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Michigan Football vs Iowa: Game Balls and The Depression Sets In
Reese Strickland-USA TODAY Sports
Michigan football lost to Iowa last Saturday. Here are the game balls and some analysis of the depression you may feel.
Jim Harbaugh-coached teams usually play like well-oiled machines; something got caught in the gears on Saturday in Iowa City. For the first time this season, Michigan football played down to its opponent, and it paid for it in the form of a 14-13 loss at the hands of a 5-4 Kirk Ferentz-coached team.
Michigan football has now dropped four straight at Kinnick Stadium, and the last time Iowa beat a top two team was in 1985 at home against the Wolverines. Kinnick does weird things to otherwise good Wolverine squads, and playing a team with little to lose at night doesn’t help either.
We’re going to attempt to find some bright spots among the individual performances, but make no mistake about it, that was a wire to wire failure at every level. Michigan was favored by twenty one and playing inspired football–this game shouldn’t have been close.
Wilton Speight finished with a QBR of 10.5. Mike McCray and Channing Stribling continued to struggle mightily in run defense.
Jehu Chesson looked like he was half asleep. Even Amarah Darboh was dropping big catches. The offensive line looked like a liability for the first time this year. Ferentz and company out coached Harbaugh and company. Michigan football didn’t show up ready to play and never really flipped the switch they needed to to squeak out a win.
The only real solace is the fact that this loss doesn’t change the big picture: Michigan still controls its destiny in the Big Ten. There’s just a lot more blueprint material on tape for other teams than there was a week ago.
Anyways, here are the game balls.
Reese Strickland-USA TODAY Sports
Jourdan Lewis
In a game where seemingly everyone on the team was a varying degree of off, Lewis had himself another lockdown performance.
Iowa quarterback CJ Beathard was 8/19 for 66 yards with a touchdown and a pick. Lewis was matched up against Iowa’s leading receiver CJ McCarron for most of the day, and he managed all of one catch for four yards.
It’s also becoming increasingly clear that Lewis is the only cornerback that can actually tackle (Jeremy Clark’s injury looks more unfortunate by the week).
He had two solo tackles on screens that he blew up. Those plays account for a lot of Iowa’s passing attack, and they just weren’t able to get going because they were getting blown up at the line of scrimmage.
Stribling had the big interception, but he was again exposed in the run game and wasn’t terribly sharp in coverage. I think we’ll be seeing a lot more of him in coming weeks, because throwing at Lewis seems like an increasingly absurd proposition and trying to get out to the edge on his side of the field isn’t much more likely to yield positive yardage at this point.
Brad Mills-USA TODAY Sports
Taco Charlton
Taco continues to be basically unblockable, and Iowa prepared for him the same way Michigan State and Maryland did: with tackling dummies. It probably wasn’t as consistently egregious as it was the past two weeks, but Taco was getting mauled for most of the game.
He still managed to create a whole hell of a lot of havoc on passing plays and spent most of his time on the backside of running plays. Four tackles (three solo), a sack and quarterback hurry later and he’s got himself another excellent game. He also nailed Beathard after blowing by an Iowa offensive lineman:
Stribling's diving interception gives #Michigan the ball back with two minutes to play and a 13-11 lead!! #GoBlue pic.twitter.com/4TjupCtjGg
— Michigan Football (@ChatWolverines) November 13, 2016
He and Wormley were caught on the wrong side of the field or the wrong side of the play on Iowa runs for most of the game, which is what will happen when your opponent wants to stretch the field and your back seven can’t set the edge. Still, Taco continued to play like a first round pick on Saturday.
Reese Strickland-USA TODAY Sports
Chris Evans
Evans finished as the leading rusher with a measly 52 yards . . . on eight carries. It was a little more than frustrating seeing that Evans could get five or six yards every time he touched the ball and having him only touch said ball nine times.
The offensive line wasn’t getting good push up front and De’Veon Smith had trouble avoiding backfield contact and had some vision problems when there weren’t three defenders in his face.
It seems like Evans’ lack of run in this game is emblematic of the shortcomings in playcalling. He was able to navigate semi-broken plays pretty well (and in a way Smith wasn’t), which was important in this game, and despite that he only got eight carries. The staff didn’t seem particularly well prepared in any regard, and when it came time to adjust they seemed lost, throwing plays at the wall and seeing what stuck. Not much did.
Hopefully the plan behind the running game will look a little more coherent and be more effective by the time Indiana rolls into Ann Arbor on Saturday.
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