Michigan Wolverines football fans had been waiting all season to see the Shea Patterson they expected this year. He showed up in the second quarter of U-M’s game at Penn State, and while Michigan still lost, Patterson showed heart in leading them back.
He was a dropped pass away from tying the game and sending it to overtime. Instead it was a 28-21 loss, one in which he probably deserved a better fate.
“I don’t know if it was his best performance, but he certainly played well enough to put us in position to win that game, which I’m happy about,” quarterbacks coach Ben McDaniels said Wednesday. “He’s progressed all year. We focus on that a lot, just trying to get better every week. We talk about, ‘you’re not going to be the same at the beginning of the year that you are at the end of the year.’
“Hopefully we’re getting better all the way through, and I think he’s done that.”
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Last Saturday was the biggest leap, however. He trusted his pocket, and while there were moments he still bailed too soon, he hung in and delivered strikes like he hadn’t all year.
His numbers were good — 26 of 41 for 276 yards — and had his receivers caught all the passes they should have, he would have had at least five more on the plus side, bringing him to 75 percent against a tough defensive team.
He also seemed to do a better job getting the ball out quickly and going through his progressions, something they’ve worked on all offseason, McDaniels noted.
“I think he’s always been very comfortable playing off schedule. He’s very athletic and does a great job playing off schedule well when he’s on the move, but that’s something he wanted to put focus to; I wanted to put focus to. I think he’s done a good job progressing that way," he said.
“In the most critical moments in a lot of games you’ve got to play quarterback that way, understand what the eyes are looking at and be able to go put the ball where it needs to be based on what your eyes are telling you about the defense. He’d done a good job.”
Part of that is knowing what the defense is showing before the snap, he added.
“We have a lot of different reads in the system, some of which are one side of the field or full field reads. Regardless of the read, I think what you can gather about what you know about the defense before you have the ball in your hands speeds up your process after the snap,” he said. “However long that progression is on paper, it can be as fast as you want it to be based on what you know about the defense before you have the ball. That’s what we focus a lot on.”
While he’s always been a “risk taker” type quarterback, Patterson has done a better job lately of knowing when and where to take them. It changes situationally, McDaniels noted, from down and distance, where they are on the field, yards needed, score and everything else.
The goal, of course, is to make sure the focus is there all the time, not only part time.
“I think the situation changes throughout the game. As a quarterback, you have to calculate that really down to down,” McDaniels said. “He did that pretty well the other night. He has to do that every game, every time we go out there, every series.”
The offense will go how he goes, after all, and the back half of the schedule doesn't get any easier, starting Saturday night with Notre Dame.
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