Once again, Michigan won a game it had no business winnning, as Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz suddenly morphed into Lloyd Carr with first-and-ten on Michigan's 15 with 1:10 and 2 timeouts left. I thought Michigan would call a time out to save some clock before Iowa's game-tying FG try, just so they'd have to kick off afterwards, but Carr must have figured if Ferentz was willing to play for OT, so was he (at what is now a 5-0 record in OT games, that's one part of winning close ones that Michigan has figured out).
What's it mean for the rest of the season? Hell, I don't know. I said a couple of weeks ago that I didn't know whether they'd end up 9-3 or 4-7, and the only thing I know for sure now is that they won't end up 4-7. They head to Evanston Saturday to play WAC-leading Northwestern, who has a mobile quarterback in a spread offence, two things Michigan has had a lot of trouble stopping.
OK, I hear you going *cough*MichiganState*cough*. Fine. If they bring the same team to Evanston that they did to East Lansing, they'll be OK. But I still haven't seen the dominant - all game long - performance I've expected to see yet this year (outside of the Directional State games, and those don't really count). That's what I mean when I say I still don't know how good they really are. It isn't like they're a great team that occasionally has a bad outing; it's like collectively they're always betting the under and want to keep the score low (something, it seems, like Lloydball is designed to do). And that's why I said they would lose either the Iowa game or the NU game, and I haven't seen anything to change my mind there.
Of course, the good news is that I'm 0-5 in picking nontrivial Michigan games this year, so odds are I'm wrong.
Posted by Chris at October 25, 2005 05:21 PM