Wolverine Watch: A Rocky Afternoon Stands Dead Ahead

We last spotted Rocky Lombardi lobbing rainbows over the heads of Michigan defenders like a sandlot-game hero picking on Cheetos-distracted chubby kids.

It wasn’t pretty. U-M cornerbacks either chased the backs of jerseys, or latched on so they wouldn’t. The sorry scene produced the shocker of the season — a terrible Michigan State team beating a worse (at least on that day) Michigan crew.

Those downfield heaves wound up becoming the shots heard ‘round the Michigan football world. They played a major role in changing it, coaching-wise.

Lombardi is no longer a Spartan. He’s a Huskie, for Northern Illinois University. But no matter. Rocky’s Return summons up images of the original movie that bears his name. When two silver screen heavyweights stagger in an exhausted embrace at the end, we hear the following exchange …

Apollo Creed: “Ain’t gonna be no rematch. Ain’t gonna be no rematch.”

Rocky Balboa: “Don’t want one.”

Only this time, Rocky enters the rematch as a winner the last time around. And the Wolverines are aching for a rematch, ugly green uniforms or not.

The question becomes, will it be any different? The answer speaks to Michigan’s change of course, not to mention its growing secondary maturity.

U-M’s cornerbacks aren’t the same players they were a year ago, having taken additional classes at SOHK (School Of Hard Knocks). They’re getting put in position to succeed differently this year, under new defensive coordinator Mike Macdonald. And obviously, Northern Illinois University doesn’t possess the resources of a Michigan State.

Not that the Huskies are predestined as the next set of dead dogs inside The Big House. They pulled a stunner of an opening-week win, wrecking Georgia Tech in a 22-21 eye-opener in Atlanta.

They lost last week at home against Wyoming, but still put 43 points on the board. So it’s not like Lombardi lost his lob.

He threw for 323 yards and three touchdowns on only 17 completions against Michigan a year ago. He’s racked up 369 yards passing in two games this year, with three TDs and three picks.

Can he find another pot of gold at the end of a few more rainbows? Not likely, in the judgment of a witness to last season’s carnage.

Michigan radio sideline reporter Doug Karsch saw it all. Not surprisingly, he sees this one differently.

“I can’t imagine that would be the case, given what Macdonald has said about the way he wants to play defense, which is adapting to the opponent,” Karsch said, when asked if Lombardi could bomb his way by Michigan again.

He paused for a moment, cautioning that he doesn’t want to bash former Michigan defensive coordinator Don Brown, whom Karsch believes did some good things in Ann Arbor.

“If nothing else, we learned about how being aggressive all the time can also backfire,” Karsch said. “I heard this as it pertained to college basketball once, with Duke basketball assistants. The system that they ran at Duke was highly effective in part because Duke had better players all across the board, and it worked very well for them.

“But when Duke assistants got out in the real world and weren’t able to recruit at that level, and then tried to deploy the Duke system, it wasn’t quite as effective. They didn’t have better athletes than every opponent they were playing.

“That’s sort of what Don Brown’s system relies upon. If you can play great man coverage, you can play his system. But when they lost what they lost last year, with opt-outs and graduation, they threw some young kids into the fire that weren’t quite ready just yet.”

Ready or not, here comes Rocky again. In two games, Michigan’s pass defense has given up an average of 242 yards per contest, against teams down and desperate. It’s allowed a pair of touchdown passes, and is still seeking its first interception of 2021.

There’s a sense, though, that this defense and this team aren’t in the same place they were a year ago. Squaring off against NIU gives the Wolverines another chance to prove it.

“I would argue that [redshirt sophomore cornerbacks] Gemon Green and Vincent Gray are probably significantly better in man coverage now than they were a year ago,” Karsch opined. “But that doesn’t mean they have to do that.

“At the end of the day, Mike Macdonald seems to be focusing on what his defense needs to be, to beat an opponent on a given Saturday, not to force any system. I don’t think there’s any correlation between what happened last year and what’s going to happen Saturday.”

Maybe not, but the comparisons will be there. The difference between a Rocky afternoon and a rocky afternoon for the visitors further marks the difference between 2020 and 2021.

Macdonald, for his part, yearned to discuss Lombardi about like Eisenhower wanted to talk D-Day on the evening of June 5, 1944.

“Oh yeah,” he said, asked if his secondary embraces the challenge. “They understand what’s at stake in the game, and they’re ready to go.”

Just how ready, week to week, will write the story of 2021. Chapter 3 won’t be the most headlined, but it will be another shot at a knockout.

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