At this point in the football season, you can see pretty much whatever you want to see.
Some things are obviously true and real statements of fact (Michigan's offense is the functional equivalent of a ball of paperclips held together with chewing gum and painter's tape), and other things are wishful thinking (the Wolverines losing every other game for the rest of the year by 50 points before the NCAA gives them the death penalty), but in early September it can be hard to tell the difference between the two.
I generally (generally!) try to be at least relatively impartial when assessing how good the Michigan football team is when writing Threat Level. It would be frankly pretty lame if I came out every week and spent 700 or so words saying the equivalent of "Michigan sucks, Bucks by a million" and, given the last three (damn, really?) games between the two teams, also completely wrong. I was the only person on the Eleven Warriors staff to predict an Ohio State loss against the Wolverines last season; a fact that gives me zero pleasure because if I had been wrong I would've looked like a huge asshole, and when I ended up being right I was still miserable anyway.
All of this is to say that while I'm pretty thoroughly convinced that the 2024 Michigan football team is Not Good, not everything about their admittedly pretty-terrible-on-paper 28-18 win against Arkansas State has convinced me that they're Actually Bad as a team.
Yes, the final score looks and is rough, especially against a team as poor as the Red Wolves, and especially especially at home. But Michigan was also up 28-3 in the 4th quarter, only gave up the two touchdowns with less than six minutes left in the game, and racked up over 300 yards on the ground.
OKAY BUT THERE IS QUITE A BIT THAT IS ACTUALLY BAD
I have no idea what Michigan is going to do at quarterback going forward. This is in part because Davis Warren threw three interceptions to an atrocious Arkansas State defense, two of which made me think that Scott Bakula had quantum leaped into his body for a second and freaked out as he tried to process three defensive linemen in his face. More on that in a second (the line play part, not the Scott Bakula part), but the actual answer is that Warren is terrible under any kind of pressure and ended up benched for a guy that apparently the Michigan coaching staff doesn't trust to throw the football? Very much, anyway?
Davis Warren has been benched for Alex Orji after his 3rd INT of the game
— SleeperCFB (@SleeperCFB) September 14, 2024
pic.twitter.com/6hfJAER8TK
Warren got benched and Alex Orji did actually get a chance to throw the football four times. Three of the passes were little pop-a-shot looks that were the equivalent of letting your 6 year old pretend to drive the car while it's in neutral in an empty parking lot, but one was a bomb to Fred Moore that he inexplicably slowed down for and missed. Orji probably threw it too long anyway, but if Moore keeps running Michigan fans get to store that play in their "shows potential" memory folder instead of the "this makes me sad" one.
The wide receivers continue to be mentally lost in space, but what should be much more concerning is that the right side of their offensive line is a sieve, with tackle Evan Link in particular being maybe one of the worst starting linemen in the country. Arkansas State had more sacks (2) than Michigan did (1), which is both very funny and true. Tight end Colston Loveland has been bailing everyone out so far this year, but he got hurt and is questionable for this weekend.
Oh, and the Wolverines gave up 222 yards passing, in large part because their linebackers and safeties are still lost in coverage. That feels ominous.
NOT EVERYTHING WAS ABSOLUTE BUTT
The aforementioned Wolverine running game got back on track, but whether it stays there is dependent on Sherrone Moore looking at 17 carries for 82 yards versus 15 carries for 153 yards and being able to determine which of the two is a better performance.
Donovan Edwards didn't even get five yards per carry against a team that gave up over seven against Central Arkansas, a team that I'm only 75% sure exists even after I went to their website to make sure. But Kalel Mullings sure as hell did.
Mullings isn't some revelation at running back. He's just huge, and even though both guys were getting hit at the line of scrimmage, Mullings is the guy who was more consistently breaking tackles for big gains. I continue to posit that the ideal move here is to make Mullings the featured back and give him the rock 25 times a game and involve Edwards in the passing game, which is why I'm confident that The Don will get 15 carries against USC this week.
The defense as a whole played much better than they did against Texas, especially in the run game. But: it's Arkansas State. And like I said, they still can't defend short or intermediate passes.
LOSE TO THE TROJANS TO BEAT THE SPARTANS
There is probably no version of the 2024 Michigan football team that can beat USC, and it's certainly not the version of the 2024 Michigan football team that's desperately trying to pretend that it's still the 2023 Michigan football team.
What Sherrone Moore, official contracted football coach no longer working paycheck to paycheck, needs to do is understand that the Wolverines can eventually evolve into something new this season, something that reasonably expect to beat the Michigan States and Illinoises of the world. That's going to involve taking a long, hard look at this offense and what it's actually capable of, but it'll need to start by redefining themselves against the Trojans.
The Threat Level will remain at GUARDED, mostly because I want to be able to drop them if they lose to Indiana or somebody. Fingers crossed!
