The local team is No. 2 in the CFP, folks, which means we're headed to Arizona for New Year's Eve!
The new Michigan fan conspiracy involves a team that finished third in its division and lost to Iowa becoming the first two-loss team to ever make the playoffs.
I'll believe it when I see it. If it does go down that way, Michigan fans better hope they draw Alabama, because they want no part of an Urban Meyer-coached team with three weeks to battle plan.
A HOT TAKE A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY. Chris Worley waited two years to get a crack at a starting job, and he performed admirably in his first year on the job.
Saturday, Worley got his first crack at Michigan as a starter and responded with the best game of his career (yes, this could be said about all three Buckeye linebackers).
According to the Cleveland Glenville product, beating Michigan by three points in double overtime was better than drilling them by 40.
From theozone.net:
"This is definitely what I waited for," said junior linebacker Chris Worley. "Even better is in order to get where they still wanted to go, where I wanted to go, the defense and the offense, you had to go through those guys. Those guys have had a heck of a season and they have some tremendous talent on that team. You don’t want it any other way. Honestly. You don’t want it any other way. You don’t want to beat them by 40. You want it to be a dog fight and that’s what it was and I’m truly thankful for the opportunity I got today."
Worley made the most of his opportunity, finishing with 11 tackles and helping the Ohio State run defense shut the Wolverines down. He was thankful to have taken part in such a battle, and he wasn't the only Buckeye linebacker who felt that way.
"This is probably my favorite win of all time that I’ve ever played in," middle linebacker Raekwon McMillan said. "Winning the national championship, the Sugar Bowl, beating Penn State on the road when I was a freshman, all those, I think this is the best game I’ve ever played in."
You know, I totally would have been okay with demolishing that Michigan squad by 40. It's glorious to me Michigan should've won (more on that in a bit) and their fans, for the first time basically since the first quarter in 2006, felt they were going to win only to see their dreams ripped away quicker than the guy awoken from a reverie about winning the lottery.
And beating them by 40 may not have made Nike a billion dollars or produced a ratings bonanza for ABC, but it would've warmed the decrepit shards of my heart just the same.
OH, SO CLOSE. The second best part of The Game, other than, you know, beating Michigan in double overtime, was watching their win chances peak late in the third quarter before slowly dissipating to 0%.
From sbnation.com:
Michigan’s 83 percent win expectancy
Win expectancy looks at all the key Five Factors stats from a game — efficiency, explosiveness, field position, finishing drives, turnovers — and announces, “With these stats, you could have expected to win this game X percent of the time.”Despite the turnovers (and bad turnovers luck), and despite the fourth-quarter 0-fer, the Wolverines still won the field position battle by nearly 9 yards per possession and limited OSU to three touchdowns in seven scoring opportunities. They were still the only offense capable of converting on passing downs (a 36 percent success rate on PDs to Ohio State’s 23). And win expectancy said they would have probably still won this game five of every six times.
They didn’t.
For Ohio State, this was the opposite of the Penn State game where it statistically dominated but left with an L.
As hard to stomach as that loss was, the Michigan victory assuaged all bad feelings about that. From this week forward, whenever somebody brings up the Penn State loss I will look at them baffled because I deleted the memory from my mind.
DOMINANT JAMARCO. It seems like just yesterday we were making a Stephen Collier Snapchat photo into the "Happy Jamarco" meme we all love to know.
Jamarco earned the starting left tackle spot in the spring, and he's been everything we expected this year:
Ohio State LT Jamarco Jones finished season with a 97.4% pass block rate. Lions 1st-rd pick Taylor Decker had a 96.4% rate for OSU in 2015.
— CFB Film Room (@CFBFilmRoom) November 29, 2016
That's a key rock of stability given Ohio State's offensive line struggles.
SPEAKING OF STRUGGLES. Not all offensive line newbies have dominated, though. Former five-star recruit Isaiah Prince struggled at Wisconsin and Penn State before rebounding later in the season.
But with Michigan in town, Prince fell back into old habits of forgetting fundamentals.
Ohio State RT Isaiah Prince allowed 6 QB pressures vs Michigan. He allowed 25 combined vs MICH, PSU, WISC. Huge liability in playoffs.
— CFB Film Room (@CFBFilmRoom) November 29, 2016
To further put into perspective, Chase Farris (RT in 2015 and the weak link on o-line) allowed 18 QB pressures all season last year. https://t.co/bybsGfYJhf
— CFB Film Room (@CFBFilmRoom) November 29, 2016
Maybe Prince will evolve into a beast between now and the playoffs. The much more likely scenario is he continues to play on par with his previous performances.
The offensive coaches must have more anxiety about keeping receiving options back to help the right tackle block than letting defenses swarm a sophomore.
Given the past performances, though, Clemson/Washington/whoever will obviously target Prince from the jump. He or the coaches better be ready for it. Because if Prince can't reach Chase Farris pass protection levels, that's a problem.
MORE DEFINITIVE PROOF. I assume before the internet existed people would've screamed at each other about that fourth-down spot until fistfights erupted in bars across America.
Thankfully we live in a more civilized era where technology can be used to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that spot was good, actually:
Get dumped then, Michigan.
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