Mel and John — legends
October 1, 2011 - Two absolute legends, Mel and John (miss these dudes so much), hanging in The Cove before Michigan’s 58-0 pasting of the Golden Gophers behind Fitz Toussaint’s 108 yards on just 11 carries. Denard would add a rushing TD and 2 passing TDs on one of those "Denard doing Denard things” days. More pics from the day on the game page here.
Michigan played probably its best game on both sides of the ball on Saturday.
Offensively, Bryce took another pretty substantial step forward. His 276 passing yards in a Big Ten game is a mark that JJ McCarthy hit only four times in conference play in his career. Michigan had two 100-yard receivers in the same game for the first time since the national semifinal against TCU in 2022. This wasn’t just Bryce looking a little better. This was legitimately good Big Ten quarterback play.
The defense stuffed Iowa in a locker all day, right up until the very end, when their two touchdown drives were kept alive by a series of (horseshit) penalties, fortunate bounces, dropped interceptions, and a terribly timed injury that stopped a clock that just wouldn’t run out.
Michigan dominated and lost.
Iowa is garbage, and teams more prepared to keep their foot on the gas will be knocking them off their pedestal soon enough. Michigan was better at football for most of Saturday. Iowa just did Iowa things, and Michigan let them.
Michigan fell asleep on a kickoff, committed too many penalties, lost the turnover battle, and eventually got too conservative trying to protect its quarterback from making a catastrophic mistake. The result was long drives that ended with no points, followed later by an inability to run out a clock that desperately needed running out.
And that might be the most frustrating part of the whole thing. Michigan finally got the kind of performance from Bryce that we’ve been waiting to see. They trusted him enough to throw for 276 yards against a Big Ten defense. But with the interception coming out of halftime, when it came time to actually win the game, Michigan seemed to coach as though the primary objective was preventing him from throwing another one.
I understand it. I don’t like it. Bryce sure didn’t appear to like it. But had it gone the other way and Bryce turned it over again, we’d probably be spending all week talking about Tommy’s turn.
And I guess that’s where we are right now.
I genuinely can’t remember Michigan losing a game in which it so clearly owned both lines of scrimmage. That’s supposed to be the formula. Control the line. Get good quarterback play. Hold the other team’s offense underwater for most of the afternoon. Do all of those things and you’re supposed to win the damn football game.
They did all of those things.
They lost.
And the world rejoiced.
The people received their pound of flesh for their misconceived notion of clock impropriety in the Western Michigan game, and the Wolverines take a costly loss that could very well become the “what if?” we point to when the calendar turns to December.
There are great things ahead for this team, and I suspect at least one win none of us expects right now. But they’re not going to win them all. And after giving this one away, the margin for error has become painfully thin.
Which makes Saturday hurt even more, because Michigan had already done the hard part.
They were the better football team.
October 22, 2005: Dennis poses with his ladies before a hard fought battle at Kinnick ends with Jerome Jackson punching it in for an overtime win. Michigan wins 23-20, ending the Hawkeyes 22 game home win streak. This was a great weekend that started with a layover in the Quad cities, Chinese food eaten on a garbage can, a full tailgate in the parking lot of Alcoholics Anonymous, and the away seats for Michigan in the 5th row where we wreaked havoc on the home crowd with an arrogant amount of trash talking considering the score. Good times. Game page lives here if you want to see the recaps and the rest of the photos.
