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And no matter what tasty choice you make, you'll enjoy our everyday low prices, plus extra ways to save, like digital coupons worth over $600 each week, and up to $1 off per gallon at the pump with points, so you can get big flavors and big savings. Kroger, fresh for everyone, fuel restrictions apply. George Clooney and Brad Pitt's new movie, Wolf, is on Apple TV Plus, September 27th. That's where I want you to be now. So if you want to see George Clooney and Brad Pitt, go to Apple TV Plus. You got to start the story there. Or if you want to see Brad Pitt and George Clooney, go to Apple TV Plus. I am enjoying the show. And if you want to see their new movie, Wolf, you can't do it. We can help you. I can do it. Do it. Definitely go to Apple TV Plus. When it comes to towing, seeing is believing. That's why Chevy Trucks Advanced Camera Technology offers up to eight available cameras for 14 unique views. So you can focus on the view that really matters. Chevrolet, together let's drive. Learn more about Chevy Trucks at Chevy.com. Safety or driver assistance features are no substitute for the driver's responsibility to operate the vehicle in a safe manner. We the vehicle owners manual for important feature limitations and information. All right. Welcome to out of the blue from the block and podcast network part of the fan first sports network. A podcast with a lot of interested parties, a lot of ifs and what's in outs and what have yous. I am Jared Stormer of masonbrew.com with me as always as Andy Bailey, my head or a life mate, Andy Bailey, the man in the black pajamas, a worthy adversary and a dear friend. How are you, sir? I'm good, brother. I am actually I'm better. I'm more than good. I'm great. This week, we're talking about a win an emphatic win, a win with under 100 passing yards. This is my kind of ball, baby. This was a wonderful weekend of sports. You and I got to have some fun, just spirits are high after a 2724 victory over a ranked opponent in the big house and just an identity forming win. I'm so excited to talk about this one, man. It's great to be here. We've got a million things to cover. We'll talk about that game in depth on this episode. We'll get into some of the players that are really emerging. Some of the guys maybe we're wrong about and just big picture. What does this mean? But before we get into it, let's touch the banner here, just a couple little news items before we get going here. Most importantly, Will Johnson, according to Schrodemore, good to go, could have come back into that game if need be. So that is just the most important news you could get. Oh, yeah. I mean, he even said when he spoke to the media, Will did that. Hey, I was cleared to come back in, but time was up. So good to go. Thank God. I would have been very devastating to watch our best the best corner in football be knocked out for an extended period of time because he got run over by a USC running back, like just salt in the wound on everything else. But hey, Will isn't trying to make a football play and that happens sometime. So glad he's okay. Yeah, even Woodson got run over occasionally. It happened even the great, you know, even the greats. It happens so glad that he's okay because there was a moment in that game where it's like, sweet Michigan needs to drive 90 yards in order to score and Will Johnson's out. Like there was a moment of hopelessness when I thought he was out. Our spiraling tweets or actual texts are actually hilarious to go back and look sometimes because it's like, Oh, they're great. They score again. Oh, they'll peas out. Oh, that was that was fun. And then it's like, yeah, then it's just like a bunch of like profanities and excitement. Gifts and yeah, that's screaming. Yeah, our our tech threads are the place to be on game day. There's no question about it. But Will Johnson will be good to go for Minnesota. Another injury update, Colston Loveland doing better, according to Sharon Moore today. Don't exactly know what that means and what the timeline means, but he's getting closer. So I don't know if it'll be Minnesota or if it'll be the week after, but I would imagine within the next two games we would see Loveland. It's nice that Minnesota's next because like you don't need Colston Loveland to beat Minnesota. Hell, you didn't need him to beat USC. Like you don't need him to beat Minnesota. And it's like they have a lab of like individuals between 63 and 66 that play tight end at Michigan. And they just like go down there. They make another one. They put them on the field. Hey, one of the things we'll kind of talk in this episode about things we were right about, things we were wrong about, we put tight end at number two as far as overall depth on this team. And that's starting to show out there is incredible depth on this team. So guys really stepping up Zach Marshall in this one playing with a club the size of Mount Rushmore on his hand like props to him for getting out there and doing work despite that. So there's guys there but getting Loveland back. Never a bad thing to get your all American first round draft pick best pass catcher still leading receiver on this team back. Yeah, all that sounds good to have. I'll say I'll take some of that. I'll have that please. Yes. So hope to see him soon here. One more. I'm just loving all the NFL guys starting to find out about the Jim Harbaugh isms. It was making the rounds that Jim Harbaugh repeated his quote. He will die leaning on his staff and with anyone else you would cry out what pitiful stuff and dismiss it as mere enthusiasm. But God, I love Jim Harbaugh just being accepted by the NFL regs. He's the best man. He's so funny. Like it's it's a neck and neck race between he and James Winston for the funniest person in the NFL. Yeah, just like every time and like it's great. We've heard all of these euphemisms before but hearing him again and hear everyone else be like Look at this guy. He's a real ham. Isn't he? Really? Yes. He's our ham. Nothing. Nothing will be the old birds would be afraid of worms if they had had machine guns. What? What is that? Or what he did the interview with Jay, this kind of world's gliding here and he was like, you're like, you like sex. You dick to sex. What is happening? Jim Harbaugh made it. I don't know what you're going to get. He just has bar after bar his line the other day where he's like, I like football. I like people that like football. I love that. I was like, this is how I become friends with all of my friends too. I like football guys related to that so much. Oh, that was so fun. Just oh, it's so glad. I'm so happy still in our lives. Oh, me too, man. Speaking of football guys, want to shout out Patrick Halloran who reached out to me on Facebook with a great question and some some great feedback for the podcast. Appreciate you. Appreciate all the listeners that have been with us for for the years. You guys are the best man. Love interacting with you guys. I'm not the biggest Twitter guy, but I do like interacting with some of our like listeners on game day or the day after and stuff like that. Oh, yeah. Like I'm not on Twitter on the weekend. So like always get back and have some like messages and stuff. Everybody's so gracious and nice and just want to talk ball and have a good time and like never take that for granted. Absolutely not. And if I see it, I will always respond to any message that anyone reaches out about football like like Jim Harbaugh love talking football. So answer is always yes. So appreciate y'all. Let's get into Michigan victory here, my friend 2724 over the USC Trojans Lincoln Riley's debut in the big 10 spoiled. This is how it's going to be folks. There just might be 45 runs right down your MF and face and that's going to be what it's like, particularly when you come to Ann Arbor. This feels like an identity forming when it feels like the kind of win that can springboard you to greater things an imperfect win. Like we'll get into some of the negatives in this one. Certainly an imperfect win, but this team figuring themselves out and to get this when you are in such a better position, man, this really could be the start of something for this team. This is a foundational win, a program win to build upon for Sharon Moore. But before we move on, stripe out look good. Shout out to everybody in attendance. I was really impressed how that turned out on TV. So shout out to everybody that was there. Good job by you. This game, dude, it just it felt like the first game of the regular season. Like there was a different energy, a sense of urgency in the air. And what I love most about it, you talked about establishing the identity, is Michigan challenged USC to a fistfight on Monday. They laid out their strategy, what they were going to do, and they still came out there and beat their ass. That is just that is next level type of dominance. It's tremendous stuff. And they put that out there. And we were questioning like, why would you do this? Why would you do this? I still question it. But maybe there is like some method to the madness. Like, Hey, we're coming, just get ready for it. Even if you are ready for it, not gonna matter. This was a game that don't like to to pat ourselves on the back too much. But the mason brew staff really on this one. Like you and I called you and I called a lot. He immediately pads himself off that you and I called a lot of this game. Kellen boss called a lot of the predictions of the game. Matt Hartwell predicted the exact score of the game and that will Johnson would score. So like mason brew staff, we were on it on this one. But part of that is because we knew what Michigan would have to do and the way they would have to play in this game once it was announced that Alex Orgy was quarterback. We're like, okay, I get it. That's what that's what this team is going to do. That's what we're going to be. We need to do X, Y, and Z then. And those things are play great defense, run the football, take take care of the ball, do not turn the ball over. And if you do those things, play Michigan football, you can win this game. And Michigan came out and for the most part executed that. What stands out though is they did a lot of that stuff. But you mentioned the imperfections. If I told you before the game, they had to play Michigan football, Alex Orgy's quarterback, and we're going to lose the time of possession battle. Like there's no way either of us would have predicted a whim with that. Like losing time of possession, having two turnovers, having penalties, having a missed extra point, just still having misuse and finding a way to be an opponent. The caliber of USC really speaks to the ceiling of this team. Yeah, the time of possession stat, which Michigan dominated in the first half USC comes back and in the second half ends up winning time of possession battle. They out gain us in yards in this one, but Michigan makes the plays that mattered. My number one key to the game coming into this was two plus touchdowns of 30 yards or more explosive touchdowns. Don't bother like getting hemmed in down there in the end zone. They were able to break those big runs. They were able to do just enough in this one, but the defense, the defense man in this one, I want to, I want to start there. I want to start there because without the defense or with even a slightly worse performance from the defense, this does not happen. The defensive line, Josiah Stewart, player of the week, I mean, Justin, unreal performance by him, best wink, Martin Dale game that we've seen by pretty wide margin. They showed up, man. They were flying around the football and we needed every bit of it. To speak to the schedule, I asked you this off air because I looked into it and I really wanted to keep the context in the forefront here. How long has it been since Michigan's faced two passing quarterbacks, this good in the regular season, let alone two of the first four weeks? Like, yeah, my, it's been a long time. Nothing came to mind. You want to think during the Stroud times, but who's the second best quarterback that we faced during the Stroud era? There was nothing going on at Penn State. Sean Clifford. Branded Peters. The names don't know the names as they don't come to mind because they're not there. It's like C.J. Stroud and who? Connor. Aidan O'Connell. Aidan O'Connell. That's not regular season. Oh, yeah. You're right. They can championship. Yeah. Yeah. No, you're absolutely right, man. This is like the toughest schedule you can get as far as like opposing quarterbacks right out of the gate. Got like the guy that was the Heisman front runner and then Miller Moss, who's I don't know, a top eight quarterback in college football right now, like I was impressed with a lot of what he could do. Yeah, despite like just absolute menace, Josiah Stewart ruining his afternoon. I mean, ate his lunch on this afternoon, but like, yeah, I was overall impressed with them. So you're absolutely right to call that out, man. It's not an easy start. No, and that's one of the things that we need to keep remind ourselves because most of the time, Michigan has only had to face one really elite like thrower and that's come against Ohio State in the end of the season when this team has worked out all the kinks like right off the bat, this team replacing five of the back seven didn't have that learning curve. They're working on an extreme curve with limited offensive help and still delivered a foundational performance and still at times just kept Michigan in this game. You mentioned his name at the beginning Wink Martin, no, man. This was, you know, I've been wink and like, this was a great game by him, mixed up the blitzes, did all kinds of different stuff, stuff with the stunts and the pressures. And he just flat out, out doled and outcoached Lincoln Riley in this game. Man, Wink Martin, who I've been a little more critical of, just so many great series, like in that disastrous third quarter, which, you know, we're going to look back and I'm like, Oh, what happened there? The points all came from turnovers that Michigan like set them up for that's 14 points on turn. Yeah, aside from the first drive. We're talking after the second, the second half year when Michigan started to fall apart, like there was the blown coverage after the Kenneth Grant one. But if that if Kenneth Grant just falls on the ball, the game's essentially over. The game is essentially over. We can't even be that mad. If you're Kenneth Grant and you have the ball, and you see pager, and it's like, you can end this game with a thick six for like 80 yards, like, go, like, I understand, protect the football, please. But like, he was excited. Come on, let's give him a break. Rumble big boy rumble. And then yeah, I mean, I was completely for it, but then the next play blown coverage, not exactly sure what happened there could have been a little bit of the defense just being shell shocked, expecting to be off the field. And then they come right back and score after that. And then there's the Donovan Edwards fumble, which led to a touchdown. But aside from that, man, like, if Michigan doesn't turn the ball over, this victory looks even better. So very impressed by Wink Martindale. You know, like, if you want to nitpick anything, I don't love cover two in the red zone. But like, McCarry page, you want to play safety for the University of Michigan? Like, when's that gonna happen? A guy that one of my favorite players coming in, so I'm going to be critical, did not have a great game in this one. No, McCarry page is rough in this. And when this defense gets offensive support, it is the best in the country. Like, in the first quarter, USC average, point three yards per play. And that's with their scripted. And that's with two weeks of Lincoln Riley preparing for this. So keep all of that in mind. And in the second half, they faced 55 plays. And they only had nine yards of offensive support until the last drive. Like, I can't stress that enough. Like how much offensive support plays into a defense's performance. But they just kept coming up with timely plays. Like when USC took the lead, Michigan went three and out. And then they forced the three and out on their side and got the ball back to the offense, kept them in the game and just kept doing stuff, man. And we can't say Josiah Stewart's name enough. Game record was the best game by a single Michigan edge since Aidan Hutchinson against Ohio State. Yeah, man. He has really shown out looks like you won that one in the spring game draft, where I took Derek Moore, you took Josiah Stewart is not a bummer though. No bum, no bums. Yeah, yeah, don't do that. But I mean, yeah, him, TJ guy, just the whole defensive line in that one. And to back up slightly to Wink Martindale point that I wanted to touch on was like, in that third quarter, like even though things weren't going great, dialled up two back-to-back blitzes, even though like you mentioned, yeah, you only mentioned 30% blitz rate, like pretty, pretty accurate again. But when he dialled him up, the back-to-backs to get that key third down at the end of the third quarter, I'm like, that's our guy. That's like, that's what I want to see. And he's understanding his personnel more, they're understanding each other. So they're blitzing cleaner, they're finding the holes and the gaps and everything's kind of meshing together. And like you and I were texting during the game, it's so much fun. This team is so much fun because you can see them getting better in real time. And that was in spades on the defense. I mean, some of those rush moves, like Eurostep, like the tackle was on skates, the power to speed, like at times, like some of the creativity there, like it just, it left me a gas and I was just blown away by some of the things they were doing in the front seven. It was awesome, man. And another key to our game that both of us had on our
