“They’re gonna smack us, too. I know we can’t afford to lose Molk or Martin.” Plocki didn’t bother to add Denard to that list, because it went without saying. “But you never know. If we win this one, we’ll be good to go. You just never know.”
About ten minutes before kickoff, the players got up, walked to the front of the room, and took a knee.
“Do you want respect?” Rodriguez asked them.
“Yeah!”
“There ain’t a better day to get it than today. Ranked opponent. National TV.
“I know you can do it.
“I believe in you.
“I trust you.
“So let’s go out there and give them sixty minutes of Michigan football.”
He did believe in them. He just couldn’t tell if they still believed in themselves.
* * *
Iowa won the coin toss and made the unconventional decision to receive the ball first, another slap in the face for Michigan’s defense. But that wasn’t how it played out.
On the first play, Kenny Demens, who—after a season-long debate between Rodriguez and Greg Robinson—had finally replaced Obi Ezeh at middle linebacker, stopped Iowa’s runner cold after he’d gained just 1 yard. Two plays later, the Hawkeyes were punting.
But after Michigan’s third offensive play of the day, the PA announcer said, “The Michigan player receiving attention is David Molk.” The crowd didn’t need to be told by Jim Plocki that Molk was one of the players Michigan couldn’t afford to lose. They groaned in unison as he was helped off the field.
Denard kept the offense rolling down to Iowa’s 8-yard line, where they faced third-and-goal. Would it be Michigan State all over again? Not this time: Robinson, with a better knee and better form, hit Vincent Smith on a slant route for a quick-strike touchdown. 7–0.
It was all Michigan needed to ignite the crowd. Forcier himself had become the team’s biggest cheerleader, urging the crowd to crank up the noise every chance he had.
Michigan’s defense—which had twice sent the Hawkeyes punting after three downs—trotted back onto the field. But Rodriguez saw something that made him run full speed down the sideline straight to Greg Robinson. The problem? Robinson was sending Obi Ezeh out to replace Kenny Demens. After a brief heated exchange between the two coaches, Ezeh returned to the sideline and Kenny Demens took his place.
When people asked about Michigan’s defense, they wondered if the shockingly poor performance was the result of inheriting weak talent, transfers, injuries, youth, or coaching. The answer was yes. It is impossible to field a defense that finished 68th out of 120 teams in 2008, 82nd in 2009, and 110th in 2010 without all those factors playing a part. If the team had to deal with only two of those issues, say, they’d probably rank somewhere in the middle—and Michigan would be a Big Ten title contender.
Of all those variables, coaching was the hardest to tease out. After Rodriguez and Scott Shafer decided they weren’t a good match, Shafer went to Syracuse, where his defense finished seventh nationally in yards per game in 2010. Rodriguez hired Robinson, whom, like Shafer, he barely knew personally or professionally and had just been fired from his only head coaching position after finishing 10–37 at Syracuse.
But Rodriguez was not hiring Robinson to be the head coach. Robinson’s run as a defensive coordinator included two Super Bowl rings with the Denver Broncos in 1997 and 1998, plus a national title with the Texas Longhorns in 2004. Some pundits debate how much influence Robinson had on those teams and suggest Rodriguez should have asked more questions, but New England Patriots’ owner Robert Kraft, for one, was impressed. He told me he had dinner with Robinson in 2002 with the intent of hiring him, but Robinson chose to work for his old friend Dick Vermeil in Kansas City instead. In fact, if Robinson coached one more season in the NFL, he would have the fifteen necessary to earn an NFL pension—no small bonus.
Rodriguez and Robinson clearly respected each other. Robinson was popular with the assistants, and he fostered a fierce loyalty among the student managers who worked with him. But, as with Shafer, Rodriguez and Robinson were not a match made in heaven. If it was the defensive coordinator’s responsibility to teach proper tackling, that was on Robinson, even with the decimated roster. Teaching the talented, experienced Broncos and Longhorns the finer points perhaps required different skills than instilling the fundamentals into Michigan’s callow underclassmen. More important, Rodriguez favored the 3-3-5 defense that Jeff Casteel had used to great effect at West Virginia, while Robinson preferred the more common 4-3-4. As the vision for Michigan’s defense passed from Rodriguez to Robinson to the position coaches to the players, something was getting lost in translation.
It is difficult even now to determine exactly where the responsibility for Michigan’s anemic defense should fall, but the easiest problem to identify was the differences in their judgment of personnel. Robinson was more patient with certain players, including Michael Williams in 2009 and Obi Ezeh in 2010. Rodriguez restrained himself about such decisions—resisting but not overruling—until he reached his breaking point.
Because, ultimately, there was one simple answer as to where responsibility fell: the head coach, something he said outright in the first minutes of the staff retreat in July. It was his job to bring the coordinator he wanted, line up another one he knew well, or not come to Michigan at all. He would never take such chances with his strength and conditioning program, but he did with his defense. It might not be fair, but it’s the reality all head coaches live with—and he was paying for it now.
The difference between Ezeh and Demens didn’t help much this time, however, when Iowa quarterback Ricky Stanzi led his team on a 70-yard drive down to Michigan’s 14-yard line.
On second-and-10, Stanzi dropped back, rolled right, and threw to the right corner of the end zone. His pass was off: too shallow and too far to the right. Michigan safety Jordan Kovacs read it perfectly and sprang forward to the ball, which was chest-high. It looked as though all Kovacs had to do was make a simple catch and start running down the right sideline. Although Kovacs was no sprinter, he was still a safety, not a lineman, and it was hard to imagine anyone catching him with a 10-yard head start.
The crowd had already jumped to its feet in anticipation, ready to cheer him wildly as he pumped his way right past Michigan’s bench to the end zone, giving Michigan a 14–0 lead before the first quarter ended—and delivering a dagger to the Hawkeyes’ heart, just like Toledo had done to Michigan two years earlier in almost the exact same situation.
A 14–0 lead wouldn’t guarantee victory, but with the offense looking good, the defense serviceable, and the crowd on fire, few would have bet against that outcome. And with it, of course, would come almost all the prizes they would have received for beating State—including job security for their coach and relief from the relentless pressure everyone worked under.
It was, in other words, Michigan’s second straight match point.
It was all right there, soaring directly toward Kovacs’s chest. Perhaps Kovacs was thinking all those things, too—they all felt the pressure building week after week—as the ball spiraled right to him with nothing but a hundred yards of green in front of him.
And perhaps that’s why the utterly reliable Jordan Kovacs dropped the ball.
The crowd, the players, the coaches, and Kovacs himself all slumped in anguish.
Stanzi took the next snap, then fired over the middle for a 14-yard touchdown pass to tie the game 7–7.
“He should have been gone,” former Michigan player Andy Mignery said on the sideline. “You need a play like that in a game like this. This is the whole season. These guys are used to losing like this, and then the slide starts.”
If two plays can change a game, a season, and maybe a career—well, there were two more candidates.
Of course, it’s not fair to pin all that on Kovacs, who had already done far more for Michigan than anyone ever could have asked or expected. And that was the point: These ha
rdworking, honest, team-spirited players kept finding themselves facing extraordinary demands, week after week. And they were beginning to crack.
On Michigan’s next possession, Robinson threw an interception, followed by a rare outburst: “Fuck!” he said, walking back to the bench. “FUCK!”
Four plays later, Stanzi threw a strike to go ahead 14–7.
When the half ended, the scoreboard indicated that Michigan had gained 223 yards to Iowa’s 192—but trailed 21–7.
In the locker room, Greg Robinson focused on getting senior Adam Patterson ready to replace Mike Martin, who left the game because his knee had not completely recovered since the Spartan chop-block a week earlier. Thus, by halftime, both players Jim Plocki had said Michigan could not afford to lose were lost. The field of hope had narrowed yet again, with Denard Robinson once more at its center.
On Michigan’s second possession of the half, Robinson gained 12 quick yards only to be hit hard by Iowa’s Tyler Nielsen, leaving him lying on the field. The team could have collapsed right then and there and called it a season, but this was the moment Forcier had been waiting for, and he took full advantage, giving the fans what they wanted, with Denard standing on the bench, urging the crowd to get into the game. Forcier delivered with an 85-yard drive to cut Iowa’s lead to 28–14, with 13:10 left.
Crazy? Sure. But the crowd knew it was not impossible. Not with this team and this offense. After another Iowa touchdown, Forcier countered with a bomb to Junior Hemingway. 35–21, with over 10 minutes left.
He had captured the fans’ imagination, and they were with him completely. Feeling total confidence, he led another touchdown drive to cut Iowa’s lead to 35–28, with a luxurious 6:55 left in the game.
It was a solid minute before any coaches could be heard over the roar, while the players jumped up and down, waving their hands upward to keep the crowd going. Stonum called Hemingway over and punched him in the chest. “Let’s motherfuckin’ GO!”
“Write this shit down,” Mike Martin hollered over the noise. “We are winning this game! WE ARE WINNING THIS GAME!”
It took three days after Rodriguez’s Wednesday speech, and three quarters of football, to conclude without a doubt: Yes, they still believed.
For the second time in a row, however, Michigan hooked the kickoff straight over Michigan’s bench—which is what rookie walk-ons can do. As it flew over the heads of the players, each helmet seemed to drop down as if the ball itself had set off a row of dominoes.
It was a surprisingly severe blow to Michigan’s shaky momentum. On third-and-8 at midfield, Michigan had a chance to get the ball back with plenty of time to tie the game. Freshman Courtney Avery had the ball carrier lined up in open space—but he missed, allowing the Hawkeyes to kick a game-clinching field goal.
Another Wolverine comeback attempt had fallen short. They were running out of air, running out of gas, running out of hope, running out of time—the very thing this team needed most.
The tunnel was not kind to the Wolverines. When one fan saw Greg Robinson, he yelled, “Your defense sucks!”
Robinson kept his chin up, looked straight ahead, and kept jogging.
Rodriguez kept his own postgame address to the players short. “Today we showed ’em we’ll fight,” Rodriguez said. “We showed ’em we’re tough! But we didn’t show them we’re smart. Too many stupid penalties and mental mistakes. And that’s on us,” he said, thumbing his chest. “That’s our job! So the coaches are committed to fixing it.”
Back in the coaches’ room, Rodriguez muttered, “Just ONE fucking stop when it counts would be nice.”
An hour later, Rodriguez signed autographs by the barricade, alongside Forcier, who savored the attention, while Rita waited in the cold by their car, clutching the lapels of her winter coat.
“I just want a break,” she said. “I just want a break.”
46 INTO THE LIONS’ DEN
Before the Sunday staff meeting, Barwis was hanging out in Rutledge and Parrish’s shared office, presenting some surprising numbers. He pointed out they were outscoring teams badly in quarters one, three, and four, but getting “our asses kicked in the second.” Through seven games, Michigan was minus 34 in the second quarter, and minus 24 against MSU and Iowa alone. Why was that?
“It’s like in Ultimate Fighting. You hear about some new guy who’s undefeated, and think, great, I’ll kick his ass. Because he’s never been hit. Never gotten smacked around and had to shake that shit off and come back harder.
“And that’s what happens to us. We come in breathing fire, all jacked up, and we take it to them. But when they start fighting back, we’re surprised. We’re stunned! And it takes us a full quarter to get our heads back on straight.”
It made some sense, and spoke to their intensity and conditioning—and inexperience.
Despite the loss to Iowa, the mood among the coaches on Sunday started out surprisingly light. No one was panicking. No one seemed overly stressed. They had lost two in a row, but both loses had been to very good teams, and both times they’d held their own in the yardage battle, even notching a remarkable 522 yards on Iowa.
Of course, it also helped that everyone was in for a bye week—much needed, physically and emotionally—even if the coaches would spend it traveling the country recruiting. Chomping their Sunday night pizza, Magee stopped chewing for a moment and said, “Man, when I close my eyes, I am seeing little men running around in my head. And they’re not even running any plays I recognize. Man, I have seen too much film.
“This break could not have come at a better time. Well, maybe last week. But that’s it.”
That night, with no pressure to prepare for practice or a game in six days, the assistants had a rare chance to openly consider the possibilities: No one gets fired, some of them get fired, or everyone gets fired.
Frey groaned at the prospects. “What I find amazing is, we’re talking about all this stuff, and we’re 5-and-2, and this is only our third year. We had only seven scholarship O-linemen ready to play our first year, and none of them were drafted.”
The quality of the cupboard’s contents when Rodriguez took over ranks as one of the most frequently debated subjects among Michigan fans. You can very plausibly make a case that if Carr had stayed for the 2008 season, many if not all of the players who transferred, jumped to the NFL, or simply did not return for a fifth year would have played for the Wolverines. And since the team would not be changing coordinators or systems on either side of the ball, they would have the considerable advantage of continuity. Throw in a few breaks, perhaps, and it’s not hard to imagine Michigan going 8–4 or even 9–3 in 2008, instead of 3–9.
But even making those concessions, it is much harder to argue that the recruiting classes of Carr’s last years would allow Michigan to sustain even 9–3 records.
From 2009 to 2011, the NFL drafted only four Wolverines, and just one—Brandon Graham—in the first three rounds. Even if you count Ryan Mallett and the injured Troy Woolfolk as likely draft picks, the six total is still a third less than the previous low of nine, which is how many Michigan players were drafted from 1984 to 1986.
It’s not just the top end that shrank, either, but the middle band of solid starters, too. As a result, in 2010, Michigan played twenty-six freshmen, the third most in the nation. They had only five senior starters, less than half as many as Ohio State, Penn State, Michigan State, and Iowa. On the other end, Michigan started four freshmen, while the top teams listed above all started one freshmen, or none—simply because they didn’t have to.
“I don’t care what anybody says,” Frey concluded. “The cupboard was bare.”
The good news for the Wolverines was that in 2011 they would return nineteen starters—or twenty-four if you count the injured players who would be returning to the lineup. Of the record 6,011 yards Michigan notched in 2010, all but 67 of them were gained by players who would return in 2011.
“Iowa had never given up a third-and-seven or more all
year,” Frey added. “On our first third-and-long, we scored a touchdown. They had never given up a rushing touchdown. We scored two. They had only let two runners go over 100 yards in 34 games. Denard did it in the first half. They averaged only 242 yards against their D all year, one of the best marks in the country, and we got 522. More than twice that. They were giving up ten points per game. We scored twenty-eight—and should have scored more, if we could make a red-zone pass or kick a field goal.
“So why is everyone saying, ‘It’s all do-or-die,’ and ‘We could be gone?’ That’s crazy!”
In fact, many of the same arguments were being made by ESPN’s Ivan Maisel. “Why Rodriguez is considered on the edge of endangered remains mystifying. Michigan has improved and 18 starters return next season. Michigan will be favored in three of its final five games. Regardless of the outcome down the stretch, would it really be better to start over again?”
All true. Which raised another question: At what point did all the predictions of doom and gloom—and with them, the increased pressure—become a self-fulfilling prophecy?
That was virtually impossible to answer, but no one questioned the importance of the Penn State game on the horizon. The Lions were 4–3, and starting a walk-on quarterback.
It was Michigan’s third straight match-point opportunity. Win it, and you’re free.
One MGoBlog reader listed the stakes of this nationally televised night game thusly: “Our season, Denard’s Heisman hopes, R-Rod’s tenure, Bill Martin’s reputation, a recruiting bounty, my sanity, Dave Brandon’s decision, Mike Barwis’ weight lifting program, Joe Pa’s retirement, my marriage, our future … Let’s see how much more shit we can pile on top of the outcome of this game.”
* * *
Rodriguez did not need to be reminded, especially with his boss’s presence in the locker room. The rumor had spread to the coaches that Brandon had circled this game as do-or-die. Win it, and votes of confidence and contract extensions would flow. Lose it, and—well, they were back to the scenarios discussed over pizza.
Three and Out Page 45