Teach Me to Trust You Again...For the First Time

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I'm like a dog that has been beaten so many times that the mere raising of a hand sends me away cowering. I've been hurt too many times to count. Outside of Bloomington and the Metrodome, I've watched Michigan lose a football game in every Big Ten venue, as well as four times in the Rose Bowl (one of those being a regular season game against UCLA), the Capital One/Citrus Bowl, the Alamo Bowl, Washington, Oregon, and a bunch of other places....not to mention the crushing defeats I have endured at home.

For the losses that occurred from 1998 through 2006, I expected to win every one of those games. I went into each of those meetings with confidence that Michigan would just be Michigan, and would come out on top. But something changed when Bo died before The Game in 2006. Bo died on Friday, and we lost on Saturday. We lost the chance to go to the national championship game. We lost our undefeated season. And we lost the chance to honor our most revered coach with a victory over a Buckeye team that had defeated us for two consecutive seasons, which at the time was about as long as streaks had gone for the Buckeyes against Michigan. That was five years ago, and we still haven't won.

This is where my bitterness comes from.

It's not from the Rodriguez years, which were themselves horrifying in so many ways, it was that two-loss finish. That Ohio State game and that Rose Bowl to end the 2006 campaign. And it was the writing was on the wall. The two games that started 2007 (App State and the Oregon blowout) just threw more gasoline on the fire. By the time we made it to Orlando to defeat Tebow that year, I had already reached a level of bitterness that didn't even allow me to enjoy it.

This is why I enter every game expecting Michigan to screw something up, to miss field goals, to fumble punt returns. This is why I enter every season expecting to lose games that we shouldn't. I didn't used to be this way. Recalling Michigan's victory in 2003 over the Buckeyes, I was a confident fan...hell, even downright poetic:
The rising sun broke the horizon as I loaded the last of the tailgate equipment into my car. It was a brisk and mostly cloudy morning. This is one of those games where the tailgate is just something you need to get through. I exchanged a few salutations and a 'Go Blue' with the families of Grant Bowman and Andy Mignery, expressing cautious confidence verbally, while maintaining the utmost confidence mentally in the team which I follow with unwavering passion.
Wowsers. Old me would stare new me down and call me a bad fan.

It would be so cliche to say that Saturday's win over the Cornhuskers changed everything. Honestly, Nebraska is not that good (see home loss to Northwestern), and they did everything possible to hand us that game on a silver platter. But it did change some things, like the current perception of Michigan Football. And I've said it 1000 times, there is no place in the world where perception is reality more than in college football. Michigan has one many-a-game before they were played over the years by way of the name, the helmet, the jersey, the tradition, the reputation.

That will start to happen again.

Saturday also changed me a bit. It made me look at myself and wonder why I gave my team absolutely no chance to win that game, why I was waiting for the screw-up, the turnover, the big play that let Nebraska back into the game. I look away when we kick field goals, and when I did so on Saturday I missed Hoke's fake field goal call and Dilleo's slashing run that executed it and sent a message to Nebraska: We are leaving no doubt.

All of that worry. All of that snarkiness...instead of appreciating the fact that we dominated a team. A team with a mobile quarterback. A team with a power running game. A team with a power defense. Three historical recipes for disaster that Michigan took head on and threw back in their face.

And now The Game is all that is left. A bruised and beaten Buckeye squad, ripe with the stench of controversy, full of bitterness, looking to salvage an entire season at our expense. It can't happen. It won't happen. I want to step on their throat. I want to curb-job them American History X style. This is not about 8 long years of waiting to beat Ohio. This is not about serving justice for their crooked program and illegal players. This is about today. This is about 2011. The revisionist Buckeye faitful used to like to pretend that Ohio State football history started with Tresselball...and that time is dead. A new history starts Saturday. A history that starts at noon and ends with me making reservations for New Year's in New Orleans.

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42 Big Ten Championships. 132 years of Michigan Football. Beat Ohio.

And leave no doubt.

The Home Stretch

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Everybody is lining up this week to stand at the buttocks of the Michigan coaching staff and get their noses just a little bit brown, already declaring the current season a resounding success. The Wolverines just grabbed their 8th win of the season, a somewhat decisive victory on the road against a team that 1) squeaked out a 17-14 victory over Western Michigan, 2) is coached by Ron Zook and 3) Had lost three consecutive games while scoring a TOTAL of 28 points. It's a celebration! If you watched that game, you know it was one of the poorest excuses for a football game ever played. The only team in the country that played worse than Michigan on Saturday was Illinois. Michigan would have lost to pretty much anybody else that day. Missed opportunities, turnovers, an embarrassing red-zone offense, and a rotating pair of quarterbacks that are both mediocre at best with regards to passing. I'd like to also add that I think Denard has been pulled a couple times this season, Saturday being one of them, under the guise of injury...when in fact he was not injured. I feel like his injuries have come all too coincidentally after very poor interceptions.

And somehow, holding Illinois (the 78th ranked scoring defense in the nation) to 14 points was the defining moment for the Michigan defense. In fact, depending on who you ask, it turned them into an actual Michigan defense. Listen, they played very well against the run, and as I said last week, Michigan's turnaround on D from last year to this year borders on the miraculous, and it is a testament to just how bad Greg Robinson was, how bad Schafer was before him, and how poor the general defensive direction and communication was in the previous regime. It is also a testament to the quality of opponent we've played, as the Big Ten is worlds worse, team by team, than it was last year. Also, I cannot say enough about how bad Ron Zook's gameplan was. Illinois scored their first touchdown in the third quarter to make it 17-7 on a drive that was all passes, basically a series of completions and pass interference penalties. I thought they had us. I thought they figured it out. Yes, despite JT Floyd being anointed the next Charles Woodson by the blogosphere this week, Michigan is still vulnerable to the deep ball. Throwing deep against us will get you large chunks of yards and/or draw penalties. It's a nearly foolproof plan. And after Michigan countered the Illinois's TD with a three-and-out, I was convinced the Illini were about to make it a three point game. But they went back to running and a sideline to sideline passing game, never throwing the ball more than 5-yards past the line of scrimmage. That got them nowhere. JT jumped a short route and got an interception that set up Devin Gardner to put the game away. 8 wins for the first time since 2007. Bury the demons? A little bit. Still concerned about the future from both a "right now" and "5-years from now" perspective? Most definitely.

 

I'm worried about the last two games. I'm concerned that Nebraska's line will show us the kind of manball we saw at Iowa and MSU. I'm concerned that OSU will find a way to put it all together for that last Saturday in November. But beyond this season, I'm still worried about where we are going. We are going back to building a Big Ten champion, and in the short term that's going to make us feel better because we've endured so much pain in the last 3 seasons. We can very easily dominate this conference. So could the 7th best team in the SEC. As Ohio State has shown in the past several years, dominating the Big Ten does not translate nationally. And ready or not, we are headed to the big stage, because after these two games, our next two games are (likely) January 2nd against an SEC team that we have no business playing...and then Alabama on September 1st.

 

Brady Hoke is well on his way to being the Michigan Man we needed. He is certainly "as advertised." I just want him to be more than that. Even in these rebuilding times, when victory is so much more appreciated, I want to see Michigan moving past being Michigan. I know Brady will get us back to where we were, and I hope he proves me wrong and gets us to where we've never been.

I Know Team 132

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There's no debating, this defense is remarkably better than last year.  Still full of attrition, still full of injuries, still starting babies and walk-ons, and yet performing at a level that warrants your attention.  The 2011 Wolverines boast, per game, the #10 scoring defense in the country (16.38), and the #28 defense in total yards (335.75).  Through the same point last season, Michigan was allowing twice as many points (33.89) and 118 more yards (453.67) per game. 

And that's where the good news stops for now.  The offense has been struggling to find its identity, residing somewhere between the wide open speed of the RichRod led Wolverines and the I-form/playaction/drop-back passing scheme you came to know and love...and eventually hate...under Lloyd Carr.  For me, it's about the misuse of talent.  Denard, when left to roam, makes things happen.  But somewhere along the line his "health" became the focus, or at least that's what they're selling us...less running, more quarterbacking...less RichRod system, more installation of the system we will be using in the future.  They are making Denard into the QB of our future, and it remains to be seen (meaning next year) if he can develop that skillset.  Regardless, it seems our 2nd biggest concern (behind the worst defense ever) going into the season is coming to fruition...Denard is no longer Denard.  They are coaching this team like they have the ability to punch teams like Iowa in the mouth, to win in the trenches, to play power football.  But that's a few recruiting classes and apparently a significant amount of growing pains away.

The Purdue victory, and the method by which it was accomplished, is what lost the game at Iowa.  They won that game with the system of the future using players of the past, playing a craptastic Big Ten squad, and they assumed it would work again.  It didn't.  It won't.  A Michigan offense that isn't centered around Denard and his uncanny ability to be his own personal playaction is not going to work...not this year.

NASCAR.  It's the buzzword of the week out of the post-game pressers.  It's Coach Hoke's pet name for the two-minute offense...the offense that wins games, the offense that worked against Notre Dame to the tune of two touchdowns in a little over a minute, the offense that marched down the field in the 4th quarter this week.  It had Iowa on it's heels.  It was unstoppable.  It IS unstoppable.  So the simple question becomes, why isn't NASCAR THE OFFENSE?  Even some watered down version of it is better than what we did out there for three quarters, and what we seem to try to shoehorn in every Saturday.

At Kinnick, I sat five rows up behind the Michigan bench at about the 25 yard line.  Not my favorite vantage point, given the depth perception issues you get when the ball is snapped at the other end of the field, but fun to experience every once in a while, especially when the action is right in front of you.  Michigan came on and off the field in my corner.  After halftime, for the first time in many years, I yelled at a coach.  "Turn him loose Coach!" I yelled at Brady.  "Turn him loose!"  I struck up a conversation with a former Hawkeye player in the stands, and he was as astonished as I was that Denard was so handcuffed.  When the opponent is wondering why you aren't gashing his team with your team's strengths....that's when you know you are doing something wrong.

And the answer today from Fort Schembechler seems to be "we need to play tougher," when the reality is, we need to play smarter and faster, at least on offense.  Smarter and faster would have made the Sparty game closer.  Smarter and faster would have won at Kinnick.  Tougher might win in the future, but the truth is, team 132 does not have the men for tough, and it would be very surprising if suddenly they developed into what Brady wants them to be in time for the season saver after Thanksgiving.  

That's not to say that Indy is out of the question.  The Big Ten is a mess.  A giant sloppy mess of barely average teams beating each other up from top to bottom.  If you think you are in the driver's seat, you are probably about to lose.  

But Michigan would need to win out to even sniff a chance, and that is no small task.  In addition, I don't think it's this team's focus anymore.  I believe this season has become about beating Ohio.  And while that hurts to say right now, it's going to feel so good that none of this will matter.