Michigan Football: The “OSU has more talent” excuse was always wrong

Hmm, who would’ve thought that Michigan football could beat OSU and win the Big Ten title, eh? It seems that many fans before this season started thought that OSU was some unstoppable juggernaut, and Michigan wouldn’t be able to catch them.

These same fans, national talking heads, and media members also thought that Jim Harbaugh should’ve been let go and didn’t understand why he was retained.

Boy, what a difference a year can make.

No, taking seven years to beat an opponent is never ideal, but some things take longer than others to accomplish. The main thing was fans and media members needed to have patience. It takes the right group of players and coaches to gel together to do something special. That’s exactly what this season has become: a special season.

The main thing fans and media have been so concerned about leading up to this year, and in years past, was OSU’s recruiting compared to Michigan’s.

They always looked at OSU having top-3 recruiting classes and thought that’s the main reason why Michigan football has been losing their games to its rival, and why things would never change as long as Ryan Day was head coach.

Well, I’m here to tell you that if you thought that way, you were wrong. If you gave Michigan no shot this year, and just wrote them off automatically, before the season even began, you were wrong.

Talent wasn’t issue with Michigan football and Ohio State

I actually wrote an article over the summer about how the talent gap between Michigan and Ohio State wasn’t the main reason why Michigan was losing to Ohio State all these years in a row and got absolutely blown up in the comment section for it. But I said what I said, I stood firm, and lo and behold, I was right. Michigan beat Ohio State. Would you look at that!

Because Michigan finally beat Ohio State, fans can no longer say that the talent gap is too wide, or the players on Ohio State are too talented for Michigan to overcome.

That has never been the case. As the saying goes, “where there’s a will, there’s a way.” Michigan found a way to win this year, relying on their ground game, keeping OSU out of the endzone a few times, and won the game.

Michigan fans and media used this excuse as a coping mechanism to deal with all of these losses. Each loss felt like a punch to the gut for Michigan fans.

My main point is: if you look throughout the history of sports, nothing has ever been impossible to accomplish. Yes, at various times, the odds seemed really stacked against certain teams trying to beat juggernauts, but throughout history, we have seen various teams rise to the challenge and slay the proverbial dragon.

This 2021-22 Michigan football squad can say that it is one of those teams.

Everybody thought that Michigan would seemingly never beat OSU again. This was probably an exaggeration, but the reality of the situation was, the losing streak was already at eight straight games, and fans and media didn’t foresee Michigan winning “The Game” anytime soon.

If you really thought about it, really pondered both teams’ strengths and weaknesses, you could’ve foreseen this victory over OSU coming from a mile away.

It was the perfect recipe. OSU had a first-time starting QB. Even though he is talented (C.J, Stroud) he is still only a freshman and has a lot to learn still.

Next, Ohio State lost a lot of stars on their defense from last year. They were playing a bunch of underclassmen in their secondary, while Michigan football had a veteran-laden team on offense to exploit OSU’s defense.

Lastly, Don Brown was let go, and Mike MacDonald came in with a completely new scheme that finally took away those crossing routes and other routes that OSU used in ’18 and ’19 to exploit Michigan in those blowouts. It was the perfect recipe for how to handle OSU’s offense.

Listen, I don’t expect Michigan to beat OSU eight straight times like OSU did to us. That’s nowhere near realistic. I’m sure fans and media can agree that we just want the series to be competitive again and have at least a split over a decade (5-5 win to losses) in the future, and if we can string together a winning streak over the Buckeyes, so be it.

We can no longer say now though that OSU having all these recruiting classes will mean an automatic loss to our rivals. OSU can’t be arrogant either. They can’t say that they will just walk all over Michigan just because they have more talent. Talent doesn’t mean jack if you can’t walk the walk, and have a great game plan.

If anything, this loss has to be a wake-up call for Michigan AND OSU fans. For Michigan fans, we can finally believe that we can actually beat our rivals in future games. We can finally stop giving the “talent” excuse in the rivalry. For OSU fans, they now have to be wary and cautious about being too overconfident in their team when they face Michigan every season.

Talent means something, but it doesn’t mean everything in this series. The will and the “want-to” mean a whole hell of a lot more than talent. That may sound cliché, but it’s true. In this rivalry in the past, OSU wanted it more than Michigan. It showed in the eight straight victories. In 2021, Michigan football truly wanted it more, and it showed with a dominant victory.

It takes the right coach and the right group of players and coaches, but it can be done.