Don't Know What You've Got

Source: Dave Hogg

For Michigan fans, the Minnesota series has been one of spoiled comfort marked by occasional hardship, hardship in the sense that a loss stands out like a flamingo among a waddle of penguins. In the grand scheme of things, Michigan's three losses against the Gophers since 1967 are kind of like getting comfortable on the couch to watch something on Netflix, only to realize your computer is about to die; you'll have to get up and plug it in. Sometimes you don't make it, as Jason Giannini has kicked your power cord out the window.

In my 24 years, the Wolverines have lost the Little Brown Jug just once, in 2005. Despite coming off of a big victory in East Lansing against the then No. 11 Spartans, the Wolverines were just 3-2 heading into the Minnesota game. Even so, the Wolverines still had a shot at winning a Big Ten title, despite stubbing their toe in Madison two weeks prior.

The year before, Henne and Hart's freshman season, the Minnesota game once again went down to the wire. Chad Henne struggled, tossing two interceptions in the third quarter. If I remember correctly, backup QB Clayton Richard even came into the game for a series, although the box score says he didn't throw a pass, and my vague memories of that day nine years ago shakily confirms that fact.

The Gophers collapsed down the stretch that season, but headed into the Big House with a shiny 5-0 record (Michigan was 4-1, its lone loss coming in South Bend before Mike Hart was Mike Hart).

Eventually, Henne led one of many comeback drives to come in his Michigan career. With 3:04 to go, Henne marched the Wolverines 67 yards to a score, capped by a 31-yard strike to pre-pitch-the-ball Tyler Ecker. As a sophomore in high school making my first trip to the Big House as a person old enough to remember and acknowledge the significance such a thing (I hadn't been since I was a little kid), the victory was the greatest sporting event I had seen live at that point. Then again, I was a Chicago sports fan growing up in a post-MJ world.

I didn't really understand what the Michigan fans of 1986 and and 1977 felt when the Wolverines lost the Jug, but I would find out the next season.

So, back to 2005. Steve Breaston returned a kickoff 95 yards for a score early in the second half to put Michigan up 20-13. However, a 13-play, 61-yard Minnesota drive tied things up with six minutes to play in the third quarter.

In the 4th, Garrett Rivas missed a 34-yarder that would've given Michigan the lead with about eight minutes to go. The miss would prove costly, not that you need reminding.

With Minnesota seemingly content to just run the ball and kill the remaining couple of minutes of clock, Gary Russell busted a 61-yarder as the Michigan defense seemed to collapse like a slowly deflating bouncy castle. I often wonder what was going through Russell's mind when he saw all that space before him. Is this real? Is this happening? What is the meaning of life? If a Michigan safety falls down in the forest and no one is around, does he make a sound? 

Only five seconds remained. Unlike Rivas, Minnesota PK Jason Giannini booted his 30-yarder through the uprights. On the ensuing kickoff, Steve Breaston was not able to duplicate his third quarter magic. The Wolverines lost ownership of the Jug for the first time since Jim Harbaugh wore the winged helmet.

In an altogether disappointing season--one that still ended with a shot at the Big Ten title when Ohio State came to town, mind you--that loss still sticks in my mind more than a relatively inconsequential loss should. The Notre Dame game was simply bad football against what turned out to be a solid Fighting Irish squad. The Wisconsin game can easily be chalked up to playing at a venue like Camp Randall during Barry Alvarez' swan song in Madison. The Ohio State game was crushing for the simple fact that it was Ohio State, and Michigan had the game in its hands late.

With all of that said, there's something about losing the Jug in the way that they lost it, my sarcastic hardship analogy notwithstanding. It was nonsensical, avoidable, and truly unbelievable, and not in the colloquial sense of something happening that could be believed if you think about it for just a little bit.

As painful as it is to lose the Jug, every event has its equal and opposite reaction; in no place is this more tidily accurate than in sports.

Think of how the Gophers felt in 2005, or in 1986 when they upset the undefeated, No. 2 Wolverines in the Big House. If you cannot muster the energy to care for the Jug from Michigan's vantage, think of what it means for the other side.

Back in 2004, when I didn't quite understand the meaning of the Jug, and how this could be considered a "rivalry" game at all, what I did understand was that Ecker's touchdown score was a great thing, something I'd seen and experienced live. I remember him catching the Henne bullet, shrugging two tacklers and rumbling down the left sideline--right from my perspective in the end zone--and into the end zone. The crowd roared for perhaps the first time all game. For a 14-year-old, waking up at 6 a.m. is never part of the plan; at certain points in the first half, I felt as if I might fall asleep.

I also wondered why no one was standing, but that is a gripe for another day.

As with all things, once you have it, you must keep it, lest you find out what it is to go without. Despite having won 16 in a row coming into the 2005 game, one less sent the Jug back to the Twin Cities.

The Jug is truly a supernatural thing, for with it comes the power to roll up 16 seasons into one, to negate a long steady march in one fell swoop.

Although Michigan's contests against the Gophers since 2003-05 haven't been particularly competitive, that doesn't mean that the game hasn't accrued value over time. Michigan enters this game a 19-point favorite, and Wolverine fans hope that is a reasonable assessment.

But, the Jug knows nothing of point spreads or favorites and underdogs or AP polls or relative numbers of All-Americans.

All the Jug knows, in the darkness within its painted exterior, is that it must be awarded, to one or the other. It isn't the Lombardi Trophy or the Stanley Cup, nor does it pretend to be. On Saturday, both of those crowning achievements of their respective sports will mean very little to me, because I want the Jug to stay in Ann Arbor, almost as much as I don't want it go.

In case you need one more external reason to care, remember Glen Mason in 2003:

"I'd just like to see the thing before I die." 

Shameless Self-Promotion Time (2007 and Now)

(HT: Mike DeSimone)

Due to a somewhat nebulous snafu, I scheduled a post for this morning over at Maize n Brew that only emerged from the concealed and winding tubes of the Internet in the last hour or so. Anyway:

• I talked about the 2012 season to date and the so called Big Picture vis-a-vis the 2007 season. It's by no means a perfect comparison, I admit, but there are some similarities worth pondering in these final coming days before the return of football, in all its glory and terror. I made sure to cater to your sensibilities by not directly referring to 2007's particular brand of catastrophe, but it is mentioned in an oblique way, so be prepared (I hope you read that with Scar's voice from The Lion King in your head). There's also some quality nostalgia-ing in there, which I'm known to do from time to time. Anyway, read it, because it's Tuesday and you just have to have exhausted all potential forms of Al Borges critique by now...right? 

Time and Quarterbacks and Yesterday

This upcoming fall, Denard Robinson will be a senior. It will be his last year as a Wolverine.

Was this yesterday? It is yesterday like that moment from your childhood, the one that, through some process of by and large senseless mental natural selection, survived the years and became entrenched, a moment so brief--and potentially, probably, trivial--yet definitive of an era.

In 1997, after the Wisconsin game, I remember walking through a Toys R Us parking lot with my parents. The asphalt was wet--I remember this--and I could only think about how good the team had looked--in fact, I think I remember saying "They looked really good"--and what was in store for Michigan, before the BCS and realignment and any other number of post-modern gibberish diluted and sullied the product. This, and I was about to get a toy of some sort. Things were as good as they could be. The wind in my sails was forceful but kind.

I remember watching the 1998 Rose Bowl, a week before my 9th birthday. I was eating Skittles--I remember this, Wild Berry, I think--and watching the action unfold in my Midwestern living room as the Wolverines and Cougars took the field in a sun-soaked Eden, all of which I couldn't truly appreciate but knew was something to be in awe of. Living in the suburbs of Chicago at the time and thus concurrently experiencing the second Bulls 3-peat, I was spoiled. I watched every game expecting the Bulls to win, and they almost always did. When they went 72-10 in the 1995-96 season, each loss seemed a grave indignity by virtue of their infrequency, my reactions then to those losses only matched by my modern-day consternation on Saturdays when Michigan's helmets decided to spot an opponent more than 14 points. It was the closest that the NBA--or any other brand of sport--was ever elevated to and allowed to coexist on the same plane of existence that Michigan football occupied, occupies, and will continue to occupy.

I remember always feeling a sense of unspoken dread whenever the Bulls wore black in those days. Whether backed by fact or not, it always seemed that they would lose when donning the black road uniforms as opposed to the red ones. This relic of superstition survives to this very day, as useless as the appendix. When the Bulls wear black, I reflexively expect defeat. 

I only got to experience the last three years of Jordan's career in Chicago (I hear he played somewhere after that--for the preservation of my idyllic view of that time, I continue to ignore that Pretender arrogating the throne of MJ), but those three years were arguably the longest years of my life. They were three years of unadulterated sports bliss, and they were probably best consumed in the time my life in which they were consumed. Each year was a triumphant march toward what I felt was rightfully Chicago's, and I mean that in the naive way that a child believes it and not an adult's rage-filled insistence that his team deserves and should win it every year in an invocation of Divine Right. The adult could learn something from the child; Divine Right in sports comes from this world and not on high (whether literally on high--a Heaven of sorts where sports is the chief concern--or as a part of an artificial notion of deservedness interwoven within a city's character vis-a-vis its sports teams.

All of this was taken in while Michigan was making its push for the Rose Bowl (and if I had only known about Michigan hockey circa the mid to late nineties, my understanding of how sports fandom is supposed to work might have been irrevocably stunted). Naturally, I was eight, and so the particulars of it all were never there in real time (what I know of that season is a combination of impressionistic recall and retrospective viewing and reading of whatever I can find on the Internet and elsewhere). The year, 1997, was marked in my mind by three things, things which aren't so much plays as they are concepts: Woodson's interception against MSU, Woodson's punt return, and Brian Griese waggles. Now, when a Michigan quarterback play actions and comes the other way, I rise out of my seat, conditioned like Pavlov's dog.

Fandom grows and changes and I don't think that necessarily means that something definitively good or bad is happening in the process. I will say that that time of my fandom--that period between 1996 and 1998--was the greatest era in my relatively brief career as a fan of sports. You would think that the reason for this would be four combined titles won between my two favorite teams at the time--the Michigan football team and the Jordan Bulls--but that is not the case, anymore. As the years have passed and I've been able to more fully appreciate what I had the luck to experience as a kid, the entire thing boils down to one issue. It is a concept that dominates everything around us, whether we choose to be aware of it not. We get older and relative duration is exchanged for clarity.

Time, time, time. It's all about time.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

As we get older, Time has a funny way of passing. As children, we are pushed through the fabric of space and time (Space and Time if we want to pretend about any number of things) slowly, as if to ease us into what lies ahead. Take your time, kid. High school and driving and college are all other such things are so far out of the realm of a child's comprehension that they can barely exist. Life is like a water slide: it starts off slow, giving you enough time to understand and enjoy the fact that THIS IS A WATER SLIDE before taking you through swiftly and with less meaning than you might want. 1996-1998 was like the initial part before the precipitous drop, before days shed hours and weeks and months flew by with astonishing speed.

Another watershed moment in my fandom occurred in 2004. Michigan was replacing a significant amount of firepower, of which quarterback was probably the most difficult to immediately replace. As good as Chris Perry was, the quarterback position is in a league of its own, and John Navarre was a good one in his final season despite what many will tell you.


Matt Gutierrez went down and true freshman Chad Henne became the starter. The following January, Michigan found themselves in the Rose Bowl on the heels of remarkable freshman seasons from Henne and a little guy named Hart--to the satisfaction of pun and sports cliche enthusiasts everywhere--and although Michigan had lost to two mediocre to bad teams in Notre Dame and Ohio State (and a Vince Young-led Longhorns team in the Rose Bowl), things were looking good. It was 2004, and we had three more years of this. It would only get better.

A few years later. I was a freshman at Michigan, watching my first game as a student. The senior year, which had been talked about for so long as if it were a Holy Grail, was here. Like Thomas Hobbes's opinion on the nature of life, it was short and brutish. The following season elaborated on this notion.

Then, Denard Robinson burst onto the scene in 2009. Unlike Henne, he had to wait a year before becoming the starting quarterback. A boon and a curse, the year came and went with efficient, heartless speed. This is the crux of the matter. When you get older, when the gravitational pull of life is strong enough to have pulled you into its orbit like the wayward bit of interstellar rock that you are, you are moving too fast for you to truly appreciate everything that is transpiring. Now, there is not enough time to even say that this will never end.

Some things are cynic-proof. 

2010 and 2011 came and went, each replete with their own triumphs and misfortunes. He ran and ran but Time outpaced him. There is only one year left.

---------------------------------------------------------

Getting older has its negatives, as I've made clear. However, getting older allows the benefit of experience and hindsight. In 2004, I, like many, assumed that some combination of national and conference championships was an inevitability. In doing so, I think many lost the way. By 2007--and after the first two games of that season--there was a sense of dead weight, of a wasted something, an unattained ideal, all while things were happening that were worth really talking about.

Michigan went 11-2 this past season. Denard is now a senior, and Michigan returns much in the form of hope and a promise of the continuation of last year's successes. It is difficult to believe, however, that this will be the last season in which Denard Robinson will lead the Wolverines. When I think about it, I think of his run against Western in 2009, the 2010 ND game, and last year's Ohio game, wondering how it could have possibly happened this fast. Is this really it?

The boon of fandom, post-childhood, is that we can retain and store memories more precise and comprehensive than we could have imagined or been capable of as children. It is a simple fact of biology, and yet, it is the most endearing tool in our favor, as adults rooting for Michigan, attempting to revive the unburdened glow of childhood.

If you haven't started storing these sorts of things, start doing so. You'll wake up soon, January knocking at your door. The snow will be falling, perpendicular to the ground and in step with time, and Denard Robinson no longer playing for the Wolverines will have become a reality. This corporeal January will either scold you or shake your hand for what you've done, how you've handled the in between.

There will never be another Denard Robinson, just like there will never be another Chad Henne or Mike Hart. I made a mistake, in 2004, of establishing expectations, a reasonable projection. Wait till 2007, ad infinitum. 2007 is now, in a way, 2012.

To take on expectations--say, that Michigan won 11 games last season so they should logically win 11 again, or, even more ambitiously, more--is a mistake. It draws attention away from the reality on the field, whatever that may be. We have less than a year left with Denard, an allotment of time that would have once been an eternity. If time insists on moving faster as we slide, we might as well take notes. The curvature of the slide, a mental rendering of its layout in realtime, the exact feeling of the slide--the intermittent harshness and smoothness of it--and the exact moment when the realization that it's over descends, allowing itself to be described and understood as it happens. This is what we can do. It's the only thing to do; to take note, review, and bask in the clarity of memory in formation.

Kerosene

The final seconds ticked off and Michigan had lost again. It wasn't even close and by the time it was over I was already numb to it all. Chris Relf plowing through the line become a philosophical reality, and Bulldog linebackers streaming through our line on all-out blitzes like so many Haley's Comets turned life-destroying asteroids, wiping out Michigan's chances like the dinosaurs. An era was over, and despite the brief hope I held that somehow the vast layer of dust left by the impact would catch fire from some random wayward spark--reigniting the hope that once existed about the spread and Rich Rodriguez and the new and certainly better Michigan that would arise of it--it did not, and everything went dark for a while. We were left, leaderless, to madly wander the heath like King Lear, in the cold and in the dark and without direction or any sense of purpose or meaning. We were kings reduced to common men, crazy men.


Rich Rodriguez waited for his fate after the catastrophic failure that was the Gator Bowl (and much of the rest of his tenure) like Meursault, waiting for the gears of justice to finish grinding in order to provide a favorable verdict. After a while, it is easy to trick yourself into believing that something will turn out better than it will. Meursault's lawyer told him he expected a "favorable outcome," which, for me, would have been the retention of Rich Rodriguez and his offense, with, of course, some serious changes being instituted in an attempt to fix what had obviously been broken. Maybe those fixes were impossible because they were fixes to problems caused by things so deeply rooted in Rich's personality that it would've been like telling a consistently pessimistic person to look at the bright side of life. I convinced myself that maybe that would happen, but, like Meursault's case, it did not.

When the bell rang again, when the door to the dock opened, what rose to meet me was the silence in the courtroom, silence and the strange feeling I had when I noticed that the young reporter had turned his eyes away. I didn't look in Marie's direction. I didn't have time to, because the presiding judge told me in bizarre language that I was to have my head cut off in a public square in the name of the French people. Then it seemed to me that I suddenly knew what was on everybody's face. 

And, like that, it was over.





---------------------------------------------------------------------


Five days later, Michigan had a coach. Each day seemed like a lifetime in and of itself as the program wandered like Lear, with the rain falling down turning the ash and the dust on the ground into a soft, extinguishing mud. Each day was stretched out and miserable, leaderless and void of anything, not even anything bad, by which to define ourselves. Each day we were left to twist in the wind, hoping for Harbaugh, for Miles (not me), for someone to come and say that they were the leader of this program and they would get on it then and there. Finally, we had that man, and, for a while, I was unhappy. But, as they say, it's in the past.


We're 72 hours and a tailgate away, and yet I get the feeling that it's happening too fast. I wonder if I've done everything I needed to do this offseason? I wonder if the team is ready? I wonder if Coach Hoke believes the things he is saying or if it's all a show? I wonder how media savvy Coach Hoke really is? Is Greg Mattison really that good? Does Borges really understand what he has in Denard? Does Denard really understand how fast he is, and how when there's nothing there on the pass he needs to go?


These aren't questions so much as expressions of anxiety. After a long hiatus, the 2010 season seems like the distant past, as does most of the Rich Rodriguez era. What came out of the Llody Carr era was rebirth, and from that hope, and from that resistance, and failure, and partial rebirth into failure and failure and failure and part of the partial rebirth into dread, the dread of the end and the dread of the beginning, like stabbing at the surface of a pool once, twice, three times before eventually taking the plunge for better or worse.


We're embarking on a slow shift the other way, the way we desperately strove to distance ourselves from after Crable blocked the outside guy on the final field goal against Appalachian State. The old way of doing things, whatever that may mean. There's nothing sarcastic or critical in that designation (particularly since this old way was more successful than the new way), as trying something new necessitates the existence of a prior way, an SOP of Michigan football. Everybody needs definition or else they risk extinguishing the fire of themselves, the thing that makes them do the things they do. For those five days, the fire fell to a low, dull glow, sickly and meek and embarrassing. It's a wonder what eight months can do. I went to bed on January 1st, thinking about what had just happened, what would happen, wondering what another restart would do to that flame. Those five days bore out our biggest inefficiencies, our at times hamfistedness, our determination to revert, to tear down, to criticize. Some threatened to leave if changes weren't made. Some said that all of this was a mistake. I had poured my entire heart into the revolution, and in the end, too many people had put down their guns and gone home.

I, myself, am furthering myself from certainty. This weekend marks the first home game for which I won't be in attendance since 2006. I don't know what I'll do, or how I'll handle it. This coming Saturday last year, I was in the stadium when Brock Mealer walked across the field. It got dusty.

I was starting my senior year, which I thought would never end, as people always do at the beginnings of things. I've had to adapt, to realize that things are now irrevocably different, that they won't be the way they've been the last four years, where I could walk to my window any evening of the week and hear a faint and distant rendition of The Victors, chopped up in pieces, played and replayed and perfected. I always wondered how they could practice it so many times, because when they played it during the games it sounded the same every single time.


I'm in New York now, a place that represents the antithesis of college football culture. I've seen my share of Michigan gear here and exchanged Go Blue's with people I would never see again. On my way back home to New York after a trip to Alabama in June, I met a Nebraska fan in the airport in Huntsville, AL. I told him I wished him well and that I hoped he would enjoy the Big Ten conference. He said that he was looking forward to it. I had over an hour until boarding; I ended up talking to this stranger, who was kind enough to approach me upon seeing my #16 jersey. He asked me if I was a Michigan fan, and I laughed and said yes while thinking how no answer would ever convey what I was thinking.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------


I got to watch Mike Hart and those guys for a year, my freshman year, after watching them play for three years while I was in high school in north Alabama, surrounded by Alabama and Auburn fans. Michigan won the Big Ten when Mike Hart and Chad Henne were freshmen, and even they they lost their last two games that season you had the feeling that an endless future extending to infinity existed, that three years of Henne and Hart might as well have been an eternity. Everybody said to wait till 2007, when they would be seniors. If you think this is good, wait till they're older, better, more experienced. Everything gets better, everything is linear and un-tampered with, watch this success unfold methodically. It was the height of certainty, as far as knew it, as certain as I could be as a 15-year old. I got to Ann Arbor in 2007, and things did not happen the way people expected them to, and uncertainty ruled the day.


Even then, the fire burned. It never wavered because I saw Mike Hart carry the ball 44 times against Penn State with strep throat. I saw a gimpy Chad Henne lead the Wolverines to a victory in Evanston after the young upstart Mallett proved to be unworthy of the throne. I watched Mike Hart pick up a fumble that miraculously bounced into his hands--on the first snap that Mallett took after Henne hobbled to the sidelines midway through the fourth--as if he was picking up his laundry and it was all perfectly logical and true to life.

It was absurd and irrational but it was memorable and it kept things alive. Hart did that his entire career; just when you thought things were over, when you thought that Michigan would lose to Michigan State for the first time in six long, dominant years, Hart pulled out a big bucket of kerosene and poured its contents all over his own body and set it on fire to prove a point. Even at the bottom, the smallest, most ridiculous events spawn things beyond their original scope. A seed becomes an apple tree, a fumble picked up like the stray singular sock on your bedroom floor becomes victory; unadulterated, undiluted victory. When I look back, I remember the defeats, but they litter the landscape light stray leaves, secondary aspects of a grander scene. Disappointment is relative, but memories are not. I remember Mike Hart doing that thing, and it was. It still is.


This team has has its heroes. I could go through them, but to draw attention to them is superfluous and most probably not what they would want themselves. The thing that's most worth knowing is that heroes will be born this season, but you might not know it until next year, or the year after, or 20 years down the road when you're wondering what happened to that guy or that guy.

via Maize & Blue Nation

We can't control what happens on the field, but we can control the fire that burns, that must burn, if you're a fan of any sort. I choose to relish the moments, the players, and the experiences I have with Michigan football. There's always a time for moping, a period of days or weeks when it's justifiable to be a cantankerous, horrible version of yourself. We are all allotted this time by ourselves, a special time we've set aside at the beginning that we've condemned yourselves to lose, like walking into a casino and saying you'll lose this much and that it's okay. 

I've learned, in four short years of horrible, frustrating, and exhilarating Michigan football, that you've got to take what comes, assimilate the failures into the overall sum of memories so that in the end they're indistinguishable. Selective memory is just another name for optimism. As long as you keep the fire burning, as long as you feed it and nurture it and remember why you even do it when it shoots up smoke and burns everything around it to the ground, leaving unseemly trails of blackened earth and ashy detritus, then you'll understand, and everything along the way becomes a part of the process, a part of the burning. After all, sometimes the only thing that lets you start over in earnest, is fire. 

Remember When: 2007 Northwestern

People forget about this one a lot. In fact, I haven't given it much thought since it happened. I decided to watch Wolverine Historian's Chad Henne tribute video last night on a whim and it brought it all back. You might think that it's "just Northwestern"--a 6-6 one at that--and, well, it is. It also isn't. I would posit that if there was a game that defined Chad Henne was as a player, I think this one is it. Five-star quarterbacks are not all the same. I mean, they're all generally great passers with strong arms and either great size or great athletic ability, but after that things start to get clear. It's like a microscope slide--at a resolution that is a touch less than needed everything looks the same, but a subtle uptick in focus reveals a world crawling with particles all different from each other. Sometimes you can't tell the difference even then, and you need to see how things act under natural conditions. If a slide in a controlled laboratory environment is a 7 on 7 camp or the Elite 11 then a real, live game is the unpredictable swampland, swishing with flotsam and jetsam, a place where destinies fulfill themselves without rhyme or reason. It was 2007. The Wolverines had lost their first two games after beginning the season with a top five ranking, and Chad Henne had gotten hurt in a thumping against the Ducks. Chad Henne came back for this: why?

--------------------------------------------------------

Chad Henne passes as Justin Boren looks on, confused

This is a game that nobody will talk about in the grand scheme of things. It was an inglorious contest, one that Michigan escaped from with a victory but only barely after entering the half with down by 9. After Henne engineered a masterful opening drive--leading to an 11-yard Manningham touchdown reception, in which he made calmly dismissed the defensive back before him with a shimmy and a burst that we would see again months later against the Gators. Even throughout this first drive, it was obvous Carr and Co. were protecting Henne via a gameplan that featured short drops and quick passes to the sidelines. Northwestern wasn't very good, so it worked, but Henne had to exit the game for a while. Enter Ryan Mallett, the hero of the Penn State game and the caretaker throughout the Notre Dame Yakety Sax contest (for the kids). 

Of course, some people were already calling for the young upstart to ascend the Michigan quarterbacking throne, kicking Henne to the curb like the Borgias "dismissed" their rivals. Unfortunately for Mr. Mallett, he was not quite that good yet. From the moment he entered the game in the first quarter until Henne's return at the beginning of the second half, no points were scored. The offense was stuck in the mud and it was obvious that the freshman wasn't up for it. In a drive near the end of the first half, he was able to complete a bomb to Manningham down the right sideline, followed by a nice scramble to avoid a near sack to find an open Manningham for a first down*. Those two plays were just about the extent of Mallett's good play that afternoon: one frantic near sack and a completion that was almost ruled incomplete. He was downright bad and this performance was a bitter disappointment after he performed so admirably against ND and PSU (especially in the latter, during which he completed a number of fairly clutch late game passes). My intention is not to trash Ryan Mallett; rather, it is to show how good Chad Henne was by comparison, and what he offered that Mallett didn't then (and arguably never did, but that's a story for another day). Sometimes it's easier to tell what it is that you have before you if you juxtapose it with something else. 

Chad Henne returned and with a workmanlike efficiency resurrected Michigan's offense, applying a defibrillator to Mike DeBord's brain and saying just let me finish this so we can go home. Once he returned, the outcome was never in doubt. Henne led Michigan down the field once again in the 3rd with a little help from his friends--namely Mario and Mike--punctuating the 10 play, 77-yard drive with a touchdown pass to Carson Butler (!) of all people. Despite knowing that it's going to happen and having seen the above highlight video many more times than a normal person probably should have, it always surprises me that Carson Butler catches that touchdown for some reason. 

Henne went on to throw another touchdown pass, this time to Adrian Arrington, in the fourth to put the Wolverines ahead 21-16. It wasn't even some long, triumphant drive, either. 

Michigan at 11:15			MICH	NW
1st and 10 at NW 16		Mike Hart rush for no gain to the Nwest 16.	14	16
2nd and 10 at NW 16		Chad Henne pass incomplete to Mike Hart.
3rd and 10 at NW 16		Chad Henne pass complete to Adrian Arrington for 16 yards for a TOUCHDOWN.	20	16
		Jason Gingell extra point GOOD.	21	16
		Bryan Wright kickoff for 65 yards returned by Stephen Simmons for 29 yards to the Nwest 34.
DRIVE TOTALS: Mich drive: 3 plays 16 yards, 01:22 Mich TD

After a stuffed rush by Mike was followed by an incompletion, Henne said bastante. He was sick of this, like John McClane, wondering how he get himself into all of this. Henne dropped back and unloaded a precision strike to Arrington between two hapless Northwestern defenders floating around like buoys in the sea, helpless and ineffectual in their movements. Henne's arm and precision was the perfect storm. 

I imagine Henne walking up to Lloyd in that knee brace, even more immobile than usual. Lloyd probably had that same look he always had, the stonecut wrinkles in his forehead in their most compressed state. He was probably anxious on the inside because Mallett play was the antithesis of tremendous. Henne to Lloyd: I'm good. Lloyd nods.

*Jason Gingell went on to miss a 26-yard field goal...history repeats itself and whatnot. 

------------------------------------------

Nobody will ever remember this game, which is a shame. This game is a reminder of so many things: how good Mario Manningham really was, what a somewhat competent defense looked like, what Obi Ezeh was before he was bludgeoned by unsolicited expectations that outpaced the growth of his abilities on the field, and what a quarterback with nothing to lose but a little more dignity could do. It also featured a hilarious interception return by Tim Jamison, as well as a somewhat depressing play in which Brandent Englemon failed to close in on a pretty slow Omar Conteh, who went on to bust a long touchdown run past him. That was one of the more embarrassing moments in Michigan safety play of the last 10 years, of which there are,of course, many. I remember thinking this exact thought after that play: "Man, we really need to upgrade our safety talent." 

Either way, this was the game that officially got Michigan's head above water, putting them at 3-2 (2-0) for the season. It had to be done and the senior did it, silently and without pomp. He'd done this before.