Michigan football’s arrogance brings it down, not No. 1 Oregon

The play that sealed Michigan football’s fate Saturday in a 38-17 loss to No. 1 Oregon was a testament to the Wolverines’ own arrogance.

There they were, 10 yards away from the Ducks’ end zone and within striking distance of making it a one-score game midway through the fourth quarter. It was fourth down, and 5 yards were needed to keep hope alive.

On a team with weak options at quarterback, and a running game malfunctioning for much of the afternoon, it was assumed Michigan would turn to the one guy, Davis Warren, who had demonstrated he could at least throw a decent forward pass. Before this do-or-die moment, Warren had delivered 12 completions, including two that resulted in (gasp!) goal-to-go touchdowns.

But no — deploying Warren, right then and there, would have made too much sense.

Instead, offensive coordinator Kirk Campbell inserted Alex Orji, a backup who had used his arm just once in live action since his benching during an Oct. 5 loss at Washington.

What he said next went about just as bad as anyone would have expected.

Orji took the snap, and of course, he didn’t drop back to pass. Instead, he faked one handoff and flipped the ball to receiver Semaj Morgan, who was running an end-around. Morgan, who had never attempted a throw in his college career, then turned, reared back and fired.

The ball floated toward the sideline… drifting, drifting and drifting some more until it was so far out of bounds that his intended target, Orji, crashed into a camera stanchion yards beyond the field’s white border.

A befuddled crowd groaned in agony, watching the turnover on downs unfold. They then saw Oregon slowly sink a stake into the heart of their beloved Wolverines as they marched the length of the field to produce one last touchdown in the final minute.

After Jordan James rammed his way into the end zone to complete the execution, the Ducks’ running back flexed and roared — reminding everyone that his team, not Michigan, rules college football at the moment.

It’s something the Wolverines have struggled to accept.

Back on Monday, the players were reluctant to pay much deference to the Ducks, a rising power that is beginning to resemble the juggernaut that resided in Ann Arbor last fall.

“We don’t look at them as the No. 1 team in the country,” safety Quinten Johnson said. “We look at them like Oregon. So, at the end of the day, they got to come play us.”

It was a surprising comment considering Johnson’s team had already been tagged with three losses and no longer occupied the same rarefied air as the mighty Ducks.

But, head coach Sherrone Moore explained, “You’re Michigan. “You’re always hunted, regardless of the year, the record.”

“This is a big-time program,” Warren added. “We’ve got a lot of great players in this building, and I’m confident that we’re more than capable of beating any team in the country.”

Few, if any outsiders, shared the same belief. The Wolverines were deeply flawed, and that was apparent even after Michigan rebounded last Saturday with a tense, taut 24-17 victory over Michigan State — a middling rival that Indiana demolished Saturday at the same time as Michigan was getting its lesson.

As Johnson, Warren and Moore were hesitant to acknowledge, UM had come to have startling deficiencies in all areas by the time they reentered the Big House for their showdown with the Ducks. The offense had become a persistent liability, the defense had turned vulnerable, the special teams were no longer sound and the coaching across the board had started to raise red flags.

Back in the offseason, Moore and his staff downplayed concerns about the Wolverines’ perceived deficiencies while making a few moves to upgrade a roster that lost 18 starters who helped win a national championship.

“We’ve got enough talent, and we’re going to develop them,” Moore boasted in mid-August.

But they don’t and they haven’t — at least not to the point that Michigan can compete against elite opponents like Oregon.

On Saturday, U-M’s top two cornerbacks, Will Johnson and Jyaire Hill, were ruled out. Their absences further exposed the lack of depth on a defense that is nowhere near as solid as the one that ranked first nationally in yards and points allowed last year.

Dillon Gabriel, Oregon’s dynamic passer, took advantage. He flambéed U-M’s secondary patchwork while completing 22 of 34 attempts for 294 yards — 217 of which were generated during a first half when the Ducks built an insurmountable 28-10 lead. Just as Texas’ Quinn Ewers showed Michigan in Week 2 during the Longhorns’ Big House massacre, Gabriel again demonstrated the immense value and fortune-altering impact a quality quarterback offers.

Somehow that didn’t register with Moore and Campbell during an offseason when they dealt with the reality of replacing JJ McCarthy, a top-10 pick in April’s NFL draft in Detroit.

The two men, who had seen McCarthy up close as he went 27-1 as UM’s starter, decided to pin the program’s hopes on several unproven options competing to succeed him. It was a huge miscalculation. Warren, Orji, and Jack Tuttle — a 25-year-old who retired from football in October in the middle of his seventh collegiate season — have taken turns commanding an offense that has produced fewer than 20 points four times this season. Each of those games resulted in a loss.

The mismanagement of the team’s most important position was seen again near the end of the game Saturday, when the Wolverines still had a glimmer of hope.

That was when Campbell thought he could outfox Oregon and his defensive-minded head coach, Dan Lanning, by dialing up a trick play with Orji as one of the featured players. It was a decision born out of sheer hubris. Yet, it was also completely unsurprising considering it came from a man who, back in the spring, predicted that this offense — now ranked 109^th in the nation — would be “extremely explosive.”

Campbell’s cheeky play call, which seemed to taunt the football gods, was royally backfired. That left Moore to face some more uncomfortable questions afterwards.

But instead of admitting fault or second-guessing Campbell, Moore instead said he was “not going to regret” the choice that was made.

It was a baffling response.

Moore, after all, should have plenty of regrets about that move and so many others that have gone sideways this year — from his clumsy handling of the quarterbacks to the myopic management of the roster to the frequent in-game blunders that have proven damaging.

All of it has led the Wolverines to this point, where they stand at 5-4 after a loss to a far superior opponent. The decline of the program over the past 10 months has been pronounced.

But as one rival coach once said about Michigan, pride comes before the fall.

Contact Rainer Sabin at [email protected]. follow him @RainerSabin.

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Michigan football’s arrogance brings it down, not No. 1 Oregon