Given Michigan secured their first back-to-back outright Big Ten championships since 1991-92, last night’s 43-22 victory over Purdue felt oddly anticlimactic.
By kickoff, U-M’s playoff bid wasn’t just secure, they were all but locked into the two-seed, win or lose. Within about 12 hours of the final play, the playoff committee announced two-seed Michigan will play three-seed TCU at the Fiesta Bowl. The next big thing is already here.
The game itself didn’t dispel the feeling this was a monotonous march to the inevitable. Purdue dinked-and-dunked their way into hanging around for a half before U-M pulled away after intermission, a show we’ve seen before. FOX made the proceedings interminable with numerous and lengthy commercial breaks; the officials did their part with more replay reviews than I cared to count.
The game itself ended well after midnight Eastern. It’s safe to assume a large portion of even the Michigan-favoring audience went to bed before the trophy ceremony.
It all felt predetermined. The Boilermakers were capable of putting up a fight but were never going to win. Even if Michigan somehow lost, they’d be the two-seed. There would be advertisements. So many advertisements.
The nature in which the Big Ten title was attained shouldn’t take away from the accomplishment, however, or the joy of watching the best back-to-back seasons in program history since the Mad Magicians ruled the country in 1947 and 1948.
Donovan Edwards will forever be remembered for one of the greatest two-game stretches in U-M’s storied history of running backs, the legend only augmented by his broken hand and U-M’s desperate need for someone to fill the shoes of Blake Corum. He almost single-handedly — sorry, sorry — put the game out of reach in the opening minutes of the third quarter.
J.J. McCarthy needed only 17 attempts to throw for 161 yards and three touchdowns, one apiece to Ronnie Bell, Colston Loveland and Luke Schoonmaker. McCarthy ripped NFL throw after NFL throw between Purdue defenders. Loveland’s jump-ball touchdown was a glimpse of an impossibly bright future and a pretty damn good present.
The defense did what it does, choking the life out of their opponent when it mattered. A game Aidan O’Connell led PU’s offense into the red zone six times only to come away with a touchdown, four field goals and an interception. Freshman cornerback Will Johnson made several plays that looked ahead of his years, including jumping two O’Connell throws for picks.
For the second straight game, Michigan won without arguably their best player on each side of the ball. Corum underwent successful knee surgery instead of making the trip to Indianapolis, while Mike Morris traveled but never donned pads.
One year after shocking Ohio State and exorcising their demons on Iowa to win the Big Ten, Michigan repeated those feats, only this season it felt somewhere between predictable and routine. There’s little doubt the Wolverines will enter 2023 as the decided Big Ten favorite. They’ve upended the order.
Meanwhile, Michigan opened as a 9.5-point favorite against TCU. There’s a good chance they’ll play for their first national championship since 1997. Unlike last year, it feels like they’ve got a real shot to win it, even though they won’t be favored if Georgia takes care of Ohio State, which backdoored its way into the title picture.
Michigan is ticking off accomplishments not achieved by this program in decades, if ever. We’re savoring every moment, even the drowsy ones.