Wolverine Watch: King Of The Road
Michigan State head coach Mel Tucker won’t call Jim Harbaugh’s team Michigan.
The disciple of disgraced former Ohio State NCAA cheat Jim Tressel instead refers to Michigan as “the team down the road.”
Cute.
Maybe even appropriate, at the moment. When you’ve got a team down in the ditch, tire tracks on its helmet, lifting one eye out of the muck to catch a glimpse of the team roaring away down the road, well …
At surface level, you can’t get much deeper in the ditch than an opening-week loss, at home, to Rutgers. Tucker sojourned to East Lansing to bring uproarious joy to fans, and he’s already done so — in Piscataway, N.J.
There, ardent Scarlet Knights rooters are still celebrating the end of a 21-game Big Ten losing streak. Their team’s 38-27 triumph in the opener felt bigger than a pre-slimmed-down Chris Christie.
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And, hey, who are we to say it wasn’t monumental, or slight either the Scarlet Knights or the Scarlet-Faced Spartans regarding that result? You always need to see how a loss ages and shouldn’t immediately declare: if they can’t beat Rutgers in their own house, who CAN they beat, and where?
Wait until the first day of 2021. If you see Alabama, Clemson, Notre Dame and Rutgers battling it out in the College Football Playoff, you’ll feel pretty sheepish belittling the game that got the Scarlet Knights on the road to glory.
But we digress. This is about Down-The-Roaders vs. Ditch Devils, for the famously ugly Paul Bunyan Trophy and the right to avoid the ugly end of the smack talk over the next 365 days.
“The red blood is pumping,” Harbaugh said. “It will be really pumping for both sides in this game. I’ve got no question about that. It’s for the state championship. A lot of our players can relate to that … it’s a really big deal.”
That’s as out there as Harbaugh went. No “moment of silence,” like former MSU head coach Mark Dantonio once observed after an embarrassing Michigan loss. Not even a verbal scuff or two, ones that might make former Wolverine Devin Bush Jr. smile.
No, Harbaugh’s team is saving any slights or scuffing for game time. They appear to have the ammo to deliver, too, when Michigan and Michigan State take the field in The Empty House.
The Wolverines scored 49 points on the road, against a ranked opponent, in their Big Ten opener. Behind redshirt sophomore quarterback Joe Milton, they’re about as likely to take their foot off the gas in game two as they are to wear green patches on their uniforms to honor the fallen Spartans.
The ditch beckons.
The Wolverines look legit, no less of an offensive eye than Urban Meyer told the Big Ten Network.
“I thought [Michigan offensive coordinator Josh] Gattis did a heck of a job,” the former Ohio State coach said. “That’s a legitimate spread offense. He has options. Milton was a really aggressive runner, a good runner. I think he is just going to get better.
“He is a giant athlete, now. … The use of RPO [run-pass options] and relief, the screens, was outstanding. You have to have a quick release to operate that way and to be able to think rather quickly, too.
“The offensive line, for replacing four of the five starters, really played well. I thought this was going to be one of those down-to-the-wire games. They dominated, A to Z, in that one.”
Even Michigan’s receivers got in on the blocking act, Harbaugh noted. That’s no small bullet point, in his eyes, paving the way for a long touchdown run by sophomore tailback Zach Charbonnet.
“One of the most impressive things to me was the perimeter blocking,” Harbaugh offered. “Especially [junior] Ronnie Bell and [sophomores] Mike Sainristil and Giles Jackson on Zach’s 70-yard touchdown run, the physicality of the perimeter blocking was outstanding.”
They’ll need all the physicality they can muster against the Spartans. What Gang Green lacks in talent, it usually makes up for in violence, to and beyond the whistle. Longtime MSU defensive coordinator Pat Narduzzi is gone, but the spirit of “60 minutes of unnecessary roughness” remains.
That’s why it’s good to have someone like senior fullback Ben Mason in this game. Long-time Detroit Red Wings fans can consider him a Darren McCarty-style enforcer.
Mason blocked a Gopher off the field, into the bench and halfway to Bushwood Country Club in the opener. He wound up co-Player of the Game with Michigan’s other backs.
“I don’t know how many guys he knocked on their back, but it was pretty significant — five to eight, maybe,” Harbaugh said. “He was tremendous.”
In Ditch Sparty, The Remake, he and Michigan’s other tough guys are essential.
“Ben Mason asked if he could say something to the team,” Harbaugh noted, regarding the Minnesota pregame. “What he said was, ‘Joe, this is your night. We are going to block, we’re going to catch, we’re going to do everything in our power to make you successful.’ It was a very passionate speech.
“There are a lot of guys who have made speeches in the history of football. It’s easy to make the speech, but maybe a dozen or so that I can think of, after making the speech, actually went out and did what they said they were going to do in the speech. He did that, and then some.”
The Wolverines need to play to the whistle, and then some, on Saturday. In so doing, they’ll remind Tucker’s crew that the team down the road once again owns it.
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