A Look at Michigan's Season So Far
Written By: Jared Bouck (@MichiganBoyAA)
As I'm flying into Dallas with my Father sitting beside me, I'm holding my girlfriend's hand because I was nervous(that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it) I didn't know what to expect from this city, "The Big D" and the city of "America's Team", I had my doubts to say the least. What conclusion I came to as I landed at 4pm and departed at 3:30pm 4 days later, was that Dallas was....IS a sprawling city, you could feel the love, and the heat, from the moment you land. The people are as amazing as the picturesque views you can get from almost anywhere in the city. But I digress, we have a couple games to discuss.
I feel the need to credit Florida fans for their realism, most fans knew that they weren't ready for this type of game, this type of stage, and the following 4 quarters proved that. Michigan was a brick wall and Florida's offense continuously tried to jump into it, this isn't Harry Potter. Florida gained 11 yards on 27 rushing attempts, a rousing 0.4 YPC. Florida QB's were a tad bit better, but not enough to score a single offensive touchdown in the game, they were a combined 14-26 for 181 yards.
While the Michigan defense was dominant, the offense left something to be desired. Michigan had a total of 433 first downs and 19 first downs, not bad considering Wilton Speight was 11-25 with two interceptions returned for touchdowns and one touchdown of his own. Speight WAS Florida's best offense. A couple positives for the Michigan offense though, Ty Isaac seems to have finally lived up to his lofty 5 star status. Isaac completed 3rd down run after 3rd down run to keep a stalling Michigan offense going, Isaac had 11 carries for 114 yards. Tarik Black also made his name known, the superfrosh had 2 receptions for 83 yards and a touchdown.
Week 2 Michigan played a Cincinnati team that struggled to put away FCS Austin Peay in week 1. Would should've been a complete and udder blowout turned out to be a bit of a nightmare for some, bringing boo's of all sorts from the Michigan faithful. The defense was once again dominant, allowing 200 total yards, 15-40 passing and 2.3 yards per carry, also returning 2 interceptions for touchdowns. The offense looked even worse in week 2 unfortunately. Michigan put up some okay yards(414 total, 221 passing, 193 rushing). Wilton Speight DID play better, he was 17-29 passing with two touchdowns. Isaac once again had a stellar performance on the ground, gaining 133 yards on only 20 carries. This game was closer then the 36-14 score Indicates. Cincinnati made the score 14-17 in the 3rd quarter before Michigan finally pulled away, a special teams blunder and an interception from Lavert Hill saved Michigan.
All in all, what I've gathered from this Michigan team is youth, they are still very young, very inexperienced guys. This takes patience, the defense is the fastest I've seen from a Michigan team since....ever? Don Brown has done an incredible job but mistakes will be made, penalties, missed assignments etc. we've seen that in the first two weeks. Just be thankful that the defense we see now isn't the same we'll see against Ohio State in November. The offense has had many Michigan fans pulling hair, punching tv's and screaming, it's been that bad. Big plays haven't been the problem for Michigan, they've had 9 plays of over 30 yards in the first two weeks. The problem has been the red zone. Michigan is 127th in the nation in red zone scoring, for all you people that aren't too familiar with football, that's not good. Again, we have WEEKS before we see a real opponent that can threaten our offense, we will improve, but if we aren't careful, we could be in for a real scare against Air Force in week 3.
I know I said I'd only address this once in a previous article, but f*** it, I'm human. Stop calling for a new QB, if Wilton wasn't the best, he wouldn't be playing, period. Let's say for scenarios sake, that JOK starts next week and plays terrible, then what? Do we go BACK to Speight? Knowing that his job isn't safe can be one of the worst things for A QB, he starts to play scared, much like we're seeing JT Barrett do right now. Peters obviously isn't good enough yet. I know I know, I saw the spring game too, but are we really going to judge 1 practice enough to say that Peters should be starting? No. Speight has one valuable thing that almost no one else on this offense has, experience. He's been thrown in the fire before and came out on top. He needs to play better, no doubt, most of my last two Saturday's have had me yelling something along the lines "Noooo, what-are-you-doing? Why would you throw that?". But, we need to look on the bright side here, he's realistically only thrown 1 interception that was his fault this year, the other, the first interception in the Florida game, was admittedly a tad high, but a catch that Kekoa Crawford needs to make if he expects to make A significant impact on this team.
My last point I want to address is the offensive line, so so inconsistent, my God. I've been frustrated to say the least. I truly believe that some of Speights issues have been caused by this. Some plays, like the 48 yard pass to Nick Eubanks in the 4th quarter of week 1, Speight has all the time in the world to make a pass that he SHOULD make. Others, he's running for his life against Cincinnati. They are all individually good players, but when you have an offensive line that hasn't played together much in real live action games, it takes some time to gain that continuity.
This team as a whole has tremendous talent, and potential to be something of an animal, but potential just means you haven't done it yet. Fix the small problems, footwork issues, red zone offense etc, and we're golden. Luckily we have one of the best coaches in the country to get that done. Patience people, patience.
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