Sherrone Moore's right to be 'not happy' with Michigan football performance

For a half, Michigan football looked exactly like the team we thought it was going to be at the start of the season. Then, the Wolverines allowed 21 points in the fourth quarter and nearly lost to Minnesota.

Michigan won (27-24) and was playing well on all three sides of the ball. The special teams blocked a punt. The defense forced a couple of key takeaways and the offense scored on the first drive. It also took advantage of good field position to score two other critical touchdowns.

It wasn't perfect by any means. But it was enough. The defense needs to be better at the end of games, but the offense does too. It would also help if the coaching staff didn't have to save time for the other team by snapping the ball early with a lead, late in the fourth quarter.

Michigan football barely avoided disaster

On the final drive, after recovering an onside kick, all Michigan football needed to do was avoid catastrophe. But an early snap that led to a fumble that could have been an epic disaster. Alex Orji got on the ball and Michigan was able to run out the clock but the Wolverines were a weird bounce or two away from an epic collapse.

Afterward, Sherrone Moore wasn't happy and he shouldn't be. You have to play four quarters of quality football to win, especially against good teams and Michigan just can't seem to get it all working at the same time or for four quarters.

“Yeah, not very happy with the performance,” Moore said to Jenny Taft on the FOX broadcast. “Yeah, we’ve got a lot to clean up. The kids work so hard to come out here, and I think coaches, players, we got to do a lot of cleaning up to do as a team, as a group, to get better.”

Moore said Michigan would have to "go back to the drawing board." Who knows what that means. It's clear the Wolverines still don't know how to make use of Alex Orji. The offense needs to do more to help the offense and after the inerception, it was ineffective outside of one drive.

What's scary is thinking about if special teams didn't block that punt or if Zeke Berry didn't rip that ball away from the Gophers. The Wolverines needed all of those points to win, but starting next week against Washington, that's not going to be good enough.

Moore is right not to be happy with how Michigan football played in the second half. Now, he just needs to figure out how to fix it.