ANN ARBOR, Mich. — The No. 8 Michigan Wolverines ran out of the tunnel for the first time in front of 100,000-plus fans on Saturday for the 2022 football season.
The maize and blue had the pleasure of hosting Colorado State and its new squad led by Jay Norvell. Michigan did precisely what a top 10 team should do against a team that went 3-9 a year ago: The Wolverines won, 51-7.
For the majority of the offseason, while Michigan was predicted to be a top 10 team this year, the national media hasn’t been too friendly to the Wolverines. Michigan is coming off a College Football Playoff berth and a No. 3 ranking to end the 2021 season. But Ohio State has been picked by just about everyone to not only win the Big Ten but also be a possible national champion.
Granted, Ohio State should be elite this year. The Buckeyes brought back C.J. Stroud, Jaxon Smith-Njigba and TreVeyon Henderson. But the Buckeyes lost two of their top receivers last year, Chris Olave and Garrett Wilson.
So what does the national media say about that? Well, they say Marvin Harrison Jr. and Emeka Egbuka will just slot right in and take the place of the experienced Olave and Wilson — even if they don’t have too much experience.
This is no knock on the Buckeyes because if everything goes to plan, they are going to be right there in the end. But that isn’t equal to what is being said about the maize and blue.
What about Michigan? What does the media say about the Wolverines after losing arguably the best edge duo, Aidan Hutchinson and David Ojabo, in the past 10 years? They say that the Wolverines can’t just plug and play their edge players and get the same results.
Well, Saturday against Colorado State says differently.
The Wolverines generated seven sacks and 11 tackles-for-loss as a team against the Rams.
Now, I know Michigan was playing against a 3-9 team from 2021. While I fully believe this iteration of CSU will be much better in 2022 under Jay Norvell, we don’t know that right now.
What we do know is the Michigan defensive line, especially from the edge position, did anything and everything it wanted to against the Rams on Saturday. And I mean they flat-out bullied the Colorado State offensive line.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think anyone will ever — or at least right away — fill the production Hutchinson and Ojabo gave the Wolverines in 2021. But I believe Michigan has plenty of hungry players on the defensive side of the ball with a chip on their shoulder that wants to prove the doubters wrong.
Mike Morris was one of those edge defenders that played a good game on Saturday. He had three tackles and two tackles-for-loss against the Rams. He was one of the individual players made available for the postgame media conference. He talked about how the Wolverines rotated around eight players on the defensive line, and they all ate. Another thing he said was the Wolverines’ defense has a chip on its shoulder and wants to show the world that the Wolverines can still be great even with the presence of Hutchinson and Ojabo.
“I feel like as an edge room and as a D-line and total, we put a, put a chip on our shoulder because their absence,” said Morris. “Everybody thought like, we weren’t going to be as good because of their absence. And I feel like that fell on the coaches and the players because it’s like, I feel like people didn’t have faith in the coaches recruiting, and didn’t have faith in the coaches development of us and didn’t have faith in our development. Because people come and go out of every school all the time. But now it’s like, does Michigan have a guy? But no, we have multiple. So anybody can anybody in the edge room can play winning football and start on this defense.”
He’s right when he says that Michigan has multiple players that can play winning football in Ann Arbor. It didn’t matter who played at edge on Saturday, whether it was Morris, Jaylen Harrell, Braiden McGregor, Eyabi Anoma or Derrick Moore — they all ate.
Michigan doesn’t have much of a nonconference schedule this year, but when it comes to confidence, that’s not a bad thing. The Wolverines are bound to dominate against weaker competition, so the new-look Michigan defense should be full of confidence before Big Ten play begins.
I believe if Michigan can rotate four-to-five edge players every game, the Wolverines will continue to have fresh bodies during crucial moments. And if Week 1 told us anything, Michigan is going to be just fine when it comes to the defensive line.
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