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Michigan football, as you’ve seen, as been awfully run-heavy to start the 2021 season. It worked well through three games, as the Wolverines led the country in rushing. But it ran into a brick wall against Rutgers, over and over and over again.
As of yet, Michigan has not attempted more than 17 passes per game, and it averages 16.25 passes to 46.25 runs through four weeks. That means a quarter of the Wolverines’ offensive attempts have been through the air.
Ideally, it won’t progress that way, however.
In a conversation on Sunday with On3’s Ivan Maisel, Harbaugh said that in fall camp, Michigan threw and ran at about the same level, but once the run game started taking off in Week 1, that dictated what the Wolverines would do.
Philosophically, Harbaugh said, he’s as 50-50 as most coaches. In four weeks of training camp, he said, that’s what the offense ran. That’s always the ideal, to keep the defense guessing. But once the game starts …
“And then whichever one is better, the run game or the pass game,” Harbaugh said, “you start to favor that side of the percentage.”
He paused.
“Those backs are really good.”
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What’s more, with games like Wisconsin — the nation’s top run defense — coming up this week, you can expect a little more parity in the play-calling. At least, idealistically.
Harbaugh expects that the offense will not run three times to every one pass over the course of the season.
“Thirty-five percent pass, that would be the (lowest) it could possibly be,” he said. “It would be closer to 60-40 or 55-45. It’s the strengths of this team and how games play out.”
The higher the run-pass ratio, the more successful the Wolverines’ running game, which usually translates into victories. Harbaugh may profess to want to rebalance his offense, but the Bo in him may be just fine where it is.
We’ll see what happens moving forward and if the second half against Rutgers was an aberration of a sign of future troubles. But running for 300-plus yards in three consecutive games signifies that against most teams, the Wolverines can run at-will. It will need to learn, in a hurry, whether it can pass just the same.
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