Michigan players embrace underdog role, even as team continues to prove its not

Crazy that they know the fan base will revolt the moment the first loss comes.

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ANN ARBOR, Mich. — The big question on everyone’s minds across college football is: is Michigan for real?

The Wolverines have certainly looked the part through three weeks, but the competition gets stiffer from here on out, with Big Ten play starting in earnest on Saturday when Rutgers comes to town. But the team looks different, even if it’s been beating up on lesser competition.

As Michigan football sophomore running back Blake Corum notes, a big part of the team’s resurgence is that it’s out there having fun. Last year, you could plainly see the players sulking on the sidelines, seemingly going through the motions. That’s not the case thus far this year.

“We’re just real physical and that’s what we did this offseason,” Corum said. “We focused on being a physical team, focused on coming together as one, as one unit. As you can see on the sidelines, we’re having a bunch of fun! Last year, when you looked at the sidelines, we weren’t having much fun. We’re dancing now, we’re cheering each other up. We’re here for each other — that’s what I believe.”

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Corum later mentioned that this team has yet to face adversity and it knows that it will. Everything will hinge on the Wolverines’ response when that happens.

In previous years, Michigan didn’t handle adversity well. If it got punched in the mouth, oftentimes, it was a ‘here we go again’ mentality, before they rolled over and waved a white flag. This year’s squad isn’t doing that, or at least, it says it won’t. A big part of it is because whatever happened in the last game remains in the past. Even if the maize and blue get a big win, that was yesterday’s win.

In a sport where it’s ‘what have you done for me lately?’ Michigan realizes that it’s only as good as what it does each and every week.

“We’re just looking at it as we haven’t won anything,” senior safety Brad Hawkins said. “We haven’t done anything yet. Yeah, we’re 3-0, but we still haven’t done anything. We’re just gonna continue to play with that chip like we haven’t done anything, which we haven’t. That’s just where we are.”

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“We know as soon as we lose one game, everyone’s gonna be like, ‘Michigan sucks again!'” third-year outside linebacker Mike Morris said. “We’re just taking every game as an underdog. I feel like are underdogs against Rutgers. Everybody probably thinks we’re gonna lose that game. Everybody probably thinks we’re going to lose every game in the Big Ten right now. We’re just taking it as us vs. everybody. We don’t care if that team is 3-0 or 0-3. We’re just taking it one week at a time and just kicking everybody’s butt.”

So what does success look like? When will these players feel like they’ve actually accomplished anything?

Hawkins says that said goal is something of a moving target.

“Just continuing to win games, beat the teams that a lot of people think we can’t beat,” Hawkins said. “Win the Big Ten, make it to the playoffs — things like that. Just continue to grow, prove people wrong.”

Michigan starts Big Ten play on Saturday when Rutgers comes to town. That game will kick off at 3:30 p.m. EDT and will be nationally broadcast on ABC.

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