Michigan football is hoping that the third quarterback is the charm. Although, if he was healthy during the offseason, there’s a good chance that seventh-year signal caller Jack Tuttle would have been named the starter outright before the season.
However, injuries mounted, slow to heal, and Tuttle was unavailable for the early season, but started to work his way back the past few weeks. And with Michigan down 14-0 early to Washington, head coach Sherrone Moore made a change, one that may last for the rest of the season.
Though Saturday’s game didn’t work out for the Wolverines, Tuttle is optimistic that he can run the offense and that the offense can work better than it has recently. Michigan has the 108th-ranked offense but Tuttle moved the ball on three consecutive drives — something we haven’t seen all season.
“I just think if we execute and do what we were doing last year, and it’s — we have all the pieces,” Tuttle said. “I just think coming together as a team — we’re tight-knit, but we got to come even more tight-knitted as a unit. And we’re finding ourselves right now and this week. We had a great practice today. So we keep on doing that, we’re going to be in a good spot.”
That’s not entirely far-fetched, even if the offense hasn’t clicked at all except in batches. Tuttle was a highly-ranked four-star recruit in the 2019 class, but after transferring from Utah to Indiana, he sat behind eventual No. 9 overall pick Michael Penix Jr. He then transferred to Michigan, where he sat behind No. 10 overall pick J.J. McCarthy.
He’s had scant opportunities, really only playing (and starting) either when Penix was injured or McCarthy had the game won. But now that he’ll get the time with the ones, he feels like it should help him improve greatly in short order.
“I just think I mean more time with the team, more reps,” Tuttle said. “Super exciting to be presented this opportunity, right? But I really think, personally, even when I was hurt, I was still preparing like I was going to play. I didn’t know if I was ever going to play or not, so that part really doesn’t change for me, right? But just getting more live reps and being with the guys, more chemistry, finding ourselves, that’s really what we’re trying to do over the bye.”
As the No. 110 player in the country as a recruit, Tuttle had offers from schools such as Alabama, LSU, and USC. But his career hasn’t exactly gone as he expected, so he leaned on his faith in Jesus to help him get through the difficult times — whether that was some time in the past or the more recent past.
“I don’t think I would be here today without my faith,” Tuttle said. “Personally, it’s a lot of moments in the past nine months where it was challenging mentally and getting through that like, just lean on God in that moment. And like I said, I don’t there’s some divine intervention with me being able to throw again today. So I’m just lucky — lucky to be here, lucky to be able to throw and have this opportunity for Michigan.”