For those worried about a potential emotional letdown from Michigan as it takes on Rutgers this weekend, don't.

This team is wired differently. It was wired like that before last weekend and the connection is only going to be stronger.

Throughout the season, the Michigan program has preached the importance of taking care of brothers on the team. To do your 1/11th, as they call it, in everything you do to make the program into winners.

The importance of brotherhood is only going to get stronger after last weekend's events.

We don't need to rehash what happened with every minute detail. Two Wolverines were assaulted, and the tape is clear as day.

What happens next is how the Wolverines will set the tone for the remaining four games of the year.

Beating Michigan State was priority number one on the goal list. With that one checked off, a handful of goals remain including beating Ohio State, winning the Big Ten and winning a national championship, with the Wolverines capable of achieving all of those goals with the way it has been playing so far.

The team is too deep into the year to fold now after one incident. Instead, this team could be closer than ever before, and that's dangerous for the rest of the conference.

To see a fellow teammate brutally attacked can't even register on things that make sense in the game of football. Rallying around an injured teammate is one thing, but rallying around a friend, a teammate when his health is impacted by events outside of the boundaries of football is unheard of, and inexcusable.

The entire program will use this as an inflection point. The point where the team takes its chemistry to the next level, not that it needed help to begin with.

A together U-M is a dangerous one. As we saw last year. Chemistry was high, the team was tight-knit and used an event that Michigan State was once again involved with to set the sights on the ultimate prize.

It worked.

I expect nothing less the remainder of the way.

This team didn't need the hypothetical fire lit underneath them but here we are. U-M is in too deep to let what happened last weekend make the team take a nosedive. They're so close.

If anything, they're playing for Gemon Green and Ja'Den McBurrows.

A motivated Michigan is a dangerous one and it didn't need to add any fuel to the fire. But now the fire that's lit inside Schembechler Hall is now an all-out blaze.

The rest of college football is officially put on notice.