The season is not made or undone by an uninspiring win in Week 4 — we learned that last year. #GoBlue
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — You heard all season that Michigan football hadn’t played anybody. That was true, and as soon as the Wolverines played a team with a pulse, gone was the look of a national championship contender, and in was a team that took most of the game to put away an unranked opponent.
Is there trouble in Ann Arbor? No, not yet, anyway.
After the maize and blue beat the Maryland Terrapins by just one score, 34-27, there were cries on social media (as always) about how a performance like this wouldn’t beat Ohio State. Duh. But guess what? Michigan didn’t play Ohio State in Week 4. The two teams don’t meet until Week 13.
Michigan wasn’t alone in struggling to put away an overmatched opponent in Week 4. Georgia, which has looked like the most unbeatable team in the country, didn’t exactly impress in a 39-22 win over Kent State, for instance. Oklahoma lost to unranked Kansas State for the third time in four years, Penn State didn’t look anywhere close to dominant against Central Michigan, and Clemson needed heroics in overtime to beat Wake Forest.
In other words, sometimes things don’t go as planned, especially early in the season. It’s what you do in the bigger games, against bigger opponents that counts.
Last year, Michigan football followed that premise all the way to a Big Ten Championship. In Week 4 last year, the Wolverines struggled to put away Rutgers, leading to similar cries from the fan base. Then, the next week, the maize and blue went into Madison and took down Wisconsin on the road for the first time in a few decades. Gone were those sudden concerns, even though Michigan struggled to put away Nebraska the following week, and wasn’t exactly awe-inspiring the next week hosting a bad Northwestern team. In games like this, what’s most important is leaving with the win, and then hopefully correcting mistakes made that led to the close call to begin with.
“I’d probably say that it definitely wasn’t my best performance,” quarterback J.J. McCarthy said after the game. “And I want some things back that went out there. But I was happy with the way we were able to move the ball when times where we needed to respond. And that was a good team out there. I mean, Maryland’s got a great defense, they got a great offense, and I was just happy with the way we responded with some adversity.”
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For a team that had faced absolutely no adversity to this point, it’s a good exercise, especially given the outcome. McCarthy is right to want to have some plays back. He uncharacteristically missed on throws that would have busted the game wide open. Offensively, the issues we’ve seen are quite correctable.
On the other side of the ball, it’s worth questioning how the defense will perform in Week 13 when the Wolverines travel to Columbus. But Maryland was held to just over 400 total yards — with 75 coming on the final drive, when the game was more than likely to end in Michigan’s favor, as it was up two scores late.
We already had a good idea of what the defense brought to the table early in the season last year, since the Wolverines had played Washington in Week 2, but there’s no such luxury this season. There will likely be growing pains, but as long as the numbers keep adding up in the win column and the team keeps getting better, that’s the optimal scenario.
Of course, winning at Iowa is paramount, though it’s not necessarily dire. Besides Ohio State, the Hawkeyes and Penn State present the biggest challenges in the regular season, and the Wolverines can afford to drop either as long as they win out. That’s a tall ask, so the ideal is not to lose, naturally.
Saturday in Iowa City, we’ll know a lot more about these Wolverines, particularly the offense. The defense survived its first challenge, and while the offense looked mediocre via the pass against Maryland, all will be forgotten should Michigan go on the road and get a win at Kinnick for the first time in years.
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