Saturday's loss to Iowa for Michigan football was death by a thousand paper cuts. If one thing changes, the Wolverines likely win the game. But it was a perfect storm for the Hawkeyes, and a terrible calamity for the maize and blue.
For instance, just after the Wolverines sliced and diced through the Iowa defense to score the first touchdown of the game, special teams gave up a 99-yard touchdown on the ensuing kickoff.
Head coach Kyle Whittingham shared what happened on that play on the Inside Michigan Football radio show, and noted that a lot went wrong for Michigan. While he gives credit to Iowa, he notes that there was a lot that the Wolverines could have or should have done to keep the long return from happening.
"We had a few miscues," Whittingham
said. "We probably had three or four minuses on that play and things -- guys not rotating properly because it's all about rotation and getting yourself positioned in the right spot on the field. And one thing is our guys have been really good at kicking out of the end zone, and so you don't get a lot of game speed practice covering it because eight out of 10 balls are in the end zone, but that's no excuse.
"Still, when the ball's in play, you gotta be able to defend it, and we work on that during the week and spend as much time as we think is necessary. But that one right there, they just did a great job. First of all, they had two double teams to eliminate our No. 3 and 4 defender on one side, and they completely just eliminated them out of the play, and that created a situation where they cut the coverage team in half and hit that crease.
"And give them credit. They blocked that up phenomenally well, but we did not do a good job with our coverage. There's no doubt about it. And the kick, we don't have any kicks that go to the middle of the field. We try to kick them and pin them down in the either deep left or deep right, and so that ball drifted towards the middle of the field, and it was short. So there's a bunch of things wrong with that play, but regardless of where the kick is, you gotta be able to keep them from going 99 yards."
That was one of a few breaks in the armor for the maize and blue in the game. The other was the final play of the game, when Jay Hill's defense ran press-man coverage with a quarterback spy. Considering that the only thing that Michigan needed to do was keep Iowa from the end zone, it was a troubling play call in the eyes of many.
Whittingham certainly has remorse over it and shares what he would have done differently if he had a bit of a mulligan.
"There's different ways to approach it," Whittingham said. "We could've sped things up and brought the house and forced him to get the ball out even quicker and thrown off his back foot. We chose to rush three with a spy, so if he breaks the pocket, you got the spy there to run him down, but Jay Hill got a lot of confidence in them. He made the call he thought was best. They had given up one touchdown in almost the entire game. At that point, we were one, two seconds away from the entire game, so I was not gonna step in and meddle with what he's doing because you look at the numbers that they held that team to, and it was very impressive."
Michigan will have something of a reprieve on Saturday when it travels to Minnesota to face the Gophers in the first road game of the season. Kickoff is slated for noon EDT with the game set to be broadcast on Fox.
This article originally appeared on Wolverines Wire: Kyle Whittingham explains 2 plays that doomed Michigan against Iowa
