Wisconsin executed its famed “Jump Around,” and the Wolverines joined right in.
More importantly, Jim Harbaugh’s team pulled off the “Jump Ahead” — infinitely more important, at this point.
The Wolverines took a massive leap forward at Camp Randall Stadium, nailing down a 38-17 victory to move to 5-0 on the season. One of the bigger road wins in Harbaugh’s tenure upped the ante on Michigan’s already surprising start.
Breakthroughs? We’ve got breakthroughs …
• Michigan won for the first time at Camp Randall since Oct. 17, 2001, before some of this crew had even arrived on the planet.
• The Wolverines made it to 5-0 for only the second time in seven years under Harbaugh, and the first time since the 10-win 2016 season.
• U-M posted its second-biggest margin of victory over the Badgers since a 41-3 win in 1990.
The team some picked to go under .500 before the campaign began won’t be close to that sort of plunge. There’s a long way to go before anyone finds out exactly what they will be, but they’ve stamped something important on their résumé in the opening handful of games.
They’ve improved, and fear nobody.
“This group’s different,” Harbaugh said afterward. “They don’t flinch.”
The Wolverines were different when they came out and took control with a 10-0 lead on the road. Sparked by redshirt freshman quarterback Cade McNamara’s 34-yard flea-flicker bomb to sophomore wideout Cornelius Johnson, they underscored the fact that they were ready for the fight on both sides of the ball.
“Everything we do, we’re trying to win,” McNamara said. “Getting into Big Ten play, there’s no reason to hold back now. We’re going to be aggressive on offense. Whether that’s going for it on fourth downs, or playing smashmouth football, or taking shots, we’re going to do it.”
They did all of it, and then some.
They were different when they absorbed a shot late in the first half. Wisconsin cut the halftime margin to a nail-biting 13-10 U-M advantage with what amounted to a gift TD.
The Wolverines didn’t drain enough clock prior to junior placekicker Jake Moody’s 47-yard field goal. They left the Badgers 22 seconds and gave them the ball at their own 37 with a head-scratching squib kick.
It shouldn’t have mattered, on a day when the Wolverines surrendered a meager 210 yards and 10 points against the first unit. But it did matter. Wisconsin’s erratic QB Graham Mertz unloaded a couple of throws over U-M’s heads for a three-point halftime deficit.
It felt like a gut punch for a crew that has seen far too few road leads in recent years, and watched too many of those disappear.
But this team insists it's different.
Told of Harbaugh’s no-flinch comment, sophomore safety Daxton Hill delivered a ready answer.
“These last few years, we’ve done enough flinching,” he said. “It’s about that time we didn’t feel that way anymore.”
Redshirt freshman linebacker David Ojabo insisted it didn’t matter who the Wolverines were playing or where. They weren’t going to be denied.
“It’s all based on our brotherhood,” Ojabo said. “We believe in each other. No matter who is across from us, we preach faceless opponents and nameless opponents. As long as we’ve got each others’ backs, man, we are not really worried about whoever is on the other side.”
Mertz nearly wound up faceless when Hill raced in on a blitz and doubled him in half. The Wisconsin quarterback left the game amid the first series of the second half, and whatever hope the Badgers had went with him.
The Wolverines drove 59 yards for a touchdown to go up 20-10, and Wisconsin’s Jump-Around took on a whole new feel heading into the fourth quarter.
It wasn’t intimidating. It felt invigorating.
The Wolverines jumped right along on the sideline, launching themselves into a frenzied, celebratory leap-fest. This was different. They knew how this would end.
“My freshman year, I remember Jump Around, they were up in the third quarter,” Hill assured. “We kind of put an emphasis on that. We wanted to be up the entire game.
“Once that came on, that was going to be our juice. We were going to steal their juice. That’s what we did, and that just carried on for the rest of the game.”
The defense made sure, Ojabo poking the ball away from backup QB Chase Wolf in the backfield. Sophomore defensive tackle Chris Hinton dove on it to set up a field goal.
Hill then made a leaping interception to set up the TD that put Michigan ahead, 31-10, and the celebration went into high gear.
“They had that kind of vibe about them when they first stepped into the locker room and got here early this morning, and the vibe was they weren’t going to be denied,” Harbaugh said. “They weren’t going to flinch.”
They aren’t going to jump around long, either.
“We have big goals,” Ojabo insisted. “You can’t go one game and get all complacent. We have what, six, seven more [games] left? It’s just day by day, week by week. We can’t be high-fiving each other, thinking we won a championship or something. We haven’t done anything yet.”
Maybe not, but it’s different. Definitely different.
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