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Usually, college football teams benefit from one or two particular things: returning experience or consistency in coaching.
Michigan’s a little low offensively on the first part, but on the second, for the first time since 2016, it returns all of the coaches on that side of the ball. Perhaps more importantly, it retains Josh Gattis, whose offense started to take off near the end of 2019, when the playbook became more familiar to the players, and the mistakes stopped adding up as spectacularly as they did in the early going.
While the Wolverines are looking at a new starting quarterback, essentially four new offensive linemen, and technically a new starting wideout, there’s still a lot experience returning, as well. This won’t be a situation where the team is relying on veritable unknowns. Whether it’s Dylan McCaffrey or Joe Milton under center, they’ve been on campus for some time. All of the expected contributors at wide receiver don’t just have experience, they showed explosiveness as the season wore on. The offensive line will have new blood, but most of the expected new starters have been around for more than a year. At tight end, Nick Eubanks leads the charge, but Luke Schoonmaker and Erick All were key contributors a year ago. And the RB room is just loaded from top to bottom.
Speaking with Jon Jansen on the Inside the Trenches podcast, Gattis noted his room full of experienced playmakers stepping into larger roles. The way he sees it, it puts Michigan at an advantage, the personnel mixed with his offensive strategy that finally started to take ahold late in the season.
If Michigan can come in ready, limit the mistakes and focus on what it can control, there’s no reason why this offense can’t take a major step forward.
“That’s exciting, because you always try to find as many mismatches going into a game that you can create,” Gattis said. “Whether that’s by personnel or alignment, whether that’s by motion or formation, how you’re attacking an opposing defense into areas that puts them at their weakness. When you’ve got all the eligible skill guys that you have, it puts you at a great opportunity to do that.
“Now, are we there yet? Absolutely not. We’ve still gotta develop. I think every skill position for us has an area we need to focus on. Specifically, when you look at receivers, we gotta catch the ball more consistently. We had some big time opportunities, whether that’s pass breakups or drops, I think when you look at our passing game, I’ll tell you an interesting stat: of our 203 incompletions last year, we had 125 that were catchable. Whether the ball was just off the tip, whether it was a dropped ball or a broken up pass. But 125 plays of those 203 should have been caught. And then when you get how many opportunities we had in space with a corner, a safety with our running backs, that’s an area we’ve gotta improve in making the last defender miss, being able create explosive plays.
“So these are challenges I presented to those groups already. One: the consistency of catching the football, throwing the football. And easy opportunity plays. Whether the quarterback was right, with the right decision, the ball is going to the right decision, to the right location – now you’ve gotta make that play. It wasn’t far off. We really kind of hurt ourselves at times, whether that’s getting our running backs one-on-one in space against a corner or safety and we’ve gotta make those guys miss.
The stat that Gattis brought out is important, because some of that has to do with the uncertainty of assignment and a lack of focus.
If Michigan can come in and control the controllable, then Gattis sees no reason why the offense can’t just be good — it can be better than it was a year ago.
“I (know if) we can accept that challenge right there and just work on that challenge and not anything else, we’ll be a much better team and a much better offense next year,” Gattis said. “Just by winning your one-on-one battles. That’s why I’m really excited about spring, getting those guys all out here in different positions and getting them the ball so they can win those one-on-ones.”