I'll admit to being a little too young to have ever watched The Electric Company. By the time I was old enough to enjoy all the fine programming available on publicly funded television, I was much more interested in the dedicated goofiness of Wishbone, Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego?, and Bill Nye the Science Guy.
But kids in the 70's loved the show, especially if their inspiration for learning about math and science was the musical Hair. I tried to go back and watch some of The Electric Company to figure out what exactly I was missing, and... I don't get it. It's funky in a Jimmy Carter-frantically-paddling-away-from-a-rabbit kind of way, which is to say that it's weird and goofy but also kind of depressing somehow.
Maybe it's the analog nature of the whole experience. Back when you had three channels to choose from and they were all kind of bad, you took what you could get. But this is the year two thousand and twenty-two! We pass the football now!
Right now Michigan football is undefeated and looking like a classic Bo Schembechler team from the depths of the disco age. This is only mostly a compliment.
THE OFFENSE
Michigan beat Nebraska 34-3 in a game where they yet again looked listless on offense in the first half against a crappy opponent. Michigan fans will handwave this away with the fact that they've outscored opponents 117-3 in the second half of the last five games, while also failing to note that they've been tied or losing or the game was within one score at halftime in four of them. I've always thought that the phrase "but they're a second half team!" rings hollow because, and I had to check on this, football games actually start in the first half.
So what's the deal? Michigan has a fantastic running back in Blake Corum (who, by the way, is doing his annual Thanksgiving turkey charity giveaway, the bastard), an extremely solid offensive line, veterans at wide receiver, and a supposedly talented quarterback, I guess! So what gives?
And the answer is pretty simple: they can't pass the ball. The reason why Harbaugh and company are running Corum into the teeth of opposing defenses like Nebraska and Indiana 28-30 times a game is because they don't currently have an alternative.
Quarterback J.J. McCarthy has regressed in each of his past four games, and had his worst game of the season against the Cornhuskers, going 8 for 17 and only 129 yards. There's a subset of Michigan fans who really, really want to compare his recent performances to the stinker C.J. Stroud threw up against Northwestern, but that's comparing apples to oranges being hucked at you by tropical storm-force winds.
The fact of the matter is that McCarthy, normally a very accurate passer, sees his completion percentage drop off dramatically on 3rd down, to just over 50%. This is in part due to wideouts like Ronnie Bell and Cornelius Johnson underperforming, but also due to the Michigan offensive staff not trusting the dude to throw more than 15 yards downfield. That is a capital-P Problem for the Wolverines, whether they want to acknowledge it or not.
They can get away with being Diet Service Academy for now, but against Ohio State they can't afford to play from behind.
THE DEFENSE
Or maybe they can, I dunno! The defense has still been playing very well, and if the Buckeyes are gimpy at running back, which allows the Michigan defensive line to get after Stroud, then who knows?
Nebraska has a bad offense, but it isn't necessarily "only put up 146 yards" bad, so credit where credit is due: Michigan dominated in the trenches and Nebraska quarterback with the actual name of I swear this is true Chubba Purdy went 6 for 11 and 56 yards. Not for like a quarter or a half or something, the entire game.
Michigan defensive lineman Mike Morris got a little gimpy in the second half, which would be a big loss for the Wolverines, but also he's probably fine, and anyway hoping the guy won't be available to play in a few weeks is weirdly malicious wishful thinking, so I won't engage in it (all part of my sixteen thousand step program to be a better person, available as an ebook on Amazon for $98.99).
It was a pretty pro forma performance for a very good defense against a bad offense, but at least they whomped a dude in the balls:
You gotta see this. pic.twitter.com/QVd8R0q9C3
— Big Ten Network (@BigTenNetwork) November 12, 2022
WHAT DID WE LEARN?
Seriously, Michigan can't pass the ball. It's a big deal. There are a lot of Wolverine fans who are trying to pretend it isn't, happily making jokes about Ryan Day's beard or trying to take boring Harbaugh quotes as some kind of Kaufmanesque performance art. But in the real world that exists just two weeks before The Game, J.J. McCarthy has thrown for over 200 yards exactly once since the beginning of October, and just had his second game in a row completing under 50% of his passes.
Michigan as a whole currently has the 95th ranked passing attack, and that's including their first three games of playing against Mountain West-flavored air. Against Big Ten conference opponents, they drop to 110th, behind literal Northwestern. When Ohio State showed a semi-concerning running game deficiency, Buckeye fans were ready to revolt despite still winning games by a billion points. I do not see that same urgency up north.
With that said, it's still entirely possible that Michigan can beat Ohio State by controlling the line of scrimmage and leaning on Corum. But they can't do it with the kind of first half performances that have become the norm in Ann Arbor.
The Threat Level is HIGH.
