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Michigan had an explosive day on Saturday defeating Western Michigan 47-14, thanks to the offense putting up 550 total yards with 334 of that coming on the ground.
The trio of Cade McNamara, Hassan Haskins, and Blake Corum all had great days, and there should be plenty of hope and optimism about what this offense can do as the season progresses.
On the other side of the ball, on defense it was a pretty good day, but there is certainly room for improvement. Statistically, Michigan only allowed 317 total yards, 191 passing yards, and 126 rushing yards. If you want to strictly look at those stats, there isn’t much to talk about, but I’m going to dive a little bit more into it.
After the game, Aidan Hutchinson and Vincent Gray both shared some thoughts as to what the defense showed today, and in terms of what could be improved.
“We still have a lot of stuff to work on, I mean we have a lot to work on,” said Hutchinson. “I thought it was a good first game for us. Still working on getting stuff down, but I thought it was a good decent performance on the defense.”
“That’s the big thing, we haven’t done anything yet,” said Gray. “We can improve a lot, we made a lot of mistakes that’ll probably go unnoticed, but there’s a lot of things that can get cleaned up and get better at.”
Hutchinson didn’t mince any words after Gray finished.
“Yeah, we haven’t done a damn thing,” said Hutchinson “We’re all moved on and ready for Washington and were ready for the upcoming games. We’re not content.”
Let’s look at the areas of improvement according to the stats: Michigan only had one sack, didn’t force any turnovers, and only had 3 tackles-for-loss.
Western Michigan went down the field on the first drive — largely due to an unsportsmanlike penalty — but the Wolverines held their own the rest of the game besides a late touchdown on the final drive in garbage time.
I agree with Hutchinson and Gray with what they’re saying, not that the defense looked bad on Saturday, but that the best is yet to come. These players are hungry, and the new coaches are clearly putting them in the right positions to succeed. We constantly hear about how good the culture is, and how the new defensive scheme is helping the players produce at a higher level. This team looked better in one game this year more so than any game they played last season.
You can say ‘it’s just Western Michigan’ all you want, but remember that WMU is a really good MAC school, and Kaleb Eleby had the third-best passer rating in the nation last year. It’s not like the Broncos are some no-name team.
Once Michigan figures out a way to get more pressure on the quarterback, havoc is going to break loose. We will find out if that can happen next week against a tougher opponent in Washington.
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