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For the first time in the Jim Harbaugh era, Michigan gets to embrace the spoiler role
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Michigan will not end 2017 as it once hoped it would.
Visions of a College Football Playoff run have since faded. The Wolverines will not end their B1G title drought, nor will they likely finish better than third in the division.
So what’s there left to play for? A lot, really.
Heading into November, this Michigan team will not carry the weight that the 2016 squad did. Nobody will be talking about Playoff résumés or national titles. Instead, the Wolverines can do something that they failed to do last year. That is, they can play their best football down the stretch.
Michigan will end its 2017 campaign with two games against top-10 teams (Wisconsin and Ohio State), both of whom could be playing for their Playoff lives. And what would be sweeter for Michigan than ending the regular season by knocking off one or even both of them?
Before they do that, though, they have a couple of tune-up games against Minnesota and Maryland. The Wolverines will be heavy favorites in both of those contests.
But embracing the “spoiler” role begins now.
Michigan has something that will make it extremely difficult to prepare for in the coming weeks. Besides having a defense that despite the showing at Penn State is among the best in America, it has a young, talented quarterback with extremely little tape on him.
That combination is unusual this late in the season. I already wrote on Saturday why Jim Harbaugh is probably kicking himself for waiting so long to put Brandon Peters in. John O’Korn lost two games in relief for Wilton Speight, and the Michigan offense went into free-fall.
Fortunately for the Wolverines, though, that game film isn’t very useful now.
Harbaugh has the ability to mix things up with Peters under center. Does that mean he’s all of the sudden going to pull out his entire bag of tricks with a guy with one half of college football experience? Of course not, but why wouldn’t Harbaugh be willing to add some new wrinkles against some elite defenses?
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That’s the challenge that lies ahead for this Michigan offense. In a couple short weeks, it’ll see another top-10 scoring defense in Wisconsin, much like the one it saw at Penn State. The difference is having Peters under center (assuming Speight doesn’t return). It’d also be different than any big headliner game of the Harbaugh era.
Even go back two years ago when Ohio State waltzed into the Big House and dismantled Michigan. There was still an outside chance that the Wolverines could earn a B1G East crown that day, and many had big-time expectations for Harbaugh’s first meeting with Urban Meyer.
Guess which team isn’t going to be expected to win in the Big House this year? The home team. In all likelihood, Michigan will be a touchdown underdog against Ohio State with a chance to prevent the Buckeyes from reaching Indianapolis for the third straight year.
Of course, there will still be the elephant in the room. The talk will also be about whether Harbaugh can finally beat Ohio State. But that’s not pressure that his team should feel. After all, they aren’t the ones who will have their postseason dreams ruined with a loss.
The same can be said about Michigan’s showdown with Wisconsin. If the Wolverines win their next two games, there’s a decent chance they’ll be ranked in the top 25 again. Oh, by the way, the Badgers will likely be undefeated and they’ll have yet to face a top-25 team. Methinks there will be plenty of eyeballs on them in what will easily be their toughest matchup of the year.
What a prime opportunity for Michigan to play spoiler in Madison.
Spoilers aren’t usually traditional powers that spent part of the season ranked in the top 10. Spoilers are Iowa, which used Kinnick magic to spoil Michigan’s undefeated start last year. Spoilers are Maryland, which went into Texas and spoiled Tom Herman’s debut. Spoilers are Northwestern, which just pulled out a triple overtime victory against Michigan State to squash the Spartans’ Playoff hopes.
But why can’t this young, talented, nothing-else-to-lose Michigan team follow in those footsteps? Why can’t the Wolverines thrive when the spotlight finally isn’t on them?
For once, this program doesn’t have to deal with managing expectations or overlooking opponents. One could tell from watching them in the second half against Rutgers that the Wolverines finally took a breath and collected themselves. They didn’t look like a team that was afraid of making mistakes.
At this point, Michigan’s only mistake would be not embracing the spoiler role.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Tradition. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.