Sometimes it’s the sleepy Saturdays that get you.
The traps were clear: Maryland has been leaking oil the last five weeks. They’ve lost inexplicably and embarrassingly. Ames is always a tricky place to play for any highly ranked conference opponent. And Oregon State, with wet weather at home, had as much of a reason to be ticked off as any team in the country regarding how Washington helped bring the end of the Pac-12. The mark of a great team is seeing the traps and not getting caught in them. That’s what Michigan, Texas, and Washington did on this penultimate Saturday of the regular season.
The Wolverines notched win No. 1,000 in the process, and triumphed for the second time without Jim Harbaugh on the sidelines. They needed two safeties and a Taulia Tagovailoa fumble in the end zone to do it, but they took advantage of the breaks they got and played complementary football to bail out a passing offense that wasn’t giving much in the way of explosive outputs (again).
