By: Angelique S. Chengelis (DetNews.com) -

No one ever knows for certain how a football season will go, even in late July as preseason camp is about to begin on college campuses across the country.

At Michigan, though, the assumption was always that each season would end with some sort of bowl destination.

A bowl was among the goals this year.

“If we’re not in a bowl game, we’re all going to be ticked,” Michigan coach Rich Rodriguez said in late July during the Big Ten kickoff meetings.

But for a second straight season, there will be no postseason game for the Wolverines, and it’s a pretty safe assumption that there are lots of people, including players, coaches and fans, who are ticked.

Michigan’s 21-10 loss to Ohio State Saturday completed a streak of seven straight losses in Big Ten play as it finished 5-7, 1-7 in the conference, and the game highlighted all of the reasons why Michigan has struggled this season. For Rodriguez, who has been head coach for two seasons, his record with the Wolverines is now 8-16.

And so, another long offseason for the Michigan football team begins, void of the 15 always meaningful bowl practices that help identify and improve the players of the future.

If there’s a silver lining, it’s that the Wolverines are not technically last in the Big Ten. Michigan did beat official last-place Indiana for its lone Big Ten victory on the final Saturday in September, hence the last-place tiebreaker.

Statistics don’t lie

After a bright, 4-0 start to the season, one that Rodriguez said on Saturday was hiding some of the team’s warts, the collapse began.

“There’s never one reason you lose games,” Rodriguez said after the Ohio State loss. “Turnovers and beating yourself certainly doesn’t help, but there’s a multitude of reasons why you don’t win.”

Statistics can be manipulated to lie, but Michigan’s end-of-the-season totals don’t.

The Wolverines, while they appeared to make gains offensively this season under the leadership of freshman quarterback Tate Forcier, played most of their schedule without injured starting center David Molk and lacked the week-to-week support of healthy tailbacks.

Still, it’s tough to explain the inefficiency of the red-zone offense, which is ranked 114th nationally and last in the Big Ten. There were plenty of mistakes, as evidenced against Ohio State, once Michigan was in the red zone or in its vicinity.

Conversely, the much-maligned defense has been much maligned for a reason. The Wolverines yielded a program-worst average of 393.33 yards and didn’t do much to stop teams that reached the red zone. In fact, Michigan is ranked 103rd in red-zone defense nationally and 10th in the Big Ten.

Turnovers are killers

To top it off, the Wolverines, who had five turnovers against the Buckeyes’ four interceptions and a fumble, are last in the Big Ten and tied for 112th nationally in turnover margin.

Ouch, ouch, and ouch.

So, to sum it up, the Michigan offense couldn’t score on a regular basis when it got close enough to do so, the defense couldn’t stop opponents from scoring when they got close enough to do so, and Michigan simply couldn’t protect the ball and very rarely, particularly in the latter half of the season, didn’t take the ball away.

Does that explain a 5-7 season? Not entirely, but in a general sense, it’s difficult for any team to overcome turnovers, with an offense that created too many errors and a defense that rarely found a way to stop teams, particularly in the second halves of games the final month and a half of the season.

And now, the Wolverines will have until the start of spring practice in March to think about it all.

No related posts.