Michigan 31, Maryland 24: We made it
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This column gets the “Michigan 31, Maryland 24” treatment in the headline, because that’s what I do every week after games. But let’s be honest here. My approach to coverage of Saturday’s game against Maryland is probably pretty similar to how the Wolverines treated game film in the aftermath of their closest game of the season: look ahead, not behind.
That’s not me hiding from a bad performance by Michigan — there’s plenty to be concerned about heading into The Game, and I’ll touch on that throughout this column. But while the temptation to overanalyze every missed block, off-target throw and poor tackle attempt may be there, Michigan ultimately did what it needed to do on Saturday against the Terrapins: remain unbeaten, and stay (relatively) healthy.
Two weeks ago, after Michigan handily beat Purdue to improve to 9-0 and finally reach “the real” part of its schedule, I wrote this in my post-game column:
Luckily for everyone associated with Michigan’s football program, the style points component of the season is (finally) in the rear view mirror. Whether Michigan wins by 49, 28 or 1 point is pretty irrelevant once it steps into this next stage of the season. And that next stage begins next Saturday in a road matchup against a top-10 foe (yes — another great byproduct of the “style points” component of the season going away means the “let’s whine about Michigan’s schedule” part of the season finally gets the Old Yeller treatment, too). As the Wolverines travel to Happy Valley, and with an edition of The Game that’s already huge on paper but is now even more heightened with sign stealing and private investigators and everything in between thrown into the mix, it’s all about surviving and advancing going forward.
The game before The Game isn’t a game that’s designed to learn something about yourself. It’s a game you need to survive.
Last fall, Michigan did just that — and in far more excruciating fashion than this year’s closer-than-expected game played out. The Wolverines needed two Jake Moody field goals in the final four minutes of the game (one with just 9 seconds remaining) to beat unranked Illinois by 2. And that game was at the Big House. So were Michigan’s two games before The Game against Indiana in the early stages of the Harbaugh Era. In 2018, Michigan hosted 5-5 Indiana and trailed at halftime, eventually winning by just 11. It was the exact same situation two years before that in 2016: Michigan hosted a .500 Indiana squad and trailed at halftime, 7-3, eventually escaping with a 10-point win. And bookended by those two stinkers against Indiana was a 2017 loss to Wisconsin the week before The Game — by 14 points, no less.
So in the grand scheme of things, Michigan’s first game of the 2023 season that was decided by just one touchdown isn’t a historical outlier. Especially since it came on the road and against a school that was already bowl eligible. Did a shaky showing against Maryland give Michigan much “momentum?” No. But week-to-week momentum is basically a myth in college football — and sports in general. I’m not necessarily a card-carrying member of the “momentum isn’t a real thing” crowd that a lot of people in analytics subscribe to. But I think it’s more of a thing on an in-game level. When you have a week to remove yourself from a performance, it’s almost impossible to keep momentum.
Last year, Michigan limped into Columbus off a 2-point win over Illinois. Ohio State came in at 11-0 with all wins by double digits. It had all the bulletin board material in the world after Michigan’s post-game and offseason comments following the 2021 game. It had the big, public, passionate speeches by members of its coaching staff. And you know what? All of that meant absolutely nothing once the ball was kicked off.
Really, even if Michigan had lost to Maryland on Saturday, it likely would have been an afterthought by the time this Saturday’s game kicks off. No, it wouldn’t have been as aesthetically pleasing of a matchup — an 11-0 vs. an 11-0 matchup looks a lot cooler than an 11-0 vs. a 10-1 team, and getting a second straight undefeated vs. undefeated matchup in this rivalry is unprecedented. But my biggest concern in the moment during the Maryland game was the health of Michigan’s players, even when it was a one-score game in the fourth quarter. Even though fans don’t want to hear it, Michigan’s health for game No. 12 on the schedule was more important than the result for game No. 11. Clearly Michigan wanted to keep its conference unbeaten streak alive (and it did just that), but the dirty little secret is the stakes for The Game were the same with a loss against Maryland as they are now that Michigan escaped with a win: Beat Ohio State and you’re in the playoff. Lose and you’re out.
And it’s because of those last 12 words that this next edition of the Michigan-Ohio State game could be the biggest one yet, given the changing college football landscape.
It’s hard not to be a prisoner of the moment in spots like this. And because of that, I’ll call it “one of the biggest Michigan-Ohio State games ever” just to hedge a bit. I was there for the 2006 game in Columbus. The 2016 game had really high stakes, too. As did last year’s contest. And that’s just covering games of my lifetime.
But while you can split hairs on past games and make compelling arguments about other big games, especially if you expand it beyond the modern era, I really can’t think of a scenario where a future matchup will have stakes anywhere near as big as they’ll be on Saturday. With 12 teams making the playoff starting next fall, a game like this simply won’t have the same importance. And that’s not even factoring in any of the off-field elements that are making Saturday even more must-watch, including the fact that this could end up being the last edition of The Game for either program’s head coach.
So here we are. On the doorstep of one of the biggest games ever in one of sports’ greatest rivalries. Two weeks ago, I was tweeting out “Queme Los Barcos,” a “burn the boats” nod to the 2008-2009 John Beilein-era Michigan Wolverines as everyone rallied around due process for this year’s football squad. With new evidence from the NCAA making that rallying cry obsolete and costing Chris Partridge his job in the process, the new, more appropriate cry this week may be “Queme Las Videocintas” — burn the videotapes. Not because there’s more evidence that needs to be hidden or destroyed (I hope). But because Michigan’s less-than-emphatic win over Maryland means next to nothing now that we’re just days away from the one game everyone’s had circled on the schedule all season long. A game that somehow continues to get bigger and bigger by the week, by the day and by the scandal.
But even if we burn last week’s Michigan-Maryland game film in its entirety, there are some lessons to be learned and some trouble spots to identify as we shift our focus to The Game. Let’s take a look at what those takeaways may be as we put last week’s game — which just so happened to be the 1,000th win in the history of the Michigan football program — in our rear view mirror for good.
The J.J. McCarthy elephant in the room
J.J. McCarthy is playing hurt. He had a noticeable limp on Saturday, and there appears to be an upper-body companion to his lower-body woes, too. For the most part, Michigan did a good job of not making him take many hits against the Terrapins. But McCarthy wasn’t completely able to get the “act like he’s playing in bubble wrap” treatment, especially with a closer-than-expected game breaking out.
As such, he took some hits. He also put some not-so-great highlights on film. Simply put, he didn’t look sharp on Saturday. His out routes had his patented zip on it, and were generally right where they needed to be. But the other branches on the route tree weren’t as sharp. He made some bad decisions, forced throws into unnecessary (and unavailable) windows and didn’t look like the J.J. McCarthy we’ve become accustomed to for most of the season.
McCarthy threw his first interception of the Big Ten season to close the first half. And it came exactly one play after he was fortunate enough to have Maryland drop another interception. Yes, having your first interception of conference plays with just six quarters left in the conference season is about as #FirstWorldProblems as they come, but the more McCarthy plays without Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh on the sidelines, the more data points are added that create a pretty wild contrast in his with/without Harbaugh stat lines.
I dropped this on Twitter after the game. The difference between McCarthy with and without Sherrone Moore as his head coach this season has been … quite jarring.
J.J.’s three games with Moore as head coach: 27-of-44 (61.3%), 344 yards, 2 TD, 4 INT, 26 yards rushing, 0 rushing TD
J.J.’s eight games with someone other than Moore as head coach: 148-of-193 (76.7%), 1,991 yards, 16 TD, 0 INT, 138 yards rushing, 3 rushing TD
The second guy looks like a legitimate Heisman contender. The first guy looks like a legitimate contender to win a Russell Bellomy impersonation competition. To look at it another way, here are McCarthy's top-graded games of the season, via PFF:
93.0 Week 1 vs. ECU
92.9 Week 2 vs. UNLV
91.8 Week 8 at Michigan St
84.4 Week 10 vs. Purdue
77.6 Week 5 at Nebraska
77.1 Week 6 at Minnesota
74.8 Week 7 vs. Indiana
74.4 Week 11 at Penn State
72.2 Week 4 vs. Rutgers
50.6 Week 12 at Maryland
47.4 Week 3 vs. Bowling Green
The three bolded games — Week 3 vs. Bowling Green (47.4) and Weeks 11/12 at Penn State and Maryland (74.4, 50.6) were three of McCarthy’s four worst performances of the season, including his two worst, and they’re the three where Moore was the acting head coach. Obviously there’s plenty of nuance involved here, though. I could write an entire column focusing on all the different factors at play here, but the five that stick the most out to me are as follows: