Defense/ST Notes: Michigan 'buzzsaw' finally gets its shutout

The Michigan Wolverines were able to finally close out a game by posting a shutout this season, stifling the Michigan State Spartans to the tune of a 49-0 deficit. U-M held its in-state rival to 182 yards of total offense and was stifling in every aspect of the game.

Michigan State opened this year planning to celebrate 100 years of football at Spartan Stadium. Instead, it walked out of Saturday night’s game with its worst home loss in venue history.

“Got a little saying around here that says: What you do speaks so loudly we can’t even hear what you’re saying,” head coach Jim Harbaugh said. “So I thought our guys did a tremendous job of taking it one play at a time and they were a real buzzsaw. Just played really, really great football.”

Michigan’s starting defense has allowed only three touchdowns all season, but typically the backups have come in and let opposing offenses get on the board. Not on Saturday night. The all-hands-on-deck effort led to the team’s first shutout since a 59-0 win over UConn in Week 3 last season.

MSU running back Nathan Carter was part of both of those games and was held to 36 yards on 17 rushes on Saturday night. The Spartans ran for 57 yards as a team and racked up 133 yards through the air.

“I believe everything went right for us tonight,” junior linebacker Junior Colson said. “We’re all locked in every play in practice and just every day, and we’ll be able to execute at a very high level. We’re excited for the defensive staff, to give them that first big goose.”

So much has been made about U-M’s schedule and the level of competition this season, but Michigan captain and defensive back Mike Sainristil – more on him later –  pushed back on that.

“Coach Clink said this earlier to the DBs, people have said all year how we haven’t played nobody,” he said after the game. “And then he mentioned the fact that ‘I don’t know what that means, because on Saturdays, there are 11 people on that field across from you guys, so clearly we’re playing somebody.’ And the message that the coaches want us to send is that it doesn’t matter who we play, when we play, just go out there and play like us. That’s all we can control. The schedule is what the schedule is, but we just have to go out there and play and still win these games.”

Ja’Den McBurrows gets his revenge

Last season’s assaults in the Michigan Stadium tunnel and how the team responded were a major subplots in this game. Michigan answered by simply playing football and doing it really well. But one of the players who was victimized after last year’s game, junior cornerback Ja’Den McBurrows, intercepted his first career pass in the fourth quarter to gain his personal dose of revenge.

“The whole sideline erupted. Everyone was loving it,” Harbaugh said. “He made 3 or 4 great tackles in the game, as well. Long run saving tackle up the middle, he made a great hit on the perimeter, and then when he got the tip and interception that was… what an amazing thing. Great to see German Green get a tackle there at the end. He played on kickoff. Both those guys and German came back from ACL surgery. He’s rehabbed, come back faster than you’d think humanly possible. So great to see that.”

McBurrows is a player who has long been thought highly of in Ann Arbor, but injuries have kept him off the field, including the one he suffered last year in the tunnel. Perhaps it could serve as a springboard moving forward.

“It was a wide range of emotions,” Colson said. “I’m super excited for that man. He’s been through a lot here. His freshman year, he tore his ACL early on, so now being able to go out there and make that play was a huge confidence booster. I’m just excited to see what he keeps on doing.”

Sainristil chimed in: “Ja’Den McBurrows — that’s my guy. I was so happy to see him go out there and have some tackles. The interception — I saw his facial expression, it looked like he wanted to cry tears of joy. He held it in, but when you see that look in his eyes, I knew, I knew how he felt. I felt it, too. All week, he was talking about different things — he mentioned what happened last year a couple different times — but coaches and us as players, we told him, ‘When you get your chance, just go out there and make the plays. Don’t make the moment too big.’ I’m so happy with how he played. I’m proud of him; that’s like my little brother right there.”

Mike Sainristil sends ’em to the exits

Michigan tried to twist the knife and get the score up to 35-0 at halftime but failed to do so after a penalty led to a 10-second runoff to close out the second quarter. U-M got its fifth touchdown of the day on the first defensive series of the third quarter with Sainristil hauling in his second pick-six of the season, this time from 72 yards out.

It is Michigan’s fourth interception for a touchdown this year. The defense as a whole has surrendered five touchdowns total. The starters have allowed only three of them.

Sainristil’s interception was the moment that any shred of Spartan optimism was sucked out of the building as the green and white contingent headed for the parking lot.

“I kinda recognized it after Mike’s pick,” Colson said about when they felt MSU quit. “They were coming out there and trying to get a drive going, and Mike took the pick back for a touchdown. You could see the light going out in their eyes and the game starts becoming fun. Seeing all the juice they had … the whole sideline gets quiet. That’s what we want all year, every year.”

As a captain, Sainristil helps set the tone for the Michigan defense. The message at the half was to keep the foot on the gas.

“I was standing there and I heard how the locker room sounded,” he said. “It didn’t sound like we got unfocused, but the amount of energy and the vibe that was in the locker room, I was like, ‘I’ve never heard the locker room this loud at halftime.’ From the sense of guys talking about what was going on in the game, guys talking about adjustments and just I knew that there was no sense of complacency in that locker room. It was, ‘Alright, let’s go back out there, let’s go dominate, let’s not let up, let’s go finish this game.’”

Miscellaneous Michigan defensive/special teams notes

• Michigan has held its first eight opponents to 10 points or less for the first time since 1973. The team went 10-0-1 that year and the highest point total it allowed was 13.
• MSU rushed for 10 yards in the first half, which is the lowest total in the rivalry since U-M was held to -5 rushing yards in a loss in East Lansing in 2014.
• Michigan has forced a three-and-out or a turnover within the first four plays of a series on 33-of-72 possessions this season.
• Through eight games, no team has run a single play inside Michigan’s 10-yard line.
• With four pick-sixes on the season, Michigan has matched a single-season program record from the 1998 and 2018 campaigns.
• Michigan recorded three sacks on the night – 1 each from Josaiah Stewart, Derrick Moore and TJ Guy