Three and Out

by John U. Bacon

  The suggestion was that, if there were moles in the department, Carr most likely knew who they were, and Rodriguez would appreciate it if Carr told them to knock it off. As Rodriguez recalled, Carr remained silent at that, too.

  Walking back down the hill to their offices, Martin asked Rodriguez, “Why don’t you ask him to talk to your team before the Penn State game?”

  “Because I’ve got my team right where I want them,” Rodriguez replied. “Gary [Moeller] comes to practice every Thursday—he’s a regular—and we’re not even asking him to talk to our team.”

  This little exchange might be more telling than the strained conversation over lunch. It displayed the blind spots of both men. Martin was naïve enough to think Rodriguez would have no problem asking Carr to speak to his team after that ice-cold lunch, and that the clearly reticent Carr would accept. Likewise, Rodriguez failed to take advantage of what the Michigan family could do for him by declining to invite respected and supportive Michigan Men to address his team.

  The latter echoed Rodriguez’s refusal to visit the M-Club for their Monday luncheons during the season, too, which every coach had done going back to Schembechler’s early days. The club’s members are not, as a rule, the big money donors or power brokers—the VIPs tended to live in the suburbs or on the coasts—but their passion and loyalty were unequaled, and they served as opinion leaders for the Michigan community. It was, in many ways, an ideal setting for a new coach: a home crowd, with a strict no-press, everything-is-off-the-record policy. Further, it would give Rodriguez, an effective public speaker and a genuinely likable guy, a platform to earn some brownie points with the faithful. Here was help he could have used, in a format in which he could excel.

  Yet Rodriguez typically sent Dusty Rutledge in his stead. When a patron asked Rutledge why Rodriguez rarely came, he said, “Would you rather have him here or recruiting next year’s class?” It was a good point, especially because Rodriguez was the lead coach for both the offense and the special teams. Ultimately you could argue getting even one blue chipper outweighed a season of speeches, but it robbed Rodriguez of the support he would need when the Free Press story hit. A few hundred influential character witnesses and amateur PR workers couldn’t have hurt during an investigation that would drag out for a year.

  Back in his office, reflecting on the day’s events, Rodriguez said, “Well, that didn’t accomplish a whole lot. We’re going to extend an olive branch one more time—ask [Carr] to be the honorary captain for Penn State—and then when the season ends, that’s it.”

  Nothing, of course, could help Rodriguez more than winning another football game. With center David Molk finally returning from his broken foot and many pundits calling the upcoming Penn State game for Michigan, there was good reason to hope. Once again, the incentives were many: a 2–2 Big Ten record, bowl eligibility—and proof to the rest of the nation they were back.

  In the two weeks since the Iowa game, still more drama swirled around the program. From Leach’s outburst to Martin’s retirement to suspending Cissoko for missing class to the NCAA investigation, Rodriguez’s options for surviving the experience were becoming narrower by the day. He had only one way out: He had to win games, and fast.

  * * *

  Forcier looked good against the Nittany Lions, not forcing anything. But when PA announcer Carl Grapentine told the fans a man was down on the field—and it was center David Molk—they let out a collective “Oooh.” They understood immediately.

  Everyone assumed Molk had refractured his recently healed right foot. But on the sidelines, a team of four orthopedic doctors began testing not his right foot but his right knee—touching it here and there, seeing where it hurt and what Molk could and couldn’t do. The same man who had not missed a single play the previous season had suffered his second serious injury just minutes after coming back from his first—and the two were, amazingly, unrelated.

  Moosman moved back to center, and Michigan marched all the way to the end zone. 7–0 Michigan, just 3:49 into the game.

  After Michigan’s opening drive, Rodriguez walked past the offense’s benches. “Tempo, tempo, tempo!” he said, rolling his left hand over and over. “Keep it fast! Make them play your speed—they can’t keep up!”

  Greg Mathews nodded. “They weak, man, they weak!”

  But Penn State’s offense needed only four plays to tie the score 7–7.

  Just when it looked like the two teams were poised for another classic battle, the Wolverines seemed to forget everything they did right on their first drive. Forcier looked rough, from his inconsistent drops to his missed reads; no one seemed capable of blocking anyone; and the receivers ran sloppy routes. When Forcier did manage to get them the ball, they often dropped it.

  For the next twenty minutes, Michigan managed only four first downs.

  In the waning minutes of the half, down 19–7 but facing second-and-goal, Forcier dropped the snap, fell on it, and lay there while the clock was running. By the time he got up, he had to spike the ball to set up the field goal, which cut Penn State’s lead to 19–10 at the half. For anyone keeping count, which included everyone on the Michigan sideline, the Wolverines were two botched snaps from going into halftime down just 17–14.

  Of course, such would’ves, could’ves, and should’ves marked Michigan’s last three games: a lot of almost. They were slipping backward on the Bowden scale, from winning close to losing close.

  At halftime, Rodriguez steamed over Forcier’s lack of game awareness. “Where’s the sense of urgency!” he asked. “Get up! He’s got to get rid of the ball sooner, too. Throw the seam hitch every time. Every time! He’s open!”

  Rod Smith, who exhibited the patience of Job with his young quarterbacks, told Forcier, “Quit being a robot and start being a football player. Trust yourself!”

  Meanwhile, in the next alcove over, the normally cool Calvin Magee blasted the tight ends: “Catch the fucking ball! Catch. The. Fucking. Ball!”

  * * *

  Just four plays into the new half, however, the Lions invaded Michigan’s end zone again to go up 25–10, then 32–10.

  The game was over, and everyone seemed to know it except Brandon Graham, who charged in to block a punt, then raced to recover it not once but twice. He was playing for his school, he was playing for his teammates, he was playing for his future. He simply would not stop.

  But it didn’t matter. Two plays later, Michigan fumbled it back. The Michigan sideline, normally as active as an ant colony, had lost all life. With seven minutes left, the football staffers started packing the trunks. They are the vultures of college football. When you see them circling, you’re done for.

  After Penn State finalized the deal 35–10, the cold, wet Wolverines trundled back to their locker room.

  “I thought I had you prepared, and I was wrong,” Rodriguez said. “That’s on me. We can’t beat teams without playing our best. And we were not at our best today. We just made too many mistakes to win. We’ve got to get it right—in a hurry.

  “I don’t want to feel this feeling anymore. I don’t like it for the seniors. I need every one of you to get back to your best. I know everyone in this room is all in for Michigan. So get in here. ‘All in’ on three.”

  “ALL IN!”

  * * *

  In addition to covering the slaughter, The Detroit News ran a postgame story with the headline LLOYD CARR PRAISES RICH RODRIGUEZ.

  “Former football coach Lloyd Carr appeared on the Michigan radio broadcast during the first quarter of Saturday’s Penn State game, praised Rich Rodriguez’s spread offense, reiterated he’s not a candidate for U-M athletic director and proclaimed his love for Michigan.

  “Carr, who has been criticized by some fans and former players for not being publicly supportive of Rodriguez, spoke highly of the new coach and the program, and singled out freshman quarterback Tate Forcier for being ‘simply outstanding in every game.’”

  On the same day, Drew Sharp of the Free Press
wrote a column titled, “Lloyd Carr’s Support Won’t Save Rich Rod Forever.”

  Sharp asked about Rick Leach’s recent comments.

  “I’m not going to worry about stuff like that,” Carr replied.

  26 THE CONTINENTAL DIVIDE

  The trouncing, coupled with Molk’s second injury, a quarterback who was not taking coaching, and a team that had seemingly become timid, had all conspired to foul Rodriguez’s mood more than usual by Sunday.

  “Game evaluation,” Rodriguez said a few minutes before noon, with all the joy of a high school teacher reading off names for detention. “Quarterbacks.”

  “Tate got sixty-five snaps, worst fucking game he played this year,” Rod Smith said, his patience finally failing him.

  “Does he ever come in to study film?” Rodriguez asked. The answer: not much. Same as most of the players.

  Rodriguez then provided the reason. “Guys are so paranoid about going past their [NCAA allowable] hours, they’re afraid to come in here to watch film. We’ve got plenty of time under twenty hours. They can all afford a couple hours a week to learn their assignments, study their opponents, learn what the hell is going on. And I’ll bet you straight up every goddamn guy at Penn State was in the film room this week, learning every damn thing about us that we weren’t learning about them.”

  When your team is in a tailspin, you have two options, neither great. You can try to calm the players, to take some pressure off—which risks not bringing the necessary intensity to the next game. Or you can crank it up another notch, in an effort to stop the slide now—which risks them getting rattled and not playing their best.

  Rodriguez, not surprisingly, opted for the latter. That meant everyone’s margin of error—from his coordinators’ to his assistants’ to his players’ themselves—had just been cut in half. He had taken this tack before, of course, and almost always gotten good results, but no one was going to get any breaks that week, and only a freshman or a fool would have expected any.

  But there was a method to his madness. He knew his team was young, inexperienced, and struggling to learn new systems. He also knew that, on some deeper level, they were fragile. So while he gave them no quarter, he focused every one of his criticisms not on ability or even performance but on toughness, focus, and effort—all the things even freshmen could control, every play.

  Redshirt sophomore Mike Williams, for example, had been struggling at safety, which created tension between Rodriguez and Greg Robinson. Although Rodriguez would have pulled Williams himself if he was the defensive coordinator, he was reluctant to pull rank on Robinson, for whom he felt a great deal of respect. But that didn’t mean he would get a free pass. Not that week.

  When Robinson graded Williams, he said, “His eyes get him in trouble more than anything. He doesn’t know what to watch for and gets sucked in.”

  Rodriguez grunted but didn’t interject until much later, when they broke down a special teams play featuring Williams. “I’m telling you that guy cannot tackle,” Rodriguez said. “Or he simply will not—take your pick. And that possibility pisses me off more.”

  After every player had been graded, Rodriguez said, “Here’s my impression: We looked poorly coached.

  “On defense, we were tentative. We had a lot of technical errors—higher than it’s ever been—with everyone either doing their own thing or not listening to coaching. On one play, Stevie [Brown, a senior] lined up at three or four different places. He had no idea where he was supposed to be. And we had twelve guys out there on a field goal block.

  “Same thing on offense. We had more MAs than we’ve ever had, and it wasn’t a very complicated defense we were going up against. First play of the game, Moose goes the wrong way. Our center, first play! Later he snaps the ball off Tate’s chest and says, ‘I couldn’t hear anything.’ Then don’t snap it!

  “We didn’t play with a sense of urgency. I can’t explain that. We played soft, as a team. That’s embarrassing to me, more than anything else. We got punched in the mouth and didn’t respond.

  “And I’m gonna call Tate and Denard both in. Tell them either start becoming quarterbacks or start looking over your shoulder.”

  When they moved on to the weekly awards, Rodriguez was no happier. “No crunches, no hammers, no nails,” he summed up, leaning back in his chair, manila file in his hand, clearly disgusted. “No turnovers, two weeks in a row—and we weren’t even close to getting one.

  “That’s it,” he said, slapping the file down. “Let’s watch special teams, so I can get in an even shittier mood.”

  * * *

  For the coaches, a bad loss means bad moods, bad press, bad pressure. It is part of a coach’s wife’s compact that her husband is allowed to brood over a loss for twenty-four hours, but then he has to drop it.

  For the Big Boys, it means bad fans and bad Facebook.

  “There’s always a different feel on the streets, around town, even on-line, after a win or a loss,” John Ferrara said over Sunday pizza at the Commons. “After Notre Dame, there’s a little more pep and excitement. And after Penn State, it feels dead.”

  “After a game like that,” Perry Dorrestein said, “I get e-mails—lots of them—explaining why I suck. Not just telling me I suck, but explaining why. That’s helpful.”

  “The worst,” Jon Conover said, “are the ones in the Victors’ Walk cheering you on and shaking your hand and patting you on the back, and that night they’re on their blog ripping you a new one. And what really pisses me off is these are people who don’t know much about the game and know almost nothing about what it means to be a college athlete. The greatest adversity they face is running into a traffic jam on the way to work.

  “Facebook’s worse. I have to deny a dozen people a day who want to friend me, who I know are fans. You feel bad, you don’t want to be unappreciative, but they’re not your friends, and I’m just too hard-pressed for time. Then the same guy will be on some blog saying what a jerk you are. And then that gets back to your parents—and who needs that? So now I have six hundred ‘friends’ on there, and probably one hundred are my real friends.”

  “Cut the Facebook, mon,” said Renaldo Sagasse, a lineman from Montreal known by his teammates as “the Big Maple.” “Too many people you don’t want to talk to.”

  “My mom was saying some people behind her were swearing all game, F-in’ this, and F-in’ that, ‘You guys F-in’ suck,’ all that,” said Ferrara, from Staten Island. “When Junior [Hemingway] was hurt, they said, ‘Drag his ass off the field! We want to see the game!’

  “So she finally turns around, right? And she says, ‘Do you know you’re sitting in the Friends and Family section?’ And this guy says, ‘I’ve been coming here thirty years! There is no fucking friends and family section!’”

  Linda Ferrara, the wife of a New York fireman, remained poised. “Where’d you get your tickets?”

  “The trainers.”

  “Right,” she said. “And that means?”

  “They didn’t get it,” Ferrara said, ending his story.

  “A fan who’d stayed for the whole game came up to me and said, ‘Keep working. We’re proud of you,’” Dorrestein said. “I said, ‘Thanks. We appreciate it.’ People like that, they make it all worth it.”

  * * *

  Just in case the past week wasn’t bad enough, the next one started out with another press release.

  “ANN ARBOR, Mich.—University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman today (Monday, Oct. 26) announced that the University has received a ‘Notice of Inquiry’ from the NCAA, indicating it will continue its investigation of allegations made about the U-M’s intercollegiate athletics football program.”

  In other words, the NCAA had concluded that the initial round of research warranted digging deeper. Not unexpected, necessarily—the threshold for such decisions was pretty low—but not good news, either. It would provide enough fodder for the media to write whatever it wanted and force the players to wonder who had said w
hat to the investigators, and why. Those questions would remain in the air for twelve more months.

  A few hours later, Rodriguez learned center David Molk hadn’t sprained his knee. He had torn his ACL and was gone for the season.

  At 5–3, and 1–3 in the Big Ten, the Wolverines’ early optimism had diminished, but they could still go to a good bowl game. All they needed was one more win to qualify, and they were not likely to get a juicier target the rest of the way than Illinois. For all those reasons, Rodriguez felt his team simply had to make a stand that Saturday and stop its three-game Big Ten losing skid.

  From the offensive meeting to the team meeting to the practice, Monday set the tone for the entire week: Get your act together, now, and get back to Michigan football—before it’s too late.

  In the offensive meeting, while going over the game film, Rodriguez interrupted his dissection of another broken play to call Forcier out in front of every offensive player—a last resort. Calling out your quarterback in front of his teammates can always backfire, but Rodriguez figured the way Forcier was playing, he didn’t have a lot to lose.

  “All we ask is that you run our offense and quit making shit up as you go along. Penn State did not do one fucking thing we did not see on film—not one fucking thing!—and you’d know that if you ever saw a second of fucking film. But you didn’t because you’re too worried about going out on the town instead of doing your actual work to be a better quarterback and lead this damn team.

  “And it ain’t just him,” Rodriguez said, pointing his laser to the screen, frozen with football players. “It’s all of them. All your quarterbacks are letting you down.” He didn’t actually mean that. Sheridan had been an ideal role model for Forcier, and Rodriguez knew it. But he also knew Denard Robinson hadn’t been working much harder than Forcier, and he wanted Robinson to know that he was on notice, too.