'Not Bad': Kyle Whittingham Defends One Michigan Football Position Under Fire

Bryce Underwood struggled, but QB isn't the only position that played poorly.

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Michigan might've started 1-0 on the season, but it wasn't pretty and nothing about the offense gives fans confidence heading into Week 2 against Oklahoma.

Bryce Underwood reverted back to his old ways and played poorly after the initial drive. But in Underwood's defense, the offensive line didn't appear to play well. Run lanes weren't opening and Underwood was under duress — at least we thought.

On Monday, Kyle Whittingham said he had watched the game three times — not falling asleep until 5 a.m. ET on Sunday morning — and came away with the conclusion that the offensive line wasn't as much of a liability as he originally thought.

"Not bad, the offensive line didn't play bad," Whittingham said on Monday. "I've watched it three times now, the entire film. And they did not have a bad game. It wasn't a great game, but it wasn't bad. We just, like I said, there were some big runs negated, and a big throw or two negated from penalties.

"Pass detection was okay, one sack, we allowed the one sack. But I thought the offensive line, after watching it a few times, it wasn't as big of a liability as I thought it was initially."

Need to run harder

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The Wolverines had 106 yards on the ground and Underwood was Michigan's leading rusher with 47 yards. Starting running back Jordan Marshall saw 11 carries for 44 yards, and Savion Hiter had 15 yards on five carries.

Whittingham believes that the Wolverines weren't running with enough violence and that's something that needs to be improved heading into the next game.

"Yeah, we weren't running very violent, we had to be more violent in our runs," said Whittingham. "And sometimes we, instead of getting more southerly, too much east-west going on, we need to be more east-south. That needs to be where we are."

A low output for Jason Beck's offense

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In each of the last two seasons, Jason Beck's offense had the No. 2 rushing attack in college football. And last season, he had Jim Harding as the O-line coach with the Utes. Beck's lowest rushing output last season came when Utah played Texas Tech, and the Utes ran for 101 yards.

Beck has been a proven commodity when it comes to getting his offense to run the football, but the Wolverines' offense stalled one too many times and Michigan couldn't gel.

"We only snapped the ball, I think, 48 times," Whittingham said. "And so a lot of our ineffectiveness on offense was because we're on the sidelines a bunch of the time, but even when we were out there, we weren't good enough on third down. Didn't run the ball well enough offensively, just barely got over 100 yards, which is not indicative of a Jason Beck offense."

And things will only be tougher this weekend when Michigan hosts Oklahoma. The Sooners will have more talent than what Western Michigan had. Beck will have to get more creative, along with his players playing up to their capabilities.

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