Three and Out (54 page)

Just 1:15.

That's what every team in the country would say in that situation. But in the Michigan coaches' box, Calvin Magee turned to Rod Smith, smiled, and said, “They left us too much time. We got this.”

On the sideline, Denard Robinson told his troops, “Plenty of time.”

Roundtree agreed. “Let's go get this,” he said, flashing his smile while snapping his chin strap.

At Indiana's 46-yard line, with 29 seconds left, Robinson dropped back to pass with a Hoosier rushing right at him, determined as a bull. Robinson ignored him, standing steadfast in the pocket long enough for Junior Hemingway to get free along the right sideline. Robinson launched a bomb, an instant before getting launched backward.

Robinson didn't see the outcome, lying on the turf 5 yards from where he'd passed, but he could hear it. The sure-handed Hemingway came down with the jump ball, getting to the 4-yard line. From there, Robinson took the shotgun snap and cut through a hole on the right for the score.

Michigan 42, Indiana 35, with 17 seconds left.

Robinson didn't celebrate. On the sidelines he looked his fiercest—“Let's go, D!”

But Roundtree did, always happier when a teammate scored than when he did. “What did I
tell
you?” he asked Hemingway, exchanging a series of complicated hand slaps. “Don't fuck with us!”

The defense held, and the Wolverines got their fifth straight victory.

“We
know
we've got a lot of work to do when we get back,” Rodriguez told his team in the crowded red locker room. “But I admire your poise under pressure.

“Do I have to remind you who's next?”

“OH, YEAH!”

“I know it's not good to hate, but it's okay to hate State!”

“YEAH!”

*   *   *

Winning solves a lot of problems, but it doesn't solve all of them. The offense and its star quarterback were getting better every week, but the defense was stagnant at best, and the kicking game had become so unreliable that on fourth downs in normal field goal range the coaches usually opted to go for it or punt. (Where was top-ranked kicking recruit Kyle Brindza when you needed him? Lost to Notre Dame.)

Some of those problems were simply the result of the rash of injuries and departures on defense. In the Indiana game alone, Michigan played a stunning twelve true freshman, seven of them on defense. Another year or two would go a long way toward maturing those players and getting the injured veterans back, but not all Rodiguez's problems could be explained by dumb luck.

One of Rodriguez's good friends, who was well aware of Rodriguez's coaching ability and the treatment he had endured both in Morgantown and at Michigan, said, “I love Rich, but he's made some mistakes.” In his mind, these included failing to get Jeff Casteel to come with him, then hiring Scott Shafer and Greg Robinson, and, of course, failing to find another blue-chip kicker after eleventh-ranked Brendan Gibbons lost the job.

There was a logic behind most of those decisions, of course. If Rodriguez couldn't get everything done at once, he should start with what he does best, the offense—and the contracts Michigan offered at the time did not permit him to hire his first choice for many coaching positions, including defensive coordinator. In hindsight, he would probably agree that insisting on guaranteed contracts for his coordinators and cutting $100,000 out of the new weight room's budget to secure Casteel—plus a multiyear contract—would have been wise, as would making recruiting an acclaimed kicker a higher priority.

But there isn't a coach in the country who couldn't look back over his past three years and have reached similar judgments based on facts known only at the end of a season. Of course, the majority of those coaches could safely assume they'd get a few more years to iron out the kinks. By the middle of his third season, Rodriguez labored under no such illusions.

Still, if Michigan was looking for improvement, there was ample evidence. If it was looking for fatal flaws that would undoubtedly show up in bigger games that year, there were plenty of those, too. This was a team in transition. It seemed to be going in the right direction—following a familiar pattern—but it still had a way to go.

But if Rodriguez's bosses wanted to see the second coming of the Leaders and Best, they were bound to be disappointed. It wasn't going to be this year.

 

42   BIG WEEK? WE KNOW!

Schmidt's injury report didn't have to be very long to inspire fear.

Top on his list: Denard's left knee, which had taken another beating, causing the bursa sac to swell. Otherwise, the team was relatively healthy, but that one knee would generate an inordinate amount of worry in the week ahead.

“Evaluations.” Rodriguez sounded somewhere between mildly peeved and disgusted—just where, his staffers knew, he operated when he was at his best.

The Big Ten had named Denard Robinson the Offensive Player of the Week for the third time in five weeks. But that didn't stop Rod Smith from grading him out at 77 percent, including two loafs on center exchanges, one of which led to the fumble on the goal line.

The grades for defenders, however, struck Rodriguez as a bit inflated. “Here are my thoughts,” Rodriguez said. “First thing I see is, we took 45 snaps. They took 102. That's ridiculous, and it will kill us against better teams. I thought Denard competed his ass off, but he hasn't reached his peak yet.

“On defense, we were all over the place. Again.” Rodriguez was especially critical of linebacker Obi Ezeh, a common source of friction between him and Greg Robinson, mimicking their debates over Mike Williams in 2009.

“And our special teams sucked,” Rodriguez concluded. “Other than that, we won the game. Yippee.

“We've got a lot of work to do.”

After they finished breaking down game film, they had to face their least savory task: watching the tape from the 2009 Michigan–Michigan State game over and over. But in that horrible performance—the team's worst showing since Rodriguez had arrived—there was a silver lining: If they could play
that
badly against the Spartans, at their place, with all the distraction of the NCAA interviews going on that week, imagine what they could do “with our heads out of our asses,” as Rod Smith said.

“Might be a little different this year, with 16 in there,” Magee added, referring to Denard.

It could also be a little different if they could figure out how the Spartans had apparently stolen their play signals in 2009, something they had started to suspect after last year's game, and now were convinced of.

“You can see them look at our sidelines,” Rod Smith said. “But what are they looking at?”

“Our signals,” Magee said, savoring a little sarcasm.

“But they couldn't have all of them, because this is a pass play and they've got eight guys in the box right here.”

After watching another hour or two of film, Magee said, “They definitely didn't know the routes, or that guy would be the hell out of there, chasing the slot.”

The solution? Watch more film.

Rodriguez had plenty on his mind that night as well. He and the defensive staff had just watched every one of their 102 plays against Indiana. “Didn't make me feel any better.”

I suggested that perhaps Indiana's speedy offense might have matched up better against Michigan's defense than Michigan State's more conventional attack would, but he was in no mood to sugarcoat his situation.

“Right now, Saline high school's offense would probably match up pretty well against us.”

There weren't too many ways to improve the defense dramatically halfway through the season, but there were ways to make it worse: give in to the tendency to start adding plays, schemes, and packages. No, Rodriguez said, the best thing to do was addition by subtraction. Make it simpler. Let your players
react
to the play in front of them, instead of thinking too much and hesitating.

One distraction they probably would not have to deal with that week was the NCAA ruling, which both Van Horn and Rodriguez expected to be largely good news for the program. “The only remaining question is, will they say I fostered ‘an environment of noncompliance'?” he asked. “That's what I really want them to take back.”

Rodriguez had a lot of rational reasons to fight the charge, of course, but paying over $300,000 for his own lawyers indicated just how badly he wanted his name cleared for its own sake—and how little Michigan cared about that point. This was one of the lessons he learned—slowly, perhaps—after getting smeared by West Virginia, Michigan's buyout mess, and the
Free Press
: If you want to protect your name, don't expect anyone to do it for you.

But the NCAA's delay also held up any talk of a contract extension with Michigan, or even a vote of confidence. The previous week, one of Rodriguez's advisers called Dave Brandon to ask for just that, to prevent other coaches from using the endless Rodriguez rumors against them in recruiting.

Brandon told the adviser, “‘We just need to see a little more,'” Rodriguez reported. Rodriguez's adviser said Brandon hadn't stopped there, reportedly adding, “‘Word on the street is he wants to win and leave.'”

“Well, if I did, I'd have my reasons!” Rodriguez told me. “But I've not talked to
anybody.
I don't
want
to talk to anybody. I want to win
here
! And everything that happens to me happens to my assistants. And those guys don't have contracts!”

Michigan hadn't even given them year-to-year deals, which is the bare minimum at most programs. That was why, before the Indiana game, Rod Smith was asking Magee, “All right, Cal, if you were me, do you buy a house, or do you rent?”

“Well, I'm an optimist, and I'm a loyalist. So I'd jump in, if the price is right.”

“It's foreclosed. The price is great. Worst case, I lose my deposit.”

“Then put it down.”

“I told the banker, ‘If we beat Indiana, we'll talk next week. We could win four in a row. If we lose to Indiana, I'm out. We could
lose
four in a row!”

A week later, after beating Indiana, Smith still hadn't jumped.

*   *   *

No one needed to be reminded that the stakes of the game against the seventeenth-ranked Spartans were piling up: bragging rights, the state championship, the Paul Bunyan trophy, the Big Ten title, the national rankings, the growing rivalry between Rodriguez and Dantonio, and a flood of national attention—for the winner
and
the loser.

Everyone was writing it. Everyone was saying it. And everyone at Schembechler Hall was sick of it.

“If
one
more person says to me, ‘Big week!'” Rutledge said, “I'm gonna tear their head off. We
know
!”

But, silly as it sounds, it was actually bigger than all that. If the Wolverines beat the Spartans, Rodriguez's team would have slain two of Michigan's three rivals, they would be 6–0, and they would probably be ranked in the top fifteen. For all those reasons, a victory would almost certainly result in a contract extension or at least a public vote of confidence, provided the NCAA report didn't destroy him. And at that point, everyone could relax—a little, anyway—and not face another season of do-or-die games, which was taking a visible toll on everyone from the coaches to the receptionists.

It was, in other words, another match point, the first of 2010. Win it, and Rodriguez would be free to coach football.

But
lose
this game? He would not simply be 5–1, which didn't sound so bad. The critics would become deafening, the ghosts of 2009 would come rushing back, morale would plummet, and from that point on, the team would be working to catch up, not to stay ahead.

At Monday's team meeting, Rodriguez laid out the good, the bad, and the ugly. “Anytime you win on the road, especially in the Big Ten, it's good. We're 5–0.
That's
good. But I'm frankly getting tired of answering questions about the D and special teams, all week, every week.

“Now, some of you aren't from Michigan, and some of you guys are new,” Rodriguez told them. “So you need to learn right now: This game is different. It's a hell of a lot bigger than Indiana. The only one even comparable to this one is Ohio State.

“They paint us as the preppy-ass, five-star entitled guys and they're these hardworking, up-from-the-bottom blue-collar guys.”

Not surprisingly, the son and grandson of coal miners didn't take too kindly to those stereotypes. He didn't care where his players came from—he believed Moundros and Kovacs, suburban walk-ons, were as tough as anyone on the team—so long as they didn't
act
entitled, one of the qualities Rodriguez couldn't stand.

“It's just wrong,” he said. “Do you understand this game is different? Are you prepared to give your all?”

“YES, SIR.”

“Saturday, at 3:30, they will see a team coming out of that tunnel they have never seen before. Get it right. Do your job. No excuses this week. No mistakes.”

All of which, of course, inadvertently reinforced the incredible pressure they were already under, yet again.

 

43   DENARD'S DAY

Michigan's entire athletic department was originally run by an undergraduate named Charles Baird, more than a century ago. He had to do some fancy financial work just to raise a few thousand dollars to pay for a couple dozen sweaters and pants. Helmets and pads hadn't yet been required.

Today, Michigan's athletic department is a multimillion-dollar machine that employs 250 people, supports some 700 athletes, and entertains over a million spectators a year and millions more on television.

In 2010, all that depended on a skinny kid from Deerfield, Florida, and his swollen left knee.