It won’t make anyone’s highlight reel unless they’re specifically paid to over-analyze Michigan football, but it happened in the middle of the third quarter, down 10-6 against Indiana, who’s made being pesky a cottage industry under Kevin Wilson.
Backup quarterback turned starter John O’Korn got pressure up the middle and squeezed through, rolling out to his left and 30 yards later, was taken down. He popped up, hooting and hollering, and right thereafter, Michigan’s De’Veon Smith rolled into the end zone giving the Wolverines a 13-10 lead.
They’d go on to win, 20-10 at home over the gamely Hoosiers, who made it more torturous than it probably had to be.
By the time it ended, Ann Arbor was blanketed in snow on Senior Day, where the Wolverines will have gone unbeaten in 2016, closed up with only massive expectations to sprout within its walls next year.
Michigan snared the win with all of 59 yards passing on 7 completed passes. Their first half was utterly abysmal.
The second wasn’t going much better. That was, until O’Korn’s run that seemed to give the offensive line some juice.
Smith would roll for the aforementioned 34-yard score and then a 39-yard one later in the game to make it 20-10 and ostensibly put it away in windy, snowy, miserable-unless-you’re-knee-deep-in-whiskey Ann Arbor by using holes a steamroller could have gotten through untouched.
After seeing four quarters of Iowa and two of IU, Ohio State’s defensive line had to be licking its chops. Whether it was O’Korn’s play that seemed like a shot in the arm for the whole team, or someone simply got a backside chewing at halftime, this was much more the Michigan team the world has gotten used to in 2016.
From there, the Wolverines played good ole Lloyd Carr ball … just use the defense to get the hell out of dodge with a win. Indiana would finish with only 255 yards total on an abysmal 1.8 yards per carry on 36 attempted runs. I guess credit them with “sticking to it.”
Not that the Hoosiers weren’t complicit in their own defeat. Down 20-10 midway through the fourth, O’Korn rolled out and with no one open, innocuously went to run out of bounds. He was crushed on the way out, clearly, causing a personal foul that kept a Michigan drive alive that would end up lasting 8:49.
That’s 1998 Rose Bowl stuff right there.
Flowers and gumdrops aside, Michigan showed real warts with O’Korn that will need to be cleaned up within 7 days. Twice, Jim Harbaugh and staff passed up opportunities with good field position on third down and long to pass it, instead running it into the line and give the drive up.
If the Wolverines don’t gain confidence in O’Korn, who looks like he’s terrified of pressure and just throws it away the second it starts coming, they won’t beat OSU. Nor will they come close.
But that’s for next week, which honestly begins now. Actually, it began the moment the season ended.
The Game will feature two teams with one loss, both with eyes on the CFB Playoffs. If we’re lucky, we’ll end up getting used to this.
