The hope and the goal for Michigan football is that it will improve upon last season, a 9-4 campaign where the Wolverines showed some promise but never quite looked to be among the elite. And a big reason why, it seemed, was that the maize and blue struggled with the little things.
But with Kyle Whittingham taking over the program, the Wolverines should improve greatly in those areas.
Doing the little things right was one of the hallmarks of the Jim Harbaugh era, and cornerback Zeke Berry has been with the program since 2022, so he's seen the mountaintops and the valleys. With Whittingham leading the ship now, Berry won't say that everything has turned around, per se, but he does feel like it's starting to look closer to what he became accustomed
to earlier in his career.
"I feel like it's too early to really say," Berry said. "But I mean, I feel like where we started from day one, and how the connection is with everyone in the field, I feel like it's really on the up slope. So I mean, I feel like we're doing pretty good."
Of course, there's the chance that Michigan could look infinitely better, but still have the same (or worse) record. Because there are six teams that the Wolverines face who are in the top 25 of the US LBM Coaches Poll. With the College Football Playoff having expanded to 12 teams, many make the argument that it's in teams' best interest to not have to play teams like Oklahoma, who the Wolverines face in Week 2. Because, after all, Michigan also will play Iowa, Penn State, Indiana, Oregon, and Ohio State.
But for Berry, the challenge is a part of it, and he wouldn't change the schedule if he could.
"I like to embrace the hard schedule or whatever people might say," Berry said. "I mean, we've got some good teams to play in this season, so I feel like it's gonna be a good time to really show what we can do."
Safety Rod Moore has also been around for some time, having come to Ann Arbor the year before Berry. He's seeing quite a few of the changes taking hold, but it's not always about the little things on the field that make things cohesive. It's the little things off the field that add up, but the biggest thing is just everyone coming together and doing things the right way.
"I think there's a lot more discipline in the building," Moore said. "How everybody goes about their day-to-day business. Like we all have the same mindset of winning. And you can't do that by being out here just BSing around, not taking everything so seriously. So I think that everybody has glued into the same goal of winning. And the first thing is to win the Big Ten. So I think that goal, you've got to set goals to be able to go do what you want to do. So that's the main goal at the time. So I think that's the main thing."
This article originally appeared on Wolverines Wire: Michigan players see culture shift under Whittingham
