GLENDALE, Ariz. — Twelve final thoughts on Michigan’s 2022 season and Saturday’s 51-45 Fiesta Bowl loss to TCU …
1. The devastation inside Michigan’s locker room after the game was hard to describe. College football is a stage-managed sport with a lot of layers between what the public sees and what happens behind the scenes. When the curtain gets pulled back, it can be striking to see the raw emotion that comes with a loss like the one Michigan experienced.
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You could see it on the face of wide receiver Roman Wilson, who answered questions softly at his locker before going back to the training room to be fitted for a sling. Wilson landed hard on his shoulder early in the first quarter, went to the locker room for treatment and battled for the rest of the game. His touchdown reception with 3:18 remaining gave Michigan a chance to win, and who knows what would have happened if his long touchdown catch had been upheld instead of spotted short of the end zone.
Wilson didn’t sound bitter about having his touchdown overturned, though it undeniably altered the game. Kalel Mullings fumbled on the next snap, and a golden scoring opportunity went to waste. It was that kind of day for the Wolverines, who made a bunch of uncharacteristic mistakes and still had a chance to win in the final minute.
Like a lot of players, Wilson took Saturday’s loss much harder than last year’s loss to Georgia in the Orange Bowl. That’s what happens when a team spends all year working toward a national championship, only to lose a thriller against an opponent that was playing with house money.
“It just hurt a lot more for me,” said Wilson, who finished with five receptions for 104 yards. “I’m a little bit older now, a lot more invested in this team. I worked a lot harder to be here.”
THE EFFORT FROM ROMAN WILSON 😳😤#CFBPlayoff pic.twitter.com/9lgQlcIZFv
— ESPN College Football (@ESPNCFB) January 1, 2023
2. This is two seasons in a row that Jim Harbaugh’s program has played its worst game of the year in its final game of the year. Is that a coincidence? A product of the competition? A flaw in Michigan’s preparation? Those are questions the Wolverines need to ask as they prepare for 2023. Next year’s team should have the talent to take another run at a national title, assuming key pieces return. But as the Wolverines learned Saturday, none of that matters if a team isn’t at its best in the CFP.
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3. Michigan’s purported physical edge was a big topic of discussion leading up to the game. People who studied these teams understood that it was an oversimplification to think that Michigan was going to run all over a TCU defense that was ill-equipped to stop a Big Ten-style rushing attack. But did anyone outside of Fort Worth expect the Horned Frogs to control the line of scrimmage the way they did?
TCU’s three-man front did an excellent job of squeezing gaps and allowing linebackers to come up and make tackles. Michigan gave up 13 tackles for loss, about three times its season average, and had trouble keeping TCU defenders out of the backfield. Any advantage Michigan had in size or strength was canceled out by the way TCU was flying to the ball.
“It was a little different,” left tackle Ryan Hayes said of TCU’s 3-3-5 defense. “We had practiced for it, but when it comes down to it, we just didn’t play as good as we needed to. I think we did that to ourselves.”
Michigan countered in the second half with the flea-flicker, plus more play-action passes and designed quarterback runs. But by then, the Wolverines were in a hole and needed to play catch-up against a team that could score points in bunches.
4. Michigan missed Blake Corum, especially in the red zone. Many times this year, Corum squeezed 4 or 5 yards out of a play that should have been stopped for no gain. Donovan Edwards is a talented running back, but his carries tend to be more boom or bust. Nearly half of Edwards’ 119 yards came on one carry, his 54-yard run to open the game. On the other 22, he averaged 2.9.
5. In hindsight, it wasn’t a great omen that Michigan felt it had to call the Philly Special on fourth-and-goal from the 2 on its opening drive. Having a freshman tight end trying to throw a pass to the quarterback didn’t communicate a lot of confidence in Michigan’s ability to line up and get the tough yards.
“I take full responsibility for it not working and should have had something different called,” Harbaugh said. “Put that one on me. They had it wired, and they had it well defended. Sitting here now, I definitely wish I would have called a different one.”
GO DEEPER
Michigan's season of destiny spoiled by TCU in Fiesta Bowl thriller
6. Mullings’ goal-line fumble was another play that highlighted Michigan’s reliance on Corum. Mullings, a linebacker, practiced at running back in the spring but wasn’t part of the backfield rotation until Corum went down. Michigan went with Mullings as the short-yardage back over Edwards, CJ Stokes and Tavierre Dunlap, all of whom had more experience playing the position. In that key situation, it didn’t work out.
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“When I went to get the ball, I didn’t handle it clean enough,” Mullings said. “When I went to tuck it away to my left (hand), I felt it slip. I didn’t even realize that I lost it.”
7. To answer a question I posed a few weeks ago: This looked like a Big 12 game, not a Big Ten game. I didn’t mean that as a pejorative toward the Big 12, which was the most balanced conference in the country. It’s just a fact: The Big 12 is more of a wide-open league, with offenses that emphasize getting the ball in space. TCU did that effectively and put Michigan’s defense on its heels in a way few teams have all season.
Michigan did a reasonably good job containing Max Duggan, who completed 14 of 29 passes for 225 yards with two touchdowns and two interceptions. The real back-breaker was giving up 263 yards on the ground and 150 to Emari Demercado, who was playing in place of the injured Kendre Miller.
“We know how to win games,” defensive tackle Mazi Smith said. “You win a game by stopping the run. Us knowing what to do, I was a little surprised to see them do it.”
8. TCU’s Quentin Johnston is a 6-foot-4 wide receiver who could be drafted in the first round. Michigan’s Quinten Johnson is a backup safety who had nine tackles all season. How Johnson ended up as the only defender within 15 yards of Johnston on a key play in the second quarter remains a mystery, but needless to say, it was not the optimal outcome for Michigan.
Michigan brings a corner blitz, Max Duggan hits Quentin Johnston for 32 yards! #TCU #FiestaBowl pic.twitter.com/Ewfx6Wguf7
— 𝗙𝗢𝗟𝗟𝗢𝗪 @𝗙𝗧𝗕𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗱𝟳 (@FTBeard7) December 31, 2022
The play had to be a miscommunication in Michigan’s secondary, as Gemon Green was coming on a corner blitz while Johnson rotated toward the middle of the field.
It’s not clear why Michigan got such limited contributions from R.J. Moten, who appeared in the participation report but didn’t compile any statistics. Like the situation with Mullings at the goal line, the busted coverage was an example of Michigan digging deep in its depth chart and asking players who weren’t in many high-leverage situations all season to make plays in the Fiesta Bowl.
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9. J.J. McCarthy showed impressive poise this season as a first-year starter. He showed it again Saturday, even if Michigan’s deficit was partly of his making. He also showed he’s still a young quarterback with some growing to do.
This was McCarthy’s first real taste of failure as a starter at this level. The spotlight that comes with being the starting quarterback at Michigan burns hot, especially when the results fall short of expectations. A quarterback who’s the face of the program in good times has to be there in the hard times, too.
College athletes are no longer unpaid amateurs, but they’re not NFL players, either. They deserve room to grow. Walking out of the postgame news conference and leaving teammates to answer for what happened on the field wasn’t a great look, but I’m not going to pretend it’s a huge deal, either. What matters is that McCarthy learns from his first experience of big-time heartbreak and comes back better next season.
10. So where does Michigan go from here? We’ll have all offseason to analyze that question, but my initial feeling is that the Wolverines will need to fortify a few areas if they want to make a serious run at a national championship in 2023.
The offensive line loses at least two starters and could lose as many as four, depending on whether Trevor Keegan and Zak Zinter declare for the draft. No one will blame Corum if he decides he’s proven everything he has to prove at Michigan. Mazi Smith, Mike Morris and DJ Turner are fourth-year players on defense with NFL futures. The receiving group is likely to look different, too, with Ronnie Bell moving on and other players weighing the NFL.
Michigan doesn’t need to abandon its identity after losing to a dominant Georgia team in 2021 and coming out on the wrong end of a shootout against TCU in the CFP. However, Saturday’s game was a reminder that great teams have to be versatile. Being able to score 45 points in a Playoff game was a sign of growth from Michigan, especially on a day when the running game wasn’t dominant. But there’s more growth that needs to happen.
11. Harbaugh’s name is going to show up in NFL reports for the next four weeks, because that’s what happens every January at Michigan. After he gave the NFL serious consideration last offseason, it’s impossible to rule out the possibility that he would leave for the right situation. However, it’s not a foregone conclusion that he would take an NFL job if offered just because he explored it last season. Until there’s a concrete report of mutual interest between Harbaugh and an NFL team, the rest is just chatter.
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12. Finally, a word of thanks to everyone who followed along this season. Readers make this job possible, and I’ve appreciated all the kind words, suggestions and conversation throughout the year. Let’s keep the conversation going … but first, let’s all get some sleep.
(Photo of Jim Harbaugh: Christian Petersen / Getty Images)
