Whew, I wish I could say that I missed the game on Saturday, but unfortunately I watched every snap. I don’t think my body was as badly bruised as the Michigan players, but there is no doubt my pride was. Diving into a recap of this game sounds like an extremely painful thing to do, but let’s face it, I need to blow an hour of work.
On Friday I previewed this matchup with the prediction of an Alabama victory by 10 points. The only thing I had correct in that was thinking Michigan could score 14 points on the Tide defense. Alabama had the advantage in every category except special teams.
Remember that I said that Alabama’s strengths lined up perfectly against Michigan’s weaknesses? Well the Wolverines got exploited over and over again. On top of the embarrassing score, Michigan also left with some major injuries that could affect the rest of the season. Taylor Lewan was shaken up with what looked like an ankle sprain. Denard got ran over by the Mack truck cornerback and was probably chewing on some vertebrae for most of the game. Brandon Moore sprained a knee, and the worst being Blake Countess tearing his ACL while covering a punt. I knew it felt weird to feel confident about the Michigan secondary, now I am back into the frantic state of.. if the B1G had any actual QB’s we are seriously screwed. In this uneasiness, I find comfort.
To be honest here I have no idea what we learned about Michigan in this game. I happen to think, or want to believe, that Michigan is still one of the best teams in the B1G and a top 15 team in the nation. If this holds true, man the B1G is terrible. None of my questions were answered with any certainty from the game. Has Denard’s passing improved? It seemed like some of his mechanics looked better, but decision making was poor, the Alabama secondary made some amazing plays to break up nice throws, and the Michigan receivers had a few drops. How good is the defensive line? I actually have no idea. They just got ran over by the best offensive line that college football has seen in my memory. I think they will be alright, and could actually cause problems for a few remaining teams on the schedule, but I cannot give a definitive answer. How good is our running game? Well Fitz didn’t play, and he is clearly our best running back. Also, the offensive line was good in pass protection on Saturday, but got mauled while trying to run block. I doubt we will not know what this team really is until after the Notre Dame game or possibly MSU.
There were some things that really confused me about Saturday night though. The offensive game plan from the start seemed extremely questionable. Even CJ Mosely was confused. After the game he said, since the starting running back was out for the game we expected Denard to have the ball in his hands more often, so we were definitely surprised. I hope the playbook will continue to evolve to showcase Denard’s talents and not just Al Borgess’s system. The game plans last year for Nebraska and Ohio were great, but Saturday looked nothing like that. Denard is not, nor never will be a pocket passer. You have to adjust and let him play to his strengths (zone option, QB draws, and rolling the pocket a bit to give him clear passing lanes). Actually College Gameday diagramed this extremely well Saturday morning.
I was impressed with the special teams play. Dennis Norfleet is going to be one of the conference’s best kickoff return specialists. This guy can fly and is pretty shifty in the open field. I would be surprised if he doesn’t not finish the year with at least 1 kickoff return for a TD. Will Hagerup boomed some huge punts and looks like he has won the starting punting job, and Matt Wile looks comfortable kicking the ball through the end zone for touchbacks. We did not see the field goal kicker, but I would imagine we will this weekend.
Saturday night’s game made me look forward to the matchup with Air Force even more. Hopefully we will have a better understanding of what Team 133 can do.
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