9/30/2023 – Michigan 45, Nebraska 7 – 5-0, 2-0 Big Ten

This column is about being grateful but first a digression into obscure lexicography, as the readership demands. Despite an Atlantic article that accidentally implies that the noun "fantods" was a neologism sprouted from David Foster Wallace's mother, Merriam Webster asserts that Charles Fredrick Briggs deployed in 1839; indeed, it actually found its way in to Huckleberry Finn:

"They was all nice pictures, I reckon, but I didn't somehow seem to take to them, because … they always give me the fantods."

I think it is probable that DFW's mother is the originator of the phrase "howling fantods," which does feel like a temple erected on top of a previous religion's foundation. Fantods are one thing. When they howl, wow. Buddy. I mean. It's not good.

I was put in this frame of mind in the midst of Michigan's comprehensive dismantling of Nebraska because whilst I was enjoying myself, many other sports fans were not. I was particularly affected by two morose persons in particular. One was Robert Rosenthal, who goes by @alioneye on Twitter and is very likely the world's most dedicated Illinois fan. Illinois is coming off a promising season, and as directed by the laws of Illinois football that means they must immediately descend into the Earth's mantle. Ryan Walters, until recently the Illinois defensive coordinator, provided that via means of a 44-19 hamblasting at the hands of Purdue. Here is a place I have been:

Found it: https://t.co/7g5yifZnba

— Robert Rosenthal (@ALionEye) September 30, 2023

I have been in the Place Of Cheese, except it was more like, you know, alcohol. At some point in the Rodriguez era I responded to news of Troy Woolfolk's injury with a burst of tweets that resulted in this exchange…

@mgoblog you are a grown man drinking tea at 9pm - things are looking VERY down

— TigerCub33 (@Tigercub33) August 18, 2010

…and me hurriedly explaining that yes I was drinking tea but, like Fred Jackson, I was also drinking several other things that may or may not kill me and that I was not entirely certain which outcome I was hoping for. After the JT Was (Probably Not) Short game I poured a double of Lagavulin 16 and wandered around in the wooded area behind my home for 45 minutes before returning to reality. Did it help? Absolutely. Enough? No.

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Depressed sports fan number two was Roger Bennett of Men In Blazers, who is apparently a fan of both Everton and the Chicago Bears. If you responded to this information with a sort of low, keening, sympathetic howl you know more about the EPL and NFL than I do but I saw this from Roger this weekend and thought "I literally wrote this except it was a 600-word column":

Sports fandom meant to be a joy. A diversion. An alternate universe rife with wonder. Not the teams I support. Peddlers only of misery, self-loathing, and pain. A stark reminder only of the truth: Life has no meaning and we are all going to Die pic.twitter.com/XJIjfDw76U

— roger bennett (@rogbennett) October 1, 2023

I first ran across Bennett during the 2014 World Cup, when Men In Blazers was a sort of late-night World Cup recap show on ESPN, and loved their general exuberance about things. To see Bennett brought so low by the things he loves is a grim reminder that two years ago I was declaring Michigan football the least fun program in the whole of sports. And… I mean… it kind of was.

Now that we are not beset by howling fantods about sports we should take a minute to appreciate that this team is not only good but also very fun. After JJ McCarthy scrambled for a 20-yard touchdown, FOX's mics picked him up saying "thank you so much boys" to his offensive line after demanding pretend corn. After Corum walked in later he pretended to salt the OL's corn. Jim Harbaugh reached unprecedented levels of football dad in the locker room after the game:

Jim Harbaugh: “It just came to me that we ought to sing ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow’ to Kenneth Grant for that amazing play that he made. … First time I’ve ever asked a team to sing, ‘For He’s A Jolly Good Fellow.’ It just came over us. The guys liked it. I think it’s a…

— Alejandro Zúñiga (@ByAZuniga) October 1, 2023

The levels of dad Harbaugh is reaching are potentially dangerous, but if there's a fanbase in the country who can adapt and survive it's this one:

This is why @CoachJim4UM is the perfect coach for Michigan, and Michigan is the perfect place for Coach Harbaugh:

Since @ByAZuniga posted this, I've received 2 emails about it, both from Michigan fans explaining the origin of the song at a French battle in the early 1700s. https://t.co/9RnthAEe9z

— Jordan Acker (@JordanAckerMI) October 2, 2023

I don't know where this season is going to end up but I'm delighted that I get to spend some time with these guys every Saturday.

AWARDS

Known Friends and Trusted Agents Of The Week

box score shmocks score [Barron]

you're the man now, dog

#1 Kris Jenkins. Notched a total of two tackles; don't care. On review of the game he was never successfully blocked. Never. I'm sure Seth will find a couple of counter-examples but Jenkins was a primary reason Nebraska's somewhat vaunted ground game went exactly nowhere.

#2 Braiden McGregor. Very hard to pick out another defensive player for the usual reasons—no snaps, everyone does like one thing—but McGregor did three things in this game: he forced the interception with a batted pass that went sky-high, he shoved a tight end into Haarberg on Nebraska's failed fourth and one, and he (like many others) showed Tyler Corcoran his own intestines en route to a sack.

#3 Roman Wilson. You make that catch, you get to be a Known Friend and Trusted Agent.

Honorable mention: JJ McCarthy averaged nearly ten yards an attempt, scored a scramble TD, ate imaginary corn, thanked his linemen to a national television audience, and kissed his girl with twenty minutes left in the game. Only sixteen attempts, though? AJ Barner and Max Bredeson continue to mash faces. Derrick Moore had a strip-sack, a batted pass, and another hurry. Blake Corum weaved through dudes.

KFaTAotW Standings.

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

22: JJ McCarthy (#1 ECU, #1 UNLV, #2 Rutgers, HM Nebraska), Kris Jenkins (HM ECU, T2 UNLV, #1 BGSU, HM Rutgers, #1 Nebraska)
11: Mike Sainristil (T3 ECU, HM BGSU, #1 Rutgers)
9: Roman Wilson (T2 ECU, HM UNLV, HM BGSU, #3 Nebraska), Blake Corum (HM ECU, HM UNLV, #2 BGSU, HM Rutgers, HM Neb)
7: Braiden McGregor(T3 UNLV, #2 Nebraska)
6: Kenneth Grant (T3 ECU, T2 UNLV), Cornelius Johnson (T2 ECU, HM UNLV, HM BGSU)
5: Mason Graham (HM ECU, T2 UNLV), Junior Colson (#3 BGSU, T3 Rutgers)
4: Ernest Hausmann (T3 ECU, T3 Rutgers)
3: Mike Barrett (HM UNLV, T3 Rutgers)
2:  Josh Wallace (T3 ECU), Derrick Moore (T3 UNLV), Jaylen Harrell (HM UNLV, HM BGSU), AJ Barner (HM BGSU, HM Neb), Max Bredeson (HM Rutgers, HM Neb)
1: Tommy Doman (HM ECU), Donovan Edwards (HM ECU), Tyler Morris (HM UNLV), Semaj Morgan (HM Rutgers), Colston Loveland (HM Rutgers), Quinten Johnson (HM Rutgers), Derrick Moore (HM Neb)

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

Roman Wilson provides his version of the Prothro.

[Barron]

Honorable mention: Kenneth Grant intercepts Nebraska's second play from scrimmage thanks to a McGregor bat; McCarthy rolls away from pressure and fires in a thirty-yard laser for another Wilson TD; Michigan coaches succumb to the clamoring of the internet and agree to call a flea flicker every game.

MARCUS HALL EPIC DOUBLE BIRD OF THE WEEK.

Uh… Tyler Morris muffed a punt, which he then returned for 30 yards?

Honorable mention: A couple of long completions on slants are irritating.

OFFENSE

[Barron]

The all-dig offense. Never seen a team that throws deep in routes more than anything else but here we are:

As discussed on the podcast, this may be the perfect dig team: opponents have to bracket Roman Wilson on a deep post and have to suck up on play action, leaving vast acres of space in the middle of the field for a quarterback with a rocket arm to throw his guys open. The frequency with which McCarthy threw low but catchable balls to guys who had DBs in close contact made me believe that was intentional, FWIW.

Henderson check. Ladarius Henderson got his first start and things felt smoother on the ground. I enjoyed this play because this entire season has been teams playing to spill power but when he sees that he needs to go inside he's able to redirect and get a block:

When you draw a play up on paper, this is what it looks like.

Picture perfect blocks on the front and backside - particularly LaDarius Henderson pulling from the backside into the hole to seal off the LB.

And all the Blake cheat codes have been downloaded. pic.twitter.com/DOqTBa3qdR

— Due# (@JDue51) October 1, 2023

Also he's pulling from tackle. It seems likely he's an upgrade on Hinton as a run blocker, because he's an established very good college guard. Hinton's highs may be higher, but Henderson seems far less likely to post a –2.

Pass protection was a bit of an adventure but I think two of the incidents are potentially not his deal. On one Corum ran into him as he was trying to release into a route; on another it looked like he expected inside help from Keegan, but Keegan was occupied by a guy slanting away from Nugent and to him. Usually defenses are not set up to pressure like that, because if you pressure like that the quarterback is going to escape the pocket and if he is JJ McCarthy he is going to throw a 30-yard rope to Roman Wilson in the back of the endzone.

[Barron]

The interior carries will continue until morale improves. After a game against Rutgers where Blake Corum got 21 carries and Edwards just six, the split in this game was 16 to 14. A fair number of Edwards's carries came after McCarthy and Corum had exited permanently. Normally I'd be rabbling at the television about this, but after last week's issues it made some sense to give him a bunch of live-fire opportunities to make the right cuts inside the tackles.

He did this pretty well. There was one bounce against a five man box that was clearly correct and one that was probably a wash compared to hitting it up inside; all other carries went between the tackles and looked to more or less maximize the blocking Michigan was providing.

We saw that Edwards needed some time to rev up last year and that he didn't really hit his stride until midseason. Hopefully this is a repeat situation.

[Barron]

Mullings check. Kalel Mullings apparently has (most of) the short yardage job. He got in for five carries in this game, all of them in third or fourth and short; he converted all of them easily, scoring a 20-yard touchdown on the first and gaining at least five yards on all other carries. On review the touchdown wasn't as impressive as it looked at first. Michigan was running belly so Mullings knew pre-snap he was going to regap to Tightendistan, but I still like that a guy at that size can make that move so smoothly. His feet are incredible for a horse-sized person. This is what happens when he meets a completely unblocked linebacker after he gets up a head of steam:

No chance. That guy's heavier than you and moving faster.

 Harbaugh:

“He's just really putting it all together. Putting the leg cycle together, the downhill running together,” Michigan coach Jim Harbugh said after the game. “To be able to lower his pads at the line of scrimmage, keep the legs going, as well as you can run through arm tackles. Didn't look like those arm tackles were there on the 20-yard run. There was probably four to eight arms that he ran through on that run. Like an arrow through snow is what it looked like to me.”

Preseason projections that someone might be used to take miles off of Corum have come to fruition. Corum got the first two short yardage attempts; Mullings got the rest.

It changes your offense. A couple people have noted that the Mullings touchdown was aided by a Nebraska player checking on McCarthy. This is correct; also you can see the influence of Michigan's QB run game all over. Michigan's first snap was split zone on which a linebacker didn't react to Corum because of the threat of McCarthy's legs:

Nebraska LB on 43 to top

That is a moment of hesitation and that's all it takes for Corum to go by you. This has been your weekly rant about this topic.

DEFENSE 

Ojaboing? [Barron]

The Corcoran curve. Well done, good job to Braiden McGregor, Josiah Stewart, and Jaylen Harrell for cooking Taylor Corcoran. The former two picked up sacks and the latter would have if not for a blatant holding call that the officials ignored because they wanted to end the game as quickly as possible. I cannot say that these events foretell anything, because Corcoran may literally be the worst pass-blocker in the PFF era.

On the other hand, Bryce Benhart is okay-ish and Derrick Moore did this to him:

DE #8 to top

Moore did that again in the fourth quarter, but Stewart's bull rush was to the interior and Haarberg was able to roll out and get a completion. This was about the point in David Ojabo's breakout season that game columns started saying things like "Ojabo ghosted past a tackle again." Worth monitoring.

PFF is grading Moore out as Michigan's best pass rusher with a 90 and a 22% win rate; his win rate on true pass sets is 36%(!!!). Nobody else on the front four is anywhere close to that latter number. FWIW, that makes Moore the top-graded pass rusher in the Big Ten with at least 50 rush snaps. Jaylen Harrell(!) is fourth. Degree of difficulty disclaimers apply, of course.

DE zone drops need work. Michigan gave up some chunk plays to Heinrich Haarberg, and there's a couple of reasons for concern. One is that Jesse Minter's gambit where he drops DL into zones was really not working, no matter who it was. This first down sees Stewart drop; he ends up standing right next to Michael Barrett:

Standup DE to top

A subsequent third and medium conversion came when Stewart again dropped into a window that the receiver immediately cleared. I don't mind giving up completions like this because if you get it right you can confuse QBs into disastrous decisions and this is the time to get it right.

On the other hand…

The second reason for concern is more concerning. For the second straight week we've seen the two guys who were supposed to be givens in this secondary get shook. Here Sainristil gets beat to the point where he can't even attempt a tackle on the catch; even if he's playing outside leverage because he expects help from the DE drop from Moore that shouldn't mean he's not able to tackle after giving up the inside:

Later the Quinten Johnson PBU saved Michigan a ton of yards when Will Johnson(?!?) got completely torched. Michigan still has time to refine and get healthy here, but I'm beginning to get owlish about the secondary. It's the one place on the team other than quarterback where there appeared to be a steep dropoff as soon as a key player went down, and as luck would have it that's more or less the only spot on the team where injury issues have been severe.

Linebackers: exist. Another game where Michigan's linebackers were called into action rarely. I caught a couple good stack and shed moments from Barrett and Haussman; otherwise not a whole lot to comment on. Even the complaints about guys covering grass were mostly (entirely?) restricted to the DEs in this one.

Safety: iffy? Keon Sabb made a heady play to drag back Haarberg on Nebraska's failed fourth down conversion but was likely the guilty party on the chunk catch-and-run that Nebraska opened the second half with. Meanwhile Johnson had the PBU on a blitz but was unable to close down Nebraska's running back on their long touchdown run.

Meanwhile, the other safety on that play deep in the heart of garbage time was Rod Moore. Moore didn't have a chance to make a play; I note it because that feels like the defensive version of running Edwards up the gut a bunch late in the game. It's midseason and Michigan has a selection of important players who are nowhere near midseason form.

SPECIAL TEAMS

[Barron]

The return. An everything's coming up Milhous moment, obviously, and perhaps an indicator as to why Morris hasn't secured the full-time return job yet.

The punt. Tommy Doman got to punt once; that punt elicited a "whoah" from the announcers because they said it may have gotten over the top of the stadium. The wind pushed it into the endzone, as it inevitably must have. If and when Michigan gets into a game where they have to punt a fair bit he's going to be an advantage.

The field goal. Uhhhhhhhhh. Seemed a little iffy, but it corkscrewed through.

The stick. Welcome to the public consciousness, Christian Boivin.

[Barron]

If you needed a one-shot summary of the game, a walk-on linebacker trucking a dude on a kickoff return seems pretty good.

MISCELLANEOUS

The gallows humor. Nebraska brought it:

[Barron]

Also:

[Barron]

I appreciate the effort.

The larger view, part two. Michigan remains #1 in SP+ by a hair over Ohio State; perhaps more startling is that when Bill Connelly ran SP+ with preseason expectations dropped out Michigan stays #1:

This week's If Preseason Projections Were Removed from SP+ rankings:

1 Michigan
2 Washington
3 Miami
4 Oregon
5 Texas
6 Texas A&M??
7 Ohio St
8 Oklahoma
9 Wazzu!
10 Notre Dame
11 UGA
12 Bama
13 USC
14 Penn St
15 UCLA
16 Ore St
17 Duke
18 K-State
19 UK
20 Maryland

— Bill Connelly (@ESPN_BillC) October 1, 2023

That's odd since until this weekend I believe Michigan had underperformed SP+ expectations in every game. Possible that wins for UNLV and BGSU made Michigan's performance closer to expectation. Also in the larger view, Michigan is #1 by a mile in relative success rate:

Schedule strength, etc. But what we've seen even against bad opponents has been enough to convince Connelly, especially via the lens of Georgia:

Here's Michigan's scoring margin by quarter.

Q1: 42-7 (+35)
Q2: 58-6 (+52)
Q3: 55-0 (+55)
Q4: 17-17 (+0)

Star rusher Blake Corum has 24 carries in the first quarter, 20 in the second, 26 in the third and four in the fourth. The starters play for 45 minutes and tag out, the backups lose some battles, and opponents snare some backdoor covers. Michigan is 1-3-1 against the spread this season, which is often the sign of a wobbly team. But it's hard to make the case that there's anything actually wobbly here. The defense is great, quarterback J.J. McCarthy ranks first in Total QBR ... the Wolverines are flying, even if you adjust for their opponents. …

A sample of five games is a decent trend signifier in this sport, and trends certainly suggest Georgia's slow starts are a problem. Against a schedule similar to Michigan's - 104th overall, with two top-40ish opponents and three ranked 110th or worse - Georgia's per-quarter scoring margins are basically Michigan's in reverse.

Q1: 17-17 (+0)
Q2: 72-21 (+51)
Q3: 63-7 (+56)
Q4: 41-20 (+21)

UGA and Michigan have outscored opponents by the exact same margin in the second and third quarters, but considering the competition, the Dawgs have started games horribly. And they're taking much longer to put games away.

The short games have disguised the absolute whooping Michigan is putting on opponents.

Meanwhile, the actual human polls do kind of matter because they tend to set the narrative for the committee, so you should prepare for Michigan to get passed by Texas if they beat Oklahoma this weekend. Texas almost made up the gap this week as first-place votes fled from Georgia after their close call against an Auburn team with a Rutgers-esque passing game.

HERE  

The State of our Open Threads is finding that the placid seas of this season are causing some posters to game the system:

…let's start with overall efficiency this time, which is sort of an intensity metric, speaking a bit to how strong the feelings actually are. Here's what we have managed:

It has been very stable, as you see. Historically, in the Harbaugh era, something between about 3.00 and 2.00 has related to a relative level of comfort with the result, with anything above 3.00 almost being no realizable worry at all. Without telling a long story, this is essentially the number of posts in the thread over the number of instances of words being tracked, so for example, in a 1,500 post thread, 750 instances of tracked words would be an efficiency of 2.00. It's a 10,000-foot view, as they say, and there are more specific metrics that add to the picture. Some of you know that - that explanation is for the uninitiated. In any case, we've been, well, mellow overall. It's certainly a change from a few seasons ago.

One thing I did see - people trying to pad the numbers again.

Best And Worst:

Best:  Lining Up Nicely

If there’s been one consistent bit of consternation about Michigan’s offense this year it has been with the offensive line, which has been rotating tackles at times with nobody above “okay” really emerging.  On the most recent podcast Brian noted that having two okay tackles was the floor coming into the year and so its disappointing to hit that low expectation but I thought the tackles looked a step better in this game than the past couple of contests.  On McCarthy’s first TD throw when he had basically the shot clock turned off both Henderson and Barnhart were walls while on Mullings’s TD run it was Henderson again who demolished an end and opened up a huge hole.  On the day McCarthy was rarely moved off his spot let alone touched by the pass rush, and Nebraska only collected a single TFL despite coming into the game averaging over 6.  I believe Hinton missed the game but if Henderson is making strides after coming over in the summer and plays like the draft pick he was projected after last season at ASU, that raises the ceiling for the tackles into the territory where you don’t see a lot of teams in the country, let alone on the schedule, that’ll be able to consistent get pressure on McCarthy and the backs.

Iowatch!

Last week, we got a question: Has a power conference program ever seen such a drastic difference in offense and defense as Iowa?

I already had this data set ready to go (yes, I’m a nerd), so let’s answer the question from a full-season Points Per Drive perspective, shall we?

The answer is YES: since 2007, there has been exactly one Power 5 team that has outdone Iowa in its attempts to win games by putting all its stat rolls into only one phase of football. (Navy has accomplished this feat once as well. Dubious credit where dubious credit is due.)

Bronze Medal: In 2018, Cal had the #125 offense and the #9 defense, for a PPD Gap of 116.

Silver Medal: In 2016, Texas Tech had the #9 offense and the #127 defense, for a PPD Gap of 118. Call this the Inverse Iowa. OC for the Red Raiders that year was Eric Morris, who is currently attempting to recreate the Inverse Iowa at North Texas this year with a mediocre offense and the worst defense in football.

The Iowa Medal: 2022 Iowa. #120 offense and #1 defense, for a PPD Gap of 119.

Gold Medal: In 2015, Boston College had the #127 offense and #5 defense, for an astounding PPD Gap of 122(!!!). Don Brown was DC and got yoinked by Michigan after the season to replace DJ Durkin, who had been so busy interviewing for head coaching jobs that he forgot to prep for the Ohio State game.

Let's see some stats:

J.J. McCarthy’s exception proves the rule. Remove the BGSU game and McCarthy’s stats look like this: 75/92 (81.5%), 928 yards (10.1 Y/A), 8 TDs to zero INTs, 8 big-time throws to zero turnover-worthy plays. The efficiency there is absolutely absurd. It’s no longer worth comparing him to the other Big Ten quarterbacks, as he’s so clearly the best it’d be a waste of words to describe. Amongst the “Power 69” (Power Five teams + Notre Dame), he’s 2nd in completion percentage, 9th in yards per attempt, and 4th in big-time throw percentage. If there’s a semi-knock against him, it’s perhaps that his receivers are catching nearly literally everything (one drop on the season) and his protection is so good (pressured on just 25% of drop backs) that he’s literally never thrown the ball away this season. Consequently, his adjusted completion percentage ([completions + drops] / [attempts - throwaways]) is “just” 80.8%, which is barely any higher than his regular completion percentage (79.0%).

Very nice.