4 Most Important Things Kyle Whittingham Said After Michigan's Stunning Win vs. WMU

The Wolverines need late heroics to take down WMU on Saturday.

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Michigan might be 1-0, but it wasn't pretty, and Saturday night was nearly a destructive start to the Kyle Whittingham era. The Wolverines needed a second added back on the play clock in order to beat Western Michigan, 13-12.

Following the game, Whittingham met with the media, and here are the four most important things he had to say.

On Bryce Underwood's performance

"I'm going to reserve judgment on that until I dissect the film. But we talked about how he improved, you know, dramatically through fall camp. That's a fact. There's no one that attended practice that wouldn't tell you anything different. We had former players there, and everybody had the same analysis. 

"And so I'm not saying that Bryce played a bad game. This isn't on Bryce Underwood. It's on me, and I've got to figure out a way to have these guys better prepared and be able to get into a rhythm offensively. 

"It's like we never got into a rhythm after that first drive. We always found a way to screw it up. We were like 0-of-5 or 0-of-6 before we converted a third down, I believe. And you just can't win football games like that. We were very fortunate to win, obviously"

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Bryce Underwood went 5-for-5 to start the game and ended 12-for-22 for 170 yards, one TD, one INT, and one fumble. Kyle Whittingham can place blame on his shoulders, but it was clear that Underwood reverted to his old habits.

Maybe Underwood was great in fall camp, but until either the coaching can get him to look that way in live action, or until it clicks with Underwood, the Wolverines' offense isn't going to be very good this season, or win many games if their star QB plays this way.

His footwork was a mess, and locked onto his targets, and was clearly trying to do way too much.

One for the history books

"This game will go down in history, Michigan history. I don't know if it's in a positive way, but it'll go down in history for certain.

"And bottom line is we're 1-0, but the reality is we have got a lot to fix, a lot of things to address. You know, the things that we didn't do well: We didn't play the run well on defense, we didn't run the ball well on offense, we lost the turnover margin three-zip, we didn't make enough first downs, and all this is squarely on my shoulders. There's no doubt about that, and I've got to do a better job preparing this football team."

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This didn't look like a Kyle Whittingham-coached team. He coached 21 seasons at Utah, and the Utes were known for their discipline, but Michigan played undisciplined all evening and had nine penalties for 80 yards.

The Wolverines were four-touchdown favorites heading into the game, and after their first drive, Michigan was clearly overmatched by a MAC team. Western Michigan is a very good program, and it returned all of its starters, but this performance was far from acceptable.

Not all was terrible

"And as a defense, we've got to create and generate takeaways. Now, to our defense's credit, all three takeaways that Western Michigan got, we held them to field goals in each of those instances. And so that was a positive.

"Defense kept them out of the end zone. That was positive. They only allowed 12 first downs.

"So there is some positive things to take away from it. The most positive thing of all, obviously, is 1-0. But we know we're not going to win a lot of ballgames this year if we don't fix some things and fix them right away. And we will be in early tomorrow morning working toward that end."

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Aside from allowing WMU to have a 20-play drive in the third quarter, Michigan's defense wasn't the issue. The Wolverines were gassed, and that's because the offense couldn't stay on the field. Between three-and-outs or turnovers, it was up to Michigan's defense to win the game.

The Wolverines allowed 132 yards on the ground to the Broncos, and fans likely thought it was more than that. Michigan's defense wasn't horrible and edge rusher Dom Nichols was great. He had nine tackles, 1.5 sacks, and 2.5 TFLs in the game.

Michigan will need its defense to take a even bigger step next week.

Oklahoma looms

"Oklahoma, top-10 team coming in, yeah. You've got to work yourself out of it. There's no magic fairy that's going to wave a wand and solve your problems. You know, we got ourselves into this, and we will get ourselves out of it, and there's no way to get out of it but hard work and getting things corrected.

"And we'll do that as rapidly as we can, obviously. But we're 1-0. We're still 1-0, I think. I've got to read the paper tomorrow. I think we're 1-0."

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While Michigan struggled to beat in-state WMU, Oklahoma cruised to a crisp 51-0 win over UTEP on Friday night. John Mateer had three passing touchdowns in the game and the Sooners are licking their chops seeing how Michigan played on Saturday.

As Whittingam said, there is no magic wand he can wave to get Michigan to play good football. The Wolverines are going to have their work cut out for them to make drastic improvements from Week 1 to Week 2 to compete against Oklahoma.

WMU might have a good defense, but the Sooners' defense is much better.

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