Michigan defeated an inferior opponent in UCF on Saturday afternoon to move to 2-0 on the season. It was a commanding win, but not necessarily the cleanest one. The best was to summarize the game: an early season win over an inferior opponent.
In this game, there weren’t any real standout performances for Michigan, but there weren’t any terrible ones either. Here’s what I thought.
MVP: Good Signs
Aside from a botched snap on a third quarter punt attempt by Kenny Allen, Michigan’s special teams looked good. Allen looked automatic on kicks and all kick return/coverage teams were excellent. This was a special teams performance that also included a number of blocked kicks, which was nice to see.
The other great sign I noticed was Wilton Speight’s very live arm. He was always known for having a big arm which went along nicely with his large frame. But, he has never showed the quick release and great zip that he has this season so far.
Jake Rudock was such an efficient passer because whether he was throwing long or short, he had a pretty fast release. He also had excellent zip on short throws, which worked very well in Harbaugh’s offence.
This team will go as far as Speight can take them, and his ability to get the ball out fast and with great zip is a very good sign for Michigan.
not-MVP: Ominous Signs
All we heard ahead of this game was that UCF gave Michigan a great early season look at how they’d fare against spread offences. Michigan stopped the Knights’ spread because they were just bigger, better and more talented.
I’m picturing that run by UCF’s quarterback… and now I’m picturing JT Barrett
— Mark (@MarktheNomad) September 10, 2016
Michigan was not able to contain a bad team’s spread offence in a very convincing way. They allowed too many long quarterback runs, which is ok against UCF….but will need to be much better as they face more talented competition.
The good news, however, is that this is only week 2 and there is now plenty of film to help identify what went wrong, and plenty of time to fix it.
Today didn’t look great, and I think most fans would have wanted it to look much better. But, now that the Wolverines have faced just a bit of adversity, they’ll improve because of it.
What did you think of Michigan’s week two performance? Let us know in the comment section below!
Photo Credit: Eric Upchurch/MGoBlog
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