"We don't want sympathy. We are going to fight back like Michigan teams always do, and we'll do that." Michigan head coach Lloyd Carr concluded his somber postgame press conference with words of resolve, but the sting of defeat hung in the room.
Michigan trailed by as many as 31 before adding sympathy touchdowns to only lose to Syracuse, 38-28. The loss snapped a home-opener win streak of eight games for the Wolverines and, despite being a 10-point underdog, Orange quarterback Donovan McNabb embarrassed Michigan in front of an NCAA record attendance of 111,012 to hand the Wolverines their second consecutive loss.
The week prior, the Wolverines had been soundly beaten by Notre Dame, 36-20; another game where garbage-time scoring helped Michigan salvage some public dignity while those who watched knew the Wolverines were plagued by mistakes and clobbered in the second half. To add insult to injury, the Irish's 36 points were the most ever scored by a Notre Dame team facing Michigan.
In the opening two games, Michigan was rudderless offensively. Some box score numbers would lead you to believe otherwise, but factoring in costly turnovers and excluding garbage-time production, the Wolverines seemed incapable of getting out of their own way and sustaining any offensive momentum. Which frankly didn't make any sense.
The offense returned its top two pass catchers, two of the top three rushers, and -- most importantly -- four starters on the offensive line, including two of the best to ever play at Michigan from a team that won a national championship. Quarterback Brian Griese had left, but Carr implemented a two-quarterback system to maximize the roster's talent.
Tom Brady, a first-year starter and traditional pocket passer (long before he was TB12, mind you), took the vast majority of snaps with Drew Henson, the dual-threat freshman super-athlete who was being touted as the second coming, except he could also hit a curve ball, coming in for select plays and packages.
Defensively, the Wolverines also returned multiple starters at every level, but the unit lacked effort and intensity, allowing more than 35 points in each of the first two games. A stark contrast from a defense that only allowed one opponent to score more than 16 points the entire previous season. Worst of all, eight months after reaching the mountain top for the first time since 1948, the Michigan Wolverines were 0-2 and lacked an identity.
Michigan expected to be running the ball with sophomore Anthony Thomas -- the A-Train was stuck at the station with 52 yards on 19 carries through two games -- and winning with defense. But for now, the championship hangover lingered as Carr searched for answers.
"I think that each team has to create its own identity," Carr explained after the Syracuse loss. "We have charted a course, and we know what we want to do. I think we know how to do it -- we just have to do a better job of executing the things that go into being successful. When you can't run the football, you can't beat good teams. That is fundamental."
The next week, Michigan echoed Carr's words by pounding the rock against Eastern Michigan for 237 rushing yards and four rushing touchdowns en route to a 59-20 victory. Allowing 20 points to an eventual 3-8 MAC team was still concerning (the 20 points make more sense now when you realize current Ravens offensive coordinator, Todd Monken, was calling plays for EMU), but at this point, winning was all that mattered.
Following its first victory of the season, Michigan carried this momentum into a 29-17 victory over head coach Nick Saban and Michigan State. Again, the Wolverines showed improvement on offense -- passing and rushing for more than 200 yards -- and the defense held its first opponent under 20 points.
"We still have a long way to go," Carr said in his Michigan State postgame press conference. "We are a better football team than we were three weeks ago. We are not dominating anybody. We are only going to get better as the season progresses."
The Wolverines were a better team because they were finding ways to win through their core tenets of running the football and playing tough defense. However, progress was far from linear or balanced.
Over the next four weeks, Michigan's offense only scored more than 15 points once against teams that would all finish with losing records -- two of which would only win three games. Thankfully, Michigan's defense began to round back to championship form.
Against Iowa and Northwestern, the Wolverines didn't allow a single touchdown and scored a safety in each game. Against Indiana and Minnesota, they only allowed one touchdown each and added another safety against the Gophers.
Curious as to how this defense turned it around, I asked former Michigan defensive backs coach Vance Bedford this very question during his weekly appearance with The Michigan Insider's Sam Webb on Wednesday.
"Simplified," said Bedford. "All we talked about was fundamentals and we never got away from them."
Fundamentals are one thing against inferior or flat-out bad opponents, but Michigan's next three opponents were all ranked inside the top-10. First up, Penn State.
In 1997, the matchup between the two programs was heralded as Judgement Day, and the same could be still said about most early November meetings between the two (look at 2023).
In '98, the Nittany Lions raced out to a 6-1 record, with their lone defeat coming against Ohio State (some things never change). The stakes didn't carry the same national implications as the year prior, but the fate of the Big Ten still hung in the balance. It wasn't quite the same Judgement Day for everyone, but it certainly was for Michigan's offense.
Looking to make a statement, the Wolverines scored on their opening two drives and before the Nittany Lions knew what hit them, it was 17-0 at the half. Michigan added another 10 points in the second half and the defense never relented a single point. The 27-0 victory marked the first time Penn State had been shut out in 11 years and vaulted the Wolverines to the top of the Big Ten after Ohio State was upset by Saban and the Spartans.
With a win over undefeated Wisconsin, Michigan was guaranteed at least a share of the conference title. Against the Badgers, the Wolverines used a 21-point surge and the efforts of two 100-yard rushers to take the dramatic tension out of the air. Chants of "OVERRATED" rained down on a 27-10 victory as the Wolverines claimed a share of the Big Ten title.
Michigan's 27 points were the most allowed by the Badgers' top-ranked scoring defense at that point in the season, and Wisconsin's 10 points were the only time Barry Alvarez's team was held under 24 points in 1998.
"This group of kids didn't point fingers and didn't make any excuses," Carr said after the game. "They continued to work hard defending our championship. After the start we had, that was an awfully difficult thing to do."
Michigan would fall in Columbus in the penultimate game of the season before beating Hawaii -- in Hawaii during a weird scheduling year -- and winning the Citrus Bowl, 45-31, over Arkansas.
The Wolverines finished the season 10-3 and co-Big Ten champions. A defense that had allowed at least 36 points in each of the first two games only allowed two other teams to score 20+ the rest of the season.
An offense that only scored five touchdowns in four weeks against the bottom of the Big Ten found its footing in time to rush for 257 yards against Wisconsin, which had the best defense in college football.
Fast forward to present day -- Team 145 finds itself at a similar early-season crossroads to the 1998 team following an embarrassing 31-12 loss to Texas. The offense is sputtering with a first-year starter at quarterback, an underwhelming running game, and a defense that allowed more points against the Longhorns than the unit did in any game in 2023.
At his press conference this week, head coach Sherrone Moore sounded similar to Carr 26 years ago when he was searching for answers.
"I want us to be a physical offense that's detailed and we can score points," Moore said. "And for us to do that, we've got to be better running the football. We've got to be more consistent running the football. And when you get games like that versus really good teams, if you get behind and it becomes a throwing game, that doesn't put you in the best position to win. Never has, never been a formula for us for that to be successful. So we've got to do a better job of establishing that and play action and run action and stuff off of it, which we will. And just ready for us to get to work with that."
Against Arkansas State, the Wolverines will have a chance to fight back like Michigan teams always do.