Best and worst from Michigan football's win over Nebraska
Michigan Wolverines football took care of business and routed Nebraska, 34-3, Saturday evening at The Big House to move to 10-0. Here are the best and worst from the game.
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Workhorse
Week after week, we wonder if Michigan will take a bit of the burden off of junior running back Blake Corum, who’s been an absolute workhorse during the Big Ten season, carrying 25 or more times in all but one game and 20-plus times in each contest.
That hasn’t happened yet, and Corum, a Heisman Trophy contender, actually limped off the field on a couple occasions during his 28-carry, 162-yard, 1-touchdown performance.
“A minor tweak. I shake it off real quick. It feels better,” Corum said with his signature smirk.
Easier said than done, but nothing Corum has done this season has come easy. The same can be said of his 162 yards, with Corum’s longest rush of the night being 12 yards, twice. It was death by 1,000 — er, 28 — cuts for the Nebraska defense, which allowed 264 rushing yards in the blowout loss.
Corum had to carry more of the load than the Michigan coaches likely planned, due to sophomore Donovan Edwards leaving the game in the first half and not returning. There wasn’t a postgame update on his status, after he rushed just twice for 13 yards. Both of his carries came early in the first quarter.
Corum has now gone over 1,000 yards in seven Big Ten games alone and has 1,349 rushing yards and 17 touchdowns on the year.
Worst area
Michigan took some deep shots last week at Rutgers and was ever so close to connecting. The Wolverines pushed the ball downfield again Saturday but didn’t have much success after a 25-yard play-action pass to graduate wideout Ronnie Bell on their opening possession.
Sophomore quarterback J.J. McCarthy took all of the blame for the lack of deep-ball success when speaking with the media earlier in the week, but he’s being gracious. It’s clear that the receivers are potentially more to blame, especially against Nebraska.
Senior Cornelius Johnson looked to the ball late and failed to adjust to the flight path on one that went through his hands, sophomore Andrel Anthony didn’t get enough separation on a deep shot, and Bell was blanketed in coverage on another.
Michigan took some chances early, then went back to the well that is the run game the rest of the way, finishing with 20 pass attempts compared to 49 rushes. Some of that is a product of having a big lead and wanting to protect the ball and wind clock, but the downfield passing game isn’t where the Maize and Blue want it to be in mid-November.
That, and perhaps that alone, outside of injuries, is a cause for some anxiety from the fan base, despite covering the Vegas spread and blowing out its opponent.
In the pass game, McCarthy finished 8-for-17 passing for 129 yards and 2 touchdowns.
New wrinkles
It wasn’t all bad through the air, though. We mentioned McCarthy’s early connection with Bell. Those two hooked up four times, with Bell racking up 72 receiving yards and a score.
A recent nitpick of Michigan’s perfect season was the red-zone offense. And then when the production improved last week against Rutgers, when the Wolverines scored 6 touchdowns on 7 attempts, there were stray complaints about how they did it, with “too much” running and not as much passing.
Michigan threw its off-speed pitch Saturday, with McCarthy finding a wide-open Bell for a 9-yard pass. The wideout got free thanks to play action where the safety bit out of fear of getting burned by Corum. That’s a good old-fashioned run setting up the pass.
Then on first-and-goal from the Nebraska 3-yard line midway through the third quarter, instead of handing it to Corum straight ahead, Michigan ran a quarterback sweep with McCarthy, who was sprung by a pancake block from his star running back.
Biggest blunder
Bell had a nice night, but it didn’t come without a major mistake. He caught a pass from McCarthy early in the third quarter, stayed up along the sideline by keeping his balance and shedding tacklers, and was headed for a touchdown … until the ball popped out, landed in the end zone and bounced a couple times.
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Luckily for Bell and Michigan, Anthony was there to recover it just before it went out of bounds, or it would’ve been a touchback. It looked like the veteran eased up just a bit and dropped the ball when contacted by a Cornhusker defender.
Best trend
The Michigan defense has continually dominated second halves, especially in the last five games. During that stretch, opponents have scored just 3 points (Penn State) to Michigan’s 117. Saturday, like clockwork, Nebraska was outscored 17-0.
Third quarters, especially, have been great all season long. The Wolverines have now outscored opponents 91-6 in third quarters this season, with the disparity being 7-0 against the Cornhuskers.
Brightest futures
Two Michigan freshmen stood out above the rest. Running back CJ Stokes and defensive tackle Mason Graham have great careers ahead of them, and they’re already making impacts.
Stokes was thrust into the No. 2 running back position with Edwards going down, and he got extended run with the Wolverines holding a big second-half lead.
He ran 8 times for a career-high 68 yards, including a 17-yarder. He just looks like a natural runner with his vision and cuts. The patience and balance will only improve, too.
Graham played a big role all game long, as he has this year, way ahead of schedule for a freshman defensive tackle. He recorded 3 tackles, including a sack, with the two others resulting in no gain and a 1-yard gain. He added a quarterback hurry.
He’s adding more moves to his arsenal, too, displaying it with a nifty swim after almost exclusively using the bull rush most of the season.
Bad beat
Michigan bettors were on the edge of their seats at the end of the game.
The Wolverines, 30.5-point favorites, were up 31-3 late. They were running the clock out but got into field goal range, and when they were stopped on third down, head coach Jim Harbaugh brought on the field goal unit for a kick that was “important to some,” as legendary NFL announcer Al Michaels would say.
Graduate kicker Jake Moody and Co. took the field and set up for the kick. But Harbaugh called timeout with the clock winding down. It effectively iced Moody, but he still drilled the 43-yarder to give Michigan the cover. We’ll see if it shows up on Scott Van Pelt‘s “bad beats” segment on SportsCenter in the coming days.
