Michigan got a week off at a time when the season could hardly use one more jolt of turbulence.
The Wolverines sat out Saturday while trying to reset after back-to-back Big Ten losses, and they now head into a home stretch that starts with Penn State coming in off a home loss to USC. Penn State is 3-3.
Michigan is 3-2. But the record only tells part of the story, because the Wolverines have looked far closer to 1-4 than a team with three wins.
So far, Michigan has only one convincing victory, and that came against UTEP, a team sitting at 1-5. The rest of the season has been a grind, and the biggest flashpoint came right out of the gate with JJ Buchanan’s heroics against Western Michigan. Even then, the conversation around whether Michigan deserved that win never really went away.
That 13-12 result over a team the Wolverines are expected to handle did not exactly calm anyone down. If anything, it left more doubt hanging around the program. Kyle Whittingham’s blunt postgame assessment - “my team was not a good football team at the moment” - still fits the way this season has felt for Michigan at several points.
Michigan did bounce back the next week with a big win over Oklahoma, who just knocked off the top team in the country on Saturday. But that victory has not turned into a launch point. Instead, the Wolverines have stumbled through two Big Ten losses that stand out for the wrong reasons.
First came Iowa, a team Michigan had not lost to since 2016. That defeat came at Kinnick Stadium, where top-5 teams often have their seasons derailed.
Then came Minnesota in Minneapolis, where Michigan had not lost since 1977. This time, the offense could only scrape together seven points in an ugly setback.
The defense remains the part of the team that can still travel. Michigan’s defense was ranked sixth entering the bye week, and the unit sits in the top 10.
That gives the Wolverines a real chance against almost anybody. There are also some signs of life on offense, even if they are few and far between.
But the problems keep showing up at the worst moments. The penalties pile up.
The mental mistakes keep coming. The alignment issues keep surfacing.
And the noise around the program keeps getting louder, with talk already circling around whether the quarterback should be benched, whether the offensive coordinator should be fired, or whether the head coach should be on the hot seat after only one season.
The bye week at least gives Michigan a break from all that. A little quiet.
A little time to breathe. A chance to get its footing before the season gets away completely.
That danger is real. Michigan is likely to be favored in only three of its remaining games. If the Wolverines simply take care of business in those matchups, they would still finish with six wins - a number that does not sit well in Ann Arbor and has often led to trouble for coaches.
Jim Harbaugh never won fewer than eight games as Michigan’s head coach unless you remove the shortened COVID season. Sherrone Moore, who was fired for reasons other than performance, went 8-4 in his first year and 9-3 last season.
Whittingham was supposed to be an upgrade at head coach, not a reminder of the Brady Hoke era. The bye week now gives him a chance to show what he can do. Can he pull this thing back on track, or will Michigan be having a very different kind of conversation in a couple of weeks?
After a week of silence, the noise is coming back fast.
In Other News...
Michigans Turnover Problem Just Forced A Change They Couldnt Avoid
Michigans turnover trouble has become hard to ignore, and Kyle Whittingham sounded like a coach who knows the margin is no longer a side note. Speaking Monday, he stressed how important it is to win the turnover battle, especially after a season in which Michigan has slipped to a minus-4 turnover margin and watched clean defensive starts get undercut by mistakes on the other side of the ball.
The latest response was a change at punt returner, a move triggered by recent miscues and one the staff could no longer put off. Michigan has lost the turnover margin in four of its past five weeks, and the pattern has lined up too neatly with the losses for anyone around the program to dismiss it as bad luck. [Read more 🡒]
Michigan Bye Week Puts Bryce Underwood And The Offense On Notice
Michigans bye week arrived with the offense still searching for answers and the bigger picture looking a lot less comfortable than the program is used to. The Wolverines have fallen well short of recent standards, and with four wins needed in the final seven games just to avoid matching their worst mark since 2014, the pressure is squarely on sophomore quarterback Bryce Underwood and offensive coordinator Jason Beck to get things moving in a better direction.
The break does buy the coaching staff some time, and head coach Whittingham is being given that window to sort through the issues and keep building toward a more consistent identity. For Michigan, the week is less about rest than reflection, a chance to step back, make adjustments and figure out whether the offense can start looking like something the rest of the schedule will have to take seriously. [Read more 🡒]
Michigans UCLA Test Suddenly Feels Very Different For One Reason
UCLAs win over Oregon kept the Bruins unbeaten and pushed them deeper into the national conversation, but the bigger news for Michigans coming trip out west is the change under center. Nico Iamaleava is now likely out for the season, and UCLA is expected to turn to Cal Poly transfer Ty Dieffenbach at quarterback as it moves into a brutal stretch that also includes Wisconsin and USC.
For Michigan, the matchup now looks different in a hurry. What had been shaping up as a test against an unbeaten team suddenly comes with a layer of uncertainty, because the Bruins are trying to replace a key piece on the fly while still protecting their perfect record. The Wolverines still have their own goals to chase, but the quarterback situation alone gives this meeting a very different feel than it had just days ago. [Read more 🡒]