Every time you think the Michigan football sign-stealing narrative has come to a close, it manages to pull itself up by its bootstraps.
Despite Connor Stalions having not been with the program since late-October, the Wolverines have kept winning — even without Jim Harbaugh on the sidelines for the three toughest regular season games to end the season.
Many critics reversed course about the severity of the allegations after Michigan beat Ohio State, and many of the holdouts finally gave in after the maize and blue took down the Crimson Tide on Monday. However, that doesn’t mean the questions aren’t persisting.
On Wednesday morning, Michigan defensive tackle Mason Graham was asked about how annoyed the players are that the narrative persists. Because as the players have insisted, the allegations negate all of the hard work and film study that the Wolverines do while they didn’t have any knowledge of any illegal scheme or anything pertaining to it.
“I’d kind of just start it off, more the allegations are coming on the defensive side of the ball,” Graham said. “I feel like we just kind of watch film and we get tendencies from other teams, just like Trevor (Keegan) was saying, and we kind of just pick up on it. I feel like we just have a high football IQ here at Michigan. We go over specific situations multiple times a week, just kind of learning more about the game every day, every meeting, just kind of just building that IQ and being starter football players all around so we pick up on things faster, even if it’s in-game adjustments.
“I think little stuff like that, film study really helped us this year.”
Quarterback J.J. McCarthy agrees.
The junior star noted that conventional sign stealing is legal and that Michigan’s changes on that front were in reaction to a rival having all of the Wolverines’ signals. Beyond that, McCarthy reiterated the team really goes all-in when it comes to watching film and preparation, and that it’s not peculiar for teams to take advantage of what other teams’ tendencies are based off film study.
“Yeah, and I also feel like it’s so unfortunate because there’s probably — I don’t want to say a crazy number, but I’d say a good number, 80% of the teams in college football steal signs. It’s just a thing about football. It’s been around for years,” McCarthy said. “We actually had to adapt because in 2020 or 2019 when Ohio State was stealing our signs, which is legal and they were doing it, we had to get up to the level that they were at, and we had to make it an even playing field.
“I just feel like it sucks, just because like Mason said, we do work our butts off. We do watch so much film and look for those little tendencies and spend like 10, 15 minutes on one clip alone just looking at all the little details of the posture, of the linebackers or the D-ends, the safeties off levels, the corner to the field is press but the corner to the boundary is off, little stuff like that where it’s like, you could say it’s all sign stealing, but there’s a lot more that goes into play, and a lot of stuff that gets masked, a lot of work that gets masked just because of the outside perception of what sign stealing is all about.”
Michigan football can put all of this full to rest on Monday if it can beat Washington in the national championship game in Houston.