Michigan Football: Wolverines’ Success Sustainable?
After watching Michigan football beat up on a highly touted BYU team in shutout fashion, I think we all have the same question moving forward: Is this sustainable?
Michigan Wolverines
It wouldn’t be the first time the Wolverines played out of their minds and then fell violently back to Earth, but those teams didn’t have the same type of feel. The 2015 Wolverines are actually improving every week.
Weird, right? It’s the first time I can remember a coach talking on and on about getting better every day and then actually seeing it work.
This Michigan team at the end of the season may not be special in its record or accolades, but it could represent a positive shift in the culture that’s become lousy in recent years.
If Michigan plays like it just did against BYU, it’s game over for every team on the remainder of the schedule, maybe with an exception to Ohio State.
I don’t want to spend too much time getting caught up in what could happen, though.
The bottom line is: Yes, this looks to be sustainable.
The Wolverines’ incredible showing against BYU was not a fluke. And it’s pretty easy to see why.
There was nothing out of the ordinary. It was just a continued progression of what we’ve already seen. Sure, the offensive playbook may have opened up a little more, but it wasn’t anything drastically different from the first three games of the season.
Jim Harbaugh is not the type of coach to try to disguise a whole lot of what he’s doing. His offense is showing you what’s up, and then they’re going to do it. Physically, I might add.
Nobody had to do anything superhuman for Michigan to score 31 points. (I do acknowledge that Amara Darboh momentarily warped physics and De’Veon Smith teleported.) And the same is true for the defense. That’s what we’ve been seeing throughout the young season; it just gets better.
In-season progress and development are things we had to divorce under Brady Hoke. It was always fun to hope Devin Gardner would become a more pure passer in the pro-style attack, but did a single ounce of legitimate belief go towards that thought? Not really.
After beating BYU, the Wolverines moved from No. 25 to No. 10 in the new S&P+ rankings. (Michigan State is No. 15 and Ohio State is No. 7.)
The S&P+ rankings produce some odd things—like Minnesota and Penn State being ranked above Utah—but this is an excellent measure of how Michigan has been performing. (Click here if you’re interested in learning more about S&P+ and other advanced stats.)
What Michigan has manufactured here in the first four games is sustainable, and I’m not going out on any kind of limb to say that.
Progress is just something we should get comfortable with.