SEATTLE — Halfway through the season and on the heels of a deflating loss to unranked Washington, the No. 10 Michigan football team continues to beg the question: What if?
What if Davis Warren could take care of the football? What if Alex Orji had the accuracy? What if Jack Tuttle was healthy from the get-go?
Any one of these hypotheticals come true, and you’re probably looking at a very different team. But that’s just the thing — they’re all hypotheticals. Warren turned the ball over three times against Arkansas State. Orji threw for 118 yards total in two full games under center. Tuttle was fighting through an upper body injury for the first four weeks of the season.
So three quarterbacks and six games later, it almost feels like the Wolverines are right back at square one.
First and foremost, they still don’t have a clear QB1. After stalling out on three straight drives to open Saturday’s clash with the Huskies, Orji was benched in favor of Tuttle. The graduate quarterback made his first appearance this season, coming in midway through the second frame and sparking three straight scoring drives.
The momentum was short-lived, though. As the night wore on, Tuttle failed to keep the ball out of harm’s way, and Michigan’s early offensive struggles reared their head once more.
“We’ll see,” Wolverines coach Sherrone Moore said in response to whether he envisioned Tuttle as the starter moving forward. “But positive, positive. I think he gave us a spark, so we’ll see if he’ll be the starter. Looks like he’s giving us the best chance. Obviously we gotta clean up the turnovers at the end, but he definitely had an exciting start to the game.”
Moore often likes to keep things close to the vest, and understandably so. But the sheer fact that Michigan’s starting quarterback is still unknown, with only six guaranteed games left, is cause for concern.
Week in and week out, the Wolverines have emphasized their ability to find success with anyone under center. So far, they haven’t shown it. None of the three quarterback options have proved capable of churning out consistent results, and with all the changes, Michigan hasn’t been able to establish a working offensive identity. Through the ups and downs of the Wolverines’ season thus far, their only real calling card is inconsistency.
And though the quarterback might be the most visible, it’s certainly not the only roster component that’s still in flux.
The Wolverines don’t have a clear WR1, either. Before senior Dominick Giudice suffered an injury this past week, they were still rotating centers. And even with arguably the most lethal defensive tackle duo and the best cornerback in the country, they have yet to find a sustainable rhythm on defense.
“It’s football,” Moore said. “And in football, you never know what’s going to happen. So for us, we’re adjusting. We’re really working our tails off to get better, and that’s what we’re gonna do this week.”
Michigan and Moore often harp on taking everything one week at a time, one game at a time. The goal is to go 1-0 each weekend. At some point, though, the bigger picture needs to be addressed — because with half of their schedule behind them, the Wolverines still haven’t figured out what they are, nor what they can become.
What if they could execute on Saturdays the way they claim to during the week? What if they could clean up the tackling issues on defense? What if they could finally figure out how to finish games?
Inconsistency breeds ‘what ifs.’ Against Washington, that inconsistency was on full display — and so far, it’s the reason Michigan has failed to establish any real identity.
The post Lys Goldman: Michigan still doesn’t know what it is, nor what it can be appeared first on The Michigan Daily.
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