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maize & blue review, 233pm


Brock Heilig • Maize&BlueReview
Staff Writer
@brockheilig

Michigan suffered its first loss in 616 days on Saturday with its 31-12 loss to Texas at home. The 10th-ranked Wolverines looked inferior in just about every way, and it resulted in the program's worst loss since the 34-11 blowout loss to Georgia in the 2021 College Football Playoff semifinal.

Here are three takeaways from the humbling game.
Michigan outmatched everywhere
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There are plenty of stats to point to that would support the claim that Texas thoroughly dominated Michigan, but doing so one-by-one would take all day. At first, it was on third down. Then, it was on the ground. After that, it was in turnover margin.

Nothing went right for Michigan on Saturday, which was evident when typically sure-handed Colston Loveland fumbled, giving Texas the ball in plus territory.

Things continued to break down in the second half when Michigan suffered a 55-yard play on an end around and proceeded to leave Texas running back Jaydon Blue uncovered out of the backfield for a 7-yard touchdown.

Michigan's star defensive players were silenced on Saturday. NFL prospects Mason Graham and Kenneth Grant were contained for the most part, and Texas' blueprint heading into the contest worked perfectly.
3rd down successes... and failures

It was evident from the first drive of the game. Texas converted on three 3rd downs, and although it didn't result in points for the Longhorns on that particular drive, there was clearly an early area of concern for the Wolverines. And it was not contained to just the first series.

Texas was 8-10 on 3rd down in the first half (10-16 overall), and it nearly doubled Michigan in time of possession after 30 minutes.

Quinn Ewers and the Texas offense were carving up Michigan's so-called elite defense, to the tune of 24 first-half points.

Meanwhile, Michigan was just 1-5 on 3rd down in the first half (3-12 overall), and the exact opposite was true for the Wolverines. Davis Warren looked subpar at best and struggled to operate the offense.

The offense was known to be a work in progress, but Michigan fans should certainly have long-term concern about Wink Martindale and the defense's performance on Saturday. With USC and Oregon still to come to Ann Arbor, and of course the annual rivalry contest against Ohio State, Michigan will need to figure out its defense sooner rather than later.
A big reality check needs to lower expectations for Team 145

Many fans expected Michigan to take a step back in 2024 following the national championship, but it appears the Wolverines will suffer more of a ginormous leap backward. Sure, Texas is the No. 3 team in the country and looked every bit the part of it on Saturday, but Michigan didn't even look competitive.

The loss exposed major issues with the 2024 Wolverines, and expectations for the season need to be lowered greatly.

Michigan's supposed top-notch defense was no where near as dominant as it has been in recent seasons. Perhaps it's a factor of the offense's ineptitude now allowing for the defense to catch its breath, but it's a team sport for a reason.

At this point in time, Michigan can kiss hopes of a fourth straight Big Ten title goodbye, and a fourth consecutive College Football Playoff appearance seems out of reach, too.

Michigan will play enough poor Big Ten teams to secure bowl eligibility, but anything beyond that seems to be a pipe dream for Michigan fans.

  • Author

free press


Michigan football humbled by Texas in 31-12 smackdown
Portrait of Rainer Sabin Rainer Sabin
Detroit Free Press

Michigan football no longer owns the nation's longest winning streak.

And it wasn't a pretty sight for the raucous maize and blue faithful at Michigan Stadium vs. the No. 3 Texas Longhorns.

The No. 9 Wolverines saw their 16-game overall win streak and 23-game home win streak torn to shreds Saturday against Texas in a 31-12 Longhorns shellacking in Ann Arbor.

Michigan (1-1) last lost to TCU in the Fiesta Bowl in the College Football Playoff national semifinal Dec. 31, 2022. It won the national championship this past January.

Michigan's vaunted defense had no answers for Texas (2-0) quarterback Quinn Ewers, who left Ohio State after his freshman season in 2021, and head coach Steve Sarkisian's scheme. Ewers skewered the Wolverines for 246 passing yards and three touchdowns.

And the Wolverines offense was no match in trying to keep pace. They produced just one touchdown, coming on a Semaj Morgan 31-yard catch with under two minutes remaining. Senior quarterback Davis Warren, making his second start, threw two interceptions. No one else attempted a pass; backup QB Alex Orji ran twice for minus-1 yards.

++++

and that's it - that's all they have to say for a recap

  • Author

detroit news

Wolverines no match for Longhorns in top-10 clash
Portrait of Angelique S. Chengelis Angelique S. Chengelis
The Detroit News

The Wolverines, the defending national champions, said they were looking forward to the matchup against third-ranked Texas, a national semifinalist last year. They said this would be a statement game and prove the doubters wrong.

Well, it was a statement game — for Texas.

The Longhorns, a touchdown-favorite entering the game against No. 10 Michigan, overwhelmed the Wolverines, 31-12, on Saturday in a much-ballyhooed matchup at Michigan Stadium with all of the major college football television shows in town.

Texas and its high-potent offense dismantled and wore down Michigan’s strength, its defense, while the Wolverines’ offense looked anemic and undermined by three turnovers.

Kicker Dominic Zvada was the lone highlight for the Wolverines after contributing two field goals from 37 and 52 yards until the final two minutes of the game. With the game out of reach, Michigan drove 78 yards on eight plays and culminated with a 31-yard touchdown pass from Davis Warren to Semaj Morgan. The two-point conversion failed.

The Wolverines (1-1), underdogs at home for the first time since facing Ohio State in 2021, saw their 23-game home winning streak snapped. They had won 29 straight regular-season games.

Michigan, which trailed 24-3 at halftime, added a field goal from Zvada in the third quarter but Texas (2-0) responded with a six-play touchdown drive and a third touchdown pass from Quinn Ewers. Ewers, who was 24 of 36 passing for 246 yards and three touchdowns, connected with Jaydon Blue for a 7-yard score and the 31-6 lead late in the third quarter.

Warren, in his second collegiate start for Michigan, was 22 of 33 passing for 204 yards, a touchdown and two interceptions, one which was tipped by receiver Tyler Morris and the other on what appeared to be a miscommunication with tight end Colston Loveland. Texas scored a field goal and touchdown, respectively, off those turnovers.

Loveland finished with eight catches for 70 yards, while Michigan had 80 rushing yards on 23 carries. Donovan Edwards led with eight carries for 41 yards.

The Longhorns finished with 389 total yards of offense. Tight end Gunnar Helm had seven catches for 98 yards and a touchdown. Texas was an impressive 10 of 16 on third down and did not have a turnover.

Texas led 24-3 at halftime. The Longhorns took advantage of uneven play-calling and two Michigan turnovers, one that came with just less than a minute left, and rode their pass game to great success. Texas, which had possession eight minutes longer and fatigued the Wolverines’ defense, outgained Michigan 279-88 and had 203 passing yards in the first half. Their experienced offensive line pushed around Michigan’s defensive line and the Longhorns were 8-for-10 on third down while Michigan was 1-for-5.

The Longhorns were able to expand their lead with 10 seconds left in the first half after an uncharacteristic mistake by Loveland, who caught a pass from Warren but fumbled with 59 seconds left, giving Texas the ball at the Michigan 42-yard line. Texas scored on a 5-yard pass from Ewers to Matthew Golden.

Texas took a 17-3 lead after the Wolverines’ first turnover of the game when Warren, on a third-and-short, saw his pass attempt tipped by Morris into the hands of Andrew Mukoba at the Michigan 37-yard line. The Longhorns looked ready to add another touchdown, but Ewers, under pressure from Derrick Moore, threw incomplete on third down. Bert Auburn made his second field goal of the half, this time from 26 yards.

Early in the second quarter, Texas used a 12-play drive that covered 76 yards and Jerrick Gibson scored on a 7-yard run for a 14-3 lead.

The Wolverines, who opened the game with a false start en route to a three-and-out, responded to the Longhorns’ first score with a strong drive that included some trickery. After Edwards ran 5 yards for a first down, Davis, on a flea flicker from Edwards, connected for a 22-yard gain to C.J. Charleston, a grad transfer from Youngstown State, to the Texas 41-yard line. On thrid-and-3, Alex Orji came in at quarterback and after a Texas timeout, he was stuffed for no gain. Zvada made a 37-yard field goal to pull Michigan within 7-3.

After faltering on their opening drive, the Longhorns took a 7-0 lead starting from their 44-yard line after a 28-yard punt from Tommy Doman. The went 56 yards on six plays and scored on a 21-yard pass from Ewers to Helm. At that point, Texas had 127 yards, including 103 passing.

The Longhorns took the ball on the opening toss and gained 71 yards — they ran 12 plays and 10 were passes — but three penalties stymied them drive. They were 3-for-3 on third down and on a fourth third-down attempt, appeared to have scored on a 24-yard pass from Ewers to DeAndre Moore Jr. But Cameron Williams, who had two false start penalties, was called for holding to negate the touchdown. Two plays later, Texas missed on a 43-yard field goal when Auburn’s kick went wide right.

  • Author

off topic but this popped up and had to share:

https://www.secrant.com/rant/sec-score-board/

our secrant thread is at 622 replies / 32 pages, for context 10x all other gameday threads except pigs' which is 1625/89

https://www.secrant.com/rant/sec-score-board/texas-31--michigan-12-final---fox/114837928/

aggy secrant thread: 32 replies, 2 pages

https://www.secrant.com/rant/sec-score-board/mcneese-state-10--texas-aandm-52-final---secn/114840379/

advantage: TEXAS

 

 

  • Author

i'm sure this in the gameweek thread somewhere but it popped up again just now, i hadn't seen it, and everyone needs to know that we have a new friend....

 

wolverineswire

Rick Neuheisel predicts that Texas will blow out Michigan football
Share this article 234 shares
 
September 4, 2024 4:49 pm ET

No one really knows how the Week 2 matchup between Michigan football and Texas will go, but one college football analyst is saying take the Longhorns — big.

CBS Sports and SiriusXM Full Ride host Rick Neuheisel is reacting to what he saw in Week 1 with Michigan edging Fresno State, 30-10, but taking all game to do so and Texas destroying Colorado State, 52-0. It’s the biggest nonconference game in 30 years for the Wolverines and the first thing that Neuheisel is looking forward to is just witnessing the atmosphere in Ann Arbor.

“The pomp and circumstance of this game is gonna be off the charts, Neuheisel said. “We’re going to have a complete party before the game because of the two brands doing battle. But what’s happened at Texas is what happened in Athens. Kirby Smart built Alabama in Athens. Steve Sarkisian is building Alabama in Austin.”

That may be true that Sarkisian has learned from Nick Saban during his tenure as the Alabama offensive coordinator. But what Neuheisel might be missing is that Michigan is also built like Georgia — with strong line play on both sides and with the best tight end in college football. However, the offensive line for the Wolverines didn’t look particularly astounding in Week 1.

Perhaps it’s because of that, or just the general sluggishness of Michigan in Week 1, but Neuheisel is predicting a blowout in Ann Arbor — and not by the hands of the defending national champion which hasn’t lost a home game since 2020 or a regular season game since 2021.

“They’re not only gonna win, they’re gonna whip ’em,” Neuheisel said. “Texas is that much faster. They’ve shown they’re physical. They held Colorado State to less than 200 yards. It’s not going to be a close game.”

Texas does have a lot of speed, but so does the Michigan defense. If styles make fights in football, this will certainly be an interesting clash on Saturday.

Reminds me of that Michigan blogger preview everyone was making fun of. Didn't he basically say our offense was meh? Lol 

10 minutes ago, CurlyDumps said:

Reminds me of that Michigan blogger preview everyone was making fun of. Didn't he basically say our offense was meh? Lol 

Somebody needs to pull those receipts 

  • Author

slate article on michigan cratering

tl/dr: aggy spank bank, texas didn't win, wool marines lost, etc.

+++


By Alex Kirshner
Sept 08, 20245:52 PM

[Image: Guy with his arms around Gibson as Zeke Berry lies on the ground helplessly beside them.]
Jerrick Gibson, of the Texas Longhorns, is tackled by TJ Guy, of the Michigan Wolverines, in Ann Arbor on Saturday. Gregory Shamus/Getty Images

Michigan was due for a significant step back. Everybody in college football knew it, including the Wolverines’ millions of fans. The team won all 15 games last year en route to a national championship, then lost 13 draft picks and head coach Jim Harbaugh to the NFL. Some regression was inevitable.

Saturday was still a hell of a jolt, though. The Texas Longhorns walked into Ann Arbor and drew and quartered the Wolverines. Texas, merely a one-touchdown favorite coming in, won by a 31–12 score that didn’t even fully capture the lopsidedness of the performance. This was a match between the nominal defending national champions and a current national championship contender. The score was 24–3 at halftime, and at that point, Texas had controlled the ball for two-thirds of the afternoon. Texas quarterback Quinn Ewers took whatever he wanted as the air gradually seeped out of the Big House, filled with 111,000 humans.

It’s not unprecedented for someone to destroy a defending champ this early in the year. (In 2020 LSU took an arguably uglier home loss in its first game post-title.) Michigan is dealing with many of the same problems that plague dozens of teams every year, including the best ones. Namely, it’s hard to resupply quickly after losing tons of good players and most of a program’s key coaches. But Michigan was also a victim of timing, as Harbaugh’s move to the Los Angeles Chargers clashed inconveniently with college football’s new calendar. Add in a dash of post-championship complacency, and you have a recipe for a rapid (if temporary) downfall that no program has ever quite brewed up before.
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Michigan’s most noticeable problem is that its quarterbacks suck. The team had JJ McCarthy, a first-round NFL draftee, slinging and running the ball the past three years. It did not develop a capable backup, however, and an offseason alternating between buzz and worry has now materialized into a season of horrible QB play. The presumed starter over the summer, as far as the public knew, was last year’s top backup, Alex Orji. But most people have never seen Orji throw more than a handful of passes. The job went instead to Davis Warren, a former walk-on who likely would’ve had more scholarship opportunities if he hadn’t had to spend time and energy beating cancer late in high school. It is now clear, after two games, that neither Warren nor Orji has any juice. Michigan’s quarterbacks offer very little—not just compared with the dynamic McCarthy or a star like Ewers at Texas, but compared with any Division I program. There are teams in the lower-level Football Championship Subdivision that can trot out better passers.

There are other problems. Over the previous three years, no team had a more consistent, physical offensive line than Michigan. The Wolverines’ big lads up front were ferocious maulers who enabled an excellent running game. It isn’t a coincidence that Sherrone Moore—the man elevated to head coach during Harbaugh’s 2023 suspensions and after his departure—started out coaching this group. But the line turned over all five starters from the championship team, and it has yet to congeal into a dominant unit. Michigan also lost starting running back and program legend Blake Corum, and while it returned a couple of tailbacks with experience, neither is Corum. The whole operation is a lot less special in 2024. Meanwhile, the team has a mediocre group of wideouts going after passes from a lesser quarterback. It’ll be enough to beat most of the flotsam in the middle of the Big Ten, but not the best teams in the country.

Defensively, the Wolverines should still be quite good. Most of their stars from a dominant 2023 unit are back. But they lost three top-100 NFL picks on that side of the ball, and they lost their coordinator, who rolled out to Southern California with Harbaugh. Texas picked on some of the unit’s fill-ins on Saturday and beat up the Michigan defense worse than anyone had in a few years. There is no area of the game in which Michigan seems better now than it was last year, except perhaps kicker, where it got a stud transfer from Arkansas State. It’s possible that no team in college football history has lost more playing and coaching talent from one year to the next. Things may yet get worse before they get better.
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All of these issues flowed downhill from Harbaugh. He had wanted for years to get back to the NFL, where he came within a whisker of winning a Super Bowl with the San Francisco 49ers. The Chargers finally bit in January, finalizing the deal right after Michigan beat Washington to win the college title. Harbaugh is a great pickup for the Chargers for the same reasons he was a great coach for Michigan.

A college team losing its coach to the pros is a sign of a healthy program, but in modern college football, it’s also a massive inconvenience that sets the team back relative to its peers. The NFL’s hiring-and-firing carousel doesn’t get going until January, after most college teams are done playing and after the transfer-portal “window,” when teams can go shopping for other schools’ players, has closed. Michigan is not heavily reliant on transfers, preferring to retain and develop its own players. But the 2023 championship team was a good example of how an elite group uses the portal to supplement its roster: Star edge rusher Josaiah Stewart arrived from Coastal Carolina, offensive tackle LaDarius Henderson from Arizona State.
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Michigan, then, was always due to have huge roster holes. The program added a couple of players shortly before Harbaugh left. But Michigan, busy with the College Football Playoff and coach uncertainty, could not be a major transfer-portal player after the season. Another transfer window opened in April, but there aren’t many great players available that late in the year. Teams have already gone through spring practice, compensation deals with schools’ outside collectives are already inked, and the coaching turnover that prompts a lot of transfers is in the rearview. Could Michigan’s outside boosters have waved a million bucks in front of a better QB last December, before Harbaugh left? Almost certainly. Could the program have landed someone better in April, though? The answer is still probably yes, but there just weren’t many great QBs available by that point. The pool of talent had gotten shallower, and Michigan may have thought (wrongly) that its existing quarterbacks were a better bet.

It was Harbaugh’s extensive dalliance with the NFL—not karmic payback for stealing signs—that put Michigan in an extra bad spot this season. Wolverines fans would take that trade 1,000 times out of 1,000. Flags, after all, fly forever. But Michigan was due for a decline even if Harbaugh had stayed. And the lateness of his move made it more difficult for Moore to patch up his team in his first year in charge.
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The program’s long-term outlook remains rosy. Michigan will never be dislodged as one of the sport’s blue bloods, and Moore has every chance to be a solid head coach. He’s already shown hints of that, filling in for a suspended Harbaugh for nearly half of last season. He was Harbaugh’s obvious replacement, and it must have been nice for Michigan to not have to mount a sprawling search.

But things may not be fun for quite a while. The eventual punishment the NCAA metes out for the sign-stealing affair won’t be as bad as the indignity of getting annihilated by Ohio State this November for the first time since 2019. The best course of action will be to keep staring very intently at 2023’s championship trophies. In the best case, they are bright enough to cause temporary blindness.

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