After Michigan football beat Oklahoma, there was a real feeling around the program that it could have been 6-0 going into the showdown against defending national champion Indiana. However, just a few weeks later, the Wolverines are sitting at 3-2, and the program is in full disarray.
It was one thing to lose on the final play to Iowa -- in a game where the maize and blue dominated everywhere but on the scoreboard. But the way that the Wolverines lost to Minnesota was a different story altogether.
Michigan did nothing right all game, particularly on offense and special teams, and the turnovers and penalties reared their ugly heads once again, all but giving the Little Brown Jug right to the Gophers. On the Inside Michigan Football radio program,
head coach Kyle Whittingham noted that the team had been progressing, so the performance on Saturday was particularly disheartening.
"Two weeks in a row, we've held a lead going into the fourth quarter and haven't been able to hang on to it," Whittingham said. "And that's at the top of the list of the most discouraging things is to go into the fourth quarter ahead and just not being able to finish. And that's something that we have gotta make even more of a point of emphasis going forward, and you gotta close people out. We had that opportunity, like I said, for the last two weeks, and we weren't able to do it.
"Obviously, we had many offensive woes in this past game. We were not nearly as productive as we needed to be, really, at anything. Didn't run the ball well enough, didn't throw it well enough, weren't good on third down, didn't protect the quarterback like we needed to. We turned it over. Just a myriad of issues that we gotta deal with, and it was discouraging in the respect that we had really taken a step forward each week with the offense up until last week, and we regressed, and so we've got our work cut out for us."
Now Michigan football is on bye week and is searching for answers. Whittingham said after the loss to the Gophers that he will reevaluate everything in the wake of the game. So what does that mean?
He shared more with Jon Jansen about what that looks like.
"Yeah, well, first of all, self-analysis. What do we do best? What is our, through five games, what's been our strength?" Whittingham said. "Where do we need to gravitate? What do we need to gravitate towards schematically? Personnel-wise, who have been our best players through those five games, and are we getting those best players on the field often enough, and enough reps?
"Defensively, there's been a lot of good things on defense. It really is, you know, we're playing at a high level, and putting up really good numbers. We did take the ball away, we had a score, and set up a score with the defense that picked by Staehling was a really nice play by him, and then we actually set up the one touchdown we did get offensively was on a short field due to the Smith Snowden interception. So, there's a lot of positive things going on on defense. I'm not sure there's a lot of corrections or adjustments that need to be made. We just need to keep doing what we're doing, and start to take the ball away at a higher rate like we did last game, and that'll be help the offense as well when we get them more short-field situations.
"And offensively, we got a long ways to go. I'm telling you right now, there's a lot of issues, and we gotta address them. It's just a situation of, again, figuring out what have we done well so far, what do we need to just cast off and not try to do anymore, try to put a square peg in a round hole, and find a way to manage the game offensively so we have a chance to win."
Michigan is off this week but will resume play in the Big Ten with Penn State coming to Ann Arbor in Week 7. Like the Wolverines, the Nittany Lions are 3-2 with two losses in the conference.
This article originally appeared on Wolverines Wire: Kyle Whittingham reveals how Michigan plans to overhaul its offense
