After he benched senior quarterback Davis Warren on Saturday for throwing three interceptions, Michigan football coach Sherrone Moore turned to his past rhetoric when speaking about the future of the position.
“That’s why we practice,” Moore said. “We’ll figure it out in practice.”
It makes sense. Practice gives the Wolverines’ coaches more film to work with than the limited reps they see on game days. Three games is still a small sample size, and a spring, summer and fall worth of practice helps fill in the cracks of what can’t be settled in that short timeframe.
The problem is that Moore and the rest of his staff have been repeating the “we’ll figure it out in practice” rhetoric for months now, and whatever happens in practice hasn’t translated to the product on the field. At multiple positions, the starter that Michigan has named based on practice hasn’t performed the best in games.
The Wolverines’ talent level, save for the quarterback position, hasn’t dropped much — their blue-chip ratio is actually 2% higher than it was last season. But after years of emphasizing development and coaxing out hidden talent, Michigan’s new regime is failing to properly evaluate the talent it has.
Start with the most glaring issue: the quarterbacks. There may not be a great answer already on the roster — a past talent evaluation issue in and of itself — but through three weeks, the Wolverines haven’t found an answer that works at all.
When Warren first won the job, Moore pointed to the fact that he had a very good completion percentage in practice. That’s true in games, too, as he’s completed 67% of his passes. But he’s also thrown six picks through just three games, a whopping 25% of his incompletions.
Either Michigan failed to identify Warren’s turnover problem in practice, or found it and chose to start him anyway. No matter which way you look at it — and neither looks particularly good — the coaching staff’s decision off of practice left the Wolverines looking extremely shaky thus far.
With Michigan clearly hesitant to let junior quarterback Alex Orji throw the ball and graduate quarterback Jack Tuttle out with an injury, the Wolverines admittedly may not have enough talent currently available at the position to effectively evaluate. Look to other positions, though, and the same issues arise.
Look at center, another position battle that has bled into the opening weeks of the season. Senior Dominick Giudice won the starting job in practice, but senior Greg Crippen has been better in games. Against Arkansas State, Crippen first came in on Michigan’s third drive of the game. Over their next two series, the Wolverines’ rushing attack combined for 130 yards and two touchdowns — their best two drives of the game, and frankly, the entire season.
And still, Moore was noncommittal about the future, justifying any decision he might make with something that onlookers can’t see.
“It goes back to the last three years when I was coaching the line,” Moore said. “It was always whoever practices the best is gonna play, and right now those two guys are practicing at the same level.”
Practice is a good indicator for who will play well in games, but it can’t be the end-all, be-all. At a certain point, the performance on Saturday has to hold weight. Given the starting decisions that Michigan’s staff has made — at quarterback, center and possibly even right tackle or cornerback — they’re not effectively taking that into account.
It’s not only who the Wolverines are or aren’t starting that shows their issues with talent evaluation, either. They’ve also struggled to find the most effective use for their offensive weapons, even for as much talent as offensive coordinator Kirk Campbell argued they have there after Michigan’s Spring Game.
“We’ve got really explosive players, and it’s my job to get them the ball,” Campbell said.
Campbell shared more about how he planned to get some of those explosive players, namely the running backs, the ball earlier in spring camp on March 15:
“We’re gonna play to our players’ skill sets. We’re not gonna pigeonhole a square peg into a round hole.”
If that was the plan, then Campbell might just have trouble telling what shape his pegs are.
Graduate running back Kalel Mullings has starred as a physical, ground-and-pound back, yet he’s still getting fewer early-down touches than senior Donovan Edwards. Edwards is a very explosive player and deserves to touch the ball, but he’s at his best when he gets out in space and can evade tacklers — not running between the tackles, where Campbell seems determined to use him.
Edwards’ usage is particularly confounding. He has the versatility to line up pretty much anywhere on the field — also allowing the Wolverines to play Mullings at the same time — and has been effective in the passing game in the past. Given that the Wolverines have a hard time trusting their quarterback, who could probably use an effective dump-off option, it makes little sense that Edwards has received just five targets this season.
And between iffy starting decisions and puzzling usage of weapons, the Wolverines continue to raise questions about their ability to properly evaluate talent. Each week, when Michigan’s product on the field slips further away from what is expected of it, Moore and his coaches just turn back to “figuring it out in practice.”
Maybe this week, practice really will clear everything up. Maybe Orji will take a massive step throwing the ball or Crippen’s play will be miles ahead of Giudice.
But on the likely chance that doesn’t happen, Michigan’s coaches will be left to evaluate the same options once again, and make another choice. Based on the first three weeks, it’s hard to trust that they’ll make the right one.
The post SportsMonday: Michigan isn’t properly evaluating its talent appeared first on The Michigan Daily.
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