Michigan football head coach Sherrone Moore met with Jon Jansen on Monday night for the duo's weekly "Inside Michigan Football" radio show. The Wolverines are currently 5-5 and need one win in their last two games to secure bowl eligibility.
Northwestern will visit the Big House on Nov. 23 before Michigan heads south to take on Ohio State in the annual rivalry matchup.
Moore provided a series of injury updates on key Wolverines, including a name that hasn't been brought up all season.
Injury updates
Will Johnson, who is arguably Michigan's best player, has missed the team's last three games with an undisclosed injury. He prematurely left the field in Michigan's 21-7 loss to Illinois, and he hasn't seen the field since.
With just two more guaranteed games this season, some believe Johnson may not play another snap in a Michigan uniform. Moore provided an update on the All-American cornerback.
"He's working towards it," Moore said. "He wants to play. He got to running a little bit this week, and so we'll see how he feels going into next week."
As for players who played in Saturday's 20-15 loss to Indiana, Moore didn't sound too optimistic about Giovanni El-Hadi, who left the game in the first quarter.
"He's doing okay. He'll be probably a little bit limited this week and it's good with the bye week, and then probably back to more next week."
And the speculation at running back continues. Against Indiana, Kalel Mullings did not get any touches in the first quarter for the second consecutive game. After the loss, Moore said Ben Hall had practiced better, and Michigan wanted to feed the hot hand, but on Monday, Moore added some more context regarding Mullings.
"He's just had a lot of carries. So, working through stuff. But also, Ben (Hall) practiced really well and (I) wanted to get him in the game, so a little bit of both."
What he wants to show in the last two games
The second bye week is now here. It's likely that before the season began, no Michigan fans were planning on having conversations about whether the Wolverines would get a sixth win during this week.
But, that's the reality of the situation, and Michigan will face one of the Big Ten's worst teams and one of the Big Ten's best to close out the season. At .500, it's already a disappointment of a year, but Moore discussed what he wants to see from his team in the last two weeks of the regular season.
"I want to continue the juice, the energy, because it's easy for, it's human nature. A lot of guys — you're 5-5, you're not where you want to be — so, it's human nature for people to just coast and think about the next steps and think about what they should do next. I've gotten to talk to all the guys that are possible high draft picks and there's zero thought process of that (sitting out or "coasting") and all those guys want to do is go win. And that's the cool thing about this team and the people around here. So our job now is just to go try to win."
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