, it just took many of us longer to get used to the idea than we perhaps realized it would.

So I don't even know what I want for Michigan to be.  Perhaps the most frustrating notion is that Michigan hasn't won a game in the Harbaugh era in which it was an underdog.  0-10.  47-8 as a favorite, 0-10 as an underdog.  So basically, when Michigan is supposed to win, by and large, it does, but if Michigan isn't favored, it has no shot.  There is no unexpected surprise.  That's the real frustration.  Michigan is chaos free Auburn.  The difference is that Auburn will lose games it's supposed to win, but then it will beat Bama when it's not supposed to and people are happy for a touch.  Michigan doesn't do that, and we all end up sad.  (Truthfully, Michigan should have been in the Outback against Auburn, which would have been a much better game, as would have Minnesota/Alabama, but that's now how bowl ties work anymore.)

There are bright spots you can point to for next season and that's what we'll do because not having hope in sports makes it pointless to even be a fan.  We'll talk about the loaded running backs room, we'll talk McCaffrey/Milton, we'll see which receivers come back for another year, and we'll tell ourselves with a few breaks, we can make it to Indy.  We won't, of course, but we'll tell ourselves that because feeling hopeless for eight months is probably more than fans can bear to ponder.

So thanks for another great season, Thank you for continuing to read, even when we haven't had a lot to say.  We'll see you around.  Go Blue.