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While the biggest question facing Michigan football at the moment is how it will rebound this week against No. 13 Indiana, one of the frequent subsets is how the Wolverines will continue to attack via the run.
Everything worked out well in Big Ten Week 1, with seven players rushing for 277 yards, but in Week 2, it got to be more convoluted. Against MSU, there were six players who ran the ball, but for just 152 yards. No one had more than 60 yards on the day and only two had more than 50.
So how will it work going forward? Will Michigan try to find the hot hand and ride him throughout games? Or will it continue to just cycle through the four tailbacks while adding QB runs and WR jet sweeps?
There are different methods to it, running backs coach Jay Harbaugh said, noting to Jon Jansen on the Inside Michigan Football program that all four tailbacks will get carries, but they’re trying to find ways to get them each to be successful in their own right.
“Each guy’s a little bit different, each guy brings a little something different to the table,” Harbaugh said. “A little bit of everything – putting guys in a situation to do what they’re really good at. Obviously, if a guy starts to catch fire, so to speak, and feel like he’s running it really well, that guy’s gonna get a little bit more of an opportunity. You saw that a little bit with Blake last week and Hassan a little bit, as well. So there are situations that come into play. I have a hard time imagining a scenario where all the guys don’t play, just because they all do bring a little something different to the table. If they were all more similar, I don’t think there’d be a reason to, but the fact that they provide a little bit of difference to the offense gives merit to all of the guys play, as long as they’re performing the way that they need to.
“Don’t anticipate anything changing in that regard, and obviously would love to see in the course of a game, being able to find a groove as an offense where guys are running and getting more productive. But it’s not a ‘hey, we don’t like how a guy’s playing, let’s pull them out.’ We’re trying to get them involved and get our talented players on the field and give them opportunities – and good things will happen if we do that.”
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So how does Michigan plan to get each involved? Obviously, you want to see more of what happened in Week 1 and less of Week 2, in that, you want multiple guys having success.
Harbaugh says the goal is to make everyone as close to a complete back as possible, so that any tailback, despite what they might be best at, can be in on any play. Then, you try to get them to do what they’re best at.
“In the flow of the game, there can be some challenge to it,” Harbaugh said. “I think Coach Gat does a great job going into the game of giving us a heads up what calls are gonna be coming, possible sequence of calls that could come up. The ability of coaches to try to get a call in for a certain player or whatever. But as a running back position, you can’t be a specialist, so to speak, where you can only do these types of runs or run these types of routes. You can’t limit yourself. Because if you do that, you get into a real problem in terms of substitutions as well as in terms of (attacking the defense) with the backs, we try to become complete players where you don’t have anything that you can’t do. If you set that as a baseline, where you can have a freshman in Blake Corum in there on protection downs, that’s really helpful. Then the defense can’t tee off every time he’s in there, thinking, ‘Hey, this is gonna be for sure a run for him or a perimeter run.’ So having that balance is key and the way the guys prepare rounding their games out makes that real possible to be well-rounded like that.”
We’ll see if the rushing attack improves in Big Ten Week 3, when No. 23 Michigan takes on No. 13 Indiana in Bloomington. Kickoff is slated for noon EST.