Michigan 13, Ohio State 10: Why go for 2 when you can go for 4?
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Saturday was supposed to be Ohio State’s coronation. The game that returned the Buckeyes back to their rightful place atop the Michigan-Ohio State rivalry. The one that was going to erase the horrible taste of the last three years out of their mouths (can a single win over a 6-5 team erase three straight high-stakes losses as the No. 2 team in the country? Oh well, I digress — it’s moot now).
Saturday’s game was, in the minds of Buckeye fans, the opportunity for good to triumph over evil and for the greatest roster ever assembled to beat up on a demoralized, injured and unengaged rival for 60 minutes in front of a home crowd.
Endless trash was being talked. An odd tactic from a team riding an 1,800-plus day winless streak against the rival it was about to host on Saturday. But hey, I get it. Not everyone knows what it feels like to ride the high of beating the Indiana Hoosiers.
One of the most famous moments in rivalry history — Woody Hayes going for two to run it up against Michigan in 1968 “because I couldn’t go for three” — was going to be the blueprint to Saturday’s game, where it wasn’t just a possibility that Ryan Day would run it up: it was an expectation. An inevitability.
But here’s the thing about Ohio State and expectations: those two things haven’t been meshing very well together for the past four seasons. And for the fourth time in four years, the Buckeye team that entered The Game as a top-2 team in the country on all four occasions left with the exact same end result: a gut-punch loss, no trip to Indianapolis to compete for a Big Ten Championship, and a whole lot more questions than answers.
As for the Woody Hayes-inspired fan fiction so many Buckeye fans were writing in their heads in the days and weeks leading up to The Game? Well, Ohio State didn’t have many chances to go for two on Saturday. You only get that opportunity after scoring a touchdown, and the Buckeyes’ $20 million roster only crossed the goalline once in 60 minutes, and opted to kick an extra point to tie the game at 10 rather than “run it up” all the way to 11.
After that touchdown, the Buckeyes headed into the locker room in a familiar place — in a really tight matchup with 30 minutes to play in college football’s greatest rivalry. In the last four editions of the game, no team has led by more than four points at halftime.
What came next was familiar in terms of the end result, but incredibly different in how Michigan got across the finish line.
The Wolverines entered Saturday not only having won three straight games against the Buckeyes — but three straight second halves. A refresher, for those who may need it:
In the second half of The Game in 2021, Michigan outscored Ohio State, 28-14. All four of Michigan's drives that didn't end in victory formation ended in Hassan Haskins rushing TDs. Defensively, Michigan forced Ohio State to punt on its first two drives of the half, creating all the separation needed after a 14-13 halftime score.
In the second half of The Game in 2022, Michigan outscored Ohio State, 28-3. Once again, Michigan scored four second-half touchdowns, with three coming from 45 yards or more (85, 75, 45). Ohio State had six drives drives and mustered just three points on a FG, with three punts and two INTs coming on the other five drives.
In the second half of The Game in 2023, Michigan outscored Ohio State, 16-14. The scoring differential was for more modest, but Michigan scored points on all four of its non-victory formation drives, winning the time of possession battle by more than an 18-12 margin. Ohio State scored on two of its four drives, with the other two being a three-and-out and then a game-ending interception by Rod Moore.
In other words, Michigan’s offense had been near perfect in the second half of each of the Wolverines’ last three matchups with Ohio State. My favorite stat I shared after last year’s win was as follows: Michigan punted the ball just one time in the last three second halves vs. Ohio State. Here was the drive-by-drive breakdown:
2021:
TD
TD
TD
TD
Victory formation
2022:
TD
Punt
TD
Missed FG
TD
TD
Victory formation
2023:
FG
TD
FG
FG
Victory formation
Here was the problem on Saturday. Michigan had history on its side. But one thing it didn’t have: an offense. The Wolverines had just four first downs in the first half. Their two scoring drives went for 2 plays/2 yards and 4 plays/3 yards for an average YPP of 0.883.
The 2021 team had Hassan Haskins score four second-half TDs. The roster also boasted future NFL talent like Blake Corum, Cornelius Johnson, Roman Wilson and Luke Schoonmaker, and ran behind the Joe Moore Award winning offensive line that had a handful of future NFLers on it, too.
The 2022 team was led by five-star QB J.J. McCarthy and still had most of those future NFL wide receivers still on the team — plus Ronnie Bell, who wasn't available in 2021 because of injury.
The 2023 team had the biggest collection of future NFL stars at the closest point to their peak. McCarthy was playing QB just a few months before being a Day 1 NFL Draft pick at QB. Corum was just a month shy of joining the Michigan football record book for rushing TDs. Johnson and Wilson were still Michigan's top 2 WR options two years later after that being the case back in 2021, and they were complemented by Colston Loveland at TE getting to play in his only edition of The Game as Michigan's TE1.
You take a look at the offense that took the field for Michigan on Saturday and look for NFL talent, and it feels like playing Where’s Waldo on a page that has no red and white on it. With all due respect to the Wolverines who busted their asses on Saturday, this was an offense full of guys that are likely going pro at something other than sports — with maybe guys like Kalel Mullings and Myles Hinton being late Day 3 or UDFA exceptions.
But let’s be honest here: Michigan’s starting QB on Saturday was a walk-on who was diagnosed with leukemia the same year Ohio State last won in this rivalry. Michigan’s leading rusher was a converted linebacker from the not-so-talent-rich state of Masschusetts. Michigan’s leading receiver was a walk-on who spent most of his time in college playing special teams and looked poised to be a lacrosse player at UMass Amherst this time four years ago. Its offensive line has been a revolving door of mediocrity all season long after last year’s starting offensive line all moved on to the NFL over the offseason.
A year after Michigan scored at least 30 points in 11 of its 12 regular season games, this year’s Michigan's offense scored 30 points in its opener against Fresno State and then never reached the 30s again until lowly Northwestern came to town last week.
This was the offense that was supposed to outscore mighty Ohio State in the second half, against the Buckeye defense that also just so happened to be No. 1 in the nation in total defense?
Well, yeah.
And it did.
But it did so doing things Michigan’s way.
The path to victory in this year’s edition of The Game was going to have to be nothing like the path taken the last three years. That’s because this year’s Michigan team is nothing like the last three iterations of the Michigan Wolverines, for better or for worse — and almost always for worse.
But while Michigan’s offense didn’t shine in the second half in the same way it did the last three years, it did accomplish what it needed to do to win this year’s game — by controlling the ball, draining the clock and keeping Ohio State’s offense off the field.
After Ohio State's missed field goal late in the third quarter to keep the game at 10-10, here’s how both sides played the rest of the game out:
Michigan: 27 plays, 134 yards, 15:01 TOP
Ohio State: 7 plays, 10 yards, 1:57 TOP
That’s one team playing winning football during winning time. And the other team is Ohio State.
This wasn’t the game falling into Michigan’s lap. It was the game being played at a style that Michigan dictated — one that Michigan hoped and prayed it could impose when gameplanning earlier in the week.
That’s not me being revisionist to fit things into a neat little narrative that I can write about. FOX analyst Joel Klatt, who gets the opportunity to speak to coaches on the Wednesday of game week as part of his broadcasting duties, said as much when breaking down the game Monday morning.
Klatt said “God as my witness, they told us this during the week” when talking about the keep-it-close-early, go-for-the-juggular-late game plan:
“All we hope for is a one-score game in the fourth quarter, because then we feel like we feel like we've got them. And we're gonna win that game.” ... “They said ‘IF we can travel a really narrow path toward a one-score game in the fourth quarter, we'll win that game.’ And they were VERY confident about that. Very confident about that. And now I know why. Now I know why. Because in the last three years, it's been very evident to them that they would be able to win physically in the fourth quarter. And they've done that. For now four straight years. Four straight years. You saw it in the way that they played. You saw it in the way that their offensive line just continued to grind away at the Ohio State defense. And it wasn't pretty. But guess what? They finally were able to start running the football a little bit in the fourth quarter.”
The gaudy volume of points from the past three second halves may not have been there on Saturday in the Horseshoe, but the toughness that was the trademark of the Jim Harbaugh Era was still very much there on Saturday — on both sides of the ball. And it looks like it’s there to stay.
As for Ohio State? The team that was already planning which plays to run while it ran up the score and went for two? Maybe the Buckeyes should’ve been worried about going for one — as in one single win, something the program hasn’t accomplished in 1,829 days against its rival.
Meanwhile, Michigan is at four — four straight wins over Ohio State. Four straight Buckeye seasons ruined. And four straight meltdowns caused for fans and players alike.
Soak it in. Enjoy it. Because unlike Ryan Day, these meltdowns will have serious staying power, and can be counted on to show up when you least expect it.
Below the paywall jump, there’s much, much more to discuss about a game that’s going to go in the record books as, according to Las Vegas, the biggest upset in the history of the rivalry. There’s the Ryan Day factor, there’s Kalel Mullings, there’s Wink Martindale and the mighty Michigan defense, there’s the post-game shenanigans. And then there’s a dozen or so unsung Wolverines who all did their parts on Saturday, too, and deserve special mention in the aftermath of a game like this. So pull up a chair, grab some caffeine and strap in for the longest newsletter I’ve ever published in five years of doing this. 👇
(For those reading this in your e-mail inboxes rather than on the site itself, you’ll likely need to click through and go to the site because this is north of 9,000 words and will almost certainly get cut off in your inboxes. Sorry, not sorry.)
