As easy fixes go, this isn’t one.
Michigan sports a defense that will keep it in every single game it plays this year. It features an offense, at present, that will keep opponents in almost every game.
Sure, monsoon season hit The Big House on Saturday night. Sure, fifth-year senior quarterback John O’Korn probably feels like Jim Cantore has a voodoo doll of him and is sticking icy or rain-slick pins in it every time O’Korn starts a game in Michigan Stadium.
But O’Korn, and the Wolverines, know better than to blame the weather for a 14-10 saturated setback on Saturday night versus Michigan State.
“It’s no secret,” O’Korn said. “It was a torrential downpour out there, but both teams have to deal with it. No excuses.”
One team dealt with it four points better than the other. One team didn’t turn the football over once. One team did so five times.
Moreover, one team scored 14 points when the uniforms were still dry. In those same conditions during the opening 30 minutes, the Wolverines scored three points, digging a hole that they couldn’t climb out of.
Jim Harbaugh’s crew has issues getting the job done on the offensive side of the football, and he knows it. The right side of his offensive line is struggling. That leads to up-and-down performances by his running backs and wideouts, because of the pressure put on by opposing defenses.
Harbaugh is on his second quarterback, and that’s not the plus some cynical fans insisted two weeks earlier. Redshirt junior QB Wilton Speight went down with an injury at Purdue, and he’s done for the year. Some less charitable onlookers took the opportunity to insist Michigan is better off with O’Korn behind center.
By the end of the soggy second half against MSU, they were already calling for redshirt freshman Brandon Peters or true frosh Dylan McCaffery. News flash: making the offense even younger and more inexperienced is not going to cure this crew.
The question is, what will?
Someone asked Harbaugh afterwards if he was going to take a “hard look” at his team on offense and figure out changes that need to be made. The head coach, predictably, didn’t play ball as hoped.
“We’ll evaluate, like we always do after every game,” Harbaugh said. “We always take a hard look. Every single game.”
The hard truth is, there are two elements that will eventually make Michigan’s offense better, and nobody wants to hear about (or experience) either. That side of the football needs time, and probably more pain, before things smooth out.
Most knew it coming into the season. Many predicted it, although they also threw Michigan’s wholly revamped defense into the equation as well. But while Don Brown’s crew has thrived in the plug-and-play scenario, the U-M offense is suffering a more natural move to the future.
In some ways, that’s a big disappointment. Michigan entered the year with an experienced quarterback, backs and left side of the offensive line. The hope there involved the other parts getting up to speed quickly. But it doesn’t always work like that. Michigan found out the hard way Saturday night, and they’ll be paying for it with 365 days worth of MSU taunts, just in case they might forget.
One scribe couldn’t wait to remind Michigan’s head coach that he’s now 1-4 against his chief rivals, Michigan State and Ohio State. Asked for a reaction, Harbaugh bit down hard and remained as pleasant as he was going to get after just having his guts ripped out.
“I don’t know,” he said. “We’re bowing our necks, getting ready for the next game. That’s our reaction.”
The next game is in Bloomington, Ind. There’s no more of a guarantee there than there was at Purdue, against a team that hung in for a half against Ohio State. The game after that will again be under the lights at Penn State, versus a squad aching for revenge after getting destroyed in Michigan Stadium last year.
Later on, a trip to Camp Randall Stadium in Wisconsin beckons. Ohio State come in at the end, very likely in position to advance to the Big Ten championship game.
Can Michigan get better before those games play out? Of course. It has to do so. But unless it gets considerably better in a hurry, the sting of the MSU loss won’t be the last one the Wolverines experience.
This was billed as the final step-back season before Harbaugh really gets it rolling. Some fought hard against that notion. Most weren’t fighting as hard in the drizzle on Saturday night.
---
• Talk about this article inside The Fort
• Subscribe to our podcast on iTunes
• Learn more about our print and digital publication, The Wolverine
• Follow us on Twitter: @TheWolverineMag, @BSB_Wolverine, @JB_ Wolverine, @AustinFox42, @AndrewVcourt and @Balas_Wolverine
• Like us on Facebook
