The Michigan football team’s fall off after winning the national championship has been remarkable. Losing to Washington on Saturday in a rematch of that game showed exactly how far the Wolverines have fallen.
The Huskies lost just as much talent as Michigan did this offseason. Both programs lost top-10 NFL Draft pick quarterbacks, their leading receivers and accomplished head coaches. Washington has certainly performed worse than it did last year — as expected — but it has shown promising signs, leaning on transfers to fill the gaps.
The same cannot be said for the Wolverines. Expectations weren’t sky high for Michigan this season considering it faced significant turnover. But the Wolverines were ranked No. 9 preseason for a reason. They have four projected NFL first round picks on their roster, so they should be able to maximize that talent for some semblance of success.
“I think our job as coaches is whoever’s in there, we gotta make the best of it,” Michigan coach Sherrone Moore said Saturday. “We got really good players everywhere, so we’re gonna use their strengths to get better, and that’s what we’re trying to do.”
Halfway through the season, the Wolverines are 4-2 and just lost handily to an unranked team. Clearly, they haven’t been maximizing the potential of their talented players. As a result, expectations for Michigan hit a new low, and they will continue to plummet every week the Wolverines leave their problems unsolved. At this point, Michigan is closer to missing Bowl Season altogether than making the College Football Playoff.
When Michigan lost to Texas, it was clear that its main problem was lack of a serviceable quarterback. And without an answer at the vital position, the Wolverines offense would be stagnant.
When Michigan proceeded to beat then-No. 11 Southern California by entirely relying on the running game, it seemed as though there was some promise to the sustainability of that identity. It certainly fit with what Moore likes to do as a former offensive lineman and offensive line coach.
That “smash” identity worked again against Minnesota, but it wasn’t nearly as impressive when the Wolverines scraped out a close win over the unranked Golden Gophers — even though Minnesota proved its mettle going on to upset the Trojans on Saturday. The problem was Michigan’s offense was one-dimensional, so if the running game wasn’t working, nothing was.
And that’s what happened against Washington. Junior quarterback Alex Orji and the running game were completely ineffective, falling into an early 14-0 hole. That’s why Moore benched Orji for graduate quarterback Jack Tuttle, who provided an initial spark but didn’t take care of the ball.
The Huskies easily picked apart the Wolverines’ defense, too. They made fundamental mistakes, missing assignments and tackles left and right. And unlike Washington’s offense, which didn’t return a single starter, Michigan’s defense actually returned a lot of its talent that won the national championship.
The fact that the unranked Huskies were favored over the then-10th ranked Wolverines was telling. When Washington actually lived up to that billing, it sent Michigan’s season into a tailspin.
“Our job now is to play the second half of the season and go try to win every game,” Moore said. “We’re gonna work our tails off. We got an opportunity to get better this week and then get better next week and get ready for Illinois.”
That’s what Moore says after every game, loss or uninspiring win. That’s all he can say. The Wolverines will “try to win.” Well, that’s what they tried to do against the Huskies, and they didn’t.
They’ll try to beat No. 23 Illinois and No. 18 Indiana on the road too, but those two teams just jumped No. 24 Michigan in the AP Poll, so that prospect is looking less and less likely. And then there’s the games against No. 3 Oregon and No. 2 Ohio State, which now seem even more like long shots for the Wolverines.
At one point, Michigan’s tough schedule seemed like a blessing, but now it seems more like a curse — because the Wolverines don’t seem to learn from their losses. They’ve seen a lot of what doesn’t work, and the only major adjustment they’ve made is changing quarterbacks twice, which hasn’t exactly worked out anyway. At this rate, they’re at high risk of losing four more games, following up an undefeated season with a .500 season.
Michigan has enough talent to compete on paper, at least against a team of Washington’s caliber. The fact that it couldn’t doesn’t bode well for the rest of the season. The Wolverines’ schedule only gets tougher from here, so don’t expect them to come out of the bye week having suddenly figured out their glaring issues. They’ve already had six weeks to do so and have only exposed more problems than solutions.
No amount of quarterback changes can solve Michigan’s season. It’s going to take a lot more than that in a lot more areas of the game. Despite the talent they have, the Wolverines have failed to properly use it. It doesn’t seem like they’ll figure it out anytime soon, so it’s time to lower expectations further than one should have to for the defending national champions.
The post SportsMonday: It’s time to lower your expectations for Michigan appeared first on The Michigan Daily.
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