I was there.
In 2006, I was there, in Ohio Stadium, as a college senior at the height of my ability to properly imbibe what at the time figured to be the greatest regular season college football game in history.
Ohio State won that titanic matchup against Michigan, 42-39, and after storming the field (and stealing a piece of said field and then losing it in a Wendy's bathroom) I made the determination that everything everyone had said in the run-up to The Game was correct: it was epic and dramatic and historic and emotional in a way other games simply aren't. All adjectives applied.
That edition of The Game was a celebration of college football, and of life. In the leadup to the game there were concerts, cookouts, blood drives, and raffles. It started with a solemn tribute to a guy who probably didn't deserve it, and ended with over a hundred thousand people all convinced that life would be great, forever.
2022 feels different than that. Ohio State and Michigan once again come into the last week of the season as Top 3 teams, but there's an edge this year. And I think it's because this could be a turning point. In 2006, there was still the assumption that these two powers would be inexorably, eternally linked at the top of the Big Ten no matter what transpired on the field.
Now there's the realization that maybe the increasingly inaccurately named Big Ten is still really only big enough for one hegemon. That Ohio State, for the first time in decades, is in real danger of letting that slip. And that maybe this is Michigan's best, last chance to regain national relevance in college football under Jim Harbaugh.
So this isn't a party. This is Defcon 1.
THE OFFENSE
Oh, right, Michigan beat Illinois 19-17.
I debated about how much ink I really needed to spill about Michigan's offensive performance on Saturday. Last week I pointed out that the Wolverines can't throw the ball and that continued to be the case against the Illini. J.J. McCarthy might've had 208 yards passing, but it was his least efficient performance of the season, taking 34 pass attempts to get there for just 6.1 yards per attempt. That's not the worst thing in the world if you've got the kind of running game Michigan does, but, well, we'll get to that.
I've given up trying to figure out what Harbaugh and company are trying to do with McCarthy. He's got the arm to stretch defenses, but the Wolverines steadfastly refuse to let him try. The most notable pass McCarthy attempted all game was a bomb to Andrel Anthony, only thrown because McCarthy thought that Illinois had jumped offsides and he had a free play. It was a beautifully thrown lob to the corner of the endzone, immaculately placed between two defenders... and hit Anthony right in the freaking face, bouncing off his gob and into another dimension. Other than that, dinks and dunks and half-assed screens are what you're going to get.
Maybe it's that Michigan rightly has no faith in their wide receivers, or maybe it's that safety valve tight end Luke Schoonmaker was out, but either way the Wolverines are ride or die with the running game.
Which is why when Blake Corum got hurt, everything went to shit for Michigan.
Corum seems "fine" in that The Game week definition of "fine" where you're going to play regardless of how banged up you actually are, but now we've gotten a look at Michigan's offense without the dude and it isn't pretty. Held out of most of the second half, Corum had to watch as backups C.J. Stokes and Isaiah Gash flailed in his spot, running for only 42 yards on 14 carries between the two of them.
Two things happened when Michigan had the ball that allowed them to win this game: Ronnie Bell had a critical 40 yard punt return in the 3rd quarter to prevent the Wolverines from being trapped in their side of the field, and Jake Moody continued to be an absolutely cold-blooded field goal kicker. Three of his four came in the last 15 minutes, but the fact remains if Illinois gets even one of their own in the same timeframe, they win the game.
THE DEFENSE
Containing running back Chase Brown is no mere feat, so Michigan's defensive line and linebackers deserve at least a decent amount of credit for holding the guy to only 4.8 yards per carry. It's even more impressive given that defensive lineman Mike Morris was held out of the game as a medical precaution, although the near-total absence of pass rush from the Wolverines came very, very close to biting them in the ass.
Here's the thing: we joke a lot about Bret Bielema, because he's a big fatuous weirdo who likes starting beefs. He's also pretty smart, and I think before the game against Michigan he noticed that their corners really haven't been tested since... basically the Maryland game back in September?
When you bet a basketball school pic.twitter.com/v6mv96mx4K
— Stuckey (@Stuckey2) November 19, 2022
So he tried. And no, Tommy DeVito's 178 yards on 21 for 30 passing isn't going to win him any Heisman votes, but Michigan defensive backs were frequently out of position and left chasing Illinois wideouts that they had given a weirdly generous amount of cushion to. It was a bad performance where a decent amount of the blame can be placed on the coaching staff, but the unsaid (okay I'm saying it) implication here is that this kind of play will get Michigan's secondary absolutely eaten alive by the likes of Marvin Harrison, Emeka Egbuka, and actually probably Cade Stover.
WHAT DID WE LEARN?
I loved, and still love, Where in the World is Carmen Sandeigo?
Everything about that show (which was itself based on an educational video game) was unabashedly weird and strange, but the great thing is that it had the guts to go out there and have an a cappella group do skits with a guy in a blue blazer while his boss gave cryptic clues to tweens about catching henchmen with names like "Patty Larceny" and "Wonder Rat" after they've stolen Mount Rushmore. All to win airfare to anywhere in the contiguous United States and the ugliest jacket in the history of jackets.
The show oozed confidence, is what I'm saying. Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? let its freak flag fly, and as a geographically-minded kid I could only sit and watch in awe (and then play my official Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? cassette tape for the five thousandth time).
That's who wins on Saturday: after all the injuries and doubts of the past week, the team that wins is the team that is able to have the confidence to know who they are and impose their will on a game that means everything. Michigan has the conviction and the confidence, but on Saturday I think they will be surprised to see a team standing on the other side of Ohio Stadium even more prepared than they are to take back control of the rivalry.
The Threat Level is SEVERE, because it had better be.
