Once upon a time, I viewed Beaver Stadium as some kind of barbed wire-and-tetanus riddled Thunderdome that swallowed Big Ten opponents whole. This was probably also around the same time that Penn State fans were making t-shirts ostensibly designed to make fun of Terrelle Pryor that instead ended up just looking uncomfortably sexy.
Then I grew old and cynical and started writing this post, and in the process of doing my cursory five seconds of research, I realized that Penn State is merely a respectable 8-7 against ranked opponents in Happy Valley in the past ten seasons. That's a decent record if you're welcoming say, Northwestern into town but for the likes of Ohio State and Michigan it lessens the mystique a bit. Not that Beaver Stadium is an easy place to play; the intensity of the environment scales with the opponent.
But Michigan metaphorically headbutting their way to a particularly Cro-Magnon 21-17 win seems about right. Penn State was and is a decent team and had a shot to pull out the win, but they lost because the Wolverines have a very good defense and do one thing very well on offense, and ultimately the Nittany Lions didn't have a response for either.
THE OFFENSE
Blake Corum is good, he's fine, everything is great, but he's also still injured and didn't play. So Michigan ran Hassan Haskins 31 times and he did Hassan Haskins things, which in this case means "ran for five yards per carry" for the entire game. And again, this is really all that it takes. Michigan has an identity, and while it's a boring, predictable identity, if you can't stop it you'll probably lose. Penn State did not stop Haskins, who ended up with 156 yards on the ground (and 45 yards catching the ball).
Cade McNamara had his typical game of making a living off of short and intermediate passes, although one of Michigan's patented tight end drag routes ended up paying off at the best possible moment for them; down 17-14 late in the 4th quarter, McNamara hit Erick All for a 47 yard touchdown pass and Penn State couldn't answer. The Wolverines scored when they needed it the most, but also, you know, punted five times and turned the ball over at a critical moment in the 4th quarter, almost blowing the game.
THE DEFENSE
The biggest accomplishment for the Michigan defense was limiting Penn State wideout Jahan Dotson to minimal impact and holding the Nittany Lions to just 7-21 on 3rd down. Dotson is fantastic, and that's no easy cheese to accomplish. I've given the Wolverines crap for their secondary, which I still maintain isn't very good, but right now they're sitting at 8th in the country in yards per game allowed (you, uh, don't want to know where Ohio State is).
Still, this was a contest until the very end, in part because Michigan again had some issues with tempo, and also allowed Penn State to convert four of six 4th down attempts. They also couldn't stop the world's most obvious fake punt on the opening drive, which led to a Lion field goal despite quarterback Sean Clifford being sacked three times on that series alone.
michigan:
— johnny (@johnny11w) November 13, 2021
- expected a fake punt
- took a timeout to prepare for a fake punt
- watched penn state line up as if they were 100% going to fake a punt
- failed to stop penn state's fake punt
Side note: watching Clifford drop back 43 times and average 4.8 yards per attempt was a mental exercise on par with a monk sitting under a torrential waterfall for a week without food or sleep. Someone should give me and everyone who watched this dude attempt to throw the football in the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Twenty One a freaking medal.
THIS IS THE END (2013)
I'm not usually a huge fan of comedies where a significant part of the humor is derived from "celebrity doing/saying something out of character" because the jokes are more or less based entirely on the zeitgeist of that moment; asking the audience to have this weird meta-contextual knowledge about Emma Watson's personality in relation to Danny McBride or Michael Cera or whoever as a basis for humor gets real old real fast. But when This Is The End swerves away from hyper-specific jokes about celebrities and leans into "dumbasses trying to survive the Apocalypse," it gets a lot funnier and eventually weirdly kind of earns the pathos it goes for at the end? Like, it's not It's A Wonderful Life or anything but I was relieved that almost everyone got to hang out with the Backstreet Boys up in Heaven.
Also, Jay Baruchel? Underrated, frankly. And he co-wrote Goon. That's a good movie.
THREAT LEVEL
You know what? Fine. I'm moving them up to ELEVATED. You and I know exactly who and what Michigan is at this point in the season. When the Wolverines play Ohio State in a couple of weeks, they will try and beat the Buckeyes with exactly the same strategy they've used against virtually everyone else. It probably won't work, but at this point I have to at least respect that Jim Harbaugh and company have a philosophy and are sticking to it. That, and a great defense, makes them more dangerous as a program than they've been in years. If the formula works again against Maryland, it should be a very interesting week leading up to The Game.
