MINNEAPOLIS – Before he sat down for his postgame news conference, Kyle Whittingham grimaced and exhaled.
“That wasn’t pretty,” the Michigan football coach muttered Saturday, Oct. 3, deep inside Huntington Bank Stadium.
It was undeniably ugly, this 20-14 loss to Minnesota that left his Wolverines with an 0-2 record in the Big Ten. But Whittingham struggled to understand why they again played so poorly, so messy and so beneath their standards. It was the latest confounding performance by a flawed team that can’t seem to get out of its own way and has been doomed by its own self-inflicted errors.
Andrew Marsh’s muffed punt and two interceptions thrown by Bryce Underwood set up each of the Golden Gophers’ scoring drives in the second half. Minnesota
netted just 13 points on those possessions. But it was enough to erase a 14-7 deficit and overtake Michigan during an afternoon when the Wolverines’ offense repeatedly flatlined.
Given what happened in the first month of the season, none of it should have come as a surprise. Five days before Michigan took the field against Minnesota, Whittingham gave the impression the sky was falling in Ann Arbor, telling reporters it felt like “we’re 0-4.”
Michigan won its opener against Western Michigan on a controversial last-second Hail Mary. And it fell to Iowa on the final play last weekend. In between, the Wolverines barely outlasted Oklahoma in a nip-and-tuck affair that was decided in the final quarter. It turns out that triumph wasn’t as impressive as it seemed at the time, considering the two-loss Sooners look just as unimpressive as Michigan does. But even as the dossier on the Wolverines grows larger and the damning evidence about his team continues to mount, Whittingham still is struggling to reconcile what they are versus what he expected them to be.
“It wasn’t what I envisioned,” he said. “I can tell you that.”
At the root of the problems, he asserts, is a “disconnect.”
“There is something that is not allowing us to function at our best,” he said.
Yet Whittingham doesn’t know exactly what it is or what is causing it. It’s a troubling admission. A 60-something man in his 22nd year as a head coach is seemingly operating in the dark as he tries to diagnose what ails his football team.
He described it as “maybe the biggest challenge” he’s had since he picked up a whistle in the 1980s.
He now must confront it with his team standing at a perilous fork in the road with the fate of its season hanging in the balance.
“It can go two ways,” running back Jordan Marshall said. “It can go really, really bad or we can turn this thing around.”
But in order for Michigan to reverse course and get moving again in the right direction, it must first identify its problems and conjure the solutions to fix them. That process will begin in earnest in the coming days as the Wolverines enter their bye week. With seven games left on the schedule, the clock is ticking for Michigan to get things right. Whittingham is aware. Still, he vowed to “look at everything.”
It appears U-M’s listing offense will undergo the most through examination. The Wolverines, after all, have produced fewer than 20 points in four of their first five games. On Saturday, they didn’t do much with the ball when it was in their hands. Underwood was erratic, completing only 10 of 21 pass attempts for 101 yards. The ground attack was punchless, producing just 79 yards on 28 attempts. The offensive line was leaky and sloppy, allowing three sacks and committing two procedural penalties. The operation, as a whole, looked dysfunctional and unreliable.
Michigan scored on one of 10 drives, gained 180 yards and maintained possession for just 22 minutes, 24 seconds. At almost every turn, it failed. It was particularly vexing, considering the defense put forth a winning effort, holding Minnesota to just 4 yards per play and contributing its own touchdown off a 79-yard interception return by linebacker Nathaniel Staehling.
“I feel like we’ve got to go back to square one,” Underwood said.
On Saturday, it looked like they were already there. The regression of the offense was baffling, considering it happened one week after the Wolverines consistently manufactured yards against Iowa’s sturdy defense. In the aftermath of that devastating loss to the Hawkeyes, Whittingham came away encouraged by the performance of Underwood and Co. But on Saturday, after watching Michigan sputter for four quarters, Whittingham seemed annoyed.
“We might have to make some tough decisions,” he said in one breath.
“The results are unacceptable right now,” he added in another.
He is certain of that.
But he’s not sure yet how he will flip them in Michigan’s favor going forward.
Instead, the Wolverines’ coach appears filled with doubt and at a loss for answers.
That may be more worrisome than an ugly, regrettable defeat to Minnesota.
Contact Rainer Sabin at rsabin@freepress.com. Follow him @RainerSabin on X.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan football is in trouble and Kyle Whittingham is without answers
