Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength.
— Mahatma Gandhi
It’s like getting punched in the nose in the playground. Two options, only — swing back [and] fight back, or walk away.
— Jim Harbaugh
Take your pick. Plenty of philosophizing takes place after Bloody Nose Saturday Night, and the degree of bluntness might depend on where you stand.
Harbaugh stands 5-2 with a team most insisted would do well to be 9-3 at regular season’s end. The Wolverines let one slip away this year, but it wasn’t the Penn State game. The nation’s No. 2 team, at Beaver Stadium, amid a deafening whiteout, motivated by revenge and a championship run … that’s a recipe for pain.
It’s especially so when you’re fielding one of the youngest teams in the nation. Michigan defiantly stressed at the start of the season that age doesn’t matter. That’s what you do when you’re young.
That’s probably what Penn State did a year ago, against a more veteran Michigan crew. That, and “next man up,” meaning it didn’t really matter that the Nittany Lions lost all their linebackers to injury before entering Michigan Stadium.
It did matter. All of it mattered.
Michigan scored 49 points that day, to Penn State’s 10. Penn State head coach James Franklin slipped to 0-3 against Michigan, and talk was that he wouldn’t survive the year.
His star running back, Saquon Barkley, rushed 15 times for 59 yards and no touchdowns. His quarterback, Trace McSorley, didn’t show a trace of what was to come, going 16-of-27 passing for 121 yards and absorbing six sacks.
Wideout DaeSean Hamilton — a year away from riddling Michigan for 115 receiving yards — made a single catch, for 11 yards.
Fast forward a couple of months, and that team became Big Ten champs. Franklin roasters were hailing their conquering hero. Fast forward a year, and the undefeated Nittany Lions are steaming toward a showdown with Ohio State for supremacy in the Big Ten East and an inside track to the College Football Playoff.
Franklin said something very telling about his team after the win over Michigan. He put 15 senior or junior starters on the field, including players like Barkley, McSorley and Hamilton, who absorbed their own punch from Michigan a year earlier. They were not only motivated for payback, they knew how to pull it off.
“You’ve got to be able to make them pay for being so aggressive,” Franklin said. “I thought we did a really nice job, because they play a lot of man coverage, outside leverage man, and try to funnel everything to the help, the safety.”
After Penn State beat Michigan outside a couple of times, the Wolverines adjusted even wider, Franklin observed. His team went to slants over the middle.
“We didn’t really even have that in the game plan,” he said. “It was just something where we were able to make an adjustment at halftime and get that done.
“We’ve got a mature team, so we’re able to make adjustments like that on the fly, and have success with it. There’s a lot of value in that, obviously.”
Obviously.
Michigan sits in a fight-back position, for two reasons. One, it’s rebuilding in a rebuilding year, which few ever want to believe until it happens. And two, the rebuild includes a new quarterback due to injury, along with additional attrition.
Harbaugh makes it clear the Wolverines intend to fight back.
“You’ve got to keep coaching,” he stressed. “Players find out what they’re made of, from a competitive standpoint. When the going gets tough, the tough get going.
“We control a lot. Understand, you control what you control, and we control a lot as a ball club.”
His players sounded pugnaciously philosophical as well.
“It’s mostly the people outside this building who are panicking and getting really worried,” noted fifth-year senior tailback Ty Isaac, who acknowledged he gets wind of the negative “noise” from the outside.
“You get told it,” he said. “I don’t really pay attention to it. If you’re not in here, that opinion doesn’t really matter, good or bad.”
“I see retweets on Twitter, people panicking or whatever,” junior wideout Grant Perry said. “I just keep scrolling. I’m not worried. I know the guys in the locker room aren’t worried.”
Worry won’t buy a yard. Work might, and that’s what Harbaugh is all about. His team has three straight games in which it will be favored to win, with no guarantees.
This is an important time, for a team learning to win, freshmen and sophomores learning to play. Eight weeks of football at this level is a punch of its own for newbies.
A previously pummeled Penn State team provided another punch. The Nittany Lions’ response hasn’t been Gandhi-like, and at some point, neither will Michigan’s.
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