Bye week will be good for what ails Michigan

http://www.michigandaily.com/node/73837


Bye week will be good for what ails Michigan

By Matt Slovin, Managing Editor
Published September 22, 2013

EAST HARTFORD, Conn. — Here’s a frightening proposition for Michigan fans that isn’t so farfetched: Akron manages to punch it in on one of four tries from near the goal line last weekend in the game’s final minute.

Then linebacker Desmond Morgan can’t quite cradle a Connecticut pass into triple coverage Saturday night. The 15th-ranked Wolverines don’t get a short field to work with, allowing them to tie the game and eventually win it with a field goal, 24-21.

Suddenly, 4-0 is 2-2, with losses to 37- and 18-point underdogs.

Two improbable defensive highlights — a fourth-down, all-out blitz that ended with junior linebacker Brennen Beyer hitting Akron quarterback Kyle Pohl and Morgan’s Charles Woodson-esque interception — were needed to keep Michigan from the ranks of mediocrity. The perfect record is still intact. Coach Brady Hoke has repeatedly said that goal No. 1 each week is, obviously, to win, and as long as his team does that, not all is lost.

But style points do matter, especially for a team that is struggling to find its confidence against opponents that it should be handling easily. If the Wolverines had delivered the blowout that nearly everybody expected against Akron, they would have had no reason to doubt themselves when they played their first road game of the season against the Huskies. Even the narrow escape the week before, though, wasn’t enough to keep Michigan from looking like a shell of the team that beat Notre Dame on Sept. 7 under the lights.

“Every opponent, we expect to play a tough game. We’re Michigan, though,” said junior defensive end Frank Clark. “We don’t settle for less. We don’t play to anyone’s level. And for the last two weeks, we have.”

The schedule doesn’t get discernibly harder for a few weeks now, which might actually be a bad thing if the Wolverines continue playing down to their opponents. Two of the next three games, Minnesota on Oct. 5 and Indiana on Oct. 19, are against teams that were picked to finish in the bottom half of the Big Ten standings before the season.

The other game before the schedule becomes increasingly difficult, Penn State on Oct. 12, will give the Wolverines a chance to show they can win an important conference road game — last season, they beat only Purdue and Minnesota away from home.

First up, though, is the bye week, and it couldn’t possibly come at a better time. Unlike last week, there will be no surprise Sunday full-pads practice to try and get the latest debacle out of the heads of the players.

Also unlike last week, the chance for redemption won’t come for two weeks. Redshirt junior quarterback Devin Gardner said midway through the week of preparations for Connecticut that when you play poorly, the following Saturday takes forever to arrive. Gardner topped his abysmal Akron performance, which he called possibly his worst game ever at any level, with three more turnovers against the Huskies. It’s safe to say the next two weeks will crawl for him.

And it’s certainly best that they do. The reason why Michigan so desperately needs this early season bye week isn’t to recover physically and get healthy, though that is a happy side effect. The bye is most crucial now because this team has a bruised psyche. Two weeks from now, fewer teams will be among the unbeaten, but Michigan will still be one. Perhaps a week without a game is exactly what the Wolverines need to begin playing like it.