A way of looking at college football teams year to year is that each has its own “DNA” which makes this year’s team distinct from last year’s or next year’s.
DNA, as we learned in biology class, is the 23 pairs of chromosomes that dictate everything from our height to our eye color to our intelligence. It’s the source code of who we are.
In a football sense, a team’s DNA comes from its coaches, from the history and culture of the program and institution in which it lives, and from the characteristics and experiences of the players that have combined to form a set of skills, abilities and personality traits that, while it may share some persistent familial characteristics from year to year, will be unique every season. No two will be alike. Each team has varying football abilities, obviously. Because of the mix of playing and coaching personalities, each team will also have its own distinct personality and mentality.
The 2021 Michigan team was unranked to begin the season in the wake of the 2-4 nuclear meltdown of 2020 and projected even by many Wolverine fans to be a 6-to-8 win team. But they finally ended their drought against Ohio State and reached the first College Football Playoff in program history before being overmatched by a faster, more talented Georgia squad, 20% of whom were five-star recruits.
Let’s break out the microscope and have a look at the 23 pairs of chromosomes that made up a truly memorable Michigan team.
1. Harbaugh Revitalized
When Jim Harbaugh came home to Ann Arbor with (ahem) an enthusiasm unknown to mankind, he was a dynamo, indefatigable to the point of manic. Be it camps in Alabama, practices in Rome, a Signing Day livestream spectacular, or the quirky homage of a Bo Schembechler cap paired with Woody Hayes glasses, this guy worked in ideas the way Lin-Manuel Miranda works in hip-hop references. He harangued officials like a badger on Red Bull. And whether he was popping up at a kicker’s house for a sleepover or on Capitol Hill to lobby Congress to fund legal aid for the underprivileged, he seemed to be happier than a Mike Gittleson lineman at Pizza House. After a pair of 10-win seasons and landing a phantom six inches from knocking off Ohio State in his second season, Harbaugh looked every bit the Prince That Was Promised.
But winter was coming…
Over the course of 2018 to 2020, it was plain to see that Harbaugh was missing something. He was haggard and reserved. He couldn’t even be arsed to yell at referees - a pained grimace was all he could muster most of the time. The mania that powered his first two teams was dissipating, his team looked increasingly lifeless and their leader just didn’t seem to be the same guy anymore.
Did losing to the Buckeyes in 2016 and 2017 in the way they did just break him? Was he having personal struggles? After all, football coaches’ mega-salaries don’t inoculate them against that. Did the level OSU had reached shake his faith that Michigan could even compete with that?
After everyone took a break from the darkness of the pandemic-ravaged 2020 season, reports began to bubble to the surface that things felt different around Schembechler Hall - more upbeat and unified. Show us, we said. Over the summer, those covering the team began to tell tales of a leaner, happier, more energetic and open Jim Harbaugh. Show us, we said. By the time his team mauled Washington under the lights in Week 2, it began to look real. Balance could only return to the Force, as it did in the snow of Thanksgiving weekend, if the old Jim Harbaugh could find his way home.
Even in light of being pounded by Georgia, few coaches in America saw their stock rise - or, in this case, rebound - like Harbaugh.
2. Brown Out
In his final season at Boston College and his first four seasons at Michigan, Don Brown fielded the #1, #2, #3, #1 and #6 defenses, nationally, and did it with three entirely different groups of players. No matter how it ended, you can’t take those five years of dominance off his resume. But unless a coordinator can evolve, his scheme is eventually going to be figured out, and that’s what happened to Brown. After his unit offered little to no resistance against OSU in 2018 and then again in 2019, the whole team appeared to lose faith that the defense could compete at the highest level, and that disintegration of belief contributed to 2020’s systemic collapse. Change for change’s sake was necessary; Brown’s exit alone was a pre-requisite to moving forward.
3. An Offense Reimagined
It would be unfair to say Michigan’s offense had been poor under Harbaugh, but that side of the ball had certainly suffered from incoherence. In 2015 Jedd Fisch took a veteran unit inherited from Brady Hoke, plugged in Iowa grad transfer QB Jake Rudock, and assembled a solid, balanced attack that turned in its final exam in the form of a steamrolling of Florida. Rudock ended up in the NFL, burnishing Harbaugh’s “QB Whisperer” creds. But Fisch exited after only one season and neither longtime Harbaugh consigliere Tim Drevno nor Pep Hamilton could seem to get things unlocked. Three straight four-star QB recruits (Peters, McCaffrey, Milton) failed at Michigan and hit the portal, and five-star transfer Shea Patterson had his moments, but was never “that guy”. The “Harbaugh-as-QB Whisperer” narrative was blown to smithereens.
Josh Gattis was brought in to install a modern “speed in space” attack, but for two years the offense mostly puttered along on impulse power, not warp. One anonymous opposing coach was quoted by Athlon as saying, “No one thinks that’s the exact offense Josh Gattis wants to be calling.” Questions abounded as to whether Gattis really had the keys; if he was, then it raised questions as to his readiness.
But along with the return of the embattled head coach’s joie de vivre, we saw Harbaugh partner with Gattis and return to his football roots, as well. What emerged this season was the style of “Manball” that Brady Hoke tried but failed to build. This newfound physical approach, tailored to personnel suited to run it, was balanced by just enough creativity and modern principles to be a version of Harbaugh’s Stanford edifice but updated for the times. Ed Warinner’s obstinance and concerning effect on play design and game planning were replaced by Mike Hart’s energy and Matt Weiss’ analytics-based approach.
An overall collegiality and harmony returned to the offensive staff, and staff chemistry was cited by Harbaugh throughout this season as being dramatically improved (a not-so-subtle shove of Ed Warinner bus-ward.)The revamping of not just the scheme but the coaching mix turned out to be the perfect vessel for unleashing years of frustration on Ohio State en route to the program’s first Big Ten title in nearly a generation.
4. Hutch
While it’s true Aidan Hutchinson didn’t have to come back - he would have been drafted last spring - the recovery from his broken leg would have hampered his pre-draft preparation. He would not have been a first-round pick and might not have been a second-rounder, either. So it does make some sense that he would return to take care of unfinished business.
Still, his emergence as a leader and superstar cannot be overstated as a driving force in this playoff run. His single-minded quest to Make Michigan Michigan Again has been well documented, and the effects on the rest of the team are obvious. Many players innately understand leadership and possess those qualities, but there is a multiplier effect of someone who possesses those qualities while also exhibiting a relentless drive and performing at a generational level on the field. The Playoff is not a reality for the Wolverines with a mere good player and solid leader at that position. Exceptional teams only emerge when some individuals rise to uncommon levels.
5. Cade
The McNamara/McCarthy debates - some of the most consequential in modern discourse since Kennedy/Nixon in 1960 - will rage on until the position sorts itself out in 2022. For now, we focus on what actually was.
Steadiness may not be the highest evolution of QB play, but it is undoubtedly a required building block. McNamara provided that this season. He did have some nervy moments: the shaky start against Washington, cases of the “yips” in the second half against Rutgers and the first half against Iowa. But none of this is unexpected for a first-year starter, of course, even as a junior. And it never persisted. His pre-snap reads were superb all season, he rarely made big mistakes, and while his only truly explosive game was against one of the nation’s worst pass defenses, Michigan State, he also consistently engineered crucial scoring drives against some of the best. He wasn’t the engine of the offense, but he did steer it. And when opposing scores needed to be answered to keep the momentum from slipping away against Rutgers and Nebraska and even in the season’s lone defeat at Michigan State, Cade was there to resolutely lead them.
Without his calm leadership in those trying moments, this team does not make the Playoff.
Yes, he’s undersized and has a greater than average number of passes tipped or batted down at the line. No, he doesn’t zip balls into tight windows in the intermediate pass game. And his deep ball accuracy has waxed and waned. He’s not a running threat, which is why opposing defenses don’t respect the read-option when he’s in. And he has played behind an offensive line that has protected him so well, he finds himself under less pressure than most quarterbacks; he has been sacked almost as infrequently as he has turned the ball over. Yet despite all of his limitations, the classic game manager did, in fact, manage the game.
Terms like “gamer” and “winner” are trite and normally just applied as post hoc explanations for our feelings about the outcome; they’re desired answers in search of a question. Cade has the same qualities today after being overmatched, athletically, by Georgia as he did directing run-heady wins in the Big Ten. The fact is, the whole team are winners… because they won a lot. Cade may not be the type of quarterback you “win because of”, but he proved to be one you can “win with” … to a point.
That’s a lot.
And, improbably, it turned out to be precisely what was called for this season. Whether he can hold off McCarthy this offseason and into next year will be fun to follow. JJ’s raw talent is tantalizing. But Cade wrote himself into Michigan lore by quarterbacking this team.
6. Ross
Josh Ross was very much the “Cade” of the defense. (He even wore the same number.) It’s easy to forget that the two other linebackers getting most of the playing time, Nikhai Hill-Green and Junior Colson, are a redshirt freshman and true freshman, respectively. Like McNamara, Ross lacked the ideal physical measurables for the position. He doesn’t have the size/speed/agility mix that will entice the NFL. But in his 5th season, experienced and finally healthy, Ross emerged as the guy who would always pop up exactly where he was supposed to be and gets everyone else organized, as well. He was a critical, if unsung, element in maxing out what wasn’t the most naturally talented Michigan defense we’ve seen, and under a new coaching staff to boot.
Ross firing through the gap and blowing up Tre’veyon Henderson short of the line of scrimmage on the first series of the second half against Ohio State will be an enduring image from this season.
7. What Doesn’t Kill You Only Makes You Stronger
Respect to Kanye - he knows of what he speaks.
And let’s be honest, there were a lot of things trying to kill Michigan in recent years. The century of futility against the Buckeyes seemed to be getting worse, not better. Harbaugh’s eccentricity - quirky and colorful when things are going well - was only earning him increasingly widespread scorn as things began to backslide. Then the pandemic arrived, and a team that already had culture problems and coaching dysfunction on both sides of the ball now had to be cooped up together for an entire season as the world struggled to figure out how to manage COVID.
Two critical players, Nico Collins and Ambry Thomas, opted out. Joe Milton won the QB job, had one good game against Minnesota, and then bottomed out. Aidan Hutchinson broke his leg. Kwity Paye went down. If it could go wrong, it did. The losses began to pile up. One insider described the atmosphere around Schembechler Hall as “sometimes downright nasty.”Ohio State made yet another Playoff, and Michigan was spared the inevitable thrashing that would have come when Dan Villari led them on a Bataan Death March into Columbus.
But the clouds lifted. Harbaugh pulled himself up off the mat, accepted an incentive-laden contract, and found himself again. And one key characteristic emerged on his 2021 team: they could take a punch. They occasionally tasted their own blood... and liked itTwo drives from this season that stand as emblematic of this team’s resiliency:
In the final minute of the third quarter at Lincoln, Nebraska QB Adrian Martinez found TE Levi Falck for a 13-yard touchdown, and a second straight Cornhusker score had tuned a 19-7 Michigan lead to a 22-19 deficit in primetime on the road. The undefeated season was in real jeopardy.
The offense immediately responded with a 10-play, 75-yard drive culminating in a 29-yard Corum touchdown scamper to re-take the lead.
Then, after Ohio State’s final score, a good AJ Henning kickoff return was followed by Haskins runs of 15, 5, 11 and a hurdle-punctuated 27 yards before the game-sealing touchdown. They defiantly never even put the ball in the air.
After all the trials of 2020, this year’s team emerged from adversity tough as nails.
Don’t act like we never told ya’.
8. Blessed Health
A revealing line from “The West Wing” is when the Press Secretary, played by Allison Janney, sees a football game on TV and asks: “Isn’t it concerning that someone needs medical attention after almost every play?”Football is a violent game and injuries can literally dictate the course of a season. Ronnie Bell tore his ACL during the first game, but he was the only season-ender, and no other starter missed more than two games. Of the top 25 or so players in the rotation, only Bell, Wilson, Corum, Zinter and Gemon Green missed any games at all.
The team had an amazingly healthy year.
9. Trench Warfare
Sometimes forgotten in an era of football characterized by wide-open offenses that would be almost unrecognizable to people of 30 or 40 years is this enduring reality:
Football all begins with the offensive line. No offense will work if you can’t block it.
But if you can run block and move the chains on the ground, you can force a defense to overcommit and leave more space to operate downfield. You can control the clock and keep your defense fresh, as well as often maintaining a game state which allows them to narrow down how an offense might come at them.No matter how advanced passing attacks become, the ability to block and run the football will always be a pathway to winning if you can do it consistently. You’ll still need to be able to throw open the throttles at times, but if you can impose your will on an opponent, physically, you will win more often than you lose.
You’ll rarely see a good team with a bad offensive line. You’ll even more rarely see a bad team with a good offensive line, because even average skill position players can execute if a play is blocked well.
There was reason to be bullish on Michigan’s offensive line this season. All 5 starters had at least some starting experience. Keegan was a third-year player, Hayes a 4th, Stueber a 5th and Vastardis a 6th. An offensive line with almost all guys old enough to buy a beer is usually a recipe for success.
And there was reason not to over-index 2020 as a read on where the unit really was. There were a number of program-wide effects dragging everyone down, and with some of the mess surrounding them cleaned up and another year of experience under their belts, a good season from the big guys up front was much easier to anticipate than some realized.
Although the unit finally met its match in Miami, Cade McNamara and Hassan Haskins would surely tell you that unit on the team contributed more to this team’s success than the offensive line.
10. Competition From Behind
A program in a healthy place does not find itself relying on true freshmen to come in and contribute right away. Ideally, some really good freshmen will force their way into the picture and push the veterans, but you’ll never go into a season projecting a true freshman to start.
For the first time in a while, such was the case in 2021. Obviously, all eyes were on JJ McCarthy, and his full-season stats read like one ridiculous single game. Early signs point towards him being everything it was hoped he’d be.
Despite his lofty ranking, the presence of Haskins and Corum meant that Donovan Edwards was going to have to wait his turn. Yet Edwards proved to be too good to keep off the field entirely. He followed up his 10 catch/170-yard performance against Maryland with a glittering one-hand catch on a swing pass against Ohio State, and then an eye-popping “where did THAT come from?” halfback pass for a touchdown to Roman Wilson in the Big Ten Championship.
The linebacker position had some potential for a freshman to emerge with only Ross, Barrett trying to make the move inside from VIPER, and some inexperienced players, but Junior Colson flashed early and as the season wore on, flashed often. He looks like a third near-future star from this year’s freshman class.
And raise your hand if you had Rod Moore getting this much playing time in big games on your 2021 Michigan Football bingo card?
11. Some Beautiful Minds
In all the occasional fixation on position coaches, don’t lose sight of the shadow coaching staff that big-time programs have. Biff Poggi returned with a remit of developing the corps of young assistants - a “coach for the coaches”. And specifically, Poggi was tasked with helping Sherrone Moore, who had never coached the offensive line before.
Doug Mallory returned as a Senior Defensive Analyst after being a Co-DC and Assistant Head Coach at Indiana.
And Matt Weiss was the head of the Ravens’ analytics department. His duties extended beyond coaching a position here just as they did in Baltimore.
Harbaugh clearly saw an opportunity to raise the cerebral level of his program by augmenting the backroom staff, and it was reflected in how clean and efficient his team performed in every phase.
13. Quoth The Ravens
In the search to add some more Harbaugh and NFL DNA to the mix, Jim went to his brother, John, to find both Weiss and his new DC, Mike MacDonald. Their acclaimed knowledge, youthful energy and NFL creds injected new life into both sides of the ball.
Get out-schemed and pushed around by the Buckeyes? Nevermore.
14. We’ve Got Hart! (And Bellamy.
)It’s always tricky to parse out the specific effect of a position coach from all the variables impacting upon player performance, but bringing back two former players who, on top of their coaching skills, bleed maize and blue and actually understand the meaning of being on Michigan teams that compete at the highest level could not help but restore some of the traditional soul of Michigan to complement some more modern football approaches.
15. I Get A Kick Out Of You
No Michigan team in memory was this strong across the board in special teams. Jake Moody was borderline Rivas-level reliable. Brad Robbins turned in one of the better punting performances we’ve seen. Perhaps related to an elevated focus on analytics, a genuine strength of the team was simply avoiding having any kickoffs or punts returned at all - only 9 punts (for a mere 35 yards) and 14 kickoffs were even returned against Michigan this season. And on top of all of that, the return game was strong once AJ Henning got settled.
Special teams have often been the undoing of potentially momentous seasons. (Who can forget the spread formation and the inability to get a punt off against Iowa in 2003?) This year, special teams were part and parcel with Michigan’s meticulous ability to not beat themselves.
16. 2019
Dax Hill, Christopher Hinton, Mazi Smith, Cornelius Johnson, Trevor Keegan, David Ojabo, Cade McNamara, Erick All, Mike Morris, DJ Turner, Mike Sainristil… close to half of the contributing players on this team came from one class.
From an outcomes perspective, 2019 was one of the better classes Michigan has brought in.
17. Not Just Who’s Here But Who Isn’t
Most coaches share similar views of what constitutes a good culture for their program. Concepts like unselfishness, mutual support, attention to detail, embracing the grind, competitiveness and integrity would all be part of almost any coach’s ideal mix. But actually building that culture is far more elusive, and more coaches fail than not. Proper installation takes layers of properly instructed, motivated, cultivated and like-minded leadership within the program. It also requires having few if any “culture-killers”. You can’t have assistant coaches who don’t conduct themselves in a dignified manner, or don’t work and play well with others. You can’t have players who don’t put in the work or have one eye on the NFL and are just biding their time until they can go out and get paid. You can’t have people bringing their personal lives into the building in inappropriate ways. All of these were present before, and over a couple of seasons had to be cleared out for the program to get healthy again.
18. Security Guards
Heading into the Playoff, only 4 teams threw fewer interceptions than Michigan and only 8 lost fewer fumbles on the season.
You may beat Michigan, but Michigan will not beat themselves.
Focus and discipline defined this team for the entire season.
19. Hassan
It’s hard to imagine more of a feel-good recruitment-to-graduation story arc than Hassan Haskins.
A low-end three-star barely ranked in the top 1000 nationally, Purdue was his only other Power 5 offer. But Jay Harbaugh saw more in him when no one else did.
When Haskins first came to Michigan, he was even tried out at linebacker before moving back to offense. As a redshirt freshman in 2019, his emergence as a competent back in a timeshare with consensus top 50 freshman Zach Charbonnet was a pleasant surprise. Then he progressed further as part of an overcrowded 4-man rotation in 2020. Chris Evans graduated and landed in the NFL, while Charbonnet transferred to UCLA, where he had a banner year and may be set to be drafted higher than any Michigan RB since Chris Perry in 2004.
As the “thunder” complementing Blake Corum’s “lightning”, Haskins 1327 yards this seasons are the most from any Michigan running back since his current position coach, Mike Hart, 14 years ago. His relentless downhill grinding, metronomic reliability and surprising explosiveness were the beating heart of Michigan’s offense. And like Hutchinson on defense, Haskins was a senior who combined leadership with top-level performance on the field.
20. Mazi
Very often, a team will have one player who is simply irreplaceable. This won’t necessarily be the team’s best player. In fact, usually it’s not. It’s the player for whom there just isn’t a serviceable alternative. For Michigan this year, that irreplaceable player was DT Mazi Smith.
Smith dealt with exercise-induced asthma in 2019 which slowed down his development and kept him from cracking the rotation as a freshman. As he re-made his body, the 2020 pandemic-shortened season robbed him of still further practice and game reps. So coming into 2021, the redshirt sophomore (thanks to COVID still technically freshman-eligible despite being closer to graduation than signing day) was still very much an unknown quantity. He now looked the part, but how effective would be in the middle of a defensive front that had been pushed around last season? Could he play starter’s snaps?
But in light of all these questions on Smith… what options were on the roster? The Hail Mary of taking massive grad transfer Jordan Whittley, who had not been medically cleared at Oregon State, speaks to the staff’s unease with the depth inside. Walk-on Jess Speight was still around. So was Donovan Jeter, who in the past had not been stout enough and was best suited to play one of the 3-4 DE positions. It was unlikely that true freshman Ike Iwunnah would be ready to contribute.
A lot was riding on Smith answering those questions and staying on the field. The fact that Smith is not noticed enough to get the praise he deserves is the classic case of “no news is good news.”
21. Opposing Quarterbacks Getting Kilt
Just as any offense will function at least adequately with a high-performing OL paving the way, most defenses will get the job done when the opposing quarterback is running for his life.
Although few predicted he would rip a hole in space-time the way he did, Aidan Hutchinson was considered a mainstay from the jump. Opposite him, Jaylen Harrell started the season at EDGE, but Ojabo had his first sack against Washington, his first strip-sack the next week against Northern Illinois, and with that the light had gone on for the pass rusher from Nigeria by way of Scotland. He came to Michigan as an unrefined athletic freak, had only one tackle in 2020, but in his third year emerged as a terror to opposing quarterbacks. Now, with threats on both sides, the only schematic choice faced by opposing teams was between “death” and “death by unga-bunga.” With that, a defense that entered the season with question marks at every level suddenly had a big one answered.
22. Rising To The Moment
In every contested game this season, there was a moment where a play had to be made on one side of the ball or the other, and in every game except one… the play was made.
At Wisconsin, leading only 13-10 midway through the third quarter, Cade McNamara hit Roman Wilson for 38 yards to the Badger 10, setting up a one-yard JJ McCarthy touchdown run that provided some much-needed breathing room.
Against Rutgers, in a 20-13 game in which Michigan struggled throughout the second half, Rutgers had one final possession to tie or win the game. But with 1:37 remaining, David Ojabo dislodged the ball from Scarlet Knights QB Noah Vedral, and the Wolverines were able to kneel out a game that should not have been such a nail biter.
At Nebraska, with the game tied at 29 and the defense struggling to get off the field for the entire second half, with under 2 minutes to play in 3rd and short, Brad Hawkins stripped Adrian Martinez on a QB keeper and recovered the fumble to set up the game-winning field goal.
Against Ohio State, while the offense could not be stopped in the second half, CJ Stroud and his dangerous receiving corps still would not allow the game to get out of reach until, on 1st & 10 from the Buckeye 31, Ryan Hayes and Luke Schoonmaker opened up a hole for Hassan Haskins, who burst for 27 yards, punctuated by his hurdle of a Buckeye defensive back and sealing the program’s biggest win since the Carr era. Time and again, in situations where past teams would fold, this year’s team stood tall.
23. Who You Play And When You Play ‘Em
In some years, there’s a little luck of the draw and you get teams at the wrong or right time. This was a year where it fell our way. Washington ended up not being as good as expected. The trip to Madison came while the Badgers were struggling, before they got truly airborne. The trip to State College came while Sean Clifford was held together with duct tape. Maryland opened the year looking somewhat competent, then collapsed. And while the Big Ten Championship turned into a beatdown in the second half, this was still a good year to have Northwestern and Nebraska on the schedule instead of Iowa and Minnesota. Only one of the top three teams in the West was on the schedule.
---
Not a subscriber to The Maize and Blue Review? Sign up today!
Discuss this article on our premium message boards
Follow our staff on Twitter @MaizeBlueReview, @JoshHenschke, @BrandonJustice_, @DanielDash_, @DennisFithian, @StephenToski, @TannerWutang, @Baird_CJ, @ZachLibby, @JimScarcelli
Subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts and Spotify
Subscribe to The Maize and Blue Review on YouTube!
Like The Maize and Blue Review on Facebook!
