EAST LANSING, Mich. – You can debate whether Devin Gardner or Taylor Lewan is the face of the Michigan football program.
But what can’t be questioned is that their faces told a story on a dark, drizzly Saturday afternoon when the Wolverines took a 29-6 walloping from Michigan State.
Gardner, beaten to a pulp after taking seven sacks, stood bent over with his hands on his knees after getting picked off in the Spartans' end zone by Darqueze Dennard midway through the fourth quarter.
That play ended any hopes of a desperate comeback attempt, and his face showed the pain of it all.
Lewan, the mammoth offensive tackle who passed on the NFL for a shot at taking the Wolverines to Pasadena, had blood streaming down a cut on his forehead and across his nose.
A wound received on another day had been reopened in the trenches.
“A lot of this game falls on the offensive line,” Lewan told reporters.
He was asked if he felt bad for Gardner.
“Yeah, I feel bad for him,” Lewan said. “That’s on us. We’ve just got to compete better.”
The only thing worse than the largest margin of defeat against the Spartans in 46 years, when the Wolverines suffered a 34-0 loss in 1967, was the fact that the Wolverines questioned their own effort.
“It’s who’s tougher,” said Michigan linebacker Jake Ryan. “We played a tough game, but it came down to who wanted it more.”
Wow. That’s some statement. Ryan was asked if he thought MSU had been the tougher team.
“No,” he said quickly. “We didn’t play the game we wanted to play. We need to go 100 percent every play, and on some plays we did not do that.”
That’s a major indictment of a team. Here they were, playing their hated in-state rivals in a game where victory would put them in the driver’s seat to the Big Ten championship game, and the Wolverines were playing as if this was the Akron game or something.
I asked Michigan coach Brady Hoke about Ryan’s “100 percent” comment.
“I didn’t see that,” Hoke said of the lack of effort. “I think that was his frustration as much as anything ... I think our kids played hard. We didn’t execute.”
That brought to mind the response legendary coach John McKay, then leading the miserable Tampa Bay Bucs, had when asked about his team’s execution.
“I’m in favor of it,” McKay deadpanned.
Only Hoke wasn’t in a joking mood. He stood firm in his post-game press conference, insisting that it was execution rather than effort that did in his team. Gardner was not brought to the media interview trailer, and Hoke would only note that his quarterback got “beat up” by the Spartans, who fed off the relentlessness of defensive end Shilique Calhoun. He had 2.5 sacks and two quarterback hurries.
When asked about how tough Calhoun was, Lewan said, “He’s not. They only put him on me a couple times, and I didn’t have any problem with him at all.”
Lewan shouldn’t have said that, and he shouldn’t have been goaded into shoving trash-talking Spartans safety Kurtis Drummond in the facemask for a 15-yard unsportsmanlike penalty. His passion to bring great things back to Ann Arbor should be applauded, but his actions sometimes work against that.
The Spartans are 5-0 atop the Legends Division and the Wolverines are 2-2 with tough games against Nebraska, Northwestern, Iowa and Ohio State ahead. They are only mathematically alive in the quest for a championship.
And now the Spartans have taken five of the last six in the series.
Bo Schembechler lost only five times in 21 years to MSU. So, what in the name of Schembechler is going on?
First and foremost, Michigan can’t run the ball.
Gardner, the Big Ten’s total offense leader with 328.4 yards per game, was held to 210 yards passing and minus-48 yards running thanks to the sacks for 164 total yards.
Almost every time you looked, the Wolverines had their defense on the field.
And Michigan’s defense – while not heralded like MSU’s – provided its team a great opportunity to make a game of it. Wolverines cornerback Raymon Taylor picked off a Connor Cook pass late in the third quarter and returned it 18 yards to the Spartans’ 41-yard line. MSU had a 10-point lead at that point, and a Wolverines’ touchdown off great field position could’ve made for a classic finish.
But then Gardner was sacked on three successive plays, moving 20 yards in reverse.
And this game was over along with Michigan’s championship hopes.
Their offensive line, once the best in the conference and perhaps in the nation, is woeful. Hoke hasn’t been able to rebuild the position group his predecessor, Rich Rodriguez, tried unsuccessfully to remold with smaller, faster spread offense blockers.
And so maybe it didn’t matter whether Fitz Toussaint or highly-publicized freshman Derrick Green (who didn’t get a carry) got the ball. There were few holes opened by the line.
Falling behind and having to pass against a strong defense is a recipe for failure, and that’s what this game was for Michigan.
It was a hard one to take for the Wolverines, who have to overcome more than a tough loss. They have to prove they are tough and relentless enough to once again be a factor in the Big Ten.
