TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. — Makari Paige has seen the highs in Ann Arbor, but he’s also seen the lows.
Having come from a highly successful high school program in West Bloomfield, Michigan, the former four-star went from being a winner to part of a 2-4 program. The Michigan football team he joined in 2020 appeared to be moving backward and poised on the brink of returning to the lows of the late 2000s.
Then everything changed. The culture changed first. The record and standings followed. Two years later, Michigan has two wins over Ohio State and two College Football Playoff appearances.
What it doesn’t have is wins in either of the latter, however.
Paige says that the goal for this season is to break the cycle of the Wolverines’ latest roadblock while continuing to do the things they’ve established in the past two years.
“My freshman year, that’s when we had COVID,” Paige said. “We had a bad year and then just seeing us seeing us improve the next year and win the Big Ten — that’s a big improvement, and the culture changed. And now, you expect to do that, we expect to win the Big Ten championship and beat Ohio State. Now we’ve got to make the next step and win the national championship.”
While Michigan is still highly focused on beating the Buckeyes, given that the team has managed to do that each of the past two years, there’s a higher goal in mind for these Wolverines. In 2023, it’s championship or bust.
“The season’s about winning a national championship,” Paige said. “Getting over that hump of the College Football Playoff, losing that game. So we’ve got a chip on our shoulder to get there and win.”
But how does Michigan go about doing that? The Wolverines have not made it out of of the semifinals, having lost to eventual national champion, Georgia, in 2021, while squandering a prime opportunity against an overmatched TCU team in 2022.
Paige said some habits have come back in those games that have since become uncharacteristic. Thus, the focus this offseason is to eliminate the bad habits and issues and bring home college football’s ultimate trophy in 2023.
“Just fixing what we need to fix in the offseason,” Paige said. “We had a lot of mistakes in those games that we that was closer to games that we lost a lot of years. Just fixing those mistakes and not having those mistakes in the game will make us next level.”
[lawrence-auto-related count=3]
[affiliatewidget_smgtolocal title=”An offer for Wolverines fans” description=”For the best local Detroit news, sports, entertainment and culture coverage, subscribe to the Detroit Free Press.” url=”https://cm.freep.com/channeloffer?gps-source=CPSMGMIDARTICLE&utm_source=smg&utm_medium=inline&utm_content=wolverineswire&utm_campaign=smgtolocal&offer=W-SF&barBuild=atoms-pid” button_text=”$1 for 3 months”]