Michigan Football: Maryland- What Happened and What it Means

Nov 22, 2014; Ann Arbor, MI, USA; Maryland Terrapins defensive back Jarrett Ross (32) pressures Michigan Wolverines wide receiver Amara Darboh (82) in the third quarter at Michigan Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Rick Osentoski-USA TODAY Sports

Posted at 5:30am — 11/25/2014

Michigan Wolverines: Maryland — What Happened and What it Means

Critical Meltdown — Michigan Loses to Maryland

Once again a combination of offensive self-inflicted miscues and defensive melting at the wrong time became the final scenes of Michigan’s best (by far) chance to get to a bowl game. The scriptwriter for Michigan games did not have to work hard this year; the same scenes led to the same acts that framed most of Michigan’s season. Like our bold hero Radames in the magnificent opera Aida, Michigan buried itself in a final woeful throb. Looking back to the failures in the Rutger’s and Maryland games is tempting but tortuous. Remember when folks were gleeful to get Rutgers and Maryland on the schedule?

Everyone expected a close game Saturday, but by the time the fourth quarter started the spiral of miscues and perhaps even some give up punched out any chance of salvation.

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The same usual characteristics came to the forefront like a volcano making a quick appearance on the landscape. The game started off bittersweet with the Wolverines rolling the dice and executing a nice fifty plus yard fake punt. The offense sputtered and a field goal left Maryland with minimal damage.

All of a sudden Bo Dever becomes the receiving target and the combination of a shaky pass and Dever knocking the ball into the air gave Maryland three easy points.

Michigan ran a trio of running backs with some success, but the offensive continuity caused by the changes seemed to be lost. Doug Nussmeirer continued to dial up pass when the running game appeared to gain some momentum and between dropped passes and poor accuracy; Michigan lost the opportunity to create easy third down conversions.

Like the past few weeks, touchdowns for either team came hard, until Maryland needed one to gain the lead late. Michigan squeaks out a field goal with one second in the first half and the game was tied 9-9 with Michigan getting the second half kickoff.

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Both teams found one stock play in the second half, the planned quarterback run. While Gardner still does not look to be the runner of old, he clearly ran better than the past several weeks.

Both teams scored on quarterback runs to nullify the offensive warts. The game appeared to be afoot as Old Will was fond of saying.

Then, came the spiral. Perhaps this can first be traced to the erased touchdown return by Dennis Norfleet on a very weak block to the back. Next, a roughing the kicker penalty provided Maryland with a golden opportunity. The author’s opinion is don’t even attempt the block and take the chance of continuing the drive, just give it and get on to offense. The risk outweighed the reward.

Throughout, not just in the fourth quarter, if a guy was open Devin Gardner missed him, if Gardner put it on target the ball was dropped, usually by a “heralded” wide receiver.

Michigan misses a field goal and the defense is charged with providing a key shutdowns. The shutdown objective became meltdown mode for both the offense and defense. Again, C.J. Brown simply ran the ball as Michigan (again) gave up contain. Maryland went to the hurry up and Michigan’s defense could not adjust or execute. Timeouts were again spent to regroup and make corrections. The defense looked gassed in the fourth quarter and at the end gave up large chunks of yardage; the result being Michigan had the clock ran out by a visiting team.

The use of the final time out will be debated and there is no answer here. The common theory is that when a team has one time out remaining, take it immediately in such a position. The counter offer is that it is worthless to take a timeout with the other team is in second down and two yards to go situations. It seemed to the observer that seven seconds (or so) should have remained on the clock, but no one seemed to care, except Randy Edsall.

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There really were few bright spots. The defense held early on, but as all could see melted again when the chips were down. Maryland was tougher and showed more willpower down the stretch. Maryland has seven wins and Michigan has five. Maryland may roll Rutgers next week for an eight-win season. Edsall will pay no attention to his detractors who view his team as mediocre or below, with what that team has available on offense, one can only say, nice job Coach. The Maryland defensive front is good and made enough plays to hit the Michigan offense with negative plays. So, between Maryland making enough big stops to place the Michigan offense off schedule, and Michigan going to the passing game and coming up empty, the offense again struggled.

What this means is that Michigan is now a lame duck team, probably with a lame duck staff, and with a temp athletic director (Jim Hackett), and also with a President (Mark Schlissel) that unceremoniously blemished the roll of football at Michigan. This is a bigger mess than four years ago, because the troubles are spread throughout the entire university chain.

The author has had experience with “intellectual elitism” and it rarely, if ever, pays dividends. Michigan has a medical academic running the show, and that is just fine. But his predecessor had a little more discretion and more pragmatism. His bias was tipped when he spoke of viewing Michigan on web and football kept coming up.

The best out for the President is to hire someone with true knowledge and experience in how “these football things” can be worked out. There is public relations damage to repair. There will likely be some balking of top candidates to consider a role as Athletic Director or Head Football Coach. The answer may be fat paychecks too stiff to resist. If Michigan ends up with a yes man Athletic Director subject to the whims of others more so than a personal vision, bad could turn to worse.

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Written by GBMWolverine Staff — Doc4Blu

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