What they're saying about Michigan football's win at Iowa
Michigan football moved to 5-0 on the season with a 27-14 win over the Iowa Hawkeyes on the road in Week 5. It was their first road test of the season and it was passed with flying colors for the most part as the team works itself into form.
Here is a sampling of what the local and national media are saying about Michigan coming off the big victory. This will be updated as more opinions come in from around the media sphere.
John Borton, The Wolverine
Wolverine Watch: Michigan slugs out ‘pretty cool’ win at Iowa
Michigan’s 27-14 execution of Captain Kirk’s corn trekkers won’t make anyone’s list of college football’s most scintillating showdowns of 2022.
So what? To Jim Harbaugh, it looked as tasty as a Friday night at Cracker Barrel.
Beautifully boring. Methodically monotonous. Surgically stuporous. Call it whatever you want. The Wolverines call it a road win in the Big Ten, pack it away with the tees, nets and footballs, and head home 5-0, 2-0 in the Big Ten.
All else aside, they can’t be better than that.
“We’re 5-0 now,” Harbaugh beamed. “Can’t get to 6-0 unless you’re 5-0. Kind of cool, you know? Look at that and go, we haven’t won here since 2005. Fifth game of the year last year we went to Wisconsin, and we hadn’t won at Wisconsin since 2008. So we keep track of those things. And it’s a great thrill. Great thrill of victory. Great thrill of winning. Will be the best win of the week.”
Chris Balas, The Wolverine
Michigan 27, Iowa 14: Notes, quotes, and observations
Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh isn’t worried about style points. If he were, his team might have put 40-plus points up on the nation’s No. 1 defense, his former five-star quarterback would have thrown for much more than 155 yards and the Wolverines might have had an easier time than a 27-14 win.
What Harbaugh is about is winning, and good, physical football. He got two of three Saturday — the win, and certainly the physicality. The Wolverines beat the Hawkeyes at their own game, and you could tell by Harbaugh’s postgame comments he takes a lot of pride in that.
You’d think a former quarterback who once autographed a picture of himself with late coach Bo Schembechler, “Bo — let’s go for the bomb” would be all about airing it out. But Harbaugh is more Schembechler’s Michigan when it comes to playing style than he is sling it and wing it.
If we didn’t know it before, we know it now. No matter who his offensive coordinator is, this is really his offense. It’s blue collar, he noted, and he loves it.
“I’ve always been enamored with it,” Harbaugh said. “I always try to have our teams be about that, that blue collar mentality. I even looked it up one time. The whole blue collar started in Iowa … blue collar workers, people that do manual labor, people that do work.
“We respect that. We try to be about that, and when you’re playing a team that’s about that, it’s exciting and challenging to challenge yourselves against that kind of mentality. And I think our guys fared really well.”
David M. Hale, ESPN.com
College football Week 5 highlights: Top plays, games and takeaways
Iowa’s plan to lull Michigan to sleep by playing offense failed miserably, too. The Hawkeyes punted on each of their first five full drives, which is usually a winning formula, but not against Blake Corum, who carried 29 times for 133 yards and a touchdown in Michigan’s 27-14 win.
Meanwhile, Kentucky and NC State are likely to tumble out of the top 10. Penn State won, but served up five turnovers in an ugly performance against Northwestern. Minnesota couldn’t move the ball in a loss to the Purdue Boilermakers with star tailback Mohamed Ibrahim sidelined. Oklahoma, Florida State and Washington all fell by the wayside in Week 5, too.
We’re just one Saturday into October. We’re still farther from the finish line than the starting blocks. There’s little point in making sweeping declarations about the contenders at this point, but Week 5 did offer a clearer picture than we’ve had before.
Alabama, Georgia and Ohio State keep winning — even if it hasn’t always been pretty.
But Clemson, Michigan, Oklahoma State and others offered their own reminder that, while only four playoff invites will go out at year’s end, the Big Three don’t need to check their mailboxes just yet.
Nicole Auerbach, The Athletic
Auerbach ranks Michigan No. 4 among the national elite
The task facing quarterback J.J. McCarthy has grown more difficult by the week, but Saturday’s 27-14 win against Iowa was the test I was most curious to see. McCarthy did well in easily the most challenging environment he’s played in, piloting an offense that consistently moved the ball against a defense that entered the weekend ranked in the top 10 in both total defense and rushing defense and No. 1 in the FBS in scoring defense. Michigan did struggle at times to finish drives, needing to kick field goals twice in the second quarter despite dominating the game at that point. But the Wolverines held the ball for two-thirds of the first half.
McCarthy finished 18 of 24 through the air, his 155 yards and a touchdown nicely balancing out a rushing attack that accounted for 172 yards. Blake Corum topped the 100-yard mark yet again, and Michigan did not turn the ball over once against a defense very good at forcing them. There were a couple of moments late in the game when it looked like the Hawkeyes might make things interesting, but Iowa’s offense is, well, Iowa’s offense.
It’s clear at this point that the Wolverines are at minimum the second-best team in the Big Ten. Which means they should stay in College Football Playoff contention deep into the season.
Austin Meek, The Athletic
Another statement on the road for the Wolverines
Last year at Wisconsin, Michigan’s sideline went nuts during the playing of “Jump Around” as the Wolverines cruised to their first win in Madison in 20 years. This year in Iowa City, the Wolverines waved pink towels in pregame warmups as a way of poking fun at the visiting locker room decor. The common theme: Michigan went into a tough Big Ten West venue and planted a metaphorical flag on the turf.
The Wolverines hope Saturday’s win can do for their confidence what last year’s win in Madison did for that team. Both times, the Wolverines emerged from their first road test with a 5-0 record and a strong sense of possibility. Though it’s hard not to peek ahead two weeks to Penn State and a potential matchup of unbeaten teams, the Wolverines have Indiana first and are determined not to let their focus wander.
“We’re not thinking about, ‘OK we’ve got a huge game in two weeks against Penn State,” McCarthy said. “Whoever’s in front of us is a nameless, faceless opponent. We’re only worried about ourselves and only worried about getting better.”
Bob Wojnowski, The Detroit News
Wojo: Michigan and McCarthy unfazed, pass Iowa road test
This wasn’t about scoreboard points, or style points. This was about patience and poise and passing a test.
Michigan did what it had to do and showed what it had to show. More power running from Blake Corum. Revived pass-rush pressure from the defense. And perhaps most important, steady growth from sophomore quarterback J.J. McCarthy.
The Wolverines didn’t light things up against Iowa, but when they had to, they shut things down. Against the one-dimensional Hawkeyes (all defense, nary a speck of offense) on the road, it was enough. By the end, it was more than enough, as No. 4 Michigan powered past Iowa, 27-14, at Kinnick Stadium on Saturday.
In college football these days, you take what’s given and offer no apologies. Five of the past six top-five teams to visit Iowa left with a loss, including Michigan in 2016. The Wolverines (5-0, 2-0 Big Ten) weren’t interested in unveiling anything flashy, not against a team that slows the game, bides its time and pounces on mistakes. And oh by the way, Iowa came in with the No. 1 scoring defense in the country.
Rainer Sabin, Detroit Free Press
Was this win as significant as the 2021 victory over Wisconsin?
The conquest of Iowa in Kinnick Stadium hearkened back to Michigan’s dominating victory over Wisconsin 364 days ago. It was thorough, resounding and consequential for a team that needed to prove itself in a new environment. Last season’s three-touchdown win over the Badgers in Madison imbued Michigan with confidence and launched the Wolverines on their run to a Big Ten title and the College Football Playoff. That dominating performance came a week after Michigan stumbled in a close victory over Rutgers. Flash forward to Saturday, and the similarities became even more striking as the Wolverines easily put away a Big Ten West stalwart a week after experiencing a few hiccups in a closer-than-expected win over a second-tier East Division program.
Before Saturday, there were questions about whether Michigan, and McCarthy in particular, could handle stiffer competition in a hostile setting where U-M hadn’t prevailed since 2005. But those concerns were alleviated, just as the doubts about the Wolverines were extinguished 12 months ago when they stormed into Camp Randall and whipped the Badgers. As was the case this time last year, Michigan finds itself in a strong position with its biggest goals still ahead.
Bill Bender, Sporting News
Week 6 College Football Playoff picture: Alabama still No. 2 despite Bryce Young injury
There were brief anxious moments in the fourth quarter, but Michigan won at Kinnick Stadium for the first time since 2005 in a 27-14 victory against Iowa. Quarterback J.J. McCarthy (18 of 23, 155 yards, TD) won his first road start, and Blake Corum (29 carries, 133 yards, TD) put the game away with a fourth-quarter TD run. The Wolverines’ pass rush helped seal the victory. Michigan passed a road test – and now it is about not looking past the Hoosiers before the Oct. 8 showdown with Penn State.
Chip Patterson, CBS Sports
The Wolverines refused to fall victim to the familiar storyline of a top-five team falling at Iowa, using an early lead to avoid any upset anxiety in a 27-14 win. Michigan set the tone, created a difficult situation for Iowa’s offense with a double-digit deficit and rode yet another 100-yard rushing performance from Blake Corum to the its road win of the season.
