"The Game"

     I sat on my parent's couch on Thanksgiving weekend as the final moments ticked away, fans storming the field of the Big House. I didn't know whether to smile, cry, cheer, run around high fiving everyone around me - so I did all of the above. Buckeye fans might laugh at this, their level of success has made them forget how much this game means to each fanbase. Our level of futility over the last 20 years had made me forget how joyous it is to win The Game. Growing up I would never thought that I would have had to live through two separate long term losing streaks vs the Buckeyes, I never would have thought we would have gone 17 years in between Big Ten title's either. All of the downfalls, the 2008 type years, the "oh so close" games and the blowouts all disappeared in that moment and I was 100% unapologetically happy.

    Michigan came into the game as underdogs, OSU had the #1 scoring offense and passing offense in the country. Michigan, even with all of their success up front, had issues in the back end of their defense giving up big plays through out the season. But first year defensive coordinator Mike Macdonald came up with a brilliant defensive game-plan to slow the Buckeyes high powered offense down; put up an umbrella, make them catch in front of you, rally to the football and don't give up the big plays that had made the Buckeyes so successful during the season. Make them drive the ball all game, and it worked.

    On the other side of the ball, Josh Gattis and Jim Harbaugh had a game-plan of their own, a simple yet successful one. Hand the ball to #25 over and over again. Hassan Haskins carried the ball 28 times for 169 yards and five (that's right five) touchdowns. Overall Michigan ran the ball 41 times, compared to 20 total pass attempts, for 297 yards and six touchdowns as they ran through, around and over Buckeyes on their way to a 42-27 program defining win. 

    Ohio State fans will call it an anomaly, a one off win out of 10. I see this win differently though. This wasn't 2003, where Michigan did most of their damage through the air. And it definitely wasn't 2011 where Michigan barely beat a bad Ohio State team with an interim head coach. This was a dominant performance on both sides of the line. Michigan's offensive line had their way with the Buckeyes front seven who laid down faster than a Thai hooker when an air craft carrier pulls in. Meanwhile, Michigan's defensive front kept Buckeye quarterback C.J. Stroud on the run and Aidan Hutchinson put on a Heisman performance sacking the OSU quarterback three times. This wasn't a question of "is Michigan going to win" as much as it was "by how much." Michigan was the more physically dominant team, and as Josh Gattis said after the game, OSU was a finesse team, not a tough team,

    This is a drastic change in how these two teams have been defined over the years. No one would have called Ohio State a finesse team under Tressel and certainly not under Urban Meyer, but under former offensive coordinator turned head coach Ryan Day, that's exactly what they've become. Meanwhile the toughness that Harbaugh has been trying to instill into the program for the last seven years finally took hold. This is less of an anomaly and more of a drastic shift in how these two teams approach the game. Michigan may have finally turned the long and treacherous Buckeye corner and may have cemented themselves as the team of the Big Ten going forward. Only time will tell if that's true, but as of November 27, 2021 everyone wearing maize and blue were feeling good about the direction of their program, while all those wearing scarlet and grey were finally the ones saying "maybe next year."