All season long, Michigan leaned on its opponents until they snapped. On Saturday, TCU leaned back.
All season long, Michigan owned the trenches. It took care of the football, excelled on third down and smashed its way to win after win. On Saturday, TCU claimed the trenches, took the ball away and made the third down plays that mattered. It punched its ticket to the national championship game by punching Michigan in the mouth.
This was not what the Wolverines envisioned. Not at all. Leading up to the game, quarterback J.J. McCarthy said he liked the way Michigan's offense matched up with TCU, particularly up front. He said the Wolverines' pounding ground game would be able to exploit the Horned Frogs' 3-3-5 defense.
“I see a lot of opportunities for our smash fest to kind of take advantage of that,” McCarthy said.
The smash fest looked like more of a crash test, with Michigan's rushing attack running into a wall. Excluding a 54-yard run by Donovan Edwards on the first play of the game, the Wolverines averaged just 3.4 yards per carry. They had averaged 5.6 on the season, third best in the country.
Michigan clearly missed Blake Corum. Then again, TCU lost its star running back Kendre Miller to a knee injury in the first half and didn't miss a beat, riding bruiser Emari Demercado for 263 rushing yards and 6.4 yards per carry. Michigan had allowed just 2.9 yards per carry on the season, fifth best in the country.
"All week we heard about Big Ten football and how they were going to line up and run over us," TCU head coach and AP Coach of the Year Sonny Dykes said afterward on ESPN. "They made some plays, but we did a great job stopping the run and forced them to do some things they probably weren’t comfortable doing."
[shortcode-inline-related expand="1" link="/971theticket/sports/university-of-michigan/michigans-jim-harbaugh-the-real-winner-today-was-football" headline="Harbaugh on Michigan's loss: "The real winner today was football"" image="/media-library/image.jpg?id=63355603"]Michigan was used to playing ahead of the sticks. Stoned on the ground, it wound up playing behind them and went 3-13 on third down -- a far cry from its 47 percent third down conversion rate entering the game. McCarthy hadn't been sacked more than twice in a game all season behind Michigan's Joe Moore Award-winning offensive line. He was sacked four times alone by TCU's Dylan Horton. The Horned Frogs finished with 13 tackles for loss.
"As a defensive line group, it was a challenge initially, knowing how good they were," Horton said. "It was a challenge and we rose to the occasion."
On the other side, Michigan couldn't muster much of a push. Its previously dominant defense produced just one sack and three tackles for loss. TCU controlled the line of scrimmage in a way no one had against the Wolverines since New Year's Eve 2021 when Georgia bullied Michigan on this same stage. The Horned Frogs converted half of their third downs against a defense that had held opponents to a 33 percent conversion rate this season.
Michigan ran through the Big Ten in part by protecting the football. It entered Saturday with seven turnovers all season. Then it committed three huge ones against TCU, two pick-sixes on poor decisions by McCarthy and a fumble at the goal line. They turned another ball over at the goal line on downs, on a poor decision by Jim Harbaugh. And there was the difference in the game, 14 points up in smoke for Michigan, 14 out of thin air for TCU. Those mistakes were not on the part of the officials.
"We thought it would work," Harbaugh said of Michigan's failed Philly Special on 4th and goal from the two-yard line on the game's opening drive. "I take full responsibility for it not working. Should have had something different called. Put that one on me. They had it wired and well-defended. Sitting here now, definitely wish I would have called a different one."
It was the first big swing in a game with several more to come. And it set the tone on a day TCU kept coming up with answers. The Horned Frogs were the team that Michigan expected, the same one the players saw on film. The Wolverines were just a lesser team than they'd been all year long, on the most important night of the year.
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