Michigan 52, Minnesota 10: The good kind of snakes
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One of the challenges of writing roughly 15,000 words about Michigan football every week in this space is that I run the risk of running out of ways to talk about just how dominant this 2023 Michigan Wolverines squad has been — and will likely continue to be.
At the midway point of the season, Michigan has outscored its opponents 234-40. It is No. 2 in the AP poll, trailing only the two-time defending National Champion Georgia Bulldogs that are on a 23-game winning streak. In some metrics, like the SP+, Michigan is actually No. 1 — and by a fairly comfortable margin.
Thankfully, in the aftermath of Michigan’s most recent game — a 52-10 primetime mauling of a Minnesota team that could very well end up being the Big Ten West’s second-best team by the end of the season — Gopher head coach P.J. Fleck stepped in to lend me a hand and provide all the praise necessary in his post-game presser.
“They’re as good as advertised.”
“I think they’re the best football team I have seen in 11 years of being a head coach. I’ve never seen a football team like that — that deep.”
“They’re one of the deepest, one of the best teams, one of the biggest teams, fastest teams, strongest teams. And they do not make mistakes. They are truly like a boa constrictor, and they do not beat themselves.”
“They’re very good at each position. They’re very aligned with everything that they do, they know who they are, and they go and execute that game plan. I mean, there were times where they did it at will tonight.
“We got beat tonight, period. We didn’t ‘lose the game’ — they beat us, period. In every facet of the game.”
While there’s a lot to deconstruct from those comments — and P.J. better learn quickly that if he’s going to throw his hat in the ring for the Michigan State job, he’s going to have to stop singing the praises of Michigan, no matter how accurate he was — the part that stands out most to be is the boa constrictor line, because that’s a really great way of describing the 2023 Wolverines, and an analogy I hadn’t previously considered.
In a sport where the bad kind of snakes continue to make headlines for all the wrong reasons — as I write this, Michigan State fans continue to get more and more vocal in their support of Urban Meyer potentially replacing Mel Tucker in what would be a salacious serpent swap for the ages — it’s refreshing to see this sort of snake-like behavior put on a pedestal.
Boa constrictors are famous for their unorthodox method of subduing prey: squeezing, or constricting, the weaker member of the animal kingdom to death. And while I've learned through the reporting of this column that it's been recently revealed that boa constrictors actually cut off the blood supply of their prey rather than the long-accepted method of slowly squeezing the life out one breath at a time (it’s crazy the things you learn while writing about football these days!), the latter is such a fitting analogy of what makes this Michigan football team so damn good that I’m going to roll with that.
On Saturday, Michigan slowly squeezed the life out of Minnesota one breath at a time. There wasn’t one major highlight, or one knockout punch. Rather, it was just a suffocation from the opening whistle, and it only let up when Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh called off the starters in the third quarter and made a conscious effort to get every single non-long snapper that traveled to Minneapolis into the game to get to play on a national stage.
For the defense, there were multiple sacks, multiple TFLs, multiple interceptions and yes, multiple touchdowns. Not only did 22 different Wolverines pick up tackles, 17 different Michigan defenders had multiple(!) tackles.
With Minnesota’s third drive serving as an exception, when Zach Evans had some success on the ground on three consecutive plays, the Gophers — whose identity centers around having one of college football’s most consistently good running games over the past few years — simply couldn’t move the ball. Evans ripped off consecutive runs of 12, 14 and 8 yards at the beginning of that drive. His remaining nine touches went for 11 total yards. In fact, the entire team combined for 77 yards on 36 carries outside of those three Evans scampers, with the longest carry going for 8 yards. That’s an average of 2.1 yards per carry for a damn good rushing team.
When Minnesota tried to pivot to passing, it just got worse. Save for an improbable 35-yard touchdown catch by Daniel Jackson in the final seconds of the first half, here’s how Minnesota’s other 20 dropbacks played out:
4 of 15 passing (27%)
17 total yards (1.13 yards per attempt)
2 first downs gained
9 pressures
3 sacks
An average of just 2.88 seconds to get a pass off
2 interceptions thrown, both returned for touchdowns
I’ve talked about the Pick Your Poison dilemma opposing defenses face when it comes to Michigan’s offense, but it’s a similar lose-lose situation for opposing offenses, too. Are you going to challenge the Will Johnsons of the world and put yourself at risk of getting your quarterback mauled by Michigan’s pass rush? Or are you going to run right into the heart of a defense anchored by Mason Graham, Kenneth Grant and Kris Jenkins? That’s like being presented the option of taking a blue pill or a red pill and just requesting a cyanide pill instead to save everyone the hassle.
It was more of the same on the offensive side of the ball. Blake Corum (9-69-1) didn’t do any favors to his Doak Walker campaign, nor did Roman Wilson (3-56-0) pad his Biletnikoff resume. J.J. McCarthy (14-20-219-1) was a hell of a lot more efficient and careful with the ball than Heisman frontrunner Caleb Williams, who struggled mightily in a 2OT home game against unranked Arizona, but the vast majority of Heisman voters who just skim box scores and go by volume stats will only see that the two had comparable passing yards and go on with their days. But even with all three pieces of Michigan’s three-headed monster having modest nights, Michigan still crossed the 50-point threshold. When the starters fully cycled out of the game, Michigan had 52 points on 53 snaps.
Forget the point-a-minute offenses from the Fielding Yost days. This was a point-a-snap team on Saturday for a good chunk of the evening.
It’s like one of those Chinese finger traps. The more you panic and try to adjust on the fly, the more it tightens and the quicker your hopes for getting loose go away.
Don’t worry, though, Minnesota. It’s not a you problem. It’s an everyone-that-faces Michigan problem.
It’s just what happens when you come face to face with a boa constrictor.
Let’s dig a little deeper into Saturday’s game…