VIBE CHECK: MICHIGAN VS OHIO STATE
OHIO STATE VIBE CHECK
Entering 2023, I was at my lowest point confidence-wise with Ohio State since the Oregon loss two seasons ago. Yes, the defense was expectedly going to be good, but the last two times we saw them, they got pieced up by Georgia and Michigan with blown coverages and huge plays scattered everywhere against them. No matter how good CJ Stroud and the offense full of NFL players were, the defense consistently let them down, and now CJ, among others, was off to the NFL, leaving question marks at quarterback as well as all over the offensive line.
With no more CJ, a quarterback battle between Kyle McCord and Devin Brown. Heading into the Notre Dame game, Kyle McCord “won” the QB battle that felt less like him pulling away from Devin Brown and more so him not making as many mistakes, and for the first time in my life, I thought a Notre Dame team could beat Ohio State. Yeah, we were at all-time lows.
Heading into that game, however, you could feel a shift on this team. The defense was dominating, and while yes, it was against inferior opponents, it felt different. They were playing more connected and complete. The big plays were cut down substantially early on, and the secondary was playing at a high level. The two biggest concerns (big plays and secondary play) coming into the season with that unit looked to be addressed by Jim Knowles.
Knowles was up front and honest about the explosives all offseason. Ohio State was an advantageous defense last year, but it came at a cost. ‘Explosiveness’ is a metric on collegefootballdata.com that measures the average EPA on plays deemed successful. While Ohio State’s 2022 defense ranked 5th in success rate against, the 1.40 explosiveness rate ranked 124th. They sold out, and when they got burned, it was bad; see: Michigan and Georgia games.
When McCord pulled himself together for that final drive against Notre Dame and Chip ran in the walk-off score, I knew the inevitable was set: an unbeaten rematch for The Game, this time in Ann Arbor.
Last year was embarrassing. The offense showed no fight when the defense couldn’t pull its weight, and it went from a closely contested game to a very lopsided finish almost instantly. If you had asked me about the vibes heading into this game at the beginning of the season, yeah, I didn’t feel great about it! That’s changed a lot though.
In the midst of the biggest on-field cheating scandal to hit college football in the modern era, the once stable walls around Michigan have begun to show cracks. No Harbaugh, no Stalions, no illegal advanced sign stealing schemes to make a once solid to good coach a program legend overnight.
Michigan was the most dominant team in the country for nine weeks. Then this scandal breaks out. Stalions is fired, and he’s unable to go to the Ohio State/Penn State game as planned with his ‘vast network of helpers’ to acquire both team’s signs.
Michigan comes off a bye, beats down Purdue as we all expected, and then Harbaugh is suspended for the remainder of the season. Over the past two weeks since the scandal broke out, Michigan has looked incredibly human on offense. For an offense that ranked top five in the country in EPA/play, points per game, and success rate, they couldn’t move the ball for anything against Penn State. Admittedly, Penn State is a very good defense, but they should not be slowing down an alleged top five offense with such ease. Then Michigan came out and looked incredibly human against Maryland in a seven point win.
All of a sudden, the team's top five ranks in every metric imaginable offensively were now 75th in EPA/play, 70th in success rate, and 98th in explosiveness over their last three games against lowly Purdue, middling Maryland, and Penn State. From being surrounded by Georgia and Oregon in offensive categories to Georgia Southern, Tulsa, and Navy was a drastic switch. One can only assume that this offense just isn’t that good without knowing every set the defense was in, JJ McCarthy is a silver spoon-fed Connor Stalions merchant, Sherrone Moore isn’t up to take the mantle from Harbaugh, and that Ohio State’s defense will bully Blake Corum to the fifth round of the Draft and Donovan Edwards back to anti-semitic message boards. Who’s to know, though.
While that’s all happening, Ohio State began to find itself an identity offensively while the defense continues to perform at a national best level. Kyle McCord is what he is: a perfectly average quarterback who is not cut out for the typical Ohio State offense. He’s incredibly mistake prone while also being capable of making any throw on the field. He often finds himself nervous early in games, and misses easy throws in the first half, and then he comes out in the second half looking like a totally different person.
McCord struggled a lot against Penn State, and it was no different against Wisconsin, but what was different for Ohio State was the return of a healthy TreVeyon Henderson at running back. Henderson’s return netted him 207 total yards, 162 of which came rushing, on 28 touches. He followed that up with 208 total yards on 27 touches against Rutgers (22/128 on the ground). He played well against Sparty in a half of football as that game was 35-3 at half, and then he came out and rushed for 146 yards on 15 carries against Minnesota. Henderson has played in just eight games this season. He leads all Big Ten running backs in total yards per game (125.5), yards per carry (6.7), and is second to Rutgers’ Kyle Monangai in total scrimmage yards (1004). Mind you, Michigan’s ‘all world’ running back Blake Corum, who has a three game advantage on Henderson this season, has fewer total yards on 57 more touches. Makes you think.
All in all, Ohio State’s offense without TreVeyon this season could not beat Michigan. McCord with Henderson versus without is a scary thought. With Henderson back, McCord has just one interception over his last three games to eight touchdowns. His completion percentage on the season before Henderson returned was 63.9%. Considering what Ohio State has had at QB prior to McCord, it was pretty rough. Since Tre came back, McCord has been much better, completing 70.8% of his passes, and sure, completion percentage is far from the most thorough stat to break this down with, but it signifies a shift in philosophy I didn’t think Ryan Day was capable of making, simply because if given the choice of adjusting or sticking his head in the sand and continuing to run short side stretches and long developing routes for a QB who struggles to make those throws, Day chose the latter for seven weeks.
Now, Day is letting his offense with the best player in college football in Marvin Harrison Jr. and his dynamic speed threat at running back actually make the plays. A line that had struggled mightily in pass protection for weeks is now able to have some of that stress relieved as the running game gets going, and in turn, it helps McCord. Mesh concepts have come back, and play action rates on McCord’s dropbacks have been over 30% the last three weeks, a mark they’d reached just twice over the previous six games against power conference teams.
The Buckeyes are doing great work up front on pin and pull action on the edge for Henderson. From a flailing offense to a found identity, the biggest key against Michigan still hinges on McCord being able to not shit himself like he did against Penn State and, more importantly for this game, against Wisconsin. McCord on the road terrifies me. The questions running through my head are: What if the ground game can’t get going? Can Fryar and Simmons not be entirely useless when McCord has to pass? Can McCord compete in a close game of this caliber? Despite my growth of confidence, my vibes are still a bit uneasy offensively. I just have to see them do it to believe it. Defensively is where I think we win this game.
23-17 Buckeyes.
Go Bucks, Michigan sucks, Harbaugh is a cheating, lying hack, and may Ann Arbor burn to the ground upon Michigan’s defeat.
MICHIGAN VIBE CHECK
This game means everything. Of course it does. In the context of on-field college football, it’s the two most bitter rivals in all of American sports, both undefeated entering the last week of the regular season, likely with only one playoff spot up for grabs between the two of them. Outside the context of college football, this game could provide validation to outsiders that the last two Michigan wins over Ohio State weren’t fueled by the ongoing sign-stealing scandal. To Michigan fans, of course, there’s no revelation that could come to light that could ever invalidate those two games. The way I felt when Ojabo sacked Stroud in 2021 or Edwards broke into the open field last year couldn’t be taken from me if we found out Jim Harbaugh had a walkie-talkie in his hat and was being fed Ohio State’s play calls by Tucker Carlson. My skin is not in the “Michigan is more virtuous than you” game, my skin is in the “Michigan beat Ohio State again” game, and lately business has been booming.
While Michigan is definitely one of the four or five truly elite teams in college football this season, Ohio State is as well. But this isn’t an article where I’m meant to provide analysis on why Ohio State’s schematically-reformed run game concerns me or why Michigan’s weaknesses at the tackle spots could open them up to take negative plays that they’ve largely avoided the last two years in The Game. What I’m here to explain is how this specific iteration of The Game feels from this Michigan fan’s perspective, and to be honest it feels like any other Ohio State week in terms of my attitude towards that program. It’s not like I didn’t hate their fanbase with every fiber of my being before the cheating allegations came out. It’s not like I wouldn’t have already paid an extravagant monetary or physical toll to ensure an entire generation of Buckeye faithful lives with the yearly anguish and hopelessness that I had to for the majority of my childhood. My hate for them is not new and couldn’t possibly be elevated, not even by the incessant and wildly annoying agendas that have been pushed across my timeline for weeks on end now.
This is not the week to provide rational thought or observations. Rather than trying to explain why Michigan’s offense struggling under Sherrone Moore as HC and Ohio State seemingly finding a groove on defense this season won’t matter on Saturday, I’ll simply tell you that Michigan is better. It doesn’t have to be true. I’m not above going dark on Twitter until the coast is clear. The beauty of rivalry, specifically THIS rivalry, is that you can say anything you want and if your team wins it’s immediately validated. I can call CJ Stroud a loser despite mountains of evidence to the contrary. I can say JT Tuimoloau is just an overhyped Ryan Van Bergen and you can’t tell me I’m wrong. The winner of this game gets an immeasurable weight lifted off their shoulders on a yearly basis, and for 20 years I had to endure that weight as a fan over and over again. What happens on Saturday means plenty to outsiders, sure, but what it means to these two fanbases is something that can’t possibly be replicated in American professional sports, and honestly can’t be replicated in other college football rivalries sans maybe the Iron Bowl. If you haven’t lived it, you wouldn’t get it. Just the thought of a packed, loud, and bloodthirsty Michigan Stadium gives me chills. I can only hope this saga is the beginning of this fanbase shifting from aggrieved to arrogant in terms of their attitude towards the on-field product.
Do I have friends that root for Ohio State? Regrettably, yes. But the nature of this rivalry is such that there is basically no line I wouldn’t cross or friendship I wouldn’t jeopardize in the name of talking my shit when Michigan wins. If this sounds insane to you, that just means you wouldn’t get it. In technical terms, this is just a football game. But it’s really not. There are people less shameless and more distinguished than I that will let this game affect their moods and home lives for weeks. It’s an inevitability that things will be said on social media after that clock hits zeroes that will change lives forever. To you, Ohio State is looking to re-establish dominance in a rivalry that swung in their favor for two decades. To me, a group of spineless cowards are trying to drag the country’s finest football program through the mud as a last-ditch attempt to save face for their pathetic Just For Men spokesman of a coach, all to try and secure a pendant in the shape of a pair of gold pants for their supposed “best receiver ever”. I remember how embarrassing 2018 and 2019 were. I was in the stadium in 2017 when John O’Korn threw a majestic deep ball that only two players could’ve caught and they both played for Ohio State. A 19-year-old me was deep into the business of Zaprudering the end of the 2016 game, in which JT Barrett was unequivocally short of the line to gain.
This is the same rivalry that has produced Marcus Hall flipping double birds to an entire stadium as he headed up the tunnel, ejected. Devin Gardner playing the game of his life on a broken foot and getting sold out by poor coaching. Shawn Crable’s unforgivable mistake in the college football game of the century. JK Dobbins getting a fumble to bounce right back into his chest because Ohio State spent years sacrificing pagans into a volcano. And just to think, none of those games could possibly live up to what we have in store in Ann Arbor on Saturday. In the last year of the four team playoff, this is as high as the stakes will ever be for The Game, potentially for the rest of any of our lives. There aren’t words that can properly describe the scale of this game and do it justice. If you live for these moments, this very well may be as good as it ever gets again. I can’t say that I’ll appreciate it for what it is win or lose, because I’d be lying. If Michigan goes out with a whimper a year before possibly being sanctioned to high hell and losing their head coach, I’ll become one of the least rational bad-faith agenda pushers you’ve ever seen. But until then, the vibes are immaculate in the mind of your author.
Go Blue.
