October 21, 2019 — 3B SportsMonday The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com Close isn’t good enough for offense in loss UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Ronnie Bell stood in the middle of Penn State’s end zone, Shea Patterson’s pass floating toward his outstretched fingertips. A few yards away, Nick Eubanks started to raise his fists in celebration, because, somehow, Michigan’s season had a lifeblood. The belief emanated for just long enough to make dreams seem tangible, something that felt impossible when Penn State led, 21-0, two quarters earlier. Only, like it had been all game, fleeting hope turned out to be just that. Bell let the pass slip through his arms, Eubanks plastered his hands on his helmet in disbelief and 110,000 white pom-poms rose to the air in unison. “That definitely didn’t take away the fact that (Bell) made a ton of great plays to put us into that situation,” Patterson said. “So, we’re just going to move on.” The issue is what Michigan moves on to. The Wolverines’ three biggest rivals remain on the docket, but the season and all the goals they carried into it are gone, a 28-21 loss putting the final nail on a coffin that’s been steadily nearing the grave for the past seven weeks. On Saturday, for the first time in more than a month, it felt as if that course may be reversible. Michigan’s offense put together its most coherent performance of the season, behind 276 passing yards from Patterson — the second-best total of his Wolverines’ career. “I thought the offense did a lot of really good things tonight,” said Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh. As a result, an offense that entered opposing territory nine total times in two previous games against ranked opponents did so eight times against the Nittany Lions. Yet, those lengthy drives too often ended without points. And, at the end, they had just 21 points and another loss to show for it. “Of course it’s frustrating,” Ruiz said. “Like I said before, you can’t harp on situations like that. You’ve got to just keep executing, keep doing what you’ve got to do. That way, the next time you get in those situations you’ll score. We were in those situations a couple times (and) didn’t come up with a touchdown or any points. But, you know, it’s on to the next drive.” To their credit, the Wolverines kept that mentality throughout. When their first two trips across midfield ended in a third-and-1 stuff and a fourth-down incompletion, they came back three drives later and manufactured a eight-play, 75-yard drive to get on the scoreboard. A quarter later, they followed a punt from midfield with a run-heavy, 65-yard touchdown march. Still, as the final pass fell to the ground through Bell’s arms, it was hard to not reflect on an evening of missed opportunities. The blame spreads from execution to decision-making. The execution part is obvious — Bell’s drop will forever be the game’s — and maybe the season’s — defining moment. As for his decision-making on two punts from midfield, Harbaugh said, “we were playing for field position and we wanted to get the ball — put it inside the 15- or 10-yard line.” Both times, Penn State took over possession outside the 20. The most confounding decision, though, came with Michigan facing a fourth-and-6 from the Nittany Lions’ 41 with 51 seconds left in a once- disastrous first half that sat on the precipice of rescue. Despite senior kicker Quinn Nordin — normally the first choice for long field goals — being unavailable, Harbaugh pulled his offense off the field to go for three. “Thought we could make it,” Harbaugh said. “Was right at that line where we could make it. And it’s a long field goal, but it was either that or go for it on the fourth down.” The kick fell five yards short, finishing a third fruitless drive into Penn State territory and setting the course for the Wolverines’ second loss. “It’s just onto the next one,” Patterson said. “We’ve got a big game next week.” As he spoke, the stream of fans outside Michigan’s media room drowned him out with chants of “We are Penn State,” a fitting end to a day when talk doesn’t matter anymore. UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Jim Harbaugh’s hands were on his hips. His sweatshirt creased, the lines making their way around the back. He stood near the epicenter of a stadium that shook and swayed, singing and cheering in something nearing delirium, speaking with referees. He bore a look of exasperation and déjà vu. The call on the field — that Penn State made the line to gain — was confirmed. Minutes later, as 110,000-plus voices serenaded him and his Michigan football team in mocking unison, Harbaugh threw off his headset and started to walk towards midfield, a horde of cameras following. The clock ticked towards zero and in a game where the Wolverines had pulled their way back from the abyss encompassing the program all the way to fourth-and- goal at the three-yard line, they lost anyway, 28-21, to the Nittany Lions. “We’ve just got to move onto the next day,” said senior VIPER Khaleke Hudson. Next to him, Shea Patterson nodded silently, having been on the edge of tears for nearly all of a seven- minute press conference. “We’ve got to work even harder in practice and we’ve just got to stay on top of our film work and keep trusting our guys.” This is the kind of game Michigan has gained a reputation for losing spectacularly under Harbaugh, the hump he can’t seem to get over. The game’s first 30 minutes felt like a bad remake. The Wolverines wasted a timeout before the game’s first snap. They got conservative in their decision- making on offense. They dropped passes and dropped an interception. With 10 minutes left in the second quarter and Penn State leading 14-0, Patterson, a senior quarterback, got picked off on a screen pass and the stadium breathed fire. But this wasn’t another 35-14 blowout at Wisconsin or another 62-39 shellacking at the hands of Ohio State. This was a vulnerable Penn State and a Michigan that seemed to click into place as the game went along. Where the Wolverines seemed completely overmatched in those earlier contests, Saturday merely felt like a missed opportunity. “Made adjustments at halftime. They were good and I felt like our guys were not nervous,” Harbaugh said. “They were playing and executing. It felt like, just keep going and get this game won. That was our belief.” Harbaugh, mostly, fell back on the same platitudes that have become commonplace when he gets behind a microphone. At one point, he brought up the officiating — a borderline holding call on Lavert Hill that extended a Penn State drive at the start of the fourth quarter and cost Michigan a decisive seven points, among others. It’s easy to look at that call on Hill and gripe. But when KJ Hamler burned Josh Metellus on a post for a 53-yard score four plays later, it was — according to Harbaugh — because Michigan missed a signal, and didn’t have a safety covering the post as a result. When Harbaugh got to Michigan in 2015, he garnered a reputation for being so precise and detail-oriented that even the student managers felt the heat, needing to tighten up. On Saturday, when they missed that call and Hamler waltzed into the end zone, Harbaugh paced up the sideline, staring into a sea of white and adjusting his headset. This is the closest Michigan has come to winning a game like this — a game it wasn’t supposed to win, a game in which it was on the road as a touchdown underdog — since 2016, when Harbaugh still held all the promise of a savior. Now, after the Wolverines’ second loss effectively ended their hopes of making the College Football Playoff, winning the Big Ten or even making the conference title game for the first time under Harbaugh, there is no surprise in this program’s identity. As close as it came to taking that elusive first step on Saturday, a tectonic shift has yet to happen. More and more, it seems like it might never. For a moment in the fourth quarter, Michigan was right there on the cusp. The Wolverines held Penn State under 100 yards in the second half. Their offense looked like something to be reckoned with — Patterson leading drives with authority, the Nittany Lions struggling to keep up with the tempo. “I felt like we kinda found our groove a little bit,” Patterson said. “The run game got us in the game, our receivers made big plays in space.” “We felt like we had them right in our hands,” said redshirt freshman linebacker Cam McGrone. “This is where we wanted them. We felt we could force them to do what we wanted to. We did.” They got as far as the goal-line, with two downs to play with. Harbaugh’s hands were on his knees, his back hunched forward, when that number dwindled down to one. He said later that he wanted a fade in the corner of the end zone, but Penn State covered that up. Instead, Patterson hovered in the pocket. He saw Ronnie Bell in the center of the end zone, just past the goal line. As the football hit Bell’s hands, Harbaugh’s arms went up, a palpable expression of relief. As the ball hit the ground, his arms came back down. He ran up to Patterson and said something about getting the ball back. With two minutes left and three timeouts, possibilities remained. In the end, though, it was just more of the same. For Harbaugh and for his program. THEO MACKIE Daily Sports Editor ETHAN SEARS Managing Sports Editor ALEXANDRIA POMPEI/Daily Sophomore wide receiver Ronnie Bell dropped a potential game-tying touchdown pass late in Michigan’s 28-21 loss to Penn State. Penn State burns ‘M’ with big plays UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The door opened and the noise from outside streamed in, fans lingering in the bowels of the stadium, still singing, “We are Penn State!” Inside the visiting media room, Khaleke Hudson kept talking, his words juxtaposing the commotion outside. The senior VIPER spoke of Michigan’s defense, how it had given up too many big plays, how that was the difference in a 28-21 loss to Penn State on Saturday night. “It was nothing that they did,” Hudson said. “It was not that they outschemed us or anything, it was just our mistakes that we made ourselves. Things we knew how to do. We just messed up.” The Wolverines committed a few too many penalties. They didn’t play through their hips enough. Occasionally, their eyes landed in the wrong place. Little things, yes. But Saturday’s game, especially the first half, was a display of how easily little things can turn into big things. Michigan outgained the Nittany Lions by almost 150 yards. It had more first downs and a better third-down conversion rate. And it handily won the time of possession battle, with its offense on the field for over 15 minutes longer than Penn State’s. Stats like that usually add up to a win, but there’s a reason the Nittany Lions ran so many fewer plays and scored more points. They had six plays of over 15 yards — including three of their four touchdowns — with three of those plays over 30 yards. Chunk plays only take up a few seconds. Meanwhile, intermittent offensive struggles, as the Wolverines had throughout the game, eat up clock. “Big games like this, you can’t do anything wrong,” said redshirt freshman linebacker Cameron McGrone. He was right. Michigan’s defense, for the most part, was very good Saturday. But it wasn’t perfect, and the big plays burned the Wolverines again and again. McGrone’s theory was slightly different than Hudson’s, maintaining that, “it’s not that we did anything wrong, it was just, they outplayed us in that play.” Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh had yet another explanation. In the first half, he said, the Wolverines got burned on one particular play — the slot-fade route. That play worked to perfection on a 25-yard touchdown to star receiver KJ Hamler on third down in the second quarter. Michigan adjusted in the second half, but there, it was another mistake that cost it. Whether it was poor coaching, a lack of focus or being rattled by the raucous whiteout crowd, the Wolverines missed their defensive playcall. With one minute left in the third quarter and the Nittany Lions on first down from Michigan’s 47, the Wolverines lined up in cover-zero, with senior safety Josh Metellus the lone player assigned to Hamler. Hamler ran a post route straight past Metellus, caught Clifford’s pass in stride and motored into the end zone. The play put Penn State up by two scores and ended up being the deciding touchdown. And while the play seemed to be on Metellus for his lack of speed, he shouldn’t have been in that position in the first place. According to Harbaugh, the players missed a hand signal that would have told them the correct formation to be in. “Didn’t get a call in there, KJ on a safety, and it was a huge play,” Harbaugh said. “(We) didn’t have the right defense, and the play was a good call, so we didn’t have a post safety.” So in the end, it didn’t matter that Michigan gained 417 yards to the Nittany Lions’ 283. It didn’t matter that the defense had a good showing the rest of the night, with five tackles for loss and six three-and-outs. All it took were a few missed assignments that turned into big plays, and that was all Penn State needed to send its fans home singing along to Zombie Nation. “This game was just down to who made the big plays,” McGrone said. “And you see who won.” ARIA GERSON Daily Sports Editor White Flag Harbaugh gets close, but comes up short again in a big spot UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Shea Patterson stifled tears, his faded eye black running down a solemn face. Beneath the table where Patterson sat, stains from Beaver Stadium’s green grass covered his once-white uniform, the product of a day when he did everything he could for Michigan. Criticized for not going through his reads, being too tentative to scramble and missing open receivers, Patterson excelled in those aspects in Saturday’s 28-21 loss to Penn State, finishing with a season-high 276 yards on 24-of-41 passing. For the Wolverines, it’s the type of performance they envisioned when Patterson transferred from Ole Miss two years ago with the billing of a can’t-miss quarterback prospect who would get Jim Harbaugh over the hump. Twenty games later, that hump remains pervasive as Patterson enters the final stretch of his Michigan career with a 15-5 record, but void of the lofty goals he carried to Ann Arbor. After Saturday night, that’s the juxtaposition Michigan has to live with. “I was just proud of our guys and the defense held them to one touchdown in a real tight second half,” Patterson said. “I just love the way our offense fought back.” Patterson, so often a microcosm of Michigan’s offense, stood at the center of that turnaround. When the Wolverines went down 21-0 midway through the second quarter, it was Patterson’s interception — his one glaring mistake all game — that put Penn State in prime position for its third touchdown. As Patterson walked off the field, he cast a familiarly frustrated figure, his right hand planted on his hip as Harbaugh gave him a condoling pat on the helmet. Patterson seemed to be heading toward a similarly uninspired performance to his 14-of-32 showing against Wisconsin a month ago. Behind him, Michigan was on its own march to a repeat of that day in Madison, with the game seemingly over before halftime. Only this time, it wasn’t. “It didn’t (go off the rails early), but our guys play with great effort and great character,” Harbaugh said. “Yeah. Made adjustments at halftime. They were good and I felt like our guys were not nervous. They were playing and executing.” On his first throw after the interception, Patterson found Nico Collins on a 30-yard gain, part of a season-high 89-yard game for Collins. Amid a season in which he’s drawn criticism for not targeting Collins, Donovan Peoples-Jones and Tarik Black, Patterson found the trio for 14 completions on 22 tries Saturday. Seven plays after Collins took the Wolverines into Penn State territory, Michigan found paydirt for the first time. “I thought the offense did a lot of really good things tonight,” Harbaugh said. “The offensive line, pass protection was really good. Thought Shea had a really good night throwing the football.” The rest of the evening was more of the same for Patterson, who constructed seven drives into Penn State territory. The problem: only three ended in points, sending the Wolverines to a loss that ended every tangible goal they carried into the season. In loss, Patterson flashes brilliance Read more online at michigandaily.com THEO MACKIE Daily Sports Editor This game was just down to who made the big plays.