Michigan really can't be allowed to enjoy any kind of sustained success.
I say this not as an Ohio State fan, but as someone who desperately doesn't want the sport of college football represented by the very particular brand of corny-ass, navel-gazing, no-championship winning, nostalgia glasses-wearing, malaise-peddling drivel that has wafted from the bowels of Ann Arbor since the Truman administration.
The Michigan Wolverines being a dominant voice in the sport means that (in addition to having to dust off almanacs from 1928), college football fans at large will have to endure the most self-important people in the solar system insisting that their gas station coffee tastes funny and everyone needs to know about it right now!
Hence, whatever the hell this was about:
Look at this @UMichFootball formation.
— Big Ten Network (@BigTenNetwork) September 2, 2023
: Peacock pic.twitter.com/U0BjITrcG0
Jim Harbaugh is dead! I'm kidding, he's alive, just at home on his couch because he allegedly broke recruiting rules and lied about it. Free Harbaugh! From his self-imposed exile all the way down the street from Michigan Stadium, for three games, against the worst teams in the country. I hope quarterback J.J. McCarthy survives this tragic loss (while also managing to pat himself on the back at the same time).
"I just want my coach back," McCarthy said after Michigan's 30-3 win over East Carolina on Saturday. [...] "That was definitely a tribute to Coach Harbaugh," McCarthy said. "That was pretty cool to do that."
No one, and I mean literally absolutely no one, is as self-pitying as a Michigan Man nursing even the tiniest of slights. That the Wolverines as a team and as a concept manage to be this incredibly lame while also legitimately being one of the best teams in the country is an affront to nature.
I'm praying that something hilarious happens to them between now and November, when they finally play a team with a pulse.
THE OFFENSE
You might think that because Michigan won this game 30-3 that their offense maybe wasn't quite up to snuff for their first game of the season, but unfortunately you'd be wrong. The Wolverines could've won 60-3 if they hadn't gotten bored after touchdown drives of 57, 90, 76, and 75 yards and totally packed it in with about nine minutes left in the 3rd quarter. After a promising first series on defense, ECU offered little resistance the rest of the way as they let McCarthy do whatever he wanted.
Remember how I said I didn't have a lot of confidence in McCarthy being consistent? That was, at least for a weekend, me being a dumb wrong man, because he went out and completed 26/30 passes for 280 yards and three touchdowns. Cool.
Interestingly, Michigan's bread and butter was kind of not great, actually? Blake Corum had a few long runs to help bump up his yards per carry, but mostly it was a lot of farting around until the unit as a whole ended up with just 122 yards on 3.9 ypc (both numbers worse than what Ohio State accomplished versus Indiana, by-the-freaking-way). Long story short, it doesn't look like Donovan Edwards (37 yards, 3.1 ypc) has revolutionized the running back position quite yet. Or maybe it's some kind of jazz thing, and you have to look for the yards that aren't there.
As a result, this sequence where Michigan tried and failed to get Edwards a touchdown by running him directly at ECU five consecutive times was deeply funny:
THE DEFENSE
ECU had a pretty good offense in 2022, but that was before losing their starting quarterback and running back and two best wide receivers. I'm sure there was a Michigan fan somewhere trying to act like ECU's accomplishments last year means anything for the Wolverines defense on Saturday, but they're dumb and wrong. East Carolina is a bad team with no offense.
But guess who didn't get a single sack the entire football game! Everyone on the Michigan defense! So, whatever. Linebacker Junior Colson was very good (two tackles for loss), the defensive line was generally competent despite a pretty large rotation of dudes, and the secondary didn't have to do much of anything because ECU's two quarterbacks both averaged well below 5 yards per passing attempt.
The three points that the Pirates did manage to put on the board came as time expired, but posterity won't note that, only that the Wolverines failed to get a shutout.
MATT WEISS DRAMATIC REENACTMENT OF THE WEEK
THREAT LEVEL
Still annoyingly HIGH, but if anyone thinks that there's anything concrete to be gleaned from a lazy win against East Carolina is deeply mistaken. I will add that for this weekend at least, Michigan suffered in comparison to some of the incredibly dynamic offensive performances from other teams in the top ten. Unfortunately, so did Ohio State. We'll see if next weekend's tilt against undefeated UNLV changes that.
