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

