44 days until Michigan football: The most egregious penalty in program history
There’s much anticipation heading into the Michigan Wolverines football season, and TheWolverine.com is counting down the days until the Sept. 2 opener against East Carolina. We’ll discuss current Michigan events, the upcoming season and/or take a look at a significant number that correlates with how many days remain until kickoff, whether it be a player’s jersey number, a year, a date, a score, etc.
Michigan football had a close call in a 20-17 win over Northwestern on Sept. 29, 2018, which was the 44th game of the Jim Harbaugh era in Ann Arbor.
Trailing 17-13 in the fourth quarter and facing a 2nd and 8 from their own 39-yard line. Quarterback Shea Patterson ran the ball down to the Northwestern 41-yard line. However, running back Karan Higdon was flagged for holding to put them at 2nd and 18 from their own 29.
Except instead of holding, Higdon had been tackled. Any penalty committed on the field was done to him, not vice versa.
“They called it on 22, they called it on Karan, so I asked the referee, ‘Go ask the side judge who he called it on just so it wasn’t some different explanation days from now,’” Harbaugh said after the win.
“So he came back and said it was on the running back holding the linebacker. The whole stadium saw that the linebacker tackled our running back. It was a zone read, faked it to the running back, their linebacker tackled him, and then Shea ran for 28 yards, and they tacked on 10 yards for holding. It was a phantom call.”
“I thought it was on someone else,” Higdon said. “I got to the sideline and coaches were flipping out and I realized they must have called it on me.”
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Luckily for Michigan, it was able to push through the adversity and capture the 20-17 victory.
Northwestern jumped out to a 17-0 lead early in the game thanks to a 1-yard run from quarterback Clayton Thorson, a Charlie Kuhbander 45-yard field goal and John Moten IV 3-yard run at the 12:56 mark of the second quarter. Higdon put Michigan on the board with a four-yard touchdown run with 9:14 to go in the first half and the Wolverines went into the locker room down 17-7.
Michigan took care of its business in the second half thanks to a pair of field goals from Quinn Nordin – from 23 and 24 yards out, respectively – in the third quarter. Higdon put Michigan ahead for good on a 5-yard run with 4:06 left in the game.
The victory was the team’s fourth in a row after a season-opening loss at Notre Dame. The Wolverines would extend their win streak to 10 in a row before falling to Ohio State in Columbus in the regular season finale, then losing the Peach Bowl to Florida to end the year.
Michigan football countdown to kickoff
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