After the win over UTEP, Michigan football head coach Kyle Whittingham noted that at halftime, he had to induce the team to come back out of the locker room with energy it didn't have in the first half. And in the second half, the difference was apparent.
The Wolverines looked consistently juiced up against Oklahoma, but against the two nonconference opponents that the maize and blue should have looked the best against, for six quarters, they just didn't look like they wanted to be playing a football game in The Big House at all.
And that has to change.
Sure, with teams like Iowa, Penn State, and Indiana coming to town the next three home games, it should be easier for these Wolverines to get up and stay consistent throughout. But Whittingham is concerned,
though he notes that the youth of the team may be playing a bit of a factor.
"Somebody told me we are the youngest team in the Big Ten as far as age; I think it's like 20.8 years old or something like that. I was just told that; I didn't study it," Whittingham said. "But don't have a lot of those fourth- and fifth-year guys. We do definitely need to be more consistent with our, just our enthusiasm, passion, energy; it seems to ebb and flow a little bit. And we've had three really poor halves in that regard: the entire Western game and the first half of this last game. So we gotta find a way to get that passion and energy at a high level from start to finish, week in and week out."
It all comes down to culture, Whittingham says, and after the Sherrone Moore two-year debacle, it's something that the former Utah head coach is looking to rebuild in Ann Arbor.
In those six quarters, he saw a team that wasn't as locked in as it should have been, and then when it got punched in the mouth by upstart opponents, it became difficult to turn on the talent and the capability. Because Michigan, regardless of anything, has some of the best talent in the country (ranked 10th on the 247Sports list of team talent), and yet, it's played down to two opponents thus far.
"We're still working on the culture and getting things instilled that way and the expectations," Whittingham said. "And when things get tough, that's when you really need to rise up and up your game and not kind of get a deer in the headlights look type of thing. And so I think that we're making progress in that regard.
"And it's just when stuff gets, things get hard, and you get in difficult situations and face adversity, that's when you need to really rise up with the emotion and the energy and not let it just put you in a funk, so to speak."
Ultimately, Whittingham would like to see this team find its killer instinct. It must play at the same level, no matter if it's UTEP or Oklahoma; whether it's Western Michigan or Ohio State.
It's not something he can change instantaneously -- especially since this is a young group. But he's working toward instilling this aspect of the culture, where every opponent gets the maximum effort, and working toward the point where it sticks.
"Well, you never wanna play at the same level week in and week out regardless of your opponent," Whittingham said. "I think that our guys were definitely more excited about the challenge at Oklahoma, perhaps, than the other two games. But preaching that you gotta play at a certain level and not have the peaks and valleys, and a lot of leadership is a bunch to do with that. I think we got really good leadership on this team, but we're learning how to operate and what the expectations are.
"And it's a process, like I said; it just doesn't happen overnight."
There will be another opportunity on Saturday, when Michigan football hosts Iowa for a 3:30 p.m. game at The Big House that will be televised on CBS.
This article originally appeared on Wolverines Wire: Kyle Whittingham identifies troubling Michigan trend he must fix
