2B — Monday, December 2, 2019 SportsMonday The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com W hen it all ended, when the blowout was codified and the Michigan football team was taking a never-ending walk up the tunnel, Ohio State ran to the nearest end zone. They linked arms and swayed, the band giving the music, a sea of fans clad in red — the only ones still left in Michigan Stadium — supplying the vocals to “Carmen Ohio.” It all felt like a repeat, because it was. A repeat of last year, when “Harbaugh sucks” chants rattled around the Horseshoe after a 62-39 Ohio State blowout win. A repeat of the year before that, when the Wolverines let Dwayne Haskins take control after coming into the game as a backup and walk out with a 31-20 win. A repeat of the last eight years, over which Ohio State has outscored Michigan a combined 331-216 without dropping a single edition of this now-annual ruination. A repeat of the last 16 years, over which the Buckeyes have won 15 of these, the only loss coming in a transition year between scarlet and gray dynasties. This is what this rivalry is. This is what Ohio State is, and this is what Michigan is. A 56-27 drubbing. Jim Harbaugh sitting at one podium saying, “They played better today.” Ryan Day sitting at the other saying, “In games like this, it comes down to players. Our big-time players played well.” The Wolverines slowly walking off the field. The Buckeyes linking arms and singing their alma mater. If you think it’s any different, you haven’t been paying attention. This isn’t a Jim Harbaugh problem, a Shea Patterson problem or a Don Brown problem. Harbaugh brought Michigan to 10 wins in three of his first four years and still has a chance to do it for a fourth time — more than on par with what the Wolverines did regularly before a six-year Rich Rodriguez/Brady Hoke odyssey sunk the program to new depths. Patterson set a record on Saturday for the most passing yards a Michigan quarterback has ever had over three games. Brown’s defense has been top- 10 in SP+ every year since he’s come to Ann Arbor, and even after Saturday, it’s on pace to do so again. Since 1969, the start of the Bo Schembechler era, Michigan has averaged 9.44 wins per year. Harbaugh has 47 in five years — 9.4 per year. You want him to restore this program to what it was under Bo? Check. Harbaugh has the Wolverines right where they’ve always been. It’s not Michigan that’s changed. It’s Ohio State. In that same 50-year span, the Buckeyes have averaged 9.78 wins per year. Since Jim Tressel took over the program in 2001, that number has rocketed up to an even 11. Since Harbaugh took over Michigan in 2015, that number is at 11.8. It’s a whole different stratosphere than Michigan, and it’s been borne out on the field. “It’s just kind of the same thing every year,” senior tight end Sean McKeon said. “Gotta execute better, and yeah it gets old, but just gotta play better against them.” But the gap goes beyond execution and just playing better. In the Harbaugh era, the Buckeyes have out-recruited Michigan in all but one year, per 247Sports’ composite rankings. They’ve landed four top-five classes (including 2020). The Wolverines have landed one, in 2017, and failed to get the production they could have out of it. Want to find the difference on the field Saturday? Look there. On defense, the Buckeyes landed five-stars Chase Young and Jeffrey Okudah, two future top-10 picks in the NFL Draft. Young didn’t fill the statsheet on Saturday, but set an Ohio State record with 16.5 sacks this year and will likely be a Heisman Trophy finalist. Okudah held Nico Collins, Michigan’s best receiver, to two catches for 42 yards. On offense, the Buckeyes also landed J.K. Dobbins, who ran for 211 yards, and three starters on an offensive line that paved the Wolverines all day long. Michigan got two five-stars in that class: Donovan Peoples- Jones, who caught three balls for 69 yards and accounted for a number of second-half drops on Saturday, and Aubrey Solomon, who transferred to Tennessee before the season. Of its 19 four- stars in 2017, just three — Collins, cornerback Ambry Thomas and center Cesar Ruiz — started and made a tangible impact on Saturday. Eight are no longer with the program. The 2016 season and that next recruiting class was the Wolverines’ chance to narrow the gap, to capitalize on two years of building hype around Harbaugh and position themselves as real contenders to the Buckeyes. Instead, they were inches from beating Ohio State, failed to get everything they could from the next recruiting class, and now, this is just reality. Ohio State is one of the best three or four programs in the country every year. Michigan is one of the best 14 or 15 every year. Harbaugh is a very good football coach who got the Wolverines back to this level. But there’s only so many Jim Tressels and Urban Meyers. Before them, both programs could count themselves in that tier of programs good enough to get nine or 10 wins annually and compete for a title every so often. Then the Buckeyes took a leap. The Wolverines couldn’t make the same jump. Saturday is just what generally happens when a top-four team plays a top-15 team. So is nearly every iteration of this game in the 21st century. “We knew we had the athletes and the players to get the job done,” former Ohio State receiver Parris Campbell told The Daily a month ago. He was talking about the 2018 game, when the Buckeyes gashed Brown’s corners with crossing routes for 396 passing yards. He might as well have been talking about most of the 15 games prior, or predicting the future. This isn’t a gap that gets bridged in one year. It’s one that takes a recruiting cycle, and maybe more than one, to mend. And to get that kind of recruiting cycle, the kind it takes to beat Ohio State, Harbaugh needs to … beat Ohio State. Thus is borne the never-ending cycle Michigan finds itself facing. Get lucky once, or find itself unable to meet an impossible expectation. “We didn’t really put them in a position to be of pressure on them,” Harbaugh said. “And they played really well. They made those plays, they made those drives, they got those stops.” If he wants to fix that, it’ll take far more than a few adjustments on a whiteboard. Sears can be reached at searseth@ umich.edu or on Twitter @ethan_sears. This is what Michigan is ETHAN SEARS ALEXIS RANKIN/Daily The Michigan football team lost its eighth-straight game against Ohio State on Saturday, a marker of the level of both programs over the last 15 years. Offense goes quiet in second half Shea Patterson took the snap at Ohio State’s 16 early in the second quarter, hoping to convert third down and potentially bring Michigan within two points. But he dropped the ball, and a Buckeye fell on it. You’ve seen that before. What happened next should be familiar, too. After staying with Ohio State in the first quarter, trading blow for blow, the offense went quiet. Mistakes piled up. The Wolverines scored just 11 points in the second half. Jim Harbaugh spent nearly two minutes after the game diagnosing the problems: red zone issues, lack of momentum, not making plays. But the phrase everyone who spoke to the media used more than any other was we didn’t execute. That about summed it up. When the dust cleared on a 56-27 loss, Michigan’s eighth- straight to the Buckeyes, it was clear: the Wolverines may have had a new look offense complete with a flashy hashtag and some gaudy stats against mid-tier teams, but it wasn’t good enough to keep up with Ohio State. Again. “It was in just the second half, a few errors,” Patterson said. “ … You just gotta play the same way for four quarters, not just two or three.” At the end of the second half, Patterson found junior receiver Donovan Peoples-Jones in the end zone for a would-be touchdown — would be, if Peoples-Jones hadn’t dropped it. Michigan was forced to kick a field goal. Peoples-Jones had two more drops in the third quarter. Sophomore receiver Ronnie Bell had one, too, when a catch would’ve converted third- and-16. Even when Patterson tried to put the team on his back, the receivers didn’t hold up their end of the deal. “Just made too many mistakes. Too many drops,” said senior tight end Sean McKeon. “ … Just gotta be confident in catching the ball. Gotta make the tough plays, the one-one-one matchups.” Other times, the Buckeyes simply made plays. The Wolverines’ receivers are big, strong, athletic. But they hadn’t faced a secondary like Ohio State’s, either. And when it came to 50-50 balls, for the first time all season, Michigan was on the wrong side of the coin. And that’s not even to speak for the run game. The Wolverines rushed for just 91 yards and struggled to get anything going on that side of the ball the entire game. No play was more emblematic of that than an attempted fourth-and-1 conversion in the fourth quarter, when Michigan attempted to run a wildcat play and opened a gaping hole for Hassan Haskins — but Haskins didn’t see it and got stuffed. With the run game struggling to get off the ground and the Wolverines down big in the second half, the Buckeyes could focus their game plan on trying to stop Michigan’s receivers. They did just that. “Just gotta find a way to get on top and play with a lead if they allow you to on offense,” McKeon said. “… Can’t afford to throw the ball every play. It closes off half our offense.” Meanwhile, on the other end of the field, Ohio State put star running back J.K. Dobbins in a position to run wild. Quarterback Justin Fields picked his spots and took his shots and converted every time. The Buckeyes were a more talented team, yes — with three legit Heisman candidates and a glut of five- star talent. They didn’t get ranked No. 1 in the College Football Playoff poll for nothing. But on Saturday, they were also the better team. The team that made fewer mistakes. “They definitely made deep shots when we didn’t, took more deep shots, coverage on those, it was kinda deflating to our defense,” McKeon said. “They converted on all of their red zone drives, converted touchdowns. We didn’t.” Ohio State executed, plain and simple — and in doing so, showed Michigan what its offense wants to be, but has never quite actually been. You’ve seen that before. ARIA GERSON Daily Sports Editor ALEC COHEN/Daily Shea Patterson said Michigan struggled to keep the same level all game. Just made too many mistakes. Too many drops. Once again, ‘M’ defense falls flat Jim Harbaugh brought his hands to hips, an empty stare glued to his face. If he had looked forward, he would’ve seen Ohio State running back J.K. Dobbins leaping into the end zone, sparking pandemonium from the sea of red behind him. Instead, Harbaugh looked down, training his eyes toward his playbook, seemingly in search of answers. For the eighth-straight year — and fifth in Harbaugh’s five seasons — there were none. Just a 56-27 defeat, further cementing the balance of power in a rivalry that leaves Michigan searching for its soul every November. It’s a program that, as long as Harbaugh has been here, has hung its identity on its defense. Every year, its defense is lauded as one of the nation’s best. Every year, its defense is the reason it thinks it can beat Ohio State. Every year, the stats back those assertions up through 11 weeks. And then this game comes, obliterating those misconceptions and exposing the talent gap that the Wolverines spend three months dismissing. “They’re a very talented team, obviously, (have been) throughout the entire year,” said fifth-year senior linebacker Jordan Glasgow. “But we’re just as talented, I feel like.” Minutes earlier, sophomore defensive end Aidan Hutchinson sat in the same seat, rejecting the notion that defensive coordinator Don Brown’s scheme was at fault. “It’s not scheme, we just gotta execute,” Hutchinson said. “That’s it.” The answer most likely lies between scheme and talent. Per 247’s composite rankings, Ohio State’s roster has 13 former five- star recruits to Michigan’s four. For four-stars, the gap is 47 to 36. None of that is insurmountable, but it creates an uphill battle. A year ago, that talent gap was evident when Dwayne Haskins shredded Michigan for 396 yards and six touchdowns. In that game, though, Brown stood at the center of criticism for his inability to scheme against the Buckeyes’ crossing routes. This year, there was no single weakness that stood out so glaringly. Dobbins piled on 211 rushing yards, quarterback Justin Fields passed for 301 and four scores and, once again, Ohio State did whatever it wanted to the Wolverines. By the time the Buckeyes congregated in the south end zone, dancing on the maize ‘M’ while Michigan trudged down the tunnel, they had scored more points than they did against Florida Atlantic, Cincinnati, Indiana, Nebraska, Michigan State and Northwestern. “We gotta dig down next year, see what we got,” Hutchinson said. “You’re not gonna win ballgames when you’re letting up 50 to 60 points. It’s not gonna happen. So, we gotta be better.” It’s an eerily similar sentiment to the one the Wolverines preached a year ago, with an identical silence enveloping Ohio Stadium’s auxiliary media room. “We’ll come back motivated and make darn sure it doesn’t happen again,” Harbaugh said then. To make sure he stayed true to his word, Harbaugh went out and hired a young, forward- thinking offensive coordinator, relinquishing the keys to his offense for the first time in his coaching career. But on the defensive side, his only changes came when his hand was forced by these Buckeyes poaching two of his most respected assistant coaches. So a year later, when a near- carbon copy of that game unfolded in Ann Arbor, there were more questions than answers. “I’m not going into the criticizing, and blaming and things like that,” Harbaugh said. He doesn’t need to — the stat sheet does it for him. Ohio State’s composite offensive line over these past two versions of The Game: 118 points, 1,144 yards. Minutes later, as Hutchinson stared at that stat sheet, all he could do was pause and shake his head in disbelief. “It’s hard to look at,” Hutchinson said. “We’re just a better defense than this, we’re a better team than this.” For the second year in a row, they’ll have to wait 12 months to prove it. THEO MACKIE Daily Sports Editor ALEXIS RANKIN/Daily Michigan’s defense gave up 56 points to Ohio State on Saturday a year after giving up 62 to the Buckeyes.