ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Jim Harbaugh used to always say that players and the team make their biggest jump from Week 1 to Week 2, and certainly Sherrone Moore is hoping the same of his team.
The Wolverines played a good Group of Five team in Fresno State, but despite the 30-10 outcome, the fact that Michigan didn’t pull away until late in the game left it far too close for comfort for many fans. And considering No. 3 Texas is coming to town in Week 2, the Wolverines need to step things up considerably.
There were a lot of good things and a lot of bad in Week 1. But one thing we noted while watching the game live was that Michigan was relatively vanilla, particularly on offense. There were few motions and complexity pre-snap compared to what we usually see from the offense. And a lot of the types of plays that usually are successful for the Wolverines didn’t quite pop off as they might have in years past.
Moore said on Monday that he liked what he saw from his team but often one player would miss an assignment and that would cause certain plays to fail.
“Yeah, you saw guys weren’t scared of the big stage. Obviously, a great atmosphere in The Big House,” Moore said. “But I think players played extremely hard offensively. We got in a rhythm at the end of the game, really felt the line jelling. Got a rhythm of everything going on. I thought offensively, they definitely picked it up there.
“Got things to clean up, as we always will — and running game technique, fundamentals — it’s the tale of 10 guys, and you got one guy that doesn’t do his job, and then the play fails. So we got to continue to get better at that. But we will this week. We’re going to put our hard hat on, and we’re going to work our tails off this week to have a great week of prepping.
“I thought defensively, they flew around. They were violent, they were physical. Had a lot of fun. Big thing there we got to clean up, we just got to be stable emotionally. We had that one drive where we had a couple of penalties that can go either way, but we can’t have them. So for us, we’re going to eliminate those and just play our style of football.”
One surprising thing about the game in Week 1 was the new-look offensive line — but not in a good way. The line got pushed around at times but by the end of the game, it finally looked more in-line with what you expect from Michigan football.
Moore says that’s usually how it’s looked in his time in Ann Arbor, and after going back to the tape from the past three years, it confirmed that the offensive line has often struggled in Week 1 before settling in come Week 2.
“Never where you want it to be. And I think it’s probably — it’s definitely got to get better,” Moore said. “But I thought the attitude, I thought the strain was there, the details and technique have to continue to get better. And that’s a product of your first game as an offensive line, and even the first year, last year, the year before that, before, I’d say the exact same thing. I went back and watched the past three years in first games and watched the second games, and it looks like two different lines. So I expect those guys to be a lot better. I know Coach Newsome will coach them really hard this week.”
Fans will certainly continue to feel uneasy until the product on the field matches their expectations. Either way, rubber meets the road on Saturday with kickoff against the Longhorns coming at noon EDT.