2B — November 23, 2015
SportsMonday
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
senior safety Jarrod Wilson
chased him down at the two-
yard line.
On 3rd-and-goal from the
two, Hackenberg threw again,
this time well over the head of
his intended receiver. That was
a mistake, too. The Wolverines
swarmed him and his receivers.
The drive stalled, and Penn
State kicked a field goal, never
to have a chance like that again.
Several statistics separated
Michigan and Penn State on
Saturday, but look no further
than this one: The Wolverines
won by 12 points. Three times,
they held the Nittany Lions to
three instead of seven. There’s
your ballgame.
It wasn’t a big difference.
On Penn State’s three field goal
drives, the Nittany Lions fell
short of the end zone by a total
of 13 yards. Add that to two at
Indiana and one at Minnesota,
and 16 yards
could make
the difference
between
playing for
a Big Ten
championship
in two weeks
or packing
for a mid-tier
bowl.
If you
ask the
Wolverines, they don’t even
need 16 yards. All they need is
an inch.
“It’s just a mindset,” said
redshirt junior defensive end
Chris Wormley. “You go out
there, backs against the wall,
and you know you have to hold
them to three points or less.”
For most of the past three
close games — excluding a 49-16
rout of Rutgers in the middle —
Michigan has looked extremely
beatable. At Minnesota and
Indiana, lesser opponents
gashed the Wolverines’ defense
throughout the game. At Penn
State, minor mistakes such
as penalties finally seemed
destined to cost them.
But in those small situations,
they take their inch and they
win the game with it. In
those small situations, they
look unbeatable. In the past
four games, opponents have
journeyed into the red zone
17 times and scored 14 times.
Just two of them have been
touchdowns.
After the Minnesota game,
people criticized the Golden
Gophers for running the ball
into the teeth of the Michigan
defense instead of spreading
the field and trying to make a
play. After the Indiana game,
people criticized the Hoosiers
for spreading the field and
trying to make a play instead of
running the ball into the teeth
of the Michigan defense.
Finally, the Nittany Lions
tried every which way to get
into the end zone. They couldn’t
do it.
You could still argue that
each of those situations was
mismanaged, but three of
these games have passed now.
Quarterback sneaks, short curl
routes, wildcat formations, fade
routes, inside runs, outside
runs — opponents have tried
everything.
When you
give this
Michigan
team an inch,
you just can’t
take it away.
Now,
sometimes the
Wolverines
don’t even get
an inch. The
touchdown
they gave up Saturday was on a
25-yard pass play when redshirt
freshman safety Jabrill Peppers
was beaten on a deep route. No.
3 Ohio State, Michigan’s next
opponent, has the weapons to
burn them many, many more
times than that.
But the Buckeyes would be
wise not to give Michigan an
inch to hold. They will likely be
favored, but the Wolverines can
earn a major shift in the rivalry.
Give them an inch, and they just
might take it a mile.
Lourim can be reached
at jlourim@umich.edu and
on Twitter @jakelourim.
LOURIM
From Page 1B
“You know you
have to hold
them to three
points or less.”
For more football updates
Check MichiganDaily.com
throughout game week
SPORTSMONDAY COLUMN
Harbaugh, Bo and Ohio State
I
t took Jim Harbaugh
21 seconds to reference
Bo Schembechler at his
introductory press conference last
December.
He walked
up to the
podium and
apologized
for his hoarse
voice.
Then
Harbaugh
talked about
how he
tripped on his
walk into the
room, saying, “A lesser athlete
would have gone down,” drawing
upon Bo Schembechler’s line that
his heart attack would have killed
a lesser man.
Being a student of
Schembechler is so thoroughly
ingrained into Harbaugh’s being
that his college coach is a part of
his everyday life. Not only does
he work in Schembechler Hall
and drive past Schembechler’s old
house daily, but Harbaugh thinks
about his coach even in what
otherwise could be mundane
conversations.
It happened on Michigan’s
flight to Saturday’s game, when
former Michigan quarterback Jim
Breaugh piloted the team’s plane.
“I said, ‘You know what
Bo would tell you right now?’
Harbaugh asked. “ ‘Don’t screw
it up!’ ”
He even thinks about
Schembechler’s chief rival,
former Ohio State coach Woody
Hayes. One reporter Saturday
asked Harbaugh about a Hayes
quote about teams laying eggs
and not performing in certain
games. It led to a Harbaugh quip
about comparing humans and
chickens, but that wasn’t really
the interesting part.
Harbaugh insisted the quote
wasn’t true, that Woody Hayes
never said it.
The man is a historian of
sorts on the Michigan-Ohio
State rivalry. Last winter, in the
days before Harbaugh’s hiring
at Michigan, Chase Beeler, an
offensive lineman who played
for Harbaugh at Stanford, said
Harbaugh had “an extreme
reverence” for Schembechler.
Beeler remembered sitting
with Harbaugh and his father,
Jack, one night in 2009. Jim
and Jack went back and forth
discussing how much they
admired Schembechler and
Hayes, particularly how they
brought out the greatness in one
another.
When Harbaugh was hired,
this was the expectation for
him and Ohio State coach Urban
Meyer. They would battle as
the head coaches of Michigan
and Ohio State every year in the
last week of November for the
foreseeable future, two of the best
coaches in the country fighting for
Big Ten and national supremacy.
Schembechler came to
Michigan from Miami (Ohio) at
a time when the Buckeyes had
taken seven of nine games from
the Wolverines. Michigan was
overmatched, particularly in 1968,
the year before Schembechler
arrived. Schembechler once
called his first 10 games against
Ohio State, the ones known as
the 10-Year War, the 10 favorite
games he ever coached against
the Buckeyes. He bested Hayes
in those games — the Wolverines
went 5-4-1.
Harbaugh will get his first
chance to begin that sort of legacy
against Urban Meyer on Saturday.
The immediate implications
of the upcoming game are
now diminished. The average
Michigan fan was devastated
by Ohio State’s loss to Michigan
State on Saturday. The wildest
Harbaugh fantasy, the one of
him coming to Ann Arbor and
immediately leading Michigan to
a conference championship, was
all but shattered.
But think back to that day
when he was hired. In all of your
giddiness, was the first thing you
thought about the possibility
of Michigan winning a Big Ten
championship? Or was it the idea
that the Wolverines, finally, after
losing 10 out of 11 games to their
bitter rival down South, had a
coach who could fight back, one
whose team wouldn’t just get
geared up to play the Buckeyes,
but actually beat them?
Saturday won’t be about a Big
Ten title, a trip to Indianapolis
or the right to play Iowa. But you
know darn well that Michigan
doesn’t need to beat Iowa to
show, once and for all, that it’s
back.
“Right now, Ohio State and
Michigan State are ahead of
us,” said Michigan announcer
Dan Dierdorf, who played on
Schembechler’s first team, in
August. “We can’t talk about
national titles. We can’t talk
about winning the Big Ten. What
we have to do, job No. 1, is to
become competitive with your
chief rivals, and that’s Michigan
State and Ohio State, and those
are the two teams that have to
be front and center in everything
we do.”
Harbaugh won’t admit to that
last statement. Publicly, he has
always been focused on the task
ahead for his team, abstaining
from guarantees and absolutes
like the one he made during his
playing career about his team
defeating Ohio State in 1986. But
Schembechler, the man Harbaugh
considers a profound influence
on his life, was always thinking
about the Buckeyes. He prepared
his teams for them all year round,
even when they didn’t know it.
Exactly how Harbaugh has
prepared his team behind closed
doors is unclear. But any way
you look at it, Saturday will be
the culmination of a year’s work.
It started, as Michigan players
love to say, with four-hour spring
practices. Like Schembechler did,
Harbaugh made his team buy in
completely and unconditionally.
Senior linebacker James Ross,
who played for Brady Hoke for
three years, said Saturday that
anyone on Michigan’s team would
run through a brick wall for
Harbaugh.
Schembechler’s first team
would have done the same for
him. The group pulled off a
massive upset of Ohio State in
1969. Entering the game, the
adversary was considered to be
the greatest college football team
of all time, but Schembechler had
his team ready.
If Michigan wins this weekend,
it wouldn’t even be considered an
enormous surprise. Ohio State is
ranked eighth in this week’s AP
Poll, and the Wolverines are 12th.
But to say this edition of The
Game doesn’t matter? You’d be
dead wrong.
Cohen can be reached
at maxac@umich.edu or on
Twitter @MaxACohen.
LUNA ANNA ARCHEY/Daily
Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh has taken life lessons from his old coach, Bo Schembechler, and he will take them into his first game against Ohio State on Saturday.
MAX
COHEN
Five Things We Learned
By JAKE LOURIM
Managing Sports Editor
For the second straight week,
the
Michigan
football
team
went on the road, played in an
emotionally charged atmosphere
and took care of business.
As with Indiana last week,
this
opponent
presented
challenges: Penn State’s noisy
crowd,
quarterback
Christian
Hackenberg
and
a
physical
defensive line.
But the 12th-ranked Wolverines
solved all of them. They escaped
with another victory, setting up
this week’s rivalry clash with
Ohio State at Michigan Stadium.
Here are five things we learned
Saturday:
1. The defensive line will be fine
without Ryan Glasgow.
After last week’s game at
Indiana, what was originally one
of the strengths of the team looked
like a glaring weakness. The
Hoosiers rolled over Michigan for
307 rushing yards and 41 points
before falling in double overtime.
The
culprit,
it
appeared,
was the loss of redshirt junior
nose tackle Ryan Glasgow, who
injured his pectoral muscle the
week before against Rutgers.
With Glasgow out for the season,
the future looked bleak. The
Wolverines needed to be better on
the defensive front at Penn State,
and they were.
Against the run, they stifled
Penn State running back Saquon
Barkley,
who
managed
just
68 yards on 15 carries — even
though one of those carries went
for 56 yards. Michigan’s biggest
stands came on its first series and
second-to-last series. Both times,
the Wolverines held the Nittany
Lions to only a field goal inside the
10-yard line.
But
their
biggest
impact
was in the passing game. They
sacked Penn State’s Christian
Hackenberg
four
times
and
hurried
him
plenty
more,
disrupting the aerial attack and
making it nearly impossible for
the Nittany Lions to come back.
Michigan faces an even tougher
test next week against Ohio State,
but the resurgence in this area
bodes well for the rivalry game
Saturday.
2. Michigan’s penalties are an
issue.
Some were unambiguous, such
as the Wolverines’ four offside
and two false start penalties.
Some were controversial, such as
redshirt freshman safety Jabrill
Peppers’ pass interference, after
which
Michigan
coach
Jim
Harbaugh angrily threw off his
hat and coat.
The Wolverines have had a
significant problem with penalties
in the past two weeks. Saturday,
they committed 13 for 117 yards,
giving Penn State six of its 14 first
downs. Michigan dominated in
many facets, but its miscues kept
the Nittany Lions in the game for
too long.
The most fixable issue is
the four offside penalties from
jumping the snap early. That
might solve itself Saturday in
front of a home crowd after two
straight road games. At any rate,
the Wolverines can’t afford to give
Ohio State free yards.
3. The running game still has
some things to work out.
Those things have seemed
trivial over the past three weeks.
Fifth-year
senior
quarterback
Jake Rudock’s emergence has
made everyone forget about the
running game. The Wolverines
haven’t needed it.
But
Michigan
needs
to
re-establish the ground game
soon.
Junior
running
back
De’Veon Smith was the leading
rusher Saturday with just 39 yards
on 13 carries. Redshirt junior
wide
receiver
Jehu
Chesson
was second, despite getting only
one carry. The Wolverines are
now tied for 81st in the country
in rushing with 161.4 yards per
game.
No Michigan running back
has hit the 100-yard mark since
September, and the road doesn’t
get any easier: At 30th in the
country, Ohio State’s rush defense
will give the Wolverines another
tough test.
4. College football guarantees
nothing.
When the Wolverines walked
off the field Saturday, the stage
seemed set. A contingent of
Michigan fans greeted the team
at the tunnel after the game. Some
chanted “BEAT OHIO.” All that
had to happen to set up a winner-
take-all showdown for the Big Ten
East next week was Ohio State
beating Michigan State later that
day.
But in college football, all that
has to happen rarely does. With
quarterback Connor Cook injured
and not playing, the Spartans
rolled into Columbus and knocked
off the Buckeyes, 17-14, on a game-
winning field goal as time expired.
So, Michigan and Ohio State
will play their normal rivalry game
Saturday at Michigan Stadium.
Either could still make the Big
Ten Championship against Iowa.
But they’ll need some help: Penn
State will have to upset Michigan
State in East Lansing.
Who knows? Maybe that will
happen too. Nothing is ever
certain.
5. BOLD PREDICTION: Jake
Rudock will throw for 400
yards against Ohio State.
The days of Rudock playing
against Indiana-caliber defenses
are over. While he might not
reach the milestone as easily as
he did two weeks ago against
the Hoosiers, he will have his
chances.
The Buckeyes will provide
more opposition, but they will
also put up points, perhaps
forcing
Michigan
to
pass
for most of the game. And
if
the
Wolverines’
running
game continues to struggle, it
will give Rudock even more
opportunities. Each of the past
two Michigan-Ohio State games
have been shootouts, and the
Wolverines’ passing game has
produced in both.
This year, the unit has never
looked better. Rudock is the first
quarterback in Michigan history
to throw for more than 250 yards
in three straight games. He’s
clicking with each of his three
top receivers — redshirt junior
wideouts
Jehu
Chesson
and
Amara Darboh and junior tight
end Jake Butt. Expect the group
to have a big day this weekend.
ALLISON FARRAND/Daily
Jake Rudock threw for more than 250 yards for the third straight game Saturday.