The eyes of Texas surely enjoyed it. But Michigan football fans wanted blindfolds.
That wasn’t a game Saturday at the Big House, it was an execution. That wasn’t competitive, it was repetitive — as in Longhorns, Longhorns, Longhorns. And that wasn’t a slow hiss of vulnerability from a maize and blue balloon. That was a pop.
You knew after last season’s national championship that the Wolverines would fall off some. The question was how much? And what was the floor from which they would restart their climb?
Based on Saturday, it may be a long ascent. No. 9 U-M was no match for No. 3 Texas, which so trounced the Wolverines on offense and defense that even actor and sideline Texas fan Matthew McConaughey got tired of cooing, “All right, all right, all right.” By the end, it was more like, “Leave ‘em be, fellas, they’ve had enough.”
Texas racked up 31 points, 389 yards and three takeaways in a game that was effectively over at halftime — and that’s with a called-back touchdown and a missed field goal. I don’t want to say the Longhorns converted on too many of their drives, but if third downs were fish, they would have been throwing some back.
“We haven’t had one of these in a long time,” said U-M coach Sherrone Moore after the 31-12 defeat.
That’s your classic understatement. This was Michigan’s first loss since 2022 vs. TCU in the Fiesta Bowl, its first home defeat since 2020 to winless Penn State, and its worst drubbing since Georgia clobbered them in the 2021 Orange Bowl.
At times Saturday, it looked like a typical Michigan nonconference game in September, except the Wolverines were the overmatched opponent from the lesser conference.
They are not used to losing in Ann Arbor. They are especially not used to losing like this.
“It sucks,” said Wolverines quarterback Davis Warren.
That about sums it up.
Starting over.
Who’s to blame for this Michigan debacle?
For what it’s worth, here were the lowlights. Michigan’s offense had 80 yards rushing. It ran only nine plays in the first quarter. Its defense did not have a sack. Texas quarterback Quinn Ewers sliced up the Wolverines for 246 yards and three TDs, slinging it to the corners or finding streaking men downfield. He reminded Maize and Blue fans how nice it is to have a starting quarterback who is heading to the NFL. Especially since U-M’s counterpart, the senior walk-on Warren, looked a long way from that description on Saturday.
Warren, in only his second start, overthrew or underthrew receivers. He fired into coverage on a first half ball that was tipped up and intercepted, and he threw another pick in the second half when a receiver went the wrong way. He finished with 204 passing yards, much of it in garbage time when U-M was down three scores. He finally threw a touchdown with just under two minutes left, but by that point, half the seats were empty.
“We need to be better,” Warren said. “I need to be better.”
Someone asked him whether Saturday‘s result was Texas being superior, or Michigan not executing.
“All execution by us,” Warren insisted. “I didn’t do enough. I shot us in the foot too many times.”
That’s admirable, and Warren seems like a fine kid with a whale of a backstory (surviving cancer in high school.) But the truth is, Texas did the shooting Saturday. Their offensive line manhandled the supposedly strong U-M defense. And their running backs and receivers left the U-M defenders looking out of place. The same Longhorns kept getting open, or breaking tackles.
Meanwhile, several U-M receivers dropped passes, and tight end Colston Loveland, late in the first half, simply dropped a ball he had already caught. Nobody even hit him. Texas recovered the fumble and, 49 seconds later, went into the end zone for a 24-3 lead.
“We got a lot of tough-minded individuals,” Loveland said after the defeat, “guys that don’t like to lose at all. …. We got a group of guys that despise it.”
We’ll soon find out how much.
Sound the alarm on Michigan this season?
There’s a huge new sign at the Big House the celebrates the 2023 national champions. And no doubt fans still basking in that glow watched Saturday’s shellacking and mumbled, “Where’s JJ? Where’s Corum? Where’s Kris Jenkins and Mike Sainristill and Junior Colson?”
Gone, baby, gone. Off to the NFL with Jim Harbaugh. And you can’t deny that is largely responsible for what we saw in Saturday’s debacle.
But it can’t be an excuse. Yes, Michigan lost 13 players to the NFL draft, the most of any team. But Texas was second, losing 11. The difference is the Longhorns kept their quarterback, they recruited everybody’s All-American Arch Manning as his backup, and their coach, Steve Sarkisian, who led the Longhorns to the playoff last season, is still there.
And I’m sorry, but even though he stepped in for Harbaugh multiple times last season, there still is a learning curve for Moore, who never has been a head coach before. He should be afforded it. Subbing for a suspended boss who could still coach during the week and offer input at any time is not the same as running the program yourself.
Moore is the man now, and he’ll have to do something that hasn’t been done in a while: motivate the Wolverines to bounce back early in the season. They face Southern Cal in two weeks and Washington in four. If you want a clue as to why Harbaugh thought it was a good time to bolt, consider that schedule.
“My message to the team was it’s gonna take resolve” Moore said. “We don’t like losing…What are we gonna do to get better?…
“You can’t finger-point. … You find out who you are as a team when adversity strikes.”
It struck early — and often — Saturday afternoon. The good news is, under the new 12-team CFP format, a loss like this doesn’t end the Wolverines’ playoff hopes. The bad news is, they have a lot more top-ranked teams to contend with in the expanded Big Ten.
“Everyone is taking (the loss) super seriously,” Warren said.
They should. It has been a while since the lights started flashing in Ann Arbor before the leaves changed color. But that was a four-alarm fire Saturday. Maybe it’s an anomaly. Or maybe it’s a harbinger of things to come.
For now, we know this: It was a delicious championship cake that everyone devoured last January. Victory tastes sweet. Defeat, like Saturday’s, tastes more like Texas roadkill. And nobody wants a second helping.
Contact Mitch Albom: malbom@freepress.com. Check out the latest updates with his charities, books and events at MitchAlbom.com. Follow him @mitchalbom.
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