The first half felt like the first three games of the season for Michigan. The second half made you wonder where the rest of the season might be headed. The Wolverines escaped Rutgers on Saturday, but not before they were exposed.
The top rushing attack in the country rushed nowhere once Rutgers sold out to stop it. Meanwhile, Cade McNamara and the passing attack couldn't make the defense pay. No. 19 Michigan was out-gained in yards and out-chained in first downs and Jim Harbaugh was out-gamed by Greg Schiano, who put a scare into the Wolverines for the second year in a row.
"Gritty game," said Harbaugh. "Wasn’t pretty, but when they start making space for pretty on the scoreboard, then we’ll worry about that. Right now, that doesn’t go up on the scoreboard."
The score was 20-3 at the half, and 20-13 by the end. Rutgers had three potential game-tying drives in the fourth quarter, including one that creeped within a few yards of the end zone before a false-start penalty bailed out Michigan's defense. The Scarlet Knights ripped off run after run in the second half, seizing control of the game in the trenches. And the trenches only get more treacherous for Michigan with Wisconsin up next.
"We’ll clean it up," linebacker Nikhai Hill-Green said of the run defense. "We just need to play our gaps, be physical, knock them back and just communicate more."
Michigan has owned the trenches on offense this season. Its mauling offensive line has paved the way for Blake Corum and Hassan Haskins, just like it did on the opening drive against Rutgers, capped off by a touchdown run by Haskins. The Wolverines have made it look so easy at times that Jim Harbaugh has noted, "We’re not going to fall in love with our stuff." They looked smitten with their stuff on Saturday, even when it stopped working.
Again and again, the Wolverines ran it up the gut in the second half. Again and again, Rutgers loaded the box and thanked them for coming. Michigan averaged barely two yards per carry and produced just two first downs in the final two quarters. And when the offense took to the air, McNamara's passes fell to the ground. No coincidence that freshman JJ McCarthy was getting loose on the sidelines late in the game.
"We weren’t picking up the first downs, we weren’t moving the ball. But do I think we’ve fallen in love with our stuff? No," said Harbaugh, when pressed on the matter. "You do that, you can’t get better."
From last week to this week, Michigan's offense appeared to get worse. This was the first Big Ten test for the Wolverines, with much harder ones coming, and they finished with more questions than answers. Is this defensive line stout enough on the interior? Is the offensive line as good as we think? Can McNamara be trusted to make the tough throws? Can Harbaugh be trusted to adjust his approach?
Or is the coach still too stuck in his ways?
"In the second half we struggled a bit," said McNamara, who was 1-5 for seven yards after a solid first half. "Whatever it was, I gotta be better as well. When they load the box like that, it’s going to come down to us beating man coverage and I gotta do a better job of throwing more accurate balls."
Michigan went three and out on its first four drives of the second half. Credit to Rutgers for getting back in the game -- and Rutgers is rising, under Schiano -- but a better team would have made Michigan pay. Better teams await. McNamara said it wasn't "a lack of energy" that slowed the offense.
"I think it was simply a lack of execution," he said. "We just couldn’t really find a rhythm. And that’s the first time that’s happened, at least when I’ve been in the game. We haven’t done that as an offense. Obviously that’s frustrating and we gotta do what we can to not let that happen again."
While we're handing out credit, credit Michigan's defense for making the plays it needed to. It produced a fourth-down stop on its own 39 late in the fourth quarter, then forced and recovered a fumble on Rutgers' next drive to seal the game. It looked gassed at times in the second half, which will happen when the offense doesn't give it time to rest.
"The defense was in a bad position," Harbaugh said.
Harbaugh tried to project positivity after the game. Michigan is 4-0 for the first time since 2017, not that 2017 conjures up great memories. He said he was proud of his team, particularly "the character of the defense." McNamara, by contrast, sounded glum. He had been confronted by his own limitations, and perhaps the limitations of this team.
"Overall, the theme going around is that we’re not satisfied, and that’s extremely the case on offense," McNamara said. "From the offensive side of the ball, we’re super proud of our defense. They played really well today and bailed us out."
Michigan torched its first three opponents this season. On Saturday it nearly got burned. Its offense was too predictable, its quarterback was anything but precise and its defense was pressed to the limit in a game that felt finished at the half. Late in the afternoon, with Rutgers rallying and anxiety rising in the Big House, Eminem's 'Lose Yourself' played on the stadium loudspeakers: snap back to reality.