2B — September 9, 2019
SportsMonday
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

L

et’s get it out of the way: 
Shea Patterson wasn’t 
perfect on Saturday and 
he never will be.
Michigan’s quarterback fum-
bled twice 
against Army 
and lost both 
of them. He 
missed a wide 
open Ronnie 
Bell streak-
ing down the 
field early in 
the game on 
what prob-
ably would 
have been a 
touchdown. His internal clock 
seemed off in the pocket and 
that Bell miss wasn’t his only 
one. On zone reads — or at least 
on plays that seemed like zone 
reads — Patterson refused to 
keep the ball even when his 
rushing lanes were wide open. 
Though a lingering injury from 
last week may have been a hin-
drance, he bears a fair amount 
of blame for Michigan’s near-
implosion on Saturday, as it took 
two overtimes and a missed 
field goal at the end of regula-
tion to put away Army, 24-21. 
Predictably, Saturday brought 
with it cries for a change at 
quarterback. 
Jim Harbaugh 
said during 
the preseason 
he wanted to 
play Patterson 
and redshirt 
sophomore 
Dylan McCaf-
frey in each 
game, and he’s 
lived up to his 
word thus far. 
On rare occasions that Patterson 
left games last year, McCaffrey 
acquitted himself well. He’s 
done enough to be a clear suc-
cessor when Patterson leaves 
after this season, and in the 
minds of some, enough to start 
right now.
It makes sense to be alarmed 

right now — to see the need for 
change. The Wolverines are 
lucky to have won their first 
two games despite both coming 
against clearly inferior teams. 
They’ll go to Wisconsin after the 
bye week, seemingly unready to 
win a game of that magnitude, 
and with Michigan’s goals, a loss 
in the third game of the season 
means perfection is required the 
rest of the way. It doesn’t make 
sense to bench Patterson as a 
result of that alarm. He isn’t the 
problem. Everything else is.
It’s a problem that an offense 
meant to be predicated on run-
pass options has barely run any 
run-pass options through two 
games. It’s a problem that Josh 
Gattis has struggled to find a 
playcalling rhythm in his first 
two games with the job. It’s a 
problem that Michigan fell into 
old, predictable habits — three 
yards and a cloud of dust — late 
in a close game against Army. 
It’s an even bigger problem that 
its offensive line couldn’t push 
around a team with no defen-
sive linemen over 300 pounds 
or keep Patterson safe in the 
pocket.
“I thought our pass protec-
tion was really good,” Harbaugh 
said after the game. “At times, 
we had a long time 
back there in the 
pocket and some 
of the big third-
down conversions 
were by pass.”
That there are 
even questions 
about an offensive 
line that returned 
four starters from 
last year, includ-
ing a preseason 
All-American in Ben Bredeson, 
undermines his point. Jon Run-
yan Jr. is expected to return 
against Wisconsin, which will 
likely help things. But it doesn’t 
change that the line wasn’t 
good enough against the Black 
Knights.
“Mostly I would say just some 

of the blitz pickups,” running 
back Zach Charbonnet said 
when asked what needs improv-
ing. “They had a lot of corners 
blitzing and we just gotta adjust 
to that.”
Fix all of this and the quar-
terback issue becomes trivial, 
because the fact remains that 
Patterson is a good quarterback. 
Not just that, but he’s the best 
quarterback Michigan has had 
in a decade, at least, when it 
comes to throwing the ball (that 
thing quarterbacks are sup-
posed to do).
Patterson threw for 2,600 
yards in 2018, averaging 8.0 per 
attempt and turning the passing 
game into a legitimate weapon. 
He wasn’t the savior people 
advertised him as, and that label 
was always unfair — a way to 
tear him down for not reaching 
an unreachable expectation.
None of this is to say Pat-

terson doesn’t have issues to 
fix. Fumbling four times in two 
games is a very real problem. 
Harbaugh said last week that 
Patterson suf-
fered an injury 
against Middle 
Tennessee State, 
and video from 
the locker room 
made it seem 
that it was a rib 
issue. If you’re 
looking for a 
reason he didn’t 
pull the ball and 
run more against 
Army when there were oodles 
of space in his path, that might 
be it.
“He was better,” Harbaugh 
said, which is what he had 
to say. “He was able to work 
through what he had and felt 
100 percent for the game.”
When a reporter followed up 

and asked whether that meant 
those plays didn’t have reads 
attached to them, Harbaugh 
replied, “Yeah, or the read was 
not there for the 
quarterback to 
pull it.”
Regardless, it 
undermines the 
very foundation 
of Michigan’s 
offense if the 
entire defense 
knows the ball is 
going to the run-
ning back every 
time the quarter-
back starts to hand it off. If Pat-
terson isn’t healthy enough to 
make a legitimate read, asking 
whether he should start is valid. 
If he is healthy enough to do 
that and Michigan simply wasn’t 
attaching reads to anything, the 
fault lies with Gattis.
This is his offense. He should 

run it as he advertised it.
On rare occasions when the 
Wolverines have put their foot 
on the gas — running RPOs, 
moving fast and keeping the 
defense off-balance — things 
have looked as good as prom-
ised, Patterson very much 
included.
This won’t work if Michigan 
either can’t do that because of 
Patterson’s health, or it simply 
won’t. “Where is the speed in 
space?” a reporter asked Ben 
Bredeson after Saturday’s game.
If that question is valid after 
any other game this season, 
Michigan has done something 
wrong, and it will never be fixed 
by going to the backup quarter-
back.

Sears can be reached via 

email at searseth@umich.edu 

or on Twitter @ethan_sears.

SportsMonday Column: Patterson isn’t the problem

ETHAN
SEARS

ALEXIS RANKIN/Daily
Senior quarterback Shea Patterson has not played to his potential, losing three fumbles, but the fault for the Wolverines’ offensive struggles lies elsewhere.

At times, we 
had a long time 
back there in 
the pocket.

They had a 
lot of corners 
blitzing and we 
gotta adjust.

Lack of ball security haunts ‘M’

After a comfortable win over 
Middle Tennessee last week, 
Shea Patterson sat at the podium 
fielding questions. He seemed 
anything but comfortable as he 
got candid with reporters.
“A win’s a win,” the senior 
quarterback said then. “But I 
think everybody in that locker 
room knows that we didn’t live 
up to our standards and I put 
that on me. I gotta take care of 
the football. We got the W but we 
just gotta play better. I gotta play 
better.”
Patterson wasn’t available a 
week later, after the Michigan 
football 
team’s 
24-21 
win 
over Army in double overtime 
Saturday. But his words echoed 
through the press conference 
nonetheless.
I gotta take care of the football.
Because a week after Patterson 
fumbled on the first drive, leading 
to easy Blue Raider points, he did 
the same exact thing, leading to 
easy Black Knight points. This 
time, on first down at the Army 
43, Patterson dropped back to 
pass. The rushers came. He 
couldn’t escape and let the ball 
go. It squirted out of his arms and 
off to the side as a Black Knight 
fell on it. Five minutes later, 
Army had a 7-0 lead.
The Wolverines got the ball 
back and scored a touchdown. 
They kicked off and Army 
fumbled in its own territory. 
Michigan had the ball and a 
chance.
Then, 
the 
Black 
Knights 
brought 
a 
blitz. 
Sophomore 
running back Christian Turner 
couldn’t see it coming. They 
came for Patterson and sacked 
him again. The ball came out. 
Army had it.
“You can’t get that loose with 
the ball,” said Michigan coach 
Jim Harbaugh. “The first one 
was (Patterson’s) and the second 
one was the missed protection 
with the running back.”
As if that weren’t enough, the 
Wolverines lost another fumble 
on their very next drive, when 
sophomore running back Ben 
Van Sumeren lost the ball before 

being brought down. The Black 
Knights got the ball at Michigan’s 
40 and scored a touchdown then, 
too.
Three giveaways on three 
straight drives is never a good 
thing, but against Army and its 
clock-draining triple option — 
designed to limit possession — it 
was almost fatal. The Wolverines 
had 
squandered 
three 
vital 
opportunities and gifted the 
Black Knights 14 points.
“I’d love to get three turnovers 
every half,” said Army coach Jeff 
Monken. “We’d probably not lose 
a game again.”
A damning statement from the 
20-point underdog.
To his credit, Patterson didn’t 
get down on himself after that. 
He had one of the loudest voices 
in the huddle, telling everyone it 
was going to be alright.
Eventually, it was. But it took 
double overtime and — ironically 
— a strip sack on the final play 
that the Wolverines recovered.
After the game, the players 
were happy with the way they’d 
fought back. They didn’t have 
any turnovers in the second 
half, and the defense did its job. 
No one pointed fingers. They 
stuck together, determined to 
win it. But even then, it wasn’t 
satisfying.

“It 
was 
frustrating,” 
said 
junior defensive end Kwity Paye. 
“ … We should’ve played better.”
That’s two weeks in a row a 
player has said those words. Sure, 
a win’s a win, but at some point it 
becomes more a question.
When Paye and sophomore 
defensive end Aidan Hutchinson 
went after Army quarterback 
Kelvin Hopkins Jr. on third-
and-11 in double overtime and 
stripped the ball out, it was a 
sort of cathartic release, the ball 
security issues the Black Knights 
took advantage of all day coming 
back to haunt them. Hutchinson 
brought the game ball to the press 
conference — a simultaneous 
reminder of the defense’s heroics 
and the offense it had to bail out 
in the first place.
Harbaugh praised the defense 
postgame. He praised the team’s 
resilience. Then, he suggested 
more live tackling in practice 
for the running backs, as if that 
would cure the mental mistakes 
that have plagued Patterson and 
others. Sometimes, the solution 
is as Patterson said himself: I 
gotta take care of the football. I 
gotta play better.
After a second straight game 
of security issues, his words 
from last week are a good place 
to start.

Offense struggles to deliver on hype

Tarik Black laid on the 15-yard 
line, face buried in the turf as Shea 
Patterson’s pass attempt hit the 
sideline beyond him.
If Army’s final drive of overtime 
had gone a little differently — 
ending with the Black Knights 
streaming into the south end zone 
rather than the Wolverines into 
the north one — it would have 
been the perfect summation of 
Saturday afternoon.
Instead, 
Michigan 
rescued 
the game from the precipice of 
disaster and escaped with a 24-21, 
double-overtime win. Its last 
offensive play — the mistimed 
comeback route that sent Black 
to the turf — faded into memory, 
but the big-picture offensive 
frustration remained.
“There are just a lot of details 
that we need to clean up,” said 
freshman running back Zach 
Charbonnet. “And we’ve just 
got to thank the defense for 
stopping them when we had those 
turnovers and just giving us a 
chance to come back.”
Through no fault of his own, 
Charbonnet felt the crescendo 
of Saturday’s frustration. On 
Michigan’s 
second 
play 
of 
overtime, he took his 32nd 

carry of the game, saw only a blur 
of Army defensive lineman in 
front of him and got stuffed at the 
line of scrimmage with no other 
alternative. As Charbonnet hit the 
turf, his yards per carry standing 
at an even 3.0, a parade of boos 
rained down from a disgruntled 
fanbase.
Seeing a star running back 
stopped at the line of scrimmage 
with nowhere to go is a sight at 
once familiar and unexpected. 
Through 
three 
first-half 
turnovers and one missed field 
goal, it was that innocuous run up 
the middle that drew Saturday’s 
biggest boos.
For 
eight 
months, 
after 
Michigan 
hired 
offensive 
coordinator Josh Gattis, this 
play-calling 
— 
the 
repeated 
inside 
zones, 
perhaps 
thinly 
veiled with a read that carried 
no threat of a quarterback keeper 
— was paraded as a relic of the 
past. 
When 
Michigan 
came 
out and threw the ball 25 times 
before halftime against Middle 
Tennessee State last week, there 
was evidence to support that 
promise.
“Obviously, 
expectations, 
everyone tries to make it as 
sunshine 
and 
rainbows 
as 
possible,” 
senior 
guard 
Ben 
Bredeson said Saturday. “So this 
was good for us, it shows us what 
we need to work on as we head 
into the Big Ten season.”
Against 
Army, 
that 
all 
evaporated, culminating in a 
pair of failed 4th down attempts 
on consecutive fourth-quarter 
drives, each in Black Knight 
territory. Each time, Michigan 
faced a fourth-and-2 with a 
chance to right three quarters of 
offensive wrongs. And each time, 
Charbonnet was stopped, sending 
Army’s offense back onto the field.
After the game, the reflections 
remained calm, various position 
groups refusing to pin blame 
on one another. But perhaps 
Harbaugh, 
after 
crediting 
analytics with the decision to go 
for it, offered up the reason that 
reality didn’t follow suit.
“They had a better defensive 
call than we had a —,” he said, 
stopping himself mid-sentence, 
“than we executed our offensive 

play.”
It was the only time Harbaugh 
allowed a glimpse into Saturday’s 
playcalling, even if he cut himself 
off mid-sentence. When asked 
about the pass-run split that 
reverted back to 2018’s averages, 
he called the question “low-
hanging fruit” — “... We could 
go every game with the ‘Why 
didn’t you pass when you ran and 
it didn’t work so you should’ve 
passed?’ We could do this for 
every game that’s ever played in 
football.”
But when an entire offseason 
carries the promise of a downfield 
passing attack and your leading 
receiver from a year ago — junior 
Nico Collins — sees three targets 
compared to 45 rushing attempts, 
these are the questions that 
follow.
Asked about the reasons he 
may have shied away from the 
pass — Army’s defensive setup, 
inconsistent 
pass-protection, 
Patterson’s 
two 
fumbles 
— 
Harbaugh rebuffed.
“At times, we had a long 
time back there in the pocket,” 
Harbaugh said. “And some of the 
big third down conversions were 
by pass.”
Therein lies the frustration. 
According the Harbaugh, the 
passing game was working. And 
yet he repeatedly turned to a 
rushing attack that managed just 
2.4 yards per carry.
The play after Charbonnet’s 
run up the middle brought a 
chorus of boos, Gattis dialed up a 
pass and Patterson hit sophomore 
receiver Ronnie Bell for a first 
down on a crossing route to keep 
Michigan alive. Two plays later, 
Charbonnet was in the end zone.
“When we get our tempo going 
and we move the ball in the run 
game, it kind of sets everything 
else up,” Bredeson said. “We want 
to get the defense on their heels 
and keep going. I like when we’re 
rolling that way.”
Saturday 
afternoon, 
those 
moments were limited to fleeting 
spells amid a slew of turnovers 
and penalties.
And with it, the “sunshine 
and 
rainbows” 
of 
offseason 
expectations 
continued 
to 
dissolve into a harsher reality.

ARIA GERSON
Daily Sports Editor

THEO MACKIE
Daily Sports Editor

ALEXIS RANKIN/Daily
Senior quarterback Shea Patterson has fumbled four times, losing three, over Michigan’s first two games.

