8 — Tuesday, September 24, 2019 Sports The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com Four parting thoughts from Michigan’s disastrous loss at Wisconsin Michigan went into Saturday’s game against Wisconsin aiming to make a statement. Well, mission accomplished. Instead of a statement of affirmation — that this program could win a game in a tough environment, against a team of equal or better talent — the Wolverines confirmed the opposite. Now forced to pick up the pieces from a 35-14 drubbing in Madison, Michigan has to re-evaluate and re-calibrate. In doing so, it left plenty to digest about a season suddenly teetering on the brink. Here are four parting thoughts on a season- altering weekend and the peril it puts this season in. So much for offensive balance After the game Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh was asked what he wanted this team’s offensive identity to be. He didn’t dare utter the phrase that is quickly descending into meme territory. You know the one. “Quickness in open areas,” or something of that ilk. Hard to remember at this point. His answer, though nondescript, spoke to one of this team’s many flaws. “To be able to run the ball, to be able to throw the ball,” Harbaugh said. “Both equally effective and efficient.” Through three weeks, Harbaugh’s offense — ahem, sorry, Josh Gattis’ offense — has been neither balanced nor efficient. Saturday against Wisconsin, that play-calling tilted heavily toward the passing attack by a margin of 42-19. Last week against Army, the Wolverines ran the ball 45 times and threw it 31 times. Through three weeks, Michigan is averaging 3.49 yards per carry. From a group that was supposed to be anchored by an experienced, sturdy offensive line and a promising young running back, balance should be an attainable necessity. And yet, both Harbaugh and the players lamented the disparity on Saturday. “(The running game is) one thing we ran away from and I wish we would’ve stayed with it,” said senior tight end Nick Eubanks after the game. Making strict judgments off the run/pass ratios can be misleading; play-calling is often dictated by game context, and Michigan has allowed a touchdown on the opening drive of all three games this season. That can throw any plan for a loop. But for an offense that continues to strive for balance, among other things, it’s doing little to actually dictate game context instead of lay victim to it. A different kind of quarterback quandry As Saturday’s first half progressed, the murmurs became rumblings, rumblings became primal screams. The calls for junior quarterback Dylan McCaffrey stemmed more for a desperate clamor for change of any kind. Senior quarterback Shea Patterson continued to display carelessness in terms of ball security. He missed open reads and open receivers. In the third quarter, whether via injury or ineptitude, he was replaced by McCaffrey — only to come back in when McCaffrey exited with a concussion. Asked to assess their play, Harbaugh declined to go into specifics. “Shea was being evaluated at halftime, and then we put Dylan in to start the second half,” he said after the game. “Dylan, he’s got a concussion.” It’s easy to funnel any offensive frustrations to one place, and by default, the quarterback is often the victim of that. Patterson has played poorly through three weeks, and the quarterback play is problematic. Solving those issues cannot, and will not, turn a floundering offense into a thriving one on its own. Those two things can be, and are, true. In the short term, there’s little discussion to be had. McCaffrey is potentially recovering from his concussion; Patterson will be under center next week against Rutgers. In the long term, if these issues persist from Patterson, it will become harder to ignore the validity of those frantic pleas from fans. Keep it simple, stupid Let’s start with the facts. Donovan Peoples-Jones, Tarik Black and Nico Collins have 33 combined targets through three weeks. That trio, the most talented Michigan has had in quite some time, has 19 combined catches for 313 yards in that span. Saturday, they had one combined catch through three quarters, until all three made plays in garbage time to reiterate the following point: Michigan’s misuse of its three best playmakers has been inexplicable and inexcusable. It’s an abject failure of coaching. Period. They have the potential to spearhead the best receiving corps in the Big Ten. Instead, they haven’t been given a chance. Eubanks was asked after the game about their involvement (or lack thereof) in the offense this season. He expressed faith in the staff to figure it out. “We all see it on film. And I believe the coaches will see it as well,” Eubanks said. “And we’ll go from there in terms of who needs to get the ball and moving through the offense.” As this offense searches frantically for its identity, it would seem prudent to start with its best players. As the saying goes, “keep it simple, stupid.” Michigan’s defense has an identity crisis of its own It was hard to tell where this defense stood after two weeks. It had allowed 21 points against a meager Middle Tennessee State, but the offense set it up for failure. Same for the showing against Army, in which it held the Black Knights to their lowest rushing yardage total since 2015. The institutional framework, it seemed, had carried over. The defense was not the source for concern. While the offense overcame the speedbumps of its transition, the defense could help tread water. “We finally can play Michigan defense, where we can go back and run our stuff that we run all preseason and all spring practice,” Brown said last week. “Quite frankly, I’ve been writing Wisconsin cards (and) I’m kind of: ‘Whew, whew.’ I can whip ‘em out like that, because it’s all the stuff our guys know and are comfortable with, and we’ll jump in it at a high level without question.” So much for that. The Badgers rampaged their way to 354 rushing yards. Wisconsin quarterback Jack Coan completed 13 of 16 passes, and with comparative ease. And it wasn’t just that they ran through the Michigan defense, but how. There were no schematic mysteries, no notable gameplan mishaps. This was one team telling its opponent what it planned to do, then shoving it right at them anyway. For the Wolverines, these are problems that aren’t going away. The personnel isn’t changing. The coaching staff isn’t changing. Three weeks in, all Michigan’s cards are on the table. And it certainly appears Brown was bluffing. MAX MARCOVITCH Managing Sports Editor ALLISON ENGKVIST/Daily The Michigan football team has a bevy of problems to deal with and questions to answer after Saturday’s 35-14 loss to the Badgers in Madison. Harbaugh shoulders blame, looks to correct physicality and hustle You saw it, and so did Jim Harbaugh. There’s no extra level of analysis needed, no added layers of expertise necessary. Michigan got rocked on Saturday. Now it has to deal with the fallout. “Watching the film it was pretty obvious to everybody that was watching in the entire football world, from A to Z, it wasn’t good,” Harbaugh said. “It wasn’t good enough. Not acceptable.” It wasn’t one area that proved decisive in Wisconsin’s 35-14 win. It was all of them. Coaching. Physicality. Effort. On Monday, Harbaugh stood at the podium with the demeanor of a man ready for introspection. The scene bore all the makings of a normal press conference: Harbaugh standing there in a sweatshirt and khakis with his hands folded, speaking with as much of a filter as he can muster and giving short responses to injury questions. Rarely, though, has the Michigan coach been as direct as he was Monday afternoon. He took responsibility, and so did the players. He said, repeatedly, that the performance wasn’t acceptable, and that it starts with him. He said the effort wasn’t there on Saturday, giving the requisite cliches about believing in his team, with the caveat that, in all areas, things must improve — no excuses and no way around it. “We didn’t play physical enough,” Harbaugh said. “We were out-hustled. I take responsibility for that. In any ways that we were out-schemed, I take responsibility for that. It’s my job to make sure we are completely sound, in all offenses and defenses that we’re running.” There are no shortage of areas to improve, but Harbaugh turned the focus to the trenches, on both sides of the ball. Wisconsin outran Michigan by a margin of over 300 yards on Saturday. The Badgers overwhelmed the Wolverines with size in the run game, breaking open holes for Jonathan Taylor. The subsequent scoring forced Michigan to throw the ball on offense. After the game and on Monday, offensive players talked about how jarring it was to have passed 42 times, “which is something I haven’t seen at Michigan since I’ve been here,” fifth-year senior tackle Jon Runyan Jr. said. Strictly speaking, he’s incorrect. In 2015, Runyan’s freshman year, Michigan hit that mark three times and it did so in the 2018 Outback Bowl as well. But his answer speaks to something greater. Despite Josh Gattis’ promises of a vertical passing game, this group still wants its identity to be rooted on the ground. On Saturday, it lost that. “They took us out of our game that we wanted to play,” Runyan said. “That’s something we’re really not used to, with throwing that many times in a game.” It doesn’t help that senior quarterback Shea Patterson seemed to be playing through an injury Saturday — Harbaugh said Saturday that he was evaluated at halftime — and was constantly dodging pressure, as Wisconsin racked up two sacks and seven hurries. Patterson proved his mettle last year, when he threw for 2,600 yards and had as good a season as any Michigan quarterback has in the last decade. But against Wisconsin, he alternated between running for his life and looking lost. “We have to do a better job of protecting the quarterback,” Harbaugh said. “Have to give him time to make throws, make reads. Do what he’s capable of doing, he’s a very good player.” On Saturday, tight end Nick Eubanks said that the offense dwelled on their early errors, in particular Ben Mason’s fumble near the goal-line. Harbaugh didn’t reject the premise outright on Monday, but he refused to take it as an excuse. If that bled into effort, it’s correctable, but also as indicting as anything Michigan did on Saturday. “Effort’s something that can’t be coached it’s kind of a personal business decision you make,” Runyan said. “... Looking back on the film, not trying to call out anyone, but I feel like there were some plays where the effort could’ve been better. “I think along with effort comes execution. Guys aren’t going to trot on the field being like, ‘I’m probably only going to give 60% of effort this play.’ No one’s thinking that. They were able to exploit those matchups and get to where they wanted to get.” Acknowledging those errors is the first step. Now it’s on Harbaugh and Michigan to correct them. ETHAN SEARS Managing Sports Editor Wolverines hoping to rebound Jordan Glasgow remembers his first tough loss at Michigan — the infamous “trouble with the snap” play that doomed the Wolverines against Michigan State his freshman year. But they didn’t let it stick with them, winning their next four games — including three on the road — before losing to Ohio State to finish 9-3. Michigan capped it all off with a win in the Citrus Bowl. Last year, the Wolverines did something similar, dropping their opener at Notre Dame before ripping off a 10-game winning streak to finish 10-2 with a loss to the Buckeyes and a berth in the Peach Bowl. Neither of those things guarantee that Michigan will do the same this year. After all, the Wolverines looked much worse against Wisconsin on Saturday than they did in their previous early-season losses. But Michigan players still remember that they’ve rebounded before, and going forward, the only thing left to do is believe they can do it again. “There have been a lot of tough losses since I’ve been here and I don’t think we’ve let any of those losses really define us,” said fifth-year senior linebacker Jordan Glasgow. “ … I feel like we can go on to be a successful team and we can improve going forward.” The Wolverines pointed out again and again Monday that all their goals are still ahead of them. Every Big Ten East winner since division realignment in 2014 has had at least one loss, and losing to a West team like Wisconsin means that it could still hold the head-to-head tiebreaker against other East foes. And Michigan will enter the easiest part of its schedule: home games with Rutgers and No. 14 Iowa and a road trip to Illinois. Those games could provide a good opportunity to get back on track, but could is the operative word. The Wolverines have shown little cohesion so far, and they’ve struggled to handle in-game adversity. There are multiple areas that need fixing, from run blocking to turnovers to defensive line play. But there’s now plenty of the bad stuff on film for Michigan to learn from. The trick now is to stay mentally strong enough to not get discouraged. “I’m kinda looking at this loss as a learning moment,” said fifth-year senior offensive lineman Jon Runyan. “I’ve had some hard losses here, this one is early on in the season. It’s against a Big Ten West opponent. Everything we want is still ahead of us. “We can’t lose another game. It’s tough losing a game in the Big Ten already, but we’ve got everything ahead of us. Can’t dwell on this too much or we’re not gonna be moving forward.” Runyan noted how the Badgers were able to dictate what the Wolverines did offensively, forcing them to throw the ball way more than they were comfortable with. Against the Scarlet Knights, the first item on Runyan’s agenda is to force Rutgers’ defense to react to Michigan’s offense, rather than the other way around. But after the Wolverines are done with their film study, there’s no reason to dwell on Wisconsin anymore. If there’s any hope of still reaching the goals they constantly speak of, they’ll have to keep that game in the past and just keep moving forward. “It was a bad day for Michigan,” said Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh. “And I don’t want that to turn into two losses, don’t let one loss turn into two. ... This week (is) the most important. Win the next game, come back to work and make sure it doesn’t happen again.” ARIA GERSON Daily Sports Editor ALEXIS RANKIN/Daily Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh took the blame for Saturday’s loss. ALLISON ENGKVIST/Daily Jordan Glasgow is drawing on past losses in his response to Saturday’s.