If you’re young and talented, it’s like you have wings.
— Haruki Murakami
Sometimes, you have wings on your helmets and think you’re unstoppable. Then you go out and back it up.
Returning Michigan players listened to the talk from the moment the Orange Bowl ended last January. A near-miss 2016 crew ready to flood the NFL with personnel suddenly became too young, too inexperienced and too returning-starters bereft to get anything done in 2017.
Top 10? Please. Challenge for another 10-win season and compete in the Big Ten race? Wait another year.
The 2017 Wolverines aren’t willing to wait. They’re not sitting quietly, hands folded, anticipating 2018. They’re not looking for poll approval or acknowledgement by Southeastern Conference teams that, hey, I guess they CAN run.
Michigan’s decisive, season-opening win against Florida didn’t shock one young man inside the Wolverines’ locker room. It shocked a whole lot of Gator baiters and Michigan haters, but Jim Harbaugh’s crew itself just nodded, grinned and assured there’s plenty more where that came from.
Other than a first-series field goal, Florida’s offense accomplished precisely zero on the scoreboard. The all-maize U-M defense might have well have been a massive swarm of hornets, moving with malevolent intent.
“It was the best since I’ve been here coaching that I’ve seen our defense run to the football,” their head coach declared. “Holes opened up and then closed. Pursuit, nobody on the ground, everybody getting up, making the tackle.”
Harbaugh likes to talk about players having the “license” to perform well. There’s no age restriction on these licenses, and he’s been emphasizing that with this team since January.
Better today than yesterday, better tomorrow than today. Improvement will lead to success and championships.
That’s the mantra, and it doesn’t change due to birthdate.
“It’s irrelevant — freshman, sophomore, junior, senior, coaches,” Harbaugh assured. “We all should be doing that.”
Don’t tell sophomore linebacker Devin Bush Jr. he’s too young to be great. The hellfire missile out of Pembroke Pines, Fla., blew up the Gators over and over, his two sacks among three tackles for loss helping him earn Michigan Defensive Player of the Week honors.
Bush exudes soft-spoken defiance and the jets to ignore any speed limits with his license. Someone asked him about Michigan’s defense this year and he answered with emphasis.
“Togetherness, hungry, fast, physical — that’s how I would describe this defense,” Bush said. “We ain’t going to take nothing from nobody. We’re always going to apply pressure.”
Don’t tell true freshman wide receiver Tarik Black he’s too young to get it done. Against what many considered a national top-10 defense going into the season, Black debuted in a pro stadium under a video board bigger than the ball yards he’s played in up to this point.
Black might already be Michigan’s best receiver. He didn’t have to show ID to sneak behind the Florida secondary and haul in a 46-yard touchdown pass.
“I was a little nervous,” Black admitted. “I used to play in front of a hundred people and now I’m playing in front of a hundred thousand, so it was pretty nerve-wracking. But as long as you just focus and look at the ball all the way in, you should be fine.”
The Wolverines are telling themselves they’ll be fine, and more than fine, these days. And why not? Cincinnati, Air Force, at Purdue, Michigan State, at Indiana make up the next five games, and none of them pose the challenges — on paper — that Florida did.
There’s a huge trap door lurking, of course. If Michigan’s younger players begin thinking they’ve arrived, they could fumble one away, especially in true road games at Purdue (which gave Louisville fits) and Indiana (which hung with Ohio State for more than a half).
But if Michigan maintains the opening-game hunger, while cleaning up the turnovers, punt protection, and numerous other first-game foibles it experienced, it could grow into a force over these first six games. Then, of course, it gets real.
At Penn State, at Maryland (which out-gunned Texas, hanging more than half a hundred on the Longhorns), at Wisconsin and Ohio State at home all loom large in the back half of the schedule. Michigan is young, undeniably. But the Wolverines are feeling their wings.
Bush insisted he saw in the win over Florida “a bunch of guys play like men today … we just had a bunch of guys rise to the occasion.”
The rise, he figures, has just begun.
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