Michigan Football: Week 4

This is one of those rare and extremely frustrating games where everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. Wisconsin is a team that historically has been very strong running the ball, usually with a combination of a great running back and a great offensive line, and also fields an impressive defense year in and year out. How do you beat a team like that? You do not turn the ball over, you get up on them early so they can not just run the clock on you, and you make sure that you do not allow holes to open for their running back by crashing in too early on defense. Michigan did about zero of those, and it sure made them look really bad.

Opponent: Wisconsin Badgers

Playing at Wisconsin is never a game to look forward to. It is a very tough place to play, not to mention that Wisconsin always fields a tough team. Starting with the obvious, Jonathan Taylor is an amazing talent. He is hands down one of the best running backs in the nation, and I expect him to be a real force at the NFL-level. They played a somewhat unknown at quarterback, Jack Coan, but he seemed to be more of a game manager than anything. He averaged under 10 yards per completion, so he really just threw a lot of short passes. Their offensive line, of course, played a great game. Wisconsin always has a good offensive line, it does not matter what year it is, you can always depend on them to be big and tough up front. Outside of that, nothing on offense stood out that much. They just have a bunch of guys who are really good at football, and sometimes that is what makes a team dangerous, they do not have any real subpar players.

Defensively, it was again no surprise to me that they for the most part were able to shut down our offense. Just like with the offensive line, Wisconsin always has a good defense. No one player really stood out on their defense, but again, I do not think that is necessarily a bad thing. That just means they are a great unit who all do their job like they are supposed to.

Wisconsin has the makings to be a dangerous team in the Big Ten this year. We will see how they do the rest of the season. If they end up blowing through the rest of their schedule on their way to a Big Ten Championship and a potential College Football Playoff berth, then this loss may not look so bad in hindsight. Am I hoping that happens so that I can have an excuse to make for this loss? Absolutely not. Wisconsin could win the national championship and this loss would still look horrible at the end of the season.

Offense

I am just going to say it, I knew we would lose as soon as Ben Mason fumbled on Wisconsin's 5-yard line. Given that Jonathan Taylor had just run the ball down our throats for a touchdown, we needed to respond. Ronnie Bell helped with that by breaking free down the right sideline and getting it inside Wisconsin's 10-yard line. It looked like we were going to put up a touchdown of our own, which would have signaled that we were here to play. Then we would have had a game on our hands. The moment that ball hit the ground and Wisconsin fell on it, I believe that was absolutely deflating to our entire team. I have expressed my unbelievable frustration a lot so far this season with this team and their seeming inability to hang on to the football. To have Ben Mason, a monster of a man whose arms should have no issue protecting a football, fumble it in that situation is completely demoralizing. Our offense, especially, never recovered. Dylan McCaffrey ended up being our leading rusher with 3 carries for 21 yards. Yes, you read that correctly, and no, I did not make a typo. No other player on our team rushed for more than that. Christian Turner was the only one close, as he had 17 yards on 6 carries. We completely abandoned the run game, and whether or not it is because of Ben Mason's fumble, it is still unacceptable. It was disappointing that Zach Charbonnet only had two carries, but maybe he actually was struggling with an injury, I am not really sure. I hope that is the case, otherwise there is no justification for that. You can not become one-dimensional against a defense like Wisconsin's, they will destroy you. We ended up leaning far more heavily on our passing game, but it was also not any good. There were too many throws going to tight ends, in my opinion. For some reason, we insist on throwing to tight ends in the flat, over the middle, and on bubble screens. The problem is, they do not make anybody miss. I can think of two guys just off the top of my head that I would rather see those passes thrown to, Mike Sainristil and Giles Jackson. Those two are dynamic and can actually make plays with the ball in their hands. They are the kind of players that can take a bubble screen or a slant and make a guy miss and suddenly have a 20-yard gain. Tight ends should be used simply as last resort, short-yardage options. Yes, Sean McKeon had a nice touchdown, but again that was a shorter completion. We needed big plays to come back from as far down as we were, 28-0 at the half. You know who did make big plays? Nico Collins on the last drive. Where was that all game? He simply overpowered the cornerback on every single play on that drive, even fighting through a pass interference to make one catch. This same exact thing happened at the end of the Ohio State game last year, too, where on our last drive we just throw the ball to Collins all over the field and he makes terrific catches. Here is an idea: Let's do that, but for 60 minutes. That would have helped us keep the ball for longer and actually put some drives together. We ended up losing the time of possession battle badly. We had the ball for less than a third of the contest. That is unacceptable, and Wisconsin simply will not be beaten if a team allows that to happen. The blame typically goes, at least initially, to the defense when looking at that statistic, but I blame our offense more. They just could not put any drives together, and it was very depressing to watch. Finally, I think that I am now ready to see Dylan McCaffrey play over Shea Patterson. Not only did Patterson have both a fumble and an interception, he just did not look good all game. Some of his throws were scarily off-target, and it also seems like he has just given up on running, which is also a detriment to the offense. Our offense is best when he runs, and if he will not do it, then our offense is going to continue to be bad. McCaffrey came in the game, and not only had some good runs, but he also looked more in control than Patterson did. He really looked like he knew where to go with the ball, and made it happen. He essentially led our first touchdown drive, before taking a blatant cheap shot to the head and walking away with a concussion, never to be seen again. Patterson then proceeded to vulture his touchdown. We do not know how long McCaffrey will be out, but if it is an extended period of time, then I am very nervous about what our offense is going to be. We probably will be seeing more pitchbacks to offensive linemen.

Defense

This game pretty much exemplified why I was nervous about our defense to begin this season. Devin Bush made our defense look a lot better last year, and I firmly believe he was our biggest loss on that side of the ball. His recovery speed was so important to stop big plays, and we simply do not have that anymore. Josh Ross is the closest we have, and he got injured, so once he was gone we really had no outstanding speed left in our linebacker corps. Jonathan Taylor really took advantage of that on his long touchdown run where the outside defender did not stay home and instead crashed right into the line and allowed that play to happen. Our defensive line was also not great in this game, they struggled to create pressure all day. Now, their quarterback, Jack Coan, was a bit of a dink-and-dunker, in the mold of Alex Smith, but he still only had 3 incompletions on the entire day and was sacked once. Wisconsin is known for having great offensive lines, yes, but still it is really disappointing that we could not get more pressure on him. Honestly, I can not really get too mad at our secondary. A team's defensive backs and defensive line are very much correlated during a football game. Specifically, the defensive backs are rather dependent on the defensive linemen doing their job. Since our defensive line struggled mightily to put pressure on Coan, he had a lot of time to throw, and as a corner, it is very hard to cover a guy once they start just running around, trying to get open. So, I am willing to give our corners a slight pass on this one, especially considering Wisconsin's leading receiver was a running back, Garrett Groshek, who only went for 38 yards and I assume was probably being covered by a linebacker anyways. When looking at how our defense was on Saturday, the fact of the matter is, Jonathan Taylor is a very special running back who has the makings to be a fantastic NFL back, and their offense revolves around him. He also has a very talented offensive line opening holes for him. I was expecting Taylor to have a good day against us, I was just hoping we would keep him a lot more in-check than we did, thus forcing their quarterback to try to beat us.

Next Week:

Plain and simple, if we lose to Rutgers at home, then I have no hope left for this team. Hopefully we can use it as an opportunity to figure it out on offense and just steamroll them. My one worry is that the team may be complacent after this loss to Wisconsin, but hopefully they can get in the right mindset and will be able to put a good game together and blow them out. It will certainly be interesting to see if the players respond to the adversity they faced this week. I am cautiously hoping that they will, but at this point it is hard to really be certain of it.