ANN ARBOR, Mich. — For the third-straight game, Michigan football will have its hands full on the defensive side of the ball, as it faces a pass-heavy, high-flying offense.
Known for its offensive attack, TCU is quite balanced, despite running an air raid offense. The Horned Frogs are ranked No. 25 in the country in both the pass and the run, with the 16th-overall offense by yards and sixth in the country in scoring.
After facing off against Ohio State and Purdue, it won’t get any easier for the Michigan defense in the College Football Playoff semifinal.
“They’re versatile. They do a lot of different things,” fifth-year linebacker Michael Barrett said. “They have a quarterback who’s a competitor, a real competitor. He’s always gonna compete, put his team on his back to kind of get them the win. They got a really good receiving corps. They got a quarterback who can get on the ball, a good running back. And they’re just balanced with the pass and a running game. They’re pretty good, really good at both. It’s gonna be a good test for our defense on all levels.”
The biggest challenge for the Wolverines will come in the secondary, especially given how prolific the pass game can be.
TCU averages 273 yards per game through the air, which will be the third-best the maize and blue have seen behind the Buckeyes and Boilermakers. Led by quarterback Max Duggan, who can also run the ball, the Horned Frogs have a signal caller who won’t give up no matter how dire the circumstances, and he earned a trip to New York as a Heisman Trophy finalist as a result.
Sophomore safety Rod Moore says that the back seven for the Michigan defense is certainly on high alert due to his capabilities mixed with his moxie.
“I was watching (the Big 12 Championship game) in my hotel room and I can see that he’s a very hard player, like he (gives) everything he has,” Moore said. “We just have to do the same thing, give him everything that we have. But I was impressed. I didn’t know that he was that good. But watching that game, I was very impressed.”
“Offensively, they’re a good challenge,” Moore also said. “I know they’re an air raid offense but we’ve seen that before. They have multiple weapons, but we’re just gonna have to stop them.”
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Just as much of a challenge is wide receiver Quinten Johnston, who is 40th in the country with 903 yards in 12 games. But even if Michigan has luck in slowing down the prolific pass-catcher, the Horned Frogs have multiple other weapons in the receiving game who can be just as big of threats.
“I’m just seeing that they have weapons on the outside, the inside, and quarterback,” Moore said. “As you can see, he was a Heisman runner-up. Quinten Johnston is a good athlete, a good player. We’ve seen good players and good athletes, we’re just gonna have to stop him.
“But I know that if we have to shut him down, there’s gonna be another one that rises up. So we’re just gonna have to go from stopping him to stopping each and every one of them.”
So, how does Michigan hone in on the breadth of weapons that TCU has? Given that the run game is on equal footing with the pass game, how does the defense prioritize?
Barrett says it’s all about staying true to what the Wolverines have done all season — preparation and anticipation — while playing sound at every level.
“It just makes us focus in on our fundamentals,” Barrett said. “It’s more anticipate than guessing. In a sense, you can’t really kind of guess what they’re doing just based off of alignments and things like that. We’ll just kind of dig deeper into the film and kind of get a deeper look into kind of things that they do and different formations and stuff like that. But that’s kind of the hardest thing, just kind of not trying to guess and just anticipate.”
Michigan and TCU will kick off in the Vrbo Fiesta Bowl at 4 p.m. EST on Dec. 31.
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