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ANN ARBOR, Mich. — What can you say that hasn’t been said before about this Michigan football team? This year, it’s all been covered.
Though the offense at least was less stodgy about its running game and personnel, running Hassan Haskins early and often, that side of the ball has returned to ineptitude. Say what you will about the early season losses, the offense wasn’t inept, it was just trying to do too much. Now it can’t do much of anything. As frequently happens, Cade McNamara didn’t do as well in his second significant outing as he had the first. Penn State’s defense is much better than Rutgers, but the Nittany Lions tend to make mistakes on offense, and they didn’t do that in Ann Arbor.
You can thank a feckless defense for that.
The maize and blue would have been better served to stay in man coverage all game compared to this dalliance with zone. The Michigan defense cannot run it. More often than not, it would show man, back into zone and play so far beyond the first down marker that PSU QB Sean Clifford had no problem finding players underneath capable of moving the chains. Freshman RB Keyvone Lee punished the interior defensive line, running up the middle with frequency, while the Wolverines struggled to tackle him — or anyone, for that matter. Both sides of the ball, like in many games this year, were uninspired in scheme and execution.
Like that hasn’t been said before.
Michigan is young, plagued with injury and inexperience, yes. But the same thing can be said of Penn State, and the Nittany Lions managed to find a way to win their first game by just being smarter and executing just enough, as the Wolverines found a way to implode down the stretch.
Like that hasn’t been said before.
The smartest men in the room continue to be the Michigan football coaching staff, as they put the players in unenviable positions. The players then don’t help themselves as they find themselves behind the proverbial 8-ball. Whereas the offense and defense found a way to win against Rutgers, this time, they reverted to what we’ve seen all year, looking that much more hapless in this outing. The ineptitude was reflected in poor late-game clock management, a QB in McNamara that couldn’t hit the broad-side of a barn in the late going — although he sustained an injury in the first-half — which resulted in a rare, mid-series change back to the previously benched Joe Milton. It also was apparent early, in three-straight plays where Michigan ran Hassan Haskins three-straight times for no gain, making no adjustments along the way.
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Before this season, in the Jim Harbaugh era, Michigan hadn’t lost a game at home to teams not named Ohio State or MSU. But this year, its only two wins have been on the road at Minnesota and Rutgers. It couldn’t beat a Spartans team that hasn’t beaten anyone else, and now it hasn’t beaten a Penn State team that also hasn’t. Wisconsin looked like a College Football Playoff team in Ann Arbor a week before looking incredibly mortal in a loss to Northwestern. James Franklin, in a year when nothing could go right, managed to come into The Big House and get his first win in four tries.
At this stage, Michigan would be lucky to win another game, even with a 2-2 Maryland team up next. In Thanksgiving week, there’s very little to be thankful for when it comes to watching this Wolverines squad take the field, except for the end of the season being nigh.