Michigan Football: 4 things on Wolverines bye week to-do list

Open the playbook

Gattis’ offense is still very much a work in progress. It was always going to be, whether Michigan scored 24 points or 54 points against the Black Knights.

This is to say that it’s hardly time to call for anyone’s head. Gattis has never been a primary play-caller before this season. Now he’s being tasked with completely revamping the Wolverines’ identity. That takes patience, no matter how talented Nico Collins, Tarik Black and Zach Charbonnet are.

Still, Saturday’s contest was defined by a lack of creativity. If Michigan football was to be a mediocre offense again this season, it at least could have been imaginative, the thinking went. Instead, the Wolverines’ gameplan was 2018-esque.

We don’t know how much Patterson’s health was a factor against Army. But what we do know is that Patterson was no threat with his legs — he recorded eight carries for negative 18 yards. This left Charbonnet as the workhorse back, and left Michigan’s offense predictable and one-dimensional.

The Black Knights’ front eventually keyed in on the repetitive zone-reads. In the first half, Charbonnet took the ball 10 times and gained 50 yards. He finished the game averaging barely three yards per carry, and was stuffed on two consecutive fourth-down conversions from close range.

Much of the benefit of a bye week is recovery, and this is a huge part of the equation here too. Tru Wilson missed the contest due to an injury, leaving the Wolverines without a committee to keep its backs fresh. Donovan Peoples-Jones’ return to action looms on the horizon as well. That alone might keep the offense from looking this stale again.

But for all the hype about Speed in Space, this is still a system figuring out how to make the most out of its players. It will take at least a few weeks of experimentation to get there, judging from where Michigan was on Saturday.

On the bright side, though, we didn’t see one Dylan McCaffrey jet-sweep yesterday. Small victories!