Michigan football begins again on Saturday. Those who embrace everything about the winged helmet hope that’s true in every sense of the phrase.
Jim Harbaugh’s crew skidded into the ditch last year. The 2-4 mess of a season began late, ended early and still provided a dirty half-dozen of embarrassment and future motivation.
Now unranked, lightly regarded and feeling like an actual wounded wolverine, cornered and taunted, Harbaugh’s players stand ready to lash out — or so they say.
Half their coaching staff is new. The boss took a hard look, blew it up again and hopes the pieces fall together properly. That’s what happens when a pride-filled program finishes next-to-last in the East Division of the Big Ten — and loses, embarrassingly so, to the last-place team.
Especially this last-place team.
Michigan State’s 27-24 win over the Wolverines still resounds. It’s a big reason new defensive coordinator Mike Macdonald will be flipping the switches on Saturday, contends U-M radio sideline reporter Doug Karsch.
In a showdown of two bad teams, one found a way. The other may have found a way to the future.
Macdonald takes over a defense that gave up nearly 35 points a game last year. Fresh from the Baltimore Ravens, he’ll likely present better answers than standing pat against downfield lobs over the cornerbacks, the way Michigan reacted in that debacle a year ago.
“I can’t imagine them being more stubborn,” Karsch opined.
Michigan players are hugely excited over the new defense — more complexity, more quarterback confusion, more answers in general, they say. After featuring no answers against Mel Tucker’s moon-shot chuckers, the Wolverines were ready for change.
“Last year, the loss that most resonates with people is one of the most stubborn defensive game plans I have ever seen,” Karsch stressed. “I think a minor adjustment means they beat Michigan State. But they didn’t.
“When you have your belief … [former defensive coordinator] Don Brown said it a million times, about ‘We’re going to play aggressively, and that’s the way we’re going to be, no matter what,’ well, they weren’t up to the task.
“One was their inability to adjust coverages, to slow down a very below-average Big Ten quarterback. And the other was the inability to make adjustments to stop Wisconsin getting the ball to the edge. They just ran the jet sweep over and over, ran to the perimeter, and Michigan never really made an adjustment to stop it.
“Those two things really stood out as stubbornness.”
Karsch said he can’t imagine Macdonald being more stubborn, although coaches tend to be fully invested in their schemes. There will be plenty to scrutinize on Saturday — redshirt freshman Cade McNamara at quarterback, a revamped offensive line, a strong stable of running backs awaiting a chance.
None of it supersedes the need to begin building a defense that doesn’t come away scarlet-faced against Michigan’s biggest rivals.
“Not every loss is a referendum loss,” Karsch continued. “Not every loss means you need to take a hard look at what you’re doing. You sometimes just get outplayed by a better opponent. Sometimes you don’t have a good day.
“Sometimes you have a loss that speaks to, changes need to be made. That Michigan State loss was a referendum loss. The question was, was Jim Harbaugh going to see it that way? The answer was yes.
“That was an example of a loss that changed the trajectory of the program.”
The Spartans sought greater relevance against Michigan for decades. They found some in the genuinely bizarre 2020 season with a cellar-dweller squad.
Change arrived like a freight train in the offseason. Now it’s a matter of sorting it all out, seeing if not only train wrecks can be avoided, but whether the Wolverines are on the right track for the future.
Saturday won’t be the final word on that one. But it gives the first glimpse, and that’s why the binoculars will be trained on every play, while the new-look Wolverines begin to find their way.
“There’s a lot riding on this year, to show improvement and to take away some of the question marks on the direction of the program under Jim Harbaugh and this staff,” Karsch said. “I don’t know which way it’s going to go.
“It feels like Coach Harbaugh needs to win big this year. I’m not sure they have a roster to do it, but as much as they’ve had maybe some bad luck with the injuries and the opt outs, if they get a little bit of good luck, it could go his way, where he could get it back on track.”
Michigan at Western Michigan, at high noon. It doesn’t exactly sound like the Earps versus the Clantons, but 110,000 will be looking for a team that’s more than OK.
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