Conservative play-calling doomed Michigan at Penn State

As you’ll likely recall (though if you blocked it from memory already, we understand and are impressed), Penn State defeated Michigan in a 43-40, four-overtime thriller on Saturday. The game looked to be in Michigan’s hands at the end of regulation, with Penn State needing to go 80 yards in under a minute with no timeouts, then doing precisely that for the tying score.

The overtime was its own cavalcade of blunders, none of which merit much revisiting (unless you want to read me saying “you shouldn’t miss field goals or commit turnovers” for 450 words, which I doubt), but let’s go back to the fact that Penn State was driving for the tie in the first place.

With 3:10 left in the game, Michigan faced a 1st and 10 at Penn State’s 28-yard line with a 34-27 lead. Penn State was out of timeouts, which meant that another first down would effectively end the game. Penn State would have a tough task of scoring no matter what, but central to that task was one condition: Penn State gets the ball back in a one-score game. If Michigan doesn’t allow that, it wins.

Bleeding the clock was important too, obviously, as the clock was a Michigan ally. Leaving as little time as possible on the clock before Penn State sees the ball again makes the task of scoring more difficult, of course, but only incrementally so, and with the timing rules stopping the clock after every first down the “no timeouts” thing isn’t nearly as big a deal in college as it is in the pros. But using time in that situation pales in comparison to getting that one more first down, as there’s no team that can clear three minutes off the clock in four downs. No, not even in the Big Ten.

Michigan’s conservative approach doomed itself. With a 1st and 10 at the 28, per Outside the Hashes, Michigan’s expected points were about 3.5. And the Wolverines didn’t even need points, necessarily; just a first down would have won the game, and any substantial gain of yardage would have solidified Michigan’s place in comfortable field goal range.

Instead, Michigan called the plays that almost never worked that day, and sure enough, those plays didn’t work. Michigan’s expected points dropped down to 2.2 points on third down even before the false start; after that, it was 1.5.

And so Michigan went right back to Toussaint and lost three more yards.

Yet giving up on points is exactly what Michigan did, giving Penn State its one shot at tying the game, and we know what happened from there.

That was a farcically mismanaged last possession by Michigan once victory was in sight. That more confidence was shown in the unproductive ground game than in Devin Gardner (who finished with 361 total yards, even after being effectively neutered by play-calling in the last couple minutes and overtime) is, to put it bluntly, a mistake. Yes, Gardner committed three turnovers in the first half, but Toussaint was virtually never an effective option for the offense, no matter how many times Hoke called his number. Hoke ignored his offenses’ successes and failures on the day when the situation was most important, and he paid for it by handing his team a loss in a game it really, really should have won.

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