ANN ARBOR, Mich. – This year’s Michigan football team might be good enough to compete for a playoff spot. But it’s going to have to learn to get out of its own way.
Heading into the weekend, I didn’t know what to expect from this Michigan team. It looked so uninspiring in the first two games, but so explosive against Central Michigan — which version was going to show up in a second true road test against an unbeaten conference rival in a hostile environment?
What I saw was a team that’s good enough to make the College Football Playoff.
Why Nebraska game was so encouraging
This probably won’t come as a shock to you, but there aren’t a whole lot of people rooting for Michigan these days outside the Maize and Blue fan base.
That’s nothing new. Michigan is a big brand (strike one) with an outspoken fan base (strike two) and a long history of winning (strike three!). But the sign-stealing case made the anti-Michigan sentiments even more widespread.
So if you’re on social media, you’ll see a lot of folks downplaying what the Wolverines did this weekend. And if you only look at the box score, then yeah, sure, it was a fairly evenly matched game.
But if you were actually watching, it was crystal clear that Michigan was a much better team.
The Wolverines manhandled the Cornhuskers in the trenches, averaging 9.4 yards per carry to Nebraska’s 1.4 and finishing with seven sacks to Nebraska’s one.
The final score doesn’t effectively demonstrate the grip Michigan held on this game. It took a last-second Hail Mary before halftime and a dumbfounding penalty that extended a Nebraska drive to keep this from becoming a good old fashioned butt kicking.
Michigan looked ready to head into the locker room with a 17-10 lead before a bit of clock mismanagement allowed Nebraska star QB Dylan Raiola to take a last-second heave toward the end zone.
The pass was completed, and instead of taking the ball out of halftime with a chance to go up two scores, Michigan found itself locked in a tie game.
Then, just when Michigan was about to ice the game late in the third quarter — up 27-17 and forcing a Nebraska punt from inside its own 20 — a post-whistle unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on Brandyn Hillman gave the Cornhuskers another possession.
They went down and kicked a field goal, and suddenly, it was a one-score game.
But every time Michigan got punched in the mouth, it found a way to punch back.
After Nebraska erased a 10-0 lead in the first half, Justice Haynes answered with a 75-yard touchdown on the very next play.
After Nebraska’s Hail Mary tied the game and the Cornhuskers forced a punt out of halftime, Michigan forced back-to-back three-and-outs while putting together a couple of scoring drives to go back up 10 points.
When Nebraska pulled back within a touchdown because of the Hillman penalty, Michigan’s defense forced a three-and-out, and the offense followed up with a 16-play, 77-yard drive to take 8:46 off the clock.
Michigan has talent in all the right spots
My newfound optimism for the Wolverines is built more on how they beat Nebraska — not necessarily that they did so.
Michigan looks to be strong at the most important spots on the football field.
Bryce Underwood didn’t have an eye-popping stat line, but he was better than the numbers say. Four drops hurt his overall passing stats, but his running ability has become a major new development within the offense.
And it sure helps to have Haynes and Jordan Marshall — one of the most dynamic running back duos in the country.
Haynes ran for over 100 yards for the fourth game in a row to start his Michigan career. He’s already up to 537 yards and six touchdowns on the season.
It was also the best performance of the year for Marshall, who gained 80 yards on just six carries and had a critical two-play sequence late in the third quarter — an 8-yard run after it looked like he was going to be dropped for no gain, followed immediately by a 54-yard score.
The offensive line, despite missing its leader in Giovanni El-Hadi, allowed just one sack while dominating in the run game. We don’t know exactly how good that unit is yet, but it has clearly improved since the first two weeks.
And on defense, Michigan has an embarrassment of riches along the line, with Jaishawn Barham, Derrick Moore, Cameron Brandt, and T.J. Guy rushing the passer and Rayshaun Benny, Tre Williams, and Trey Pierce battling inside.
When Michigan gets top cornerback Zeke Berry back, the trio of Berry, Jyaire Hill, and Jayden Sanders will look pretty strong in the secondary, especially with Hillman and T.J. Metcalf as support at safety.
And Cole Sullivan has been a playmaker at linebacker next to Ernest Hausmann. In his first four games as a defensive contributor, he’s got two picks, two sacks, and a fumble recovery to go with 19 tackles and 12 solo tackles.
Michigan’s flaws are fixable
Most of the problems that have haunted Michigan so far are very fixable.
The most egregious error came at Oklahoma, when Michigan tried to survive with an overly conservative game plan. It cost them a chance to win that game, but it sounds like the staff learned its lesson.
“We’re not taking the air out of the ball ever again,” interim head coach Biff Poggi said after the win over Central Michigan. “Not with (Underwood) taking the snaps.”
Listen, everybody makes mistakes, and Michigan still has a young coaching staff. So if they’re willing to acknowledge what went wrong at Oklahoma, that should give Michigan fans a lot of confidence that it won’t happen again.
Instead of a fatal flaw, it could turn into a valuable lesson in the long-term.
The two big blunders at Nebraska — clock management at the end of the first half and the fourth-down penalty — were so high-profile that they’re unlikely to happen again.
Will Michigan continue to make mistakes? Absolutely. Again, this is a young and inexperienced group.
But now the Wolverines are starting to establish an identity, so even when they make mistakes, they have something to fall back on, like a relentless pass rush and a home-run-hitting ground attack.
Playoff picture
It’s still very early to talk about the playoff, but let’s be honest: Everything is about the playoff in today’s college football.
The way I see it, Michigan goes into every season with two mulligans. A 10-2 Michigan team is likely never going to miss the 12-team playoff.
That’s not only because of the brand, but also because the Big Ten and SEC are so loaded that their teams are going to have resumes above and beyond the rest of the country.
Here’s a full list of every power conference team (and Notre Dame) to finish the regular season with two losses and land outside the top 12 in the final CFP rankings:
2015: Northwestern
2015: Oklahoma State
2016: West Virginia
2018: Washington State
2019: Alabama
2019: Notre Dame
2019: Minnesota
2021: Oklahoma
2024: Miami
2024: BYU
That’s 10 examples in the entire 11-year history of the CFP Poll, and the only times it happened to the Big Ten, it was Northwestern and Minnesota. Since then, the Big Ten has separated itself even further from the rest of the non-SEC leagues.
So if we work under the assumption that Michigan needs to finish 10-2 to get into the playoff, the focus shifts to a handful of games left on the schedule.
Obviously, Ohio State is the toughest test. But Michigan also has three tricky road games against USC, Michigan State, and Maryland. Washington might also be a team worth watching.
So Michigan likely has to find a way to go at least 4-1 in those five games while avoiding disaster against Wisconsin, Purdue, and Northwestern.
It’s not going to be easy. But it’s possible based on what we saw from this team in Lincoln.
The first bye week comes at a great time for Michigan, which can clean up some of the mental errors and also recalibrate with Sherrone Moore jumping back into the fold.
Underwood should only continue to improve, and Michigan is already battle tested on the road after taking on two tough environments in the first four weeks.
It’s a young team. But it looks like one that can do some damage.