Michigan Football: Mason Cole, Seniors Have Final Chance To Beat Ohio State
Saturday is Michigan senior left tackle Mason Cole’s final chance to beat Ohio State.
Cole — like every other player on Michigan’s roster — has never beaten the Buckeyes. He’s hoping this is finally the year.
“It’d mean a lot,” Cole said. “It’s one of the reasons you come to Michigan, is to play in this game and win this game. It’s my last shot at these guys and I certainly want to win.”
Every Michigan fan remembers how last year’s affair ended in double overtime, but Cole said he doesn’t need to look in the past to get extra motivation — it’s Ohio State.
“You don’t need a lot of motivation for this game,” Cole said. “It just comes with it.”
He doesn’t look at the fact that Michigan has only beaten Ohio State one time in the last 13 games, saying it’s a year by year thing and each team is different.
“That’s one thing about this game, no matter the records, in a rivalry game, anyone can win,” Cole said. “I’m sure we’ll have a lot of doubters against us this week, and our focus will be to win this game.”
He said he understood the magnitude of this rivalry the minute he stepped onto the field against Ohio State his freshman year. The hostility of the crowd and emotions from both the fans and older players was noticeable compared to other games.
“It means everything right now. It’s the game. We want to win it as bad as anyone. It would mean everything for us,” Cole said. “Our fans want to win every week. If we don’t beat a team by 50, they’re our first critics. Everyone wants to beat Ohio State, that’s why we play the game.”
He said Michigan-Ohio State is the best rivalry in college football.
The Buckeyes will bring one of the best defensive lines in the country to Ann Arbor. Cole says the group is both good at rushing the passer and fundamentally as they’ve been in years past.
“In games that we’ve run the ball successfully, it’s worked out well for us,” Cole said. “So that’d be another big key for this game, is getting the run game going. It’d also take some pressure off of our protection and off our quarterback.”
He said that having offensive coordinator Tim Drevno down on the sideline has been helpful. That could be important again this week since Michigan doesn’t know who it will have under center, with redshirt freshman quarterback Brandon Peters in concussion protocol.
“We have trust in whoever’s back there,” Cole said. “Whoever is back there is going to do the best they can and going to do a good job. If we can all trust each other and play with each other, everything will be just fine.”
Cole said that fifth-year senior quarterback John O’Korn is more than capable of running the offense and handled his benching very maturely. If Peters can’t go, O’Korn is expected to be the next man up.
“I’m really proud of John for how he’s handled things,” Cole said. “It’s not an easy situation I can imagine. The way he handled it, the way they all handled it, really proud of him for doing it like that.”
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