The worst kind of wake-up calls are the ones you don’t see coming.
The Michigan football team saw this coming. It happened last week against Michigan State, when the Spartans handed the Wolverines their first loss of the season by 17 points.
Michigan State is a good team, and some thought then-No. 18 Michigan was, too. The Wolverines were 5-0 and featured an explosive offense that looked unstoppable against the likes of Notre Dame, Indiana and Bowling Green. So when the Spartans slowed down sophomore quarterback Denard Robinson and dominated all three aspects of the game, the bandwagon got a little lighter.
That game exposed a lot of the Wolverines’ weaknesses: Michigan’s defense isn’t very good and the offense can be bottled up and forced to make mistakes, and the team can get sloppy at times with its penalties.
Flash forward to Saturday, when the fourth quarter rolled around. The scoreboard read Iowa 28, Michigan 7, and a cold bucket of ice water was sitting nearby.
It didn’t matter that the Wolverines had outgained Iowa on offense by nearly 90 yards at that point. The formula was the same as it had been in the loss to the Spartans.
This Michigan team can’t beat good Big Ten teams, and it’s as simple as that.
Sure, the Wolverines generated 522 yards of offense against one of the best defenses in the conference. And when sophomore quarterback Denard Robinson left the game with a shoulder injury in the third quarter, sophomore quarterback Tate Forcier led a three-touchdown scoring outburst in the fourth quarter to restore some hope. That’s fine and dandy, but Michigan still lost the game by 10 points.
There’s a reason Iowa forced four turnovers and made Michigan play from behind the whole game — the Hawkeyes are a quality football team. Good defenses are obvious, even to the untrained eye. They’re faster, stronger and in the right place at the right time.
The Wolverines did rip off chunks of yards here and there against them, and Michigan’s first drive of the game was impressive, but from then on, Robinson and the offense couldn’t score until Forcier replaced him. Five hundred yards of offense doesn’t matter if you lose.
After the game, Michigan coach Rich Rodriguez was visibly upset with the mistakes his team made. Iowa had something to do with those mistakes and Michigan State was partially responsible for those miscues two weeks ago.
These turnovers weren’t an issue when the Wolverines walked up and down the field the first five weeks. Robinson, who was considered the Heisman front-runner, was picking and choosing where to throw the ball back then. The Hawkeyes contained everything — the field didn’t look as open. Big plays don’t even look possible. And Robinson looked stressed back in the pocket instead of cool, calm and collected.
That same tension was present against the Spartans. Robinson wasn’t making it look easy anymore, because Iowa and Michigan State both have proven defenses.
On Saturday, Robinson’s longest pass play was a 20-yard screen pass and his longest rush was for 12 yards. And he averaged five yards per pass attempt and six yards per carry — his lowest and second-lowest averages on the season.
Meanwhile, Iowa exploited the trend of consistent poor play by the Michigan defense.
A few quality stops are sprinkled in each game and the Wolverines force a couple of three-and-outs. But when the Hawkeyes got a full head of steam, they scored 21 unanswered points on three consecutive drives to end the first half. Michigan wasn’t the one racing up and down the field anymore, it was Iowa.
The Wolverines’ eight penalties for 66 yards against the Hawkeyes certainly hurt too. I know it’s a cliché, but it’s true: good football teams don’t turn the ball over and they don’t shoot themselves in the foot. That’s what Michigan has done the past two weeks.
Seven games into the season, Michigan has had two true tests of whether it is a true Big Ten contender — the Wolverines have failed both.