'Really Hungry' Wolverines Hope To Surprise College Football World

Where do they go from here?

That's the question many fans and pundits asked about Michigan football following the Wolverines' disastrous 2020 season in which they posted a 2-4 record, didn't win a home game and saw three contests get canceled.

Michigan head man Jim Harbaugh made major changes, replacing six of his assistant coaches and overhauling his recruiting department, but the emphasis of the offseason rested on one four-letter word — work.

Expectations are low in Ann Arbor. The Wolverines enter the season unranked for the first time since 2015 and 10th time since the Associated Press Poll expanded to a top 20 in 1968 (it was upped to a top 25 in 1989), and Las Vegas has their win total set at 7.5. That's a far cry away from being inches (depending on who you ask) away from advancing to the Big Ten title game in 2016 or one win away from reaching Indianapolis in 2018.

That's the reality for the Michigan Wolverines heading into the 2021 campaign, which begins Sept. 4 against Western Michigan, and they're embracing it ... starting at the top with Harbaugh.

"I would say Coach Harbaugh does a great job of … he continues to lead us in the right direction," sophomore wide receiver Mike Sainristil said Monday. "He wants it as bad as anybody else here does, if not more. That’s exactly what we need coming from Coach Harbaugh, and it shows because of the amount of buy-in everyone on the team has right now."

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When Sainristil was asked which players on the team might surprise fans in Saturday's opener, he said to watch out for redshirt freshman cornerback D.J. Turner, before stopping himself and saying that the play of the entire team may open some eyes.

"We’re going to surprise," Sainristil began. "Not us, not on the team, but people watching are going to be very … I guess you can say, ‘surprised.’"

Added Sainristil, when asked what made him make that statement: "I’ve just been here. I’ve seen the way everybody’s been working. I see the day-to-day grind. Guys just really want it.

"Every year, different teams [are] different, but this year, this team is really hungry, especially coming off the season we had last year. That wasn’t really Michigan football. Of course, I’m not happy we had a losing season, but it was a reality check for us. That’s definitely playing a big part."

Could last season, while awful, be a blessing in disguise in that it helped create the motivation needed to break through and correct problems that may have been lying under the surface? That remains to be seen. However, Sainristil is confident that the desire to win is there, maybe even more than he's ever seen it.

"I feel like there’s a much bigger chip on our shoulder as a team, and a lot to prove," he said. "Regardless of wherever we are in the rankings or however people view us, I feel like … we’re underdogs for some reason, but it is what it is."

Harbaugh named third-year redshirt freshman Cade McNamara the team's starting quarterback for the opener. Sainristil is one of many Wolverines to compliment McNamara during fall camp.

"During the offseason, he’s just working on being accurate," Sainristil said. 'I don’t know exactly what Cade does for training, but whatever he did is working because we’ve just been clicking on offense."

His leadership has also stood out.

"Cade’s an outgoing guy; he’s a team guy," the wideout said. "Cade, this offseason, taught me how to golf. That’s the type of guy he is — he just brings guys along with him with whatever he’s doing."

McNamara has said he prepared to be the starter from the moment he walked into the building as a true freshman in 2019. That kind of competitiveness helped him be ready when his name was called at the end of the 2020 campaign and will certainly give him a boost this fall, when his teammates will look to him for guidance.

"You can just see it in his face. You look at Cade in whatever he’s doing — whether it’s shooting hoops upstairs, on the football field or on the golf course — you just see it in his eyes that he wants to win," Sainristil said. "You need a winner in that position."

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