Wolverine Watch: A Sobering Second Half Casts A Shadow
The Scarlet Knights came, they saw and they conquered … absolutely nothing. Greg Schiano’s crew packed away the school’s seventh straight loss to a Jim Harbaugh team.
They packed something else in their Scarlet travel bags as well — Michigan’s 2021 comfort, for the foreseeable future.
Actually, they got a head start on that job. They turned Michigan’s apparent fourth straight blowout — 20-3 at the half — into a 20-13 cliffhanger, pitching a second-half shutout and repeatedly knocking on the door of U-M disaster.
U-M eventually slammed that door, when rookie linebacker Junior Colson made a game-saving scoop of a fumble by Rutgers quarterback Noah Vedral. That didn’t ease the nerves of the 106,943 Michigan faithful, who went from pleasantly bored to unexpectedly intent, quicker than you can say three-and-out.
The Wolverines survived, no doubt. Harbaugh didn’t hesitate to point it out afterward.
“It wasn’t pretty, but when they start making a place for pretty on the scoreboard, then we’ll worry about that,” the head coach said.
Public palaver aside, if you think the Wolverines don’t have worries inside Schembechler Hall following that second half, we’ve got some College Football Playoff tickets to sell you.
The feel-good cruise is finished. Now it’s a fight to the finish.
The Wolverines play three of their next four, and five of their next seven, on the road in the Big Ten. That’s a recipe for taking some lumps, especially if their 4-0 start involved even a whiff of smoke or a hint of mirrors.
It sure looked like it in the second half against Rutgers. The Wolverines again did what they wanted to do for a half. They built a 20-3 halftime lead against a fellow 3-0 team, and then just stopped. They stopped scoring, repeatedly needed to back the Scarlet Knights away from their goal line and started producing dyspepsia for another six-digit home crowd.
They didn’t rack up a fourth straight 300-yard rushing game. Instead, they hit a brick wall at 112, the Scarlet Knights walling up to stop them, and doing so. They didn’t roll up 63 points (or 78, like they did against the Scarlet Blights only five years ago). They scored 20 in a half, and called it a game. They came perilously close to calling it a loss.
“I don’t think it was a lack of energy,” offered redshirt freshman quarterback Cade McNamara, who went 9-of-16 passing for 163 yards and no touchdowns. “Just a lack of execution. We just couldn’t really find a rhythm. That’s really the first time that’s happened, when I’ve been in the game. We haven’t done that as an offense.
“Obviously, that’s frustrating. We’ve got to do what we can to not let that happen again.”
Bottom line — another week, another win. But there’s a whole lot of fixing required, along with that bottom line.
“Something we preach on defense is win,” said freshman linebacker Nikhai Hill-Green. “What was important today is coming out with a win. We made key stops down the stretch.
“Today wasn’t good enough, on both sides. We’ll get it fixed. We just need to execute better, and play team football.”
It gets way tougher from here on out, and what Michigan showed in the final 20 minutes isn’t good enough to win the majority of its remaining games — including next week.
Forget the fact that Wisconsin is reeling, with a 1-2 start and an offense averaging 11.5 points per game to everyone not named Eastern Michigan. The Badgers have played one of the nation’s toughest schedules thus far, taking losses against Penn State and Notre Dame.
Wisconsin showed off Whistling Straits to the world over the weekend. But the Badgers are in dire straits and whistling the blues. That means one thing — they’ll be desperate and dangerous one week hence.
Nebraska in Lincoln? There’s no gimme available, against an improving team that lost at Oklahoma by only a touchdown, 23-16.
Three weeks later, the Wolverines head into Spartan Stadium for MSU’s Super Bowl, Ryder Cup and Unholy Crusade, all rolled into one. Two weeks after that, Michigan heads to Happy Valley against a team that’s already tucked away wins over Wisconsin and Auburn.
Michigan’s second-half effort against Rutgers threatens not only losses in those place, but embarrassment. The Wolverines took a budding, fourth consecutive rout, and turned it into a ball game.
They couldn’t connect on passes at crucial moments. They got gashed on the ground and in the short passing game. They misfired for the first time all year on a field goal, one that would have put the game away, instead of giving Rutgers a final chance to tie it.
In short, the Wolverines waited around for disaster to happen in the second half — and it nearly did.
“We’ve been trying to pride ourselves on being a tough and gritty team, for times like this when that grit needed to come out, needed to show,” sophomore defensive tackle Chris Hinton said. “A thing that’s forming with this team — it’s a gritty team.”
Some will substitute other adjectives for the second-half Wolverines. But they’re undefeated — for now — and content to substitute gritty for pretty.
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