ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Thomas Hammock wasn’t about to mince words when it came to the loss at The Big House on Saturday: his team got beat. Sometimes that’s going to happen when you run into a buzzsaw.
The thing is, nobody expected Michigan football to be a buzzsaw in 2021. After a moribund 2020 campaign, though this particular game was expected to be the one where the Wolverines had the best chance to win decisively, Northern Illinois surprised in Week 1, upsetting Georgia Tech before hanging close in Week 2 with Wyoming.
The spread, betting-wise, saw Michigan as a 27.5-point favorite, but that spread was long beat by halftime — and then the Wolverines added 28 points in the third quarter alone.
Hammock, the Huskies head coach, has been around the bend with some solid teams, whether it be his 11 years of Big Ten experience at both Wisconsin and Minnesota, or with the Baltimore Ravens where he spent 5 years coaching under John Harbaugh. So, in his eyes, there was no shame losing to Michigan on Saturday.
“Obviously, I spent seven years in the Big Ten and have a pretty good gauge of the level of competition and talent in that conference,” Hammock said. “When I look at the tape, this is a (dominant) football team. I’m not gonna take anything away from them. They beat us soundly in all three phases.”
Of course, being in the Mid-American Conference, NIU isn’t exactly facing a murderer’s row now that it embarks upon its conference schedule. Its nonconference featured the aforementioned Georgia Tech and Wyoming before the trek to Ann Arbor, and Hammock made no bones about the fact that Michigan is the best team on its schedule.
“This will be the best team we play,” Hammock said. “I wouldn’t be surprised, if they stay committed to style that they play, that they’ll win a lot of football games. Obviously, it’s a team that we can emulate (in our program) to play physically, smart, and talented in all three phases. Hat’s off to them.”
The more encouraging thing, at least for Michigan fans? What he’s seen — both on tape and in the game on Saturday — is that the maize and blue are finally building something that can contend with the scarlet and grey, in that they are doing everything in their power now to beat the Buckeyes come Nov. 27.
And they’ve done that by becoming a physical, run-first team. Prescient considering that Ohio State’s defense looks like the opposite of physical at the moment. The Buckeyes did stop the run for the first time this season against Tulsa, but surrendered 428 yards through the air. The 41-20 score wasn’t indicative of how close OSU’s game against the Golden Hurricane really was.
“I think they built their team to beat Ohio State,” Hammock said. “What I see on tape, they built their team to beat Ohio State. You’re not gonna out-athlete Ohio State, so what they said is we’re gonna get dirty. Credit to them, because they stay committed to that.”
NIU did have some offensive success via the ground game, having accumulated 162 yards rushing with an average of 4.5 yards per carry. However, it only was able to muster 46 yards through the air — shocking if for no other reason than the Huskies are led by Rocky Lombardi, who aired it out in Michigan State’s upset win in 2020.
Hammock felt like he knew how to attack the Wolverines to some degree — which wouldn’t be totally surprising, given that he was on the same Baltimore staff as new defensive coordinator Mike Macdonald until he took over the NIU post in 2019. But Macdonald’s commitment to keeping offenses guessing appears to be working, even on those who know him most.
“Mike is obviously going to mix things up week-to-week,” Hammock said. “They tried to play (Aidan Hutchinson) opposite the tight end, which is different this game. They were obviously trying to prepare four the open side run game, had a nice couple blitzes, blitz patterns they tried to show that they didn’t show on tape. I told our offense those things. We tried to minimize it as best as possible. Our quarterback did a great job doing protection checks.”
As for Lombardi, while he certainly has no love for Michigan given his tenure in East Lansing, he agrees with his head coach that the Wolverines are head and shoulders above any other team he’ll have seen all year.
“That’s a really good team,” Lombardi said. “I think you’ll see throughout the season what that team’s capable of. We really moved the ball pretty decently in the run game, had a couple of opportunities in the pass game. It wasn’t an overall awful game, total awful day for the offense. I think there’s some things we can build on. Like Coach Hammock said, that’s the best team we’ll play the rest of the season — by a lot.”
But why didn’t NIU attempt to replicate the same game plan that worked so well for Lombardi in 2020? Why not test the corners, throw deep, and let your receiver make a play?
Lombardi not only spoke on the improvement of the corners — Vincent Gray and Gemon Green, the latter of whom had an interception nearly returned for a touchdown — but how the defensive scheme puts the defensive backs in a more advantageous position when it comes to big plays downfield. What’s more, he was aware that Michigan was letting them run the ball, so with passing essentially not an option, they did what they could.
“They run a completely different scheme, first of all,” Lombardi said. “Obviously the scheme’s completely different, which helps them a little bit. It’s just another year, so they keep improving, I’m sure. They look better on film than they did last year. The scheme, like I said, definitely helps them out out there in coverage. They don’t like to give up very many deep shots, to answer your deep shot question from earlier — they won’t give us that. They weren’t giving us a zero box, so we were able to run the ball — and we did. Take what you can get.”
The Northern Illinois game wraps up Michigan’s nonconference schedule as Big Ten play will start in earnest come Week 4, when the Wolverines host a resurgent Rutgers Scarlet Knights team that comes to Ann Arbor with a 3-0 record.
