Michigan GRINDS DOWN Oklahoma | Wolverines-Sooners Instant Reaction

Welcome to an Instant Reaction edition of Andy & Ari On3, presented by Polymarket and Ari. As you said, multiple times over the last week, week one results for large groups of 18 to 22 year olds don't always predict week two results. And guess what? Michigan looked a hell of a lot better against Oklahoma than it looked against Western Michigan. So, is that the takeaway for you, that Michigan looked a lot better? I think the takeaway is that Oklahoma got to skate all week on the back of a 51-0 win over UTEP. And because they played an overmatched opponent in week one, we weren't able to see correctly that their offense should still be under the magnifying glass. Michigan plays really good defense. They played really good defense and Oklahoma actually is as inept offensively as Michigan is. Now Michigan won the game. No, they are less ept than Michigan offensively. Michigan is more ept. I thought Michigan looked more ept. Slightly more ept. The extra ept, Andy, is that their quarterback is a big freak who can run like a fullback if need be. Yeah, but didn't we spend the entire week saying, is Bryce Underwood going to get pulled for Tommy Carr? Instead, Bryce Underwood played fine? And I think Jason Beck, their offensive coordinator, had a little better idea how to use him. The only issues they had, the biggest issues they had, and Kyle Whittingham mentioned this at halftime, and you saw it on a key third down play in the second half, Sadion Hyder did not have a sync with Bryce Underwood in the give-pull scenario and the read option. And Hyder was just clamping down, taking the ball, when Underwood wanted to pull it. Underwood was making the right reads. And in that case, Hyder messed it up a couple of times, but Underwood made a couple of really good reads. There was a speed option play where he kind of, you know, you had the pitch man, but he opted to keep, and it was a great play in the first half. So I think Bryce Underwood, as much criticism as we lobbed at him, took it all, and he was right. It's cool. It's cool. Well, it's cool for the time being. I don't know if I think that Michigan's out of the woods offensively here. You know, they managed 17 points, and seven of them came on a turnover that they started to drive the six-yard line. I think it's ironic because they should be celebrating this win, and it's super exciting, and obviously what could have been a week ago to what it is now, going from 0-1 to Western Michigan to 2-0 with a win over Oklahoma is certainly better. But are they going to have to win games all season, like it's 2024 again? Is that a nine-win season with an inept offense? I think that still that's probably a better case scenario than what people thought it would be a week ago, but I think that this is a huge deal for Oklahoma because this was supposed to be their most complete team under Brent Pennavilles. They went out and got Trell Harris, they went out and got Parker Livingston, John Mateer is supposed to be healthy, his hand's better. They're supposed to be really, really good, and it looked like they had the ball three different times, Andy in the fourth quarter down by seven points after Mateer's mistake, and all of their drives seemed completely doomed from the beginning, whether it was Mateer's lack of touch on the ball, whether that means that there was a bunch of holding penalties that ended drives, they were hopeless from the beginning. I don't know, I feel like Oklahoma is in shambles right now. It's hard because it feels like these two teams are the exact same to me. But they're not the same because they just played and one scored more points than the other. So let's talk about Michigan right now because we were burying Michigan this time last week and we're not burying Michigan right now because this could have gone a lot differently for Michigan. They could have just said, okay, you know what, we stink, we didn't deserve to win last week. They didn't. The defense was awesome. John Henry Daley was incredible in this game. He was unblockable. I mean, you should have known first series when he puts a spin move on the left tackle, left guard comes over, tries to help, and he powers through them both for a sack. Yeah, he beat the guard and the tackle on that play. Yeah. Yeah, so I actually think that that Michigan style of play is probably good enough to put them potentially in the playoff hunt. Now they've got Iowa, they've got Penn State, they've got Indiana, they've got Oregon, they've got Ohio State. They've got a pretty brutal schedule. But in terms of like the Big Ten, find a way to win type, defensive first. And by the way, Michigan special teams are amazing today. I think that's actually maybe outside of the Mateer pick what won them the game. Like every time they started to drive, it felt like they were inside their own 10 yard line and a few great punts to get them inside the one. But you know, it is unbelievable. And I think that it's a lesson that we won't learn because we cover college football and it's just hard to see. But what happens on one Saturday can change dramatically in 7 days. Period. Like that's just kind of the way that it goes. And you know, that doesn't even take the fact of the matter, like that Bryce Underwood is still very young. And you know, maybe he's not a complete product. Maybe he's never going to be John Elway out there. But players are allowed to get better in the season. It's not just, you know, well, he's not the best player in the number one overall draft pick now, he sucked forever. But like, it's just a huge turnaround, Andy, from seven days ago. Yes, absolutely huge. And I want to bring up a question that you brought up in our group chat during the game. And that was, let's say Michigan wins this, which they did, and they end up 10-2. Will the playoff committee consider the Western Michigan thing if they are debating between Michigan and another team, or will they just consider it a Michigan win? And I answered immediately, they'll just consider it a Michigan win. I asked other people at Working On3 the same question, and everybody unequivocally answered the way that you did. You know, you win a game, you don't get penalized for a loss. And I think that's probably the just way to go about it. I'm just curious, because it will be interesting to see, you know, and this is 35 steps ahead of where we are right now, and who knows what it's going to be. But I do think that Michigan's probably good enough to win 9-10 games, because we've already seen teams that are built like this win 9 or 10 games that are, you know, in this program, different coach, but same idea. If they are being directly compared to other 10-2 teams at the end of the year, I think that the wins or who they would have had to beat to get to 10-2 will ultimately carry the ship, not who they almost lost to, which is like, I would always work to the CFP committee. So Touchdowns and Tokes 2904, who didn't get to enjoy many of the first, maybe he's enjoying some of the second. The idea that Michigan might get better as the year goes on is lost on people who hate Michigan. That is a legitimate point. We just saw Bryce Underwood get better from week one to week two. What if he continues to get better? Yeah, absolutely. I just said that five seconds ago. Yeah. I want to touch thousand tokes to get some credit for this. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. No, there's no question that he could get better. I actually think that the things that made people fall in love with him, and the reason why he's being paid eight figures over the course of his career at Michigan is because of his unique physical skill set. I think that when you have physical skill sets like that, the ceiling is pretty high. The good news for Michigan too is that in fourth down scenarios, short yardage scenarios, like Bryce Underwood's pretty money when it comes to fighting for extra yards and stuff. So I don't know, again, if I'm supposed to be completely convinced now that Michigan is going to go win the National Championship after watching that, but certainly much better than it was last week. Yes. I definitely think you feel better about them. You feel like the defense is only allowed one touchdown so far this season. Yeah, great defense, great defense. And their best player made the biggest play of the game too, right? Or one of their best players. Well, Jerry Hill, I mean, the penalty that kept an Oklahoma drive alive was such a killer, but he absolutely made up for it with that interception and it set them up for the game-winning score. So, yeah, if we're talking about MVPs for Michigan or your three stars of the game, if this were a hockey game, you're probably going John Henry Daley, Jerry Hill, and Cameron Brown, the punter. But you'll take it. You'll take it. Underwood can get to that point where he's doing that later in the season. As long as that defense plays like that and as long as your special teams are clicking, the offense has time to develop. Yes. You have to forgive me for breaking news here, but Keelan Russell just threw a pick six. I don't know if you saw it. I know. I'm aware. We got Oregon in a close game. We got Alabama losing by seven early on in the middle of the game. I mean, this might be one of the weird Saturdays, man. I don't know. Do you want to do three minutes on Oklahoma before we go watch the rest of the games? What is your take on it? I'd like to do eight minutes on Oklahoma, Ari. We'll start with Coach RJ. Criticize Mateer like y'all did Bryce. Okay, RJ, here we go. Here we go. John Mateer stunk today. He was terrible. Yeah. Man. It makes me wonder, Andy, when was the light fully on for him? And is it possible that we've just been wrong from the beginning there? That no, because we saw everything. Kind of masked it a little bit. It was very easy to dismiss subpar play last year because of the, he broke his hand and Steven Shin saved the day, but like never really regained what we thought he was going to be. Like what was the highest point of John Mateer's Oklahoma tenure and what were we beating Alabama and Tuscaloosa? Which I know the defense did most of that. But John Mateer was the starting quarterback on a team that went 10-2 against a really tough schedule and made the playoff. In fact, and it didn't have much of a running game and he provided a lot of their run game. So to just retroactively say, oh, he was terrible all along. How do we not know? He wasn't terrible all along. He was bad today. He did not show up today. He did not look like a guy who's going to lead this team to the playoff again. Well, that's just like, I don't know whether the discourse has to be that John Mateer blows and will never be good at football. I think that the thought process was that he has been fully healthy. He got really jacked, you know, they went out and got Trell Harris. They got Robert Livingston. Isaiah Satana came back. They got Rocky Beers. They got Rocky Beers, who by the way is a hit. I mean, that guy was awesome again on Saturday. But I think that there was this expectation, Andy, that like he was going to take a step forward in the sense that he was going to elevate in a big way and be the reason why Oklahoma's offense wasn't just passable or good enough, because it was passable and good enough last year. I think people wanted Oklahoma's offense because of John Mateer to be legitimately awesome. And I don't want to take away from Michigan's defense. Michigan's defense is awesome. There's no question about it. They played like amazing football today, very physical, very swarmed to the ball, everything that you could possibly say positive about a defense. I think Michigan Illustrated on film today. But I don't know if John Mateer is what people think he will be in terms of elevating Oklahoma to not just a playoff team, because he's already done that. They can do it again. But is he going to be the guy that helps them win games when they get to the playoff, if they get back there? I don't know the answer to that. And just like we said with Bryce Underwood a minute ago, maybe he can get better. But John Mateer is a little bit further advanced into his college tenure than Bryce Underwood is. I think that benefit of the doubt should be more extended to the younger player who hasn't had a fair shake of things in the first year. Yeah, John Mateer had his year starting at Washington State. He's had a year starting at Oklahoma. With the same offensive coordinator too. It's not like he had to change systems or anything. Like he's been with the same guy too. So, I don't know. He's a pretty finished product. But by the way, we did this with Bryce Underwood last week. Coach RJ said criticize Mateer like you criticize Underwood. Let's do the same thing we did with Underwood. Look at the rest of the schedule. Jason Ek in New Mexico, which is by the way, no slouch. They might win the Mountain West this year. They're next. Then you go to Georgia. You get a week off. You play Texas and Dallas. Kentucky, Mississippi State, South Carolina, Florida, Ole Miss, Texas A&M, at Missouri. They're going to see a lot of pretty good defenses. It has to be better than it was today. It has to. You wanted us to criticize it like we did Bryce Underwood? This is the problem. If he plays like he did today, they will not make the playoff again. It's not happening. We've got 800 words waiting to be submitted for On3. When we're done here, I'm going to file that. So if you don't think we criticized Mateer, check back on the front page for a few minutes. But it was not good enough. Oklahoma's got a block better. You can't put that all on Mateer. A lot of holding. A lot of holding. But Andy, I'm more than happy to wear it on the chin with you. We picked Oklahoma to win. I made comments this week that were wrong, and I think that Michigan deserves a lot of credit for getting that win. They showed the stadium before the game started, and there was some disagreement on what the percentage is, and there were a ton of Oklahoma fans there. Tickets were down, people were down, they were afraid. I thought there would be more Oklahoma fans, though. I was surprised when they did the blimp shot. Maybe, maybe. Because all the Michigan fans were wearing maize today, and it was almost all maize on the overhead shot. You know, little pockets of crimson here and there. But yeah, when the tickets were down at 43 bucks Saturday morning, I was like, oh man, this is going to be 33% Oklahoma. No, it wasn't. The Michigan fans still showed up. Their tickets may have been for sale, but they didn't sell them. Yeah. I think people were down, and I think it was fair to be down on them. I mean, honestly, they literally kind of lost last week, so they didn't, but what are you supposed to... If you are somebody who is weird about, oh, they doubted us, it's like, well, why would we not? Why wouldn't everybody doubt you? Watch the game. Like, yeah. So what can Oklahoma do to get it? Because we buried Michigan last week, and they end up winning this game. They definitely dominated in two phases of the game. Offensively, they were better enough, but what can John Mateer and Oklahoma do better? One is, don't miss so high. I mean, John Mateer is high. When he misses his throws, he's missing them over the top. And the thing is, they're actually very lucky that only resulted in the one interception. It could have been a lot worse, because a lot of times when you miss high like that, there's a safety standing back there who can grab it. Yeah. No, I'm with you. I didn't think that Oklahoma's receivers were particularly open either. So, and a lot of the misses and stuff, too, like if thrown on target would have turned into another interception. But, you know, I don't know. I think that their skill position players have to be more involved. I mean, if you go look at the box score from the game, I think Isaiah Satania had like 20 yards of total offense. Trell Harris, I think, had like 40. Obviously, Parker Livingston had a fumble. Yeah, there was just like no production. They were trying to force feed Satania, and they couldn't get anything going. The only guy, like Rocky Beers is their best weapon, and they tried to get the run game going, and they hit a couple decent, not explosive runs, but successful runs early, and then that just, Michigan shut that down quick. Yeah. Michigan was playing man most of the game, and that's it. I mean, it's credit to Michigan's DBs because they locked those guys up in man. That allowed an extra guy down in the box. You didn't have to worry about the run game any more at all because they were stuffing Oklahoma's run game, and I hate to say it, when you play Texas, when you play Georgia, when you play Texas A&M, all of those teams have the athletes to lock you up one-on-one. Mississippi State has a potential first-round corner, so you're going to be dealing with that the whole time. This is going to be constant. So, those guys have got to figure out how to get open. Because if they don't, I don't think that run game ever shows up. I think teams are going to say, okay, we're going to play man against you, and we're just coming after you. We're going to load up the box, coming after your quarterback, and then if you try to run the ball, we're going to swarm you. So, now, their O-line has been dinged up. Perhaps that's one of those we're overreacting, because maybe they get healthier, but, I don't know. Just like we overreacted with Michigan last week, probably overreacting a little bit. Oklahoma's defense is going to keep them in games this year, but it's not like they're going to be terrible. 100%. Yeah, Tate Sandel is one of the best kickers in college football. They absolutely can still make the playoff. Just like Michigan's season was not over when they almost lost to Western Michigan, but we're going to be down on Oklahoma for a little bit. They're going to have to prove it, you know? And the thing is, the team they got coming in, the group of 16 they got coming in, New Mexico, is not going to be an easy team to beat. Like, they're going to have to try. So we'll see what happens. Stay tuned. We'll be covering Oklahoma all season long because I don't think this is the end. Our friends at Sooners scoop at On3, they're the best in the business. So we are going to have a lot of fun, I think, as this team develops. We buried Michigan. They came back and won today. We bury Oklahoma. What do they do next? We'll find out.