FootballSaturday, October 4, 2019
6B

If Michigan wants to move forward, it can start this week
T

here’s a kind of routine to 
this by now.
Michigan goes on the 
road and loses to a better team. It 
comes back home and spends the 
next week talking about a refo-
cused energy. It beats up on a bad 
team or two, calming things down 
before the next 
real opponent 
comes into 
town. Still, the 
initial loss casts 
a pall.
From there, 
it goes one of 
two ways. Last 
season, Michi-
gan ripped 
off 10 straight 
wins, including 
three over good teams, riding the 
streak into Columbus as the bruise 
left by the initial loss faded. In 
2017, it metastasized and Michigan 
went 8-4 in the regular season, the 
worst year of the Harbaugh era.
Those are the two directions 
this season can head towards, 
starting Saturday.
The phrase “measuring stick” 
has gotten some play ahead of 

Michigan’s matchup with Iowa. 
It’s a sympathetic framing. In real-
ity, the measuring stick was two 
weeks ago in Madison, and the 
Badgers blew the doors off Michi-
gan. Until proven otherwise, that’s 
the lens through which this season 
will be viewed.
But the Wolverines don’t have a 
chance to beat a good team on the 
road this week. Ohio State won’t 
roll through until late November. 
Michigan can’t absolve the woes 
of the Harbaugh era on Saturday, 
but it has a chance to beat Iowa at 
home, and that’s a task unto itself.
Iowa, as has been pointed out in 
kinder terms by many this week, is 
a poor man’s Wisconsin. The two 
teams play a similar style of grind-
it-out, classic Big Ten football. The 
Badgers do a better version of it. 
That game was on the road, this 
one is at home.
Call Saturday a barometer of 
sorts if you wish. Certainly, it’s a 
chance for Michigan to make the 
same mistake twice.
Special teams coordinator 
Chris Partridge, more than any 
other coach or player who spoke 
to media this week, painted a vivid 

picture of a program that picked 
itself up off the mat after getting 
embarrassed two weeks ago.
“Everybody responded. Every 
single person in this building 
responded,” Partridge said. “That’s 
not common when you get beat 
like that in a game.”
As for Harbaugh, the man at the 
center of the storm?
“Unbelievable how he handled 
the team and the coaches that 
week,” Partridge said. “It was just 
like a clinic, I felt.”
That’s fine and good. A 52-0 
beatdown of Rutgers last Saturday 
surely helped out Michigan’s confi-
dence and started its recuperation 
from Wisconsin. It didn’t finish 
that recuperation, though, and it 
proves nothing if the Wolverines 
can’t follow up.
The looming reality of this sea-
son still remains: every game left 
on the schedule is either against a 
ranked team or on the road. The 
Scarlet Knights were the last hur-
rah for empty blowouts. The next 
eight games are as strong a test as 
Michigan has faced under Har-
baugh.
This week is likely the best shot 

the Wolverines have this year of 
knocking off one of those ranked 
teams and a game they absolutely 
must win to keep any semblance 
of optimism for their season. That 
doesn’t mean it’s a gimme.
An offensive line that struggled 
against Wisconsin and is likely to 
be missing its best blocking tight 
end, Sean McKeon, will need to 
figure out how to block star edge 
rusher AJ Epenesa. The run game 
averaged less than 3.5 yards per 
carry against Rutgers — that won’t 
cut it against Iowa, or most of the 
opponents left on the schedule. 
Josh Gattis standing on the 
sideline is a nice cosmetic change. 
Michigan’s offense looked truly 
improved last week, but it’s 
impossible not to against Rut-
gers. Saturday will start to tell us 
whether it actually means any-
thing.
“If you play two really good 
games in a row, that would be 
a trend in my mind,” Harbaugh 
said. “Three or more, a habit.” 
In Harbaugh parlance, more 
than that might form a callus. 
That would be an uphill task given 
the schedule. It’s also what was 
expected of Michigan before the 

season. Beating Rutgers by 52 
does as little to change the goal-
posts as losing to Wisconsin by 21. 
But on Saturday, Michigan 
could get a little closer to its initial 
goal. It has yet to change, if you 
ask some players.
“We know that we’re gonna see 
(Wisconsin) again in my home-
town, for the Big Ten champion-
ship,” sophomore linebacker Cam 
McGrone said after the Rutgers 
win. “I don’t really mind hearing 
it, cause I know when we see them 
again, we’re gonna smack ‘em in 
the mouth.”
Ben Bredeson, a senior guard 
and, more importantly, a captain, 
kept things more diplomatic.
“We’re just focused on Iowa 
and not trying to make a state-
ment for a game that happened 
two weeks ago,” he said this week 
when asked a baiting question 
about Wisconsin.
Michigan can say it’s moved on 
from the loss two weeks ago. For 
the rest of us, that process can 
start with a win this week.

Sears can be reached at 

searseth@umich.edu or on 

Twitter @ethan_sears.

ETHAN
SEARS

RUCHITA IYER/Daily
The Michigan offense will be put to the test on Saturday, looking to prove its progress since the loss at Wisconsin.

