2B — September 8, 2015
SportsTuesday
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Jake Rudock’s last stand
N
ine days after Michigan
hired Jim Harbaugh on
Dec. 30, change brewed
at Iowa. It
arrived in
the form
of a depth
chart. On
that day, Jake
Rudock, the
Hawkeyes’
No. 1
quarterback
for two years,
officially
became a No. 2 quarterback.
Better opportunities awaited him
elsewhere.
Eight months later, Rudock’s
facial expression resided
somewhere between a scowl
and a frown for the first hour
after his debut as Michigan’s
starting quarterback. It was
a look of anger, of sadness, of
disappointment. It was seared
onto Rudock’s face as he left the
field when the clock hit zero.
His walk to the locker room
was slow, even agonizing.
He kept his helmet in place,
half-strapped. Rudock stared
straight forward, the second-to-
last player to enter Michigan’s
locker room, followed only by
punter Blake O’Neill, who was
exchanging pleasantries with
fellow Australian punter Tom
Hackett. Rudock spoke to no one.
He looked at no one.
The look remained with
Rudock in his postgame press
conference, when he was
forced to explain the three
interceptions and the overthrows
that might very well have cost
the Wolverines the first game of
the season. It was a look telling
of the situation. His eyes were
desperate as positives from the
game escaped him. He took
blame for the mistakes that
might have truly been the fault
of others.
Even afterward, almost an
hour after the game had ended,
Rudock maintained the look
of a man who had blown an
opportunity. Not necessarily
the look of someone losing his
job — he said he felt comfortable
as Michigan’s quarterback going
forward — but of someone who
had come from so far only to
come up short.
Rudock came to Ann Arbor
this summer from Iowa, a place
where he had started 25 games,
only to be unceremoniously
left at the altar for a younger
quarterback before his final
season. Rudock was never known
as a stud quarterback, but his
play allowed him to climb up the
school record book: He ranks
eighth in Hawkeyes’ history
passing touchdowns, passing
yards and total offense. It still
wasn’t enough to hold onto his
starting job.
Rudock threw just five
interceptions last season,
making Thursday night’s three
interceptions in his new venture
all the more perplexing. He had
been considered the safe choice
in Michigan’s
quarterback
battle, the wily
veteran who
would make
the key throws
and take care
of the ball.
But
Thursday night
was not the
start he had
envisioned.
Rudock had the look of a man
who knew he had 12 chances, 12
games to finish his career while
sending a message to detractors.
It felt like he knew the first of
those opportunities was wasted
— he had faltered at a core tenet
of his position.
“Part of your job as
quarterback is to protect the ball,
protect the ball
and manage
the game,
however cliché
you guys like
that,” he said.
Rudock, the
person, has
proven to be a
quick thinker,
fast with his
tongue and
conscious of
every word that leaves his mouth
when speaking to the media.
Before the starting quarterback
position was announced, he
joked that he knew reporters
were trying to bait him into
saying something. Rudock did
not fall for the trap.
Whether Rudock the
quarterback is the same quick
thinker remains to be seen. Jake
Butt said Monday that Rudock
could teach the team’s offense, its
“NFL offense,” to anyone, after
only one summer. Still, the first
start in Rudock’s final season was
far from ideal. The man destined
to be a one-year stopgap didn’t
stop the trend of back-breaking
turnovers that have doomed
Michigan in recent years.
After Rudock, the future
of the quarterback position
at Michigan is murky. John
O’Korn, Alex Malzone, Wilton
Speight, Shane Morris, Zach
Gentry and Brandon Peters
wait in the wings, potential
quarterbacks Harbaugh can mold
into stars. Any one of them could
conceivably be the team’s starter
of the future, the next star that
Harbaugh develops.
But for now, Rudock is the
guy. Nobody is expecting the
Wolverines to win the rest of
their games, or even come close.
Ohio State and Michigan State
will make that task even more
difficult than Utah did last week.
It could take months before
Michigan is on that level, or it
could take a couple of years.
But no matter when the
winning comes, Michigan fans
are still hurting. For all of the
Harbaugh hype and the belief
that everything will work out,
the Wolverines still haven’t
strapped on their helmets and
beaten a team in front of tens
of thousands of people. Over
the course of almost a decade,
Michigan has turned into a
laughingstock of sorts, from the
bully on the block to a punching
bag. Harbaugh hasn’t fixed that
yet — nobody possibly could in
eight months.
This season is a stepping
stone, a time for the Wolverines
to prove that they can hang with
the big boys, that they won’t be
a team Michigan State can beat
into submission. The time for
being a punching bag is drawing
to a close.
So who better to lead the
program that has been eaten,
chewed up and spat back out
than the guy who already lost
everything he had worked for
and is now trying to get it back?
The look on Rudock’s face
after the opener suggested that
he’ll use every last fiber of his
being to make sure his Game One
mistakes never happen again.
Cohen can be reached at
maxac@umich.edu and on
Twitter @MaxACohen.
SPORTSTUESDAY COLUMN
JAMES COLLER/Daily
Fifth-year senior quarterback Jake Rudock has one more year to prove himself, and he’ll do everything he can to do so after being snubbed last winter at Iowa.
“Part of your job
as a quarterback
is to protect the
ball.”
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Utah well-prepared for Michigan
By MAX BULTMAN
Daily Sports Editor
SALT LAKE CITY — Kyle
Whittingham wasn’t waiting
for Jim Harbaugh to tip his
hand.
Amidst the shroud of mystery
that surrounded the Michigan
football team, submerged from
the public eye for nearly all of
August, Whittingham simply
didn’t have time to wait.
He had a game plan to
prepare, and he wasn’t going to
rely on media reports to craft it.
“We don’t pay attention to
what people say (out of camp),”
Whittingham said. “You don’t
know if what they say is going to
be accurate … Very rarely do we
put much stock into what comes
out of the opposing camp. It’s
neither here nor there to us —
the silence, or whatever, doesn’t
faze us.”
It showed on Thursday. The
Wolverines scored a few points
and made a few stops, but for
Whittingham, there was little
to no surprise when it came
to how they did it. Utah was
prepared for everything; that
much was clear in the Utes’
24-17 win.
Michigan
came
out
as
expected, starting the game
with a give to junior running
back De’Veon Smith up the
middle. Utah stuffed him for
just a two-yard gain, and so it
began.
The Utes were ready for
everything
the
Wolverines
threw at them because they
studied everything they might
possibly see. Asked about that
preparation after the game,
Whittingham answered before
the reporter could finish his
question.
“It was tedious. It was
painstaking,” he said. “A lot of
it was best-guess scenario, but
our assistant coaches were on
the money. The things we saw
on defense, from there over,
were exactly what we practiced.
We practiced more than what
we saw, but what we did see, we
had worked on all that.”
At the top of Utah’s list was
the run game, since Michigan’s
stable of powerful backs is the
type that could wear down a
defense if allowed to get going.
And Smith did his damnedest.
The junior back broke tackles
all night long, but Utes just kept
coming at him. When he shook
loose an arm tackle, someone
was there to put a body on him,
and when he pushed through
a body, someone was there to
drag him down.
It
says
something
that
Smith
broke a tackle
on
almost
every
touch,
but
still
averaged just
2.8 yards per
carry.
“That
was
really
the
biggest
key
to
our
defense, other than the three
interceptions,”
Whittingham
said. “Their (inability) to rush
the ball how they wanted to was
the biggest key. … We knew we
needed to stand toe to toe and
slug it out, just like we did last
year and just like we did in ’08.”
If there was anything that
surprised Utah, it was how
much Rudock moved around in
the backfield.
The Utes weren’t prepared
for Rudock to run as many
bootlegs as he did, but even that
never burned them. Utah didn’t
sack Rudock once on Thursday,
normally a cornerstone for a
team that earned the nickname
“Sack Lake City” for finishing
with the most sacks in the
nation in 2014.
But for the most part, the
Utes won Thursday by knowing
what
to
expect. In an
opening game
that
could
have brought
jitters,
they
weren’t
rattled.
Utah senior
running back
Devontae
Booker
was
a
dark-horse
Heisman
candidate
coming
into
the
season, and Michigan kept
him in check for most of the
first half. But the Utes knew
Michigan had a stout line. They
weren’t surprised.
They kept with it, changing
their style up to accommodate
an advantage on the outside,
and the Wolverines’ physical
defensive line began to wear
down. Suddenly, Utah’s run
plays started working again.
Through the first half, the
Utes had 21 carries for 47 yards.
In the second, they ran it 16
times for 82 — 5.1 yards per
carry.
“We knew what was coming,”
Booker said. “We had to watch
like a million different tapes of
film, we just prepared ourselves
throughout this week, and it
paid off tonight.”
They watched film from
Stanford and the 49ers to see
what to expect from Harbaugh,
USC for offensive coordinator
Tim Drevno, the Jacksonville
Jaguars to see what to expect
from passing game coordinator
Jedd Fisch, Iowa to scout
Rudock and Florida to evaluate
defensive
coordinator
DJ
Durkin.
Everyone on the staff was
prepared, right down to the
men handing out postgame
meals.
When Whittingham walked
out to the field after his
postgame
press
conference,
he did an interview with the
Pac-12 Network, then turned
to the guy passing out ribs
from Ruby River Steakhouse.
Whittingham asked him to save
some for him.
“Two on your desk, coach,”
he said.
JAMES COLLER/Daily
Utah quarterback Travis Wilson threw for 208 yards and added 53 more and a touchdown rushing against Michigan.
“We knew we
needed to stand
toe to toe and
slug it out.”
MAX
COHEN