Yeah, I hope Sark is hurting watching this. Our running backs were doing well and he kept going away from the run. Granted, our young running backs fumbled later on. But the run was working to start the game and we kept passing on early downs. Looking at Michigan, though, we might've gotten waxed.
Looking back, the RBs had 12 carries the first half so it’s not like they didn’t run the ball at all. They probably would’ve had more were it not for all the dumb penalties putting us in long distance situations.
That’s what got to me the most. 10 penalties (including penalties on the first play of each half) and 2 fumbles were killers. Not sure who said this but they were talking about Michigan playing so well because most of the players knew the pain of losing to Georgia and TCU. Hopefully this will be the case next season for UT. Speaking of next season, Vegas has us as the 3rd best odds of winning it all. ESPN has us at #2 in their way too early rankings.
I dunno - Michigan made plenty of mistakes and dumb plays of its own in the game vs Alabama and nearly lost that one too. Michigan's offense also sucked for much of the game yesterday. They were awesome on the first couple of drives and then pretty much did nothing until the very end. Their defense has been dominant all season long and that carried them.
Point being this team will have to learn from their mistakes like UM seemingly did from their past CFP appearances.
Based on the comedy of errors in the Alabama game, though, I don't know that Michigan actually learned anything. They just were a better football team than previous years and were able to overcome the mistakes.
Not sure what you are trying to debate here. Yes Michigan was a better football team and able to overcome mistakes, something they didn’t do in previous years. That is my exact point and what I’m hoping for UT next year after a relatively sloppy CFP performance.
Texas matched up with a running team like Michigan better than Washington did. Washington was a really bad matchup for UT because of lack of edge pressure and poor secondary play. With Moore and the Duncanville kid coming in the Edge pressure issues should be much better. I expect Muhammed to be better and the S from Clemson to be an upgrade. They really need to hit on 2 or 3 of the incoming freshmen to step up. They've got the talent. Anybody hear if Barron is coming back?