The Victors: Team 138, Game 2

Saturday, 9 September @ Michigan Stadium
(№ 8) Michigan 36-14 Cincinnati
2-0, B1G 0-0

I posted the following to my FaceSpace "wall" in reaction to the valiant Wolverines' victory in the home opener against the epithetless Bearcats:

It is a tribute to how quickly Coach Harbaugh & co. have righted the ship that we, the Wolverine Nation, are vaguely dissatisfied by Saturday's victory, even though just a few short years ago any win over any opponent was cause for raucous celebration. It's good to be spoiled again. It's good to be Michigan again. #GoBlue!

Uncle Don's Murder Machine didn't look quite as murderous against Cincinnati as it had against Florida, surrendering fourteen points instead of a paltry three, but it more than compensated by scoring fourteen* points on its own with a pair of "pick sixes," interceptions returned for touchdowns. Also, we must remind ourselves that Florida is massively offensively challenged; so, even at its murderizing best the Murder Machine will rarely look as suffocating as it did in the season opener.

The offense had a better day in that quarterback Wilton Speight (senior) did not throw any interceptions, which very rare for him. The attacked was well-balanced between runs & passes, & running back Ty Isaac (senior) has his second consecutive one-hundred-plus yard game.

The special teams were a mixed bags, with freshman Donovan Peoples-Jones stubbornly refusing the signal for fair catches on punts, & mishandling several before he was pulled in favor of junior Grant Perry. Cincinnati's first touchdown game as a result of great field position resulting from a punt bouncing off the leg of a valiant Wolverine—who should have been warned away from the area by Peoples-Jones, but wasn't—& recovered by the epithetless Bearcats. On the other hand, a botched Cincinnati punt resulted in a Michigan safety, with the panicked punter pushed the football out the back of the endzone. Sophomore kicker Quinn Nordin made both his field-goal attempts.

In all this, I suppose Team 138 is a victim of a high expectations created during the Harbaugh era. By any rational standard, the rebuilding project under Coach Harbaugh has vastly exceeded expectations, with the valiant Wolverines winning ten games in each of Harbaugh's first two seasons (Teams 136 & 137 each finished 10-3), a feat that hadn't occurred in over a decade, since Lloyd Carr lead Teams 123 & 124 to back-to-back 10-3 records in 2002 & 2003. We, the Michigan faithful, have become spoiled, as I mentioned in my FaceSpace posting. In those later years under Coach Carr, the valiant Wolverines occasionally lost games to "lesser opposition" such as Cincinnati. Under Coaches Rodriquez (2008-2010; Teams 129, 130, & 131) & Hoke (2011-2014; Teams 132, 133, 134, & 135), victories were so rare & so hard to come by that none was taken for granted, none was greeted with a vaguely dissatisfied shrug because the valiant Wolverines hadn't won in more convincing fashion or by a wider margin. Yet, that is precisely the reaction to the Cincinnati game; not joy at the victory, but vague yet definite dissatisfaction with the victory, as if it somehow isn't good enough for us. Michigan fans are often accused of arrogance by our opponents & it is a fair charge. We are all too often arrogant; we expect Michigan to win. We often expect it to look easy. The decade since "the Horror" should have humbled us, & it often did, but it also made us yearn for the good old days, when we stuttered about like peacocks, secure in our place as natural kings of all we survey. We all want something we cannot have—to go back to a time before the valiant Wolverines' bowl-invitation streak was snapped, before the valiant Wolverines posted three losing seasons in seven years, before Michigan lost to Appalachian State. I think we react with borderline panic to every less-than-impressive victory because our swagger is now just a veneer, no more substantial than an eggshell. We desperately want Harbaugh's Wolverines to be the valaint Wolverines of old, with their aura of invincibility, but in our heart of hearts we fear they are merely Rich Rod's Wolverines or Hoke the Joke's Wolverines. We are scarred & we are scared.

Go Blue!

*O.K., strictly speaking the defense only scored twelve points on the two touchdowns, with the two points-after being scored by the special teams, but that's overly nitpicky even for a captious soul like your humble narrator.