Borton's Blog: Tight Lips, No Slips For Michigan Football

Jim Harbaugh strode into Michigan’s media room at Crisler Arena in full game-week focus, safeguarding personnel and schematic secrets like Ike before Normandy.

Who’s the quarterback? None of your business … stated more politely, of course, but without equivocation. Harbaugh insisted he’d name a QB prior to Saturday’s opener against Hawai'i — just not publicly.

He’s gearing up for battle and has little interest in divulging anything to assist the foe, even one that will have gone from Oahu to Australia, back to Oahu and on to Ann Arbor — that’s 14,588 miles, if you’re keeping score — in the span of a week. They’ll be playing at 6 a.m. (Hawaii-Aleutian Time Zone), and prognosticators say they should be toast before breakfast.

Someone foolishly asked Harbaugh if it’s hard to not look at bigger games down the road, rather than the Rainbow Warriors.

“Football’s a hard, tough, rough sport,” he answered. “We believe in respecting that, respecting each and every opponent. If we don’t, we will very likely lose the game.”

Harbaugh and the Wolverines respect Hawai'i plenty, and that’s not good news for the Road Warriors. U-M respects the visitors enough to prepare for beating the mango out of them.

Just ask senior cornerback Jourdan Lewis. He and his teammates haven’t experienced spa treatments while tuning up for a less-than-fearsome non-conference schedule. They’ve been training like they did prior to playing Troy Landry to Florida’s Gators in last year’s Citrus Bowl.

“I can tell you, we’re preparing like that team did,” Lewis cautioned. “We’re just as prepared as that team was in Florida.”

That team manhandled Florida, 41-7, rocketing Harbaugh’s crew into an offseason of even deeper commitment. Now, a veteran-laden bunch appears ready to unleash a tsunami on Hawai'i and beyond.

Are there questions? Sure there are. A new quarterback steps in behind a new center and there are new linebackers on the other side of the ball, with other tweaks on the team that heated up Orlando. Harbaugh, offensive coordinator Tim Drevno and passing game coordinator Jedd Fisch are working to ensure the offense can get rolling.

Still, the hole card for this crew — at least early on — involves defense. Harbaugh lost a good defensive coordinator at the end of 2015, so he snagged Don Brown, who merely guided an offense-bereft Boston College squad to the best defense in the nation.

What Brown inherited, in terms of talent, hands a flamethrower to an arsonist. From the opening snap, Lewis noted, the Wolverines are going to deliver a message on defense.

“We’re aggressive,” he said. “We’re going to send you pressure, regardless of whatever you guys throw at us. We’re going to control the tempo, and we’re going to go out there and handle any situation you throw at us.”

That sort of confidence gets forged in the furnace of August, the All-American assured. A combination of hardened veterans and very skilled younger players has competed to the max with each other, and stands ready to overwhelm the opposition.

Nobody has worked harder or competed more fiercely, Lewis insisted.

“You have to have your best performance, every single practice,” he assured. “That’s what he wants from us — go out there and practice our hardest, every single day. That’s the deal. That’s what we have to do.

“It makes us better. When you can say you have depth and you know you have competitiveness at every position, nobody is complacent on having a position. It really helps a lot.”

Someone pointed out the obvious — every team is claiming to have worked harder than anyone else at this time of year. What’s different about this one?

Lewis allowed a slow smile to emerge.

“Because Coach Harbaugh is our head coach,” he said, unflinching. “Nobody has Coach Harbaugh. I promise you, if you don’t go out there and compete, you don’t have a spot. If I didn’t go out there and compete, it doesn’t matter what I did last year, I wouldn’t be on the field.

“That’s the approach he brings to the table, and to this program. That’s his forte — if you don’t compete every day, you don’t have a spot on this team. That’s why he doesn’t have a depth chart right now.

“Coach Harbaugh brought a winning swagger back here. It’s just so infectious. It’s just so easy to follow. When you have a leader like that, who knows what he’s doing, who knows how to win and has won at every level — it’s just amazing.”

The Wolverines are convinced the season will also prove amazing, filled with sealed lips and sunken ships.

Talk about it inside The Fort.