Michigan football: Joel Klatt is right about taking a measured approach

Michigan football notched a huge win at Wisconsin last Saturday and here’s what Joel Klatt, a Fox Sports analyst had to say about it and why he’s right. 

Unless you were living under a rock, you knew that Michigan football dominated Wisconsin on Saturday and beat them 38-17, and the game wasn’t even as close as the score shows.

Michigan was finally able to exorcise its demons in Camp Randall and come away with a signature victory, the Wolverines first at Camp Randall since 2001.

Michigan’s defense was the story of the game, holding Wisconsin to 43 yards rushing and notching six sacks in the contest, oh yeah, and Dax Hill completely annihilated Graham Mertz and forced him out for the rest of the game at the beginning of the third quarter.

The offense really stepped up when it counted too, with Roman Wilson having a breakout game and Cornelius Johnson catching two nice touchdown passes.

No, the offense wasn’t perfect, with Cade still missing a few of his receivers and the receivers dropping passes, but when a play absolutely needed to be made (when Wisconsin gained momentum towards the end of the 1st half), the offense stepped up in the second half to close the door. Even JJ McCarthy threw a long TD pass (he also had a rushing TD as well).

Believe it or not, but Michigan football (as a ranked top-15 squad) was an underdog in that game and won, so Jim Harbaugh got his first win as an underdog in his coaching career at Michigan.

Now, Michigan has its sights set on a surging Nebraska, in primetime, at their place, next weekend. I liked what former college football player and current FOX analyst Joel Klatt said after the game about Michigan though.

Mike MacDonald has Michigan playing faster and looser this season. Obviously, the defensive coordinator came from a professional team in the Ravens, so it makes sense. The concepts are more pro-style, with more zone coverage mixed in with man.

Here’s what Joel had to say about this defense:

"“Mike Macdonald comes in from the Baltimore Ravens, Jim Harbaugh wanted a Ravens style defense. He felt like the players and personnel that he had on this team, namely Aidan Hutchinson, were going to benefit from an NFL style of defense that had stand up edge players,” Klatt said. “Aggressive, attacking style of defense, and yet they didn’t have to do it with just man coverage. Playing one on ones on the outside, they will do that but they mix in enough zone coverage. They mix in some of that where it’s gonna be harder for teams to key in on their defense like they were able to do in previous years.”"

He also thinks this year’s defense is more tailored to stopping some of the better offenses in college football, the OSU’s, Bama’s of the world:

"“This version of Michigan is more suited to make a run into the back end of the season than they’ve been suited in the past. In the past, they were running schematics that relied on their talent margin as opposed to their opponent. They were able to overwhelm some of those opponents, but once they got into like-footing in particular or in a situation like Ohio State where Ohio State has better players they were never able to hold up.”"

This next statement, however, really caught my eye:

"“I know everyone is gonna wanna know is this the team that can compete with and beat Ohio State —- wait for that week, just look at it a game at a time. Nebraska presents challenges, Michigan State will present challenges, Indiana will present challenges, Penn State will present challenges. If they can just focus on these challenges, continue to develop in these new schemes, then maybe they can get to a point where they can beat Ohio State. But focusing on that too early is not gonna be beneficial for this team or this fanbase.”"

Everything Joel said there was correct, especially the last statement. Although Michigan has looked very good this season, they can’t be thinking too far ahead. They still have a gauntlet of opponents to get through before facing OSU at the end of the season. They can’t take any opponent for granted. Even the Nebraska we all thought was complete garbage and dysfunctional is suddenly playing inspired football.

If we’re being completely realistic, the chances of Michigan making it to November 24th without a loss is extremely low (although it’s definitely attainable). Like I said in a previous article, the Big Ten East is very competitive from top-to-bottom this season. Any one of these Big Ten East teams can beat Michigan.

Michigan needs to take care of business first week-to-week before it can worry about bigger things like OSU.

Yes, Michigan football can still and should still be doing OSU drills every day to keep themselves motivated, but the large majority of the time should be spent on preparing for the opponent that’s in front of them. They can’t afford to slack off.

The Wolverines need to take a game-by-game approach and not think or look too far down the road.

They still have to play a probably-ranked MSU and Penn State (both away), Maryland (which has a turnover-prone but extremely efficient Taulia at QB), has to play Indiana (who almost always gives Michigan a game, even though they haven’t looked even decent this season), and this week’s opponent Nebraska, who boasts a true dual-threat QB, and dual-threat QBs have been a major Achilles heel for Michigan’s defense in the past.

So, yes Joel is right about all of that. It’ll be interesting how Michigan plays this coming weekend against Nebraska and in the weeks ahead.

Will they keep riding the highs of a signature win over Wisconsin and slack in preparation? Or will they have tunnel vision, focus on Nebraska, and other opponents and keep showing good preparation. Only time will tell.