Notre Dame Game wrap up

It’s great to be a Michigan Wolverine. Another great game for the Michigan Wolverines this week as they beat the Notre Dame Fighting Irish on the road 28- 24. This was another great win for Rich Rodriguez’s club. The win now makes them 2-0 and back in the national polls after being unranked since week 4 of last year. Denard Robinson looked amazing once again and put together another classic of a game that won him the National Player of the week honors for the second week in a row. Denard is the first player ever to win these honors two weeks in a row. The defense did enough to keep Notre Dame from winning only really making two bad decisions that hurt the team. This might not seem like a stunning victory, but it should be a big deal as this is only the 5^th time Michigan has won in South Bend in 33 years. A lot of good Michigan teams have went down their and lost, so anytime you can beat Notre Dame on the road is a great thing. The game made for a great Saturday afternoon for me to cheer like crazy downstairs all by myself, while the rest of the household was busy watching some blow out in-state rivalry watching a fellow Big Ten team dominate the lesser Big 12 program.

            The game started with what looked like Tate Forcier saying he was sorry for his sideline antics last week as this week on national TV as he hugged Rich Rod to start the game. The first quarter started with a quick opening 3 play series from the offense that forced them to punt. Dayne Crist easily led Notre Dame down the field to secure the 7 – 0 lead. Michigan returned with the two touchdown drives to lead at the end of the first 14 to 7. I was started to get worried if I was going to see a blow out and if last week was just setting me up for failure as I had put my faith back in this team to win. But, No worries Denard is still behind center as the first touchdown was an awesome quarterback draw pass. The play was executed perfectly as it forced the safeties up to stop the run and Denard hit wide open Roy Roundtree for a 31 yard touchdown pass. The next of the quarter was a scoring drive that saw Denard run all over the defense again and was finished off by a Stephen Hopkins touchdown on his first career carry. What a great start to his career that was by scoring on his first carry, and if you would have read the preview you would have expected a little dose of the big bodied Hopkins.

            The second quarter saw a couple different Notre Dame quarterback due to Crist having some vision problems after his sneak into the end zone in the first quarter. This was a good thing for Michigan with Notre Dame looking rattled and two new quarterbacks that only took a third of the practice snaps this week for the golden domers. They had true freshman Rees who was intercepted by Jonas Mouton on his second career pass trying to throw on a flee flicker that fooled nobody and next to look bad was Nick Montana play, who luckily for us Michigan fans didn’t have on a pair of his dads shape ups on, because he was throwing all over the field to anyone not wearing a Notre Dame helmet. The offense did move the ball pretty effectively and saw Denard use his speed to score on an electrifying 85 yard touchdown run to end the half. The first half saw Michigan shoot out of cannon again this week and finished with the lead 21- 7.

            In the third quarter, we saw the return of Dayne Crist and with him 10 quick points by Notre Dame as the lead quickly shrunk to 21 to 17. The youngsters started to look around a little bit and the Michigan offense got stranded at mid field often and couldn’t seem to convert on a couple short third down plays that they should of. This made me start to question Rich Rod a couple times and short third downs on why the don’t just run as they would call for a 15 yd pass, it didn’t make a lot of sense to me. The defense totally blew a coverage that led to the Notre Dame so called touchdown. If you look at the video the Notre Dame receiver started to celebrate at the two yard line and toss the ball into the end zone. Notre Dame quickly sprinted out and kicked the extra point and NBC conveniently didn’t show the replay until after the TV timeout. Way to go NBC!

            The fourth quarter came down to Michigan just not wanting to put the game away. 3 times they got down inside the Notre Dame twenty and didn’t score. Redshirt Freshman Brendan Gibbons missed two field goals that should have sealed the game and the third drive saw Michigan go backwards on third down after converting the third down due to a holding call. I am pretty sure that I could have made the second missed field goal and I am not an Army Bowl All American so maybe I needed to show up for the open tryouts. These misques would have put Notre Dame away, but instead they gave Notre Dame another chance to win the game. Out of nowhere comes this rainbow as it hadn’t been raining for hours, I started to almost think Touchdown Jesus was maybe real. My friend texted me and warned me of how this rainbow would also bring nothing good to the stadium and he was sure right, as Notre Dame somehow completed a 95 yard touchdown pass on the worst coverage I have seen in a while to retain the lead. Thomas Gordon looked as if he was playing 500 and the sun got in his eyes and then got out ran by the slowest guy on the field. But, as the rainbow went away the air and stadium would turn blue again, and also I personally just think that Michigan wanted to just raise Notre Dames hopes and then crush them back down. It was now time for the man himself Denard Robinson to put together one of the best drives in Michigan history against Notre Dame and win the game. His run ability and clutch 3^rd down completions sealed his fate in history as Michigan would score on Denard short scamper into the end zone and win 28-24. Notre Dame did have a chance at a late Hail Mary, but Crist thought the tuba player in row 4 was open and threw it out of the end zone.

            This was one of the greatest performances by a Michigan player in history as Denard Robinson accumulated 502 total yards. If you would have bet he would have attempted 40 passes people would have thought you would be crazy. He completed 24 of those 40 passes for 244 yards and a touchdown, and ran the ball 28 times for 258 yards. Once again if they gave away the Heisman after week two he would easily have won it. This easily goes in my personal top 5 performances I have ever seen as a Michigan fan, with the likes of what John Navarre did against Iowa, and Tim Biakabutuka did against Ohio State. It was just purely amazing. Denard was part of 94% of the Michigan offensive production, if you compare that to the best Vince Young ever had done was compile 84% of the yards at Texas. That is simply astounding. Expect to see his picture all over the place and the upcoming Sports Illustrated.

            The offense was lucky to see the surprising appearance of Roy Roundtree as he was supposed to be injured and doubtful this week. He played great taking some huge hits again and coming up with some great catches. He also rebounded well to dropping a great pass form Denard that would have been a hard catch anyway and played his heart out and never let it get him down. The offensive line played well again, but they do need to stop shooting themselves in the foot with those holding calls in big situations on the opponent’s side of the field. The defense as a whole played great, they just need to be aware of the big play and start wrapping up as they missed some open field tackles. They did force three interceptions and I haven’t seen that in a while. The defense keeps improving and should get a chance over the next few weeks to get ready for Big 10 conference play. It will also give Carvin Johnson who missed this game a chance to heal and be back at the starting spur position. Walk-on two years ago and now starting safety Jordan Kovacs who should have his own movie pretty soon had 7 tackles and an interception, as he would make Rudy look slow and non athletic.

            This game was another huge momentum factor for the young team to keep improving to the future and really helped the outlook of getting back to a bowl game. The next few weeks they should have a chance to get other players some more playing time and get tuned up for big ten play. I expect to see Hopkins get some more carries and Devin Gardner some reps at quarterback to give him some game experience. The return of Junior Hemingway is going to be huge to the outside wide receiver spot as Stonum and Odoms had to play over 80 snaps and that is too much to expect them to be fresh. It’s great to be a Michigan Wolverine going back home to play UMASS as the # 20^th team in the nation. Rich Rod should really be feeling great now. Go Blue!