3 things Michigan football needs to do to turn its season around

As sad as it is to say, it might be good to have a week off from Michigan football. To be frank, the Wolverines haven't been that enjoyable to watch this season.

At times, it's been hard. I know we got spoiled over the past three seasons. Michigan football rarely lost and it rarely made mistakes. So all the mental errors have been hard to stomach.

So have all the weird decisions from the coaching staff. This season was always going to have challenges. But the job of a coaching staff is to get the most of the talent it has. Michigan hasn't done that.

Hopefully, that will change over the next six games. A defense with Mason Graham and Will Johnson shouldn't allow 259 passing yards per game or allow so many explosive plays.

Other issues need to be fixed too. We talked earlier this week about some of the reasons why Michigan football has failed to meet expectations. Now, here are three things they need to do in the last six games to put their best foot forward.

Make things easy for Jack Tuttle

People expecting miracles out of Jack Tuttle need to reset their expectations for a couple of reasons. One is that he's never truly been a full-time starter and a big part of that is injury.

The second part is that Tuttle just recovered from an injury. Last week was really the first time he got to practice without restrictions. Rust is to be expected.

Tuttle isn't going to be J.J. McCarthy. He can be Cade McNamara though. Tuttle led Michigan football to three scoring drives against Washington and if the running game is working, Tuttle should be able to take advantage of the opportunities that will present.

So it will still be important to keep the down-and-distance manageable. Michigan needs to run the ball and shorten the game. They also need to run the ball, because this offense won't look good if the running game isn't even working, which at times, it hasn't.

The bottom line is that if Jack Tuttle is throwing 30-plus times per game, that won't be a good thing for the Wolverines. Most of the time at least.